Category Archives: economy

Dear Human Resources: four ways employers can help America’s job hunters (and themselves)

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“Hiring managers” say only apply for jobs you’re qualified for. Fine. Now, here are some things HR needs to do in return.

Only-Post-JobsI subscribe to a number of industry mailing lists and content services as part of my work, and periodically they’ll publish stories aimed at helping job seekers – how to find opportunities, how to network, résumé tips, that sort of thing. Recently one of them posted an article where they elicited advice for job hunters from “hiring managers.” (Actually, these folks weren’t hiring managers at all – they were HR staffing managers, who have nothing to do with the hiring decision. But they’re the gatekeepers, so their opinions matter. )

The key bit of insight in this one particular piece was fairly straightforward: only apply for jobs that you’re qualified for. Continue reading →

A stimulus plan for marketing: five steps for jump-starting your economy

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More great insight from John Cavanaugh at The Tap Tap Tap:

I hate limbo. And that’s what I’m seeing a lot of in marketing right now. Don’t accept it. Maybe some of us have gotten past the “Rage against the dying of the light” phase. But now the light is frustratingly flickering and just not coming on. Give it some more juice! Marketing and communications is a powerful force for business change. Use it!

Read all about it. Pass it on. Then act on it.

Optimism on the rise: what does it mean?

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A new McKinsey survey of global executives suggests that businesses are growing more hopeful about the economy.

…the share of executives who say their countries’ current economic conditions are better than they were in September 2008 has more than doubled in the last two months, and the proportion who expect conditions to improve by the end of the year now stands at 39 percent.

Of course, these expectations have to be evaluated against some pretty low expectations. Continue reading →

The smartest shopping cart that ever lived

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MediaPost reports this morning on an interesting new survey from TNS, which says that “sixty percent of shoppers across the globe believe that they will be able to pay for purchases using just their fingerprint by 2015, rated top by 25% of shoppers.” Never mind the chill that should send down the spine of anyone who values their privacy – we’ll deal with that another day. For the moment let’s have a look at what people expect from The Future®.

Continue reading →

Macro-succession crisis grows fangs

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I’ve written here on two or three occasions about the looming macro-succession crisis threatening American business. Well, my colleague Whytawk over at Scholars & Rogues has a great post this morning on the dynamics shaping our emerging recession, and in it he put some teeth in the retiring Boomer piece of the macro-succession puzzle. If I’m a staffing leader at a company that relies on its ability to attract and retain talented people I just got extremely nervous.

At the same time the US has not reformed either of Social Security or Medicare and fully 76 million people out of the total 150 million of the US employment base are due to retire over the next 10 years as the Baby Boomers hit 65. [emphasis added]

Yow. Continue reading →

World War III under way; America hasn’t noticed?

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“Corporate America ought to be darned worried. If you are a major corporation with very sensitive technology, you have been targeted. Somebody is spying on you right now.” Todd Davis, FBI supervisor in Sacramento

There’s been a great deal of debate lately about spying – FISA and domestic spying issues, for example – and now the news that Blackwater is augmenting its army, navy and air force with its own CIA. While I’m routinely bemused by the conclusions we seem to reach (we’re about to approve a new Attorney General who doesn’t think waterboarding is torture, remember), I do welcome these kinds of discussions. The world of information and intelligence has been changing dramatically for years and our policy deliberations haven’t kept pace. It’s critical to think about what we know, how we know it, what we do with it, and the implications of not knowing it, because despite the fact that they’ve been awfully cavalier about the Constitution, our conservative friends are generally right in noting that there are bad guys in the world. In the end, the question really boils down to how can we best deal with the bogeys without becoming bad guys ourselves.

There’s one area that we aren’t talking about, though, and it’s a topic we ought to be very concerned with: corporate espionage. Continue reading →