By Gerry Crispin, SPHR and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com
Since 1996 our Update has been published 10-12 times each year and aims to share commentary, observations, perspectives and data we come across during our staffing adventures. We hope you continue to enjoy it and pass it on to friends. All are invited to register for the Update for free. Coupled with our Bellwether, a provocative monthly look at trends we share with CareerXroads Colloquium members, we are always willing to challenge the accepted wisdom or poke a little fun at the staffing industry and ourselves in the process.
We invite you to keep in touch and join us during the year at the various conferences where we speak or simply attend.
Data geeks will love this Ted.com video. We've never seen information presented visually the way Hans Rosling, a Swedish professor of global health, does it using an application he developed. We also were amazed by a deep data mining dive into global health care.
The video (to which we were pointed by Jeremy Shapiro, a fellow data junkie who is leading one of the Staffing Standards Task Force groups) opens with a story by Professor Rosling trying to benchmark just how smart his students are at the beginning of his graduate class. He asked them to take a 1-question pre-test:
"Which country of each pair (below) has the highest child mortality?" (One member of each pair has twice the mortality of the other)
He discovered that the students consistently did worse than a control group of chimpanzees! (A group of peers (professors at his University) managed only to match the chimps.) The professor surmised that it wasn't ignorance but preconceived ideas about the distribution of wealth and other variables that contributed to the result.
As we integrate staffing globally, we are somewhat sure that preconceived ideas we have about the employment process will also hinder our ability to devise effective protocols. Here's hoping we can do better than the chimps.
Last month 2800 NJ National Guard and Reserve troops returned home to NJ from Afghanistan and Iraq after a 9 month deployment. Families in NJ were especially grateful because the mission was carried off without a fatality. The troops were greeted with applause, parades and many thanks.
Missing in the equation however was the fact that the troops were gone during an economic meltdown and many returned without a job. Not fully knowing what career assistance was needed or, whether any help was needed at all, Sherrill Curtis, a volunteer leader on the SHRM NJ State Council (responsible for Workforce Readiness initiatives) got involved. Her timing was right and the needs turned out to be extensive.
Partnering with a NJ military transition firm, Tip of the Arrow Foundation, Sherrill pulled together volunteers, resources and support in record time. The result was a 2-day event (July 29 and 30) at NJ's largest military base, Ft. Dix. Hundreds of career coaches, recruiters and HR professionals in NJ volunteered to individually counsel each of the expected 1200 attendees on the first day. Workshops and employer panels were also scheduled to focus on tactics for networking and using technology in the job search.
Our eyelids droop when we hear lawyers or PhDs explaining anything. And when they explain something legal, our head hurts. And when they explain the legality of testing, our head droops, hits the desk and then hurts even more. (There are exceptions and among them I happen to love Charles Handler who recently wrote an ERE article on this subject)
However, while we think staffing leaders want to understand what is going on in all relevant corners of their world, the recent Supreme Court decision on the Ricci case (which may eventually have some bearing on testing) is confusing. The problem is that it is a complex finding and, while it will certainly be dissected for the next few months offering lawyers, EEO experts and psychologists extra exposure on webinars, our simplified [and arguably biased] take in a few somewhat declarative sentences follows:
In the short run, if you validate against performance, you will have fewer problems. If you recruit against criteria you've validated, simply make sure your diverse candidates all meet the same bar. Tom Janz, another staffing standards group leader, sent us this link to SIOP content and a few notes which prompted my blog. Thanks Tom (another PhD we can understand).
Six Colorado men were indicted in June for defrauding 42 staffing firms of more than $5 million over the last several years. The Workforce article, Six Indicted for Allegedly Defrauding Staffing Firms, described how the defendants contracted staffing firms to provide payrolling services for imaginary workers, turned in false time cards, failed to pay the staffing firms then went out of business and repeated the process over, and over, and over.
As if the staffing industry didn't have enough to worry about with the recession. We can only wonder if they also tried to collect unemployment after laying the non- existant workers off. (Thanks to Art Koff of http://www.Retire dbrains.com and Trevor Vas from the Australasi an Conference down-under for helping track the details of this story down.)
A steady stream of #SHRM tweets enlivened the nearly weeklong conference for those of us who attended the HR community's largest yearly conference (even down 50%, there were nearly 8,000 paid attendees and more than 10,000 in all) in New Orleans from Friday through Wednesday last month.
Among the many (hundreds of) presentations was one that was moderated by China Gorman, COO of SHRM. She had a handful (perhaps one might describe it as a fistful) of talented HR bloggers for a panel entitled HR Bloggers: Who are these people and why should I care? The bloggers (who also Tweeted extensively) included HR practitioners Laurie Ruettimann of Punk Rock HR; Jessica Lee, an Editor of Fistful of Talent, Lance Haun HR Guy and Kris Dunn, the founder of Fistful of Talent.
We credit SHRM's COO for reaching out to what has been a disaffected part of the HR community and working on getting them engaged. While much more needs to be done to bring the Society up to speed with the technologically adept in HR (not to mention the staffing community, business community etc.), this was a solidly thought out experiment we would like to see more of.
CareerXroads helped to sponsor a Tweetup at the conference that drew some 100 GenY and not a few Boomers - a video moment of which was uploaded by Kris Dunn.
He has accounts on Facebook, My Space and Twitter. He runs an Internet Forum on Yahoo and keeps in touch with the rest of his friends via email. He is 37 and homeless. He lives under a bridge in NY City.
Mr. Pitts may lack a mailing address according to a Wall Street Journal feature by Phred Dvorak but you can certainly find him virtually. Roughly half of some 200 shelters in the city run by various non-profits offer online access.
When was the last time you needed a mailing address to hire?
We first learned of these ads that parody a UK Chef reality show several months ago.
First, watch the original chef's
performance for as long as you can take it.
(Warning: Graphic Content)
2. Then be prepared for a real shock by the parody: Litt
le Gordon (Warning: Graphic Content)
Note the advertiser Caterer.com a part of totaljobs
group.
Now you are ready to read John Zappe's excellent article explaining
the phenomenon.
We're not sure if this means Any Press Is Good Press
or not.
CareerXroads
The Staffing Strategy Connection
By Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com - 732-821-6652