Thanks to Adam Sandler from the Nevada Broadcasters Association on providing this article:

According to consumer and media research firm Scarborough Research, Detroit, Providence  and Las Vegas are the leading markets for Online Job Searchers. Nearly one quarter (24%) of Internet Users in each of these markets conducted an online employment search in the past month. In contrast, Salt Lake City and Tulsa are the markets least likely to have Online Job Searchers, as 12% of Internet Users in these cities searched online for a job. Nationally, almost one fifth (19%) of Internet users conducted an online job search during the past 30 days.

Job websites have obvious appeal to anyone looking for employment. Scarborough Research finds that employed adults are utilizing online job search to keep their eye on the market. The majority (74%) of Online Job Searchers are, in fact, employed full-time or part-time.

“Employers can reach both active and passive job seekers, nationally or in specific local markets, by using employment web sites,” said Gary Meo, senior vice president, digital media services, Scarborough Research. ”These types of sites are a powerful tool for marketers to connect with consumers – on many geographic levels.”

In examining Online Job Searchers locally, Scarborough Research finds this group is distinctive based on location. At a state level, all of the top local markets – Detroit, Providence, and Las Vegas – are located in states that have higher than average unemployment rates as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In drilling down to the local market (DMA) level, more demographic differences are revealed. For example, Las Vegas Online Job Searchers are less likely than the national average to be employed. 59% of Las Vegas Online Job Searchers are employed versus 74% of all Online Job Searchers nationally.

Online Job Searchers in Detroit and Providence, on the other hand, are more on par with the national average. 71% of Detroit’s Online Job Searchers are employed, and 77% of Providence Online Job Searchers are employed.

“While some generalizations can be made about the makeup of Online Job Searchers at the national level, our data shows that the demographic profile and Internet usage patterns of Online Job Searchers are unique to the local market,” said Meo. “It may seem obvious that Detroit, Las Vegas and Providence are high ranking given their rates of unemployment. But when we look more closely at Online Job Seekers in these cities, we find differences including age, ethnicity, income and white collar versus blue collar employed.”

Scarborough Research examined the demographic makeup of Online Job Searchers nationally, as they compare to other Internet users. Online Job Searchers are much younger than average Internet Users. They are 47% more likely than the average Internet User to be between the ages 18-29. The average age of Online Job Searchers is 37 compared to Internet users’ average age of 43.

They are 70% more likely to be African-American. While Online Job Searchers are embraced by adults from all income levels, those with lower incomes tend to be more likely to conduct an online job search. Further, more than half (54%) of Online Job Searchers have one or more children in the home.

While 68% of employed Online Job Searchers are white collar workers, 32% are blue collar workers. This is on par with employed Internet Users nationally as, 70% of employed Internet Users are white collar workers and 30% are blue collar workers. As further evidence of their focus on improving their employment opportunities, Online Job Searchers are more than twice as likely to plan to go back to school in the next year.

If LinkedIn is not in your arsenal of recruiting tools yet, it should be.  Traffic on LinkedIn has more than doubled in the past year with all of the massive layoffs.  LinkedIn is experiencing 7.7 million new unique visitors each month now.  That is a lot of activity.

Read this article and you will understand the power of LinkedIn. 

If you have not registered for the first Nevada Recruiters Association meeting yet, you should do so now.  Our first speaker,Dave Mendoza, was recognized for his networking and blog achievements as one of the top 20 networkers worldwide on LinkedIn and for his contributions as an Affiliate Partner to JobMachine, An Arbita Company.  RSVP today.

Make sure we connect on LinkedIn when you establish your account – http://www.linkedin.com/in/douggeinzer

Wow….the other day, I had a prospective client tell me that the people he was looking for were not online.  It has been many years since I have heard this. 

Back in 2006 when Steve Wynn was opening up Wynn Las Vegas, HR Executive Magazine was fortunate enough to interview Arte Nathan.  When posed a similar question, his response was on the money:

“I now know who’s online, and who’s not online,” Nathan says. “The answer is, everybody is online. People in the lower economic strata — all of their children have computers. It’s how they’ve guaranteed that their kids will get a better education and better access to all the information that’s out there.”

Now this employer was looking to fill call center jobs in Las Vegas.  I would venture to say that ‘those job seekers are online’ as is the rest of the population ….. like my 90 year-old grandmother, my parents, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces and everyone in between all of these age groups.

Come to think of it…. I do not know of anyone who is not online anymore.  Can you?

Las Vegas (NV) – The data presented in this press release were collected by Recruiting Nevada (“RN”) during the 4th quarter of 2008 from job seekers who visited the www.recruitingnevada.com website. Recruiting Nevada publishes Nevada’s largest network of employment Web sites, thus attracting the largest audience of local and relocating job seekers. Restrepo Consulting Group LLC (“RCG”) analyzed the trends that the data reflect.

The two firms work together to analyze and report on employment trends in Southern Nevada. The work that RN performs is critical to understanding the types of jobs being marketed, the job seekers that are interested in those jobs and our community, what job skills they might be bringing and where they are coming from. RCG’s role is to assess and interpret what the data means for the future economic sustainability of Southern Nevada.

A total of 2,729 responses were collected by RN during the period. The data contained herein represent self-reported information. Job seekers’ intentions might vary significantly from their actual behavior. The data being analyzed are based on responses to job openings that have been marketed by RN for its clients, not basic inquiries.

Top 10 States: Where Job Seekers Are From: 1,832 of 2,729 Respondents

Analysis

• There were 2,729 survey job seekers during the 4th quarter of 2008 vs 2,857 during Q3. 67% or 1,832 of Q4 respondents came from 10 states. Nevada (28.5%), California (11.2 %) and Texas (4.5 %) were the Top 3 states for survey job seekers during the quarter. In Q3, the Top 3 states were Nevada, California and Florida. Florida, which was #3 in Q3, dropped to the #5 spot in Q4. In Q3, Nevada respondents represented 26.3% of all respondents, whereas 13.7% of respondents came from California and 5.4% from Florida.
• Over 72% of all the respondents from the Top 10 states were from Southwestern states (Nevada, California, Texas and Arizona), compared to slightly over 70% last quarter. Three of these states, Nevada, California and Arizona, remain at the center of the housing market collapse. Of particular concern is Nevada, because the data is indicative of the weak job market. Nevada reached an unemployment rate of 9.1% in December 2008, almost a full percentage point above the national average of 7.2% in December 2008.

Top 5 Employment Categories of Interest to Job Seekers

Analysis

• The Top 5 employment categories most heavily marketed, and the ones that job seekers were most interested in included:
  1. Nursing – 32% vs. 41% in Q3
  2. Construction Management – 22% vs. 18% in Q3
  3. Mining Trade – 24% vs. 18% in Q3
  4. Construction Trades – 14% vs. 13% in Q3 and
  5. Instruction – 8% vs. 10% in Q3
• Again, the good news is that the largest segment of job seekers was looking for nursing jobs, a profession that is in very short supply in Nevada. The bad news is that 46% of the job seekers were from the Construction sector, a jump of 48% from Q3’s estimate. This a very clear indicator of the massive job losses experienced by this sector nationally. That construction workers are seeking jobs in Nevada shows how bad things are elsewhere, considering the state of our own real estate market!
• Please note that RN is able to define the audience of readers/users by its Search Engine Marketing (SEM). So, the data on employment categories skew towards nursing, because that is where the largest portion of RN’s marketing budget is invested. No dollars, however, were spent marketing construction-related jobs. These are “active” jobseekers who found the www.recruitingnevada.com website.

Job Seeker Education Levels

Analysis

• The data appear to indicate that there was a relatively good supply of well-educated job seekers looking for work in Nevada during Q4, 2008. Added together, job seekers with Bachelors, Master and PhD. degrees comprised 29.4% (vs. 35% in Q3) of the persons looking for new employment, in-state and out-of-state. What we don’t know is how many are currently employed, underemployed or unemployed.
• Almost 28 (vs. 23% in Q3) of respondents had a high school diploma. About 16% had an Associate’s degree and 9.4% had a trade school diploma

Job Seeker Experience

Analysis

• Senior level and senior management employees, again, represented the largest share of job seekers at 43.2%. This was the same portion as in Q3. Mid level employees and mid level management accounted for 18.4%, the second largest group. In Q3, mid level respondents accounted for 19.6% of job seekers.
• On a positive note, its good for Nevada that mid and senior level employees are interested in possibly relocating to the state. On the down side, the relatively large percentage of senior and mid level job seekers is the result of the continued shedding of jobs around the country, because of a recession that is becoming more severe with each passing month.

When Will Job Seekers Move?

Analysis

• When asked about their interest level, 54% (53% – Q3) of all the job seekers in Q4 said that they would move to Nevada if they could find a job here. Clearly, most respondents do not want to move to Nevada without a job already in hand, because of the severity of the economy in the state.
• Nearly 23% of job seekers indicated that they currently live in Nevada. The share in Q3 was 22%.

Job Seekers & Their Housing Needs

Analysis

• The majority of respondents in the Q4 survey, not currently living in Nevada (49%, vs. 45% in Q3), indicated that they would prefer to rent if they move to Nevada, at least initially. Additionally, 39% (Q3  – 43%) said that they would rent first and then buy a home once they move to Nevada. Only 12% claimed that they would like to buy a house upon relocating to the state. This was consistent with Q3’s numbers.
• The weak economy is clearly causing job seekers to be very conservative in making long-term and large-scale financial commitments like home purchases. This also continues to be function of the health of the housing markets in Nevada and in the job seekers’ state of origin.
• Out of those job seekers who expressed an interest in buying a house once they move to Nevada, 52% (51% in Q3) were senior level or senior management employees with over 4 years of experience.

Job Seekers Education Level & Willingness To Buy a Home In Nevada

Analysis

• The data show that, regardless of the education level, more than half of all job seekers plan to ultimately buy a home (51% – blue and yellow bars).
• Of the respondents who stated that they intended to buy a home in Nevada, over 29% (Q3 – 26%) had a bachelor’s degree. Of those who plan to rent, almost 31% (Q3 – 24%) had a high school diploma.

In HR we frequently use the term ‘benchmarking.’  Typically this is a way for us to set the bar for expectations. 

When an economy is on a downward spiral I encourage the sales managers, financial analysts, and budgetary gurus of the world to consider “benchmarking the bottom.”

What does this mean?  Being cognizant of when a particular industry (or even a department) hits the bottom, so you can begin to report growth or improvement.  Each industry and/or geographic location is different.  Using a blog post from earlier this week…. The mortgage industry hit bottom many months ago and is now experiencing growth rates similar to 2005 & 2006.  We don’t hear about that.  The real estate industry hit bottom in the past few months here in Las Vegas, but is now seeing consecutive months of growth.  Again – we do not hear about it.

All we hear is the doom & gloom, when there are positive indicators being seen. 

Benchmarking the bottom allows us to shift our focus and mentality back to growth.  Therefore our attitudes project positively rather than negatively. 

Written By Peter Weddle, Weddles   

Today’s War for Talent is best waged with a social strategy. That’s a far cry from what’s implicitly accepted as the key to success in recruiting today. Conventional best practices are built on the notion that talent acquisition is really an exercise in hiring “human capital.” While that term may dignify us humans as a special form of capital, however, it fails to acknowledge the one attribute that differentiates cognitive beings from cogs: we are a social species not carbon-based widgets. The best way to recruit talent for our organizations, therefore, is to acknowledge and respect that distinction.

What is a social strategy in the War for Talent?

Let’s begin by comparing it to a traditional human capital strategy. That approach to recruiting focuses, appropriately enough, on the skills and knowledge of alternative candidates. It is implemented by taking a page from our colleagues in logistics. Basically, we create a supply chain of human beings with the necessary expertise, and we turn that stream of human capability up or down as needed to fill our various openings. In short, a human capital strategy is all about supply-finding enough talent to meet the demand of your organization. Success is defined as putting a qualified person in the right job.

How is such a strategy typically implemented? The successful operation of a supply chain depends upon your ability to find enough human capital to meet the organization’s needs. Hence, the technique of choice is passive and proactive sourcing. A human capital strategy relies on passive recruitment ads and on proactive data mining online and in resume databases; it involves (largely) passive employee referral programs and proactive searching through profiles posted on LinkedIn and other social and business networking sites. However it’s accomplished, it is all about building up an inventory of talent for potential assignment to specific job openings.

A social strategy, in contrast, acknowledges the critical importance of candidates’ skills and knowledge but goes beyond them. It focuses as much on their temperament, personality and personal attributes. It examines their mettle and their potential level of engagement. Why try and get your arms around stuff as squishy as that? Because as important as “hard attributes” like skills and knowledge are, it is a person’s willingness and determination to apply those capabilities to the organization’s mission that enables that organization to succeed.

The hard skills of candidates define human capital; their dedication and loyalty define social capital. In the relatively benign marketplace of the 20th Century, human capital was sufficient for an organization to survive and prosper. In the dangerous marketplace of the 21st Century, only social capital can ensure an organization’s ability to do so.

Why is that? Because research shows that the single greatest cause for a new hire’s sub-par performance or their rapid attrition is not their inability to do the job, but their inability to fit in. As human capital, they’re everything an organization could want; as social capital they’re worthless. And, an organization that is bankrupt in social capital will inevitably (and quickly) be bankrupt in financial capital, as well.

The Hallmarks of a Social Strategy

A social strategy is not about supply. It is all about the right supply. And a successful social strategy doesn’t put a qualified person in the right job, it puts the right qualified person in the right job at the right time. You can’t do that with sourcing alone. You need sourcing and recruiting, but recruiting with a very different kind of emphasis than what we’ve seen in the recent past.

Although not universally so, recruiting in the past five-to-eight years has largely been seen as the art of selection and persuasion. It has been understood to be the effort required:

• to determine the best qualified person based on the stated requirements for a job and
• to convince that person to accept an organization’s offer of employment.

As complex and difficult as those two tasks may be, however, they do not provide a complete definition of recruiting. Historically, recruiting has also involved another activity, one that is now vital to victory in the War for the Best Talent. This third task is best described as getting to know candidates as people as well as the paper persona we meet on their resumes.

How is that done?

The activity is basically an exercise in socialization, but in our profession, we have traditionally called it relationship building. Its goal is to uncover those individuals with the right stuff-the subtle but powerful personal characteristics and values that draw out a person’s best work on-the-job and their willingness to continue contributing that work to an organization-or what we have traditionally called peak performance and retention.

Now, as anyone who’s ever been in a relationship knows, it takes time and effort to nurture the familiarity and trust that are the basis for a sound relationship. And even more challenging, many of the relationships we do nurture in recruiting will ultimately identify individuals with the wrong stuff, at least for our organizations. Nevertheless, in today’s and tomorrow’s demanding operational environment, any organization without a robust relationship-building or social strategy is at risk, not only in the War for

Talent, but in the war for survival.

It’s up to us, therefore, to move beyond the quest for human capital. In the 21st Century, the primary mission of recruiters must be to enrich our organization’s stock of social capital. We must, for example, stop seeing our resume databases as static storehouses of resumes, and instead treat them as platforms for building relationships with people. We must stop using professional networking sites as virtual barrels of profiles and instead, tap their capabilities to nurture familiarity and trust with talented employment prospects. We must get beyond the simplistic view of humans as simply another form of inert capital and see them instead as complex social beings who have talent to share, but only if they feel like they’re in the right place at the right time for them to do so.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

The advertisement below demonstrates the “changing of the times” for newspapers.  Hey – we have $1 stores….why not $1 ads??

Probably because Craigslist doesn’t cost anything.

Written By Peter Weddle, Weddles  

The conventional wisdom-or at least the “wisdom” of the Finance Department-is that recruitment advertising should stop when hiring stops. The organization doesn’t need candidates, they will argue, so why bother to recruit them. It’s a waste of money when money is tight.

This view has that inimitable bean counter logic, but as always, it’s terribly shortsighted. In fact, I think an economic downturn is the most appropriate time to advertise for new talent. Why? Because the logic of our friends in finance is framed incorrectly. You don’t need candidates right now, but you will in the future. And, since that’s indisputably true-and because you want to be ready for the upturn when it comes (not after it)-this is the very best time to invest in talent acquisition. Here’s what I mean.

In tough times (as well as good ones), it’s absolutely critical that an organization spend its money wisely. From the Finance Department’s perspective, that means doing more with less. From a rational economic perspective, it means getting the best return possible on any expenditure of scarce financial resources. And, there are at least two reasons why you can generate a better than normal return on an investment in recruitment advertising when you aren’t hiring than at any other time.

Reason #1: It Takes Time to Build a Pipeline

The best talent are almost always employed, in bad times as well as good ones. They are the last workers an employer will let go and the first workers to receive whatever raises, bonuses and plum assignments there are to be doled out. For that reason they don’t jump at the first employment opportunity that comes along, even if it involves a potentially more lucrative and interesting job. They need to be convinced that it’s the right career move for them.

And there’s the rub. Not everyone (or every organization) can convince the best talent to move. They want to be familiar with and trust those who will provide the information and arguments for making such an important career decision. What does that mean for us recruiters? Although it’s a cliche￩, it’s also absolutely true: the best talent can’t and won’t be sold via as transaction; they demand a relationship.

As anyone who’s ever been in a relationship knows-and that includes the CFO-it takes time and effort to achieve a meaningful level of familiarity and a genuine sense of trust. And it’s that necessary lead time that requires advertising now for the talent you will need later. Moreover, unlike in a stronger business environment, you actually have the time to invest in relationship building during a downturn. Instead of answering to clamoring hiring managers, you can reach out to top performers and pay attention to them so they are ready and willing to move six or twelve months from now, when you need them.

Reason #2: Your Competitors Aren’t Advertising

In normal times, you’re not the only one trying to connect with and lure away the best talent. Your efforts are complicated by competitors in your own industry as well as those that operate in countless others. Recruiting-at least recruiting those with hard-to-find skills and those who are top performers-isn’t a contact sport. You can’t just connect with them and expect that they will come. No, recruiting dream candidates is a nightmare.

It’s a cut throat business … except when it isn’t. And, this is one of those times when it isn’t. Today, you have a rare moment of collective myopia, a window of opportunity when the Finance Departments among your competitors will win out and force the cessation of recruitment advertising in their organizations. So, now is actually the very best time to strike. Because now, you have the marketplace for top talent almost all to yourself.

How does that help you? First, your message is likely to cost less, maybe even much less. (Job boards, like retail companies, are ready to deal.) Second, your message is much more likely to be noticed. There’s less competition from other employers’ job postings. And third, your message is also much more likely to work. It will be taken more seriously by more people as they worry about their job security.

All of that adds up to an extraordinary return on a present day investment in recruitment advertising. How can you calculate that return? The cost of a vacant position is typically estimated to be somewhere between one and three times the salary of the position’s incumbent. During a recovery, when having talent on hand and ready to go is critical to success, an unfilled position has the potential to cost far more. The key, therefore, is to monetize that vacancy so that even the CFO can understand.

For example, a Java programmer position that pays $100,000 per year and remains open for just sixty days is likely to cost your organization somewhere between $16,700 and $50,000; a senior sales technician job that pays $60,000 per year and remains open for 90 days could cost your organization between $15,000 and $45,000. And that doesn’t include the real cost of diminished productivity and lost growth opportunities that would accompany those talent shortages.

So, here’s the bottom line (as our friends in finance are fond of saying): investing in recruitment advertising in the present is the single best way to spend money wisely in the present and for the future. It’s as close to a two-fer as you’ll ever get in talent acquisition.

Thanks for reading,
Peter
 

The Economic INSight (see the December Economic INsight), published by Restrepo Consulting Group always simplifies Nevada’s job loss/gain with a graph:

Several weeks back, I griped about the lengthy licensure process in Nevada and how it gets in the way of recruiting.  Last Friday the Board of Medical Examiners agreed on a plan to improve the process for doctors looking to gain licensure in Nevada.  According to Louis Ling, executive director of the BME, doctors should be able to get licensed within 60 days.  We can only hope that the process improves. There are many open doctor jobs in Nevada.