The Conference Board Employment Trends Index Improves Sharply in December

Gad Levanon

"Given the sharp and widespread improvement in the Employment Trends Index in recent months, it is very likely that we will see at least some job growth during the first quarter," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "Despite the disappointing job report last Friday, the relatively strong economic recovery in the second half of 2009 suggests that the employment trend should reach a turning point in the very near future."

The Employment Trends Index aggregates eight labor-market indicators, each of which has proven accurate in its own area. Aggregating individual indicators into a composite index filters out so-called “noise” to show underlying trends more clearly.

The eight labor-market indicators aggregated into the Employment Trends Index include:

Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find “Jobs Hard to Get” (The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey®)
Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance (U.S. Department of Labor)
Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now (© National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation)
Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Part-Time Workers for Economic Reasons (BLS)
Job Openings (BLS)
Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board)
Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)

The Conference Board publishes the Employment Trends Index monthly, at 10 a.m. ET on the Monday that follows each Friday release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment situation report. The technical notes to this series are available on The Conference Board website

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I Can't Get No Satisfaction..

Tuesday, 05 January 2010
U.S. Job Satisfaction At Lowest Level In Two Decades Red Flag for Employers When Economy Rebounds NEW YORK, January 5, 2010…Americans of all ages and income brackets continue to grow increasingly unhappy at work—a long-term trend that should be a red flag to employers, according to a report released today by The Conference Board. The report, based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. households conducted for The Conference Board by TNS, finds only 45 percent of those surveyed say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1 percent in 1987, the first year in which the survey was conducted. “While one in 10 Americans is now unemployed, their working compatriots of all ages and incomes continue to grow increasingly unhappy,” says Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research Center of The Conference Board. “Through both economic boom and bust during the past two decades, our job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend.” Fewer Americans are satisfied with all aspects of their employment, and no age or income group is immune. In fact, the youngest cohort of employees (those currently under age 25) expresses the highest level of dissatisfaction ever recorded by the survey for that age group. Write comment (0 Comments)
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Jack Welch at SHRM

Monday, 29 June 2009

Jack Welch: The Biggest Trend in Business Today: "I Want Out!"

"HR is important in good times. It defines a company in bad times." Jack Welch

Jack Welch

Jack Welch was interviewed by Claire Shipman from ABC news at the kick-off to the 61st Annual SHRM National Conference. Welch, a big fan of the social networking site Twitter, also took questions from "Tweets" during Opening General Session, held at Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

This is the perfect crowd for Welch; he's always advocated for human resources. Referring to the recession and waves of layoffs in many organizations, Welch said, "HR functions got exposed. The tide went out and some of them were naked. They didn't have the human resource organization that was doing appraisals, that was evaluating people candidly; having it so people knew where they stood. None of you in HR can have anyone in your organization wondering where they stand. Your job is to make sure, just as rigorous as Sarbanes Oxley is for finance that people know where they stand. So when this thing hit abruptly, some people went slashing through the organization with layoffs. And people were saying, 'why me? Why me?' And they didn't know because they didn't have the evaluation process in their toolkit. So, for those of you who got caught naked, you can never let it happen again."

Watch this space for more of Jack's comments.

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Report from ERE Expo

Wednesday, 01 April 2009

What Do You Do? Asked Donato Diorio

Donato Diorio

ERE Expo conferences are attended by highly motivated, interesting and smart people. "Decision makers," as Keven Wheeler told me. This year is no different. We're swimming in information and ideas, here in the brilliant San Diego sunshine. One unique aspect of ERE: this is a very active virtual community (ERE.net), that comes together several times a year, face-to-face, to discuss, debate, and energize the talent management and recruiting profession. No introductions are needed. Everyone knows one another: their opinions, their backgrounds, and their passions.

I'm thankful to be here, and very appreciative that Kevin Grossman and Jonathan Goodman from HRmarketer chose to sponsor Total Picture Radio's podcasts from the conference.

The podcasts from ERE Expo will start on tomorrow with Charee Klimek, CMO of jobangles, and will continue for several weeks.

At the opening reception Monday afternoon, Sean Rehder introduced me to Donato Diorio, the founder and CEO of Broadlook Technologies. "The World's Most Advanced Internet Research Tools." If you think they're kidding, have a look at this. Sean's comment to me: You have to interview this guy."

I've met (and interviewed) many insanely smart people like Donato, who've started high tech companies. What made Donato unique, other than his company being based in Pewaukee, Wisconsin? Donato is interested in something besides computer code: namely, people. Go to Donato's blog posting titled "The Art of the Elevator Pitch; 'So...what do you do?" You'll see what I mean.

We're all asked this deceptively simple question, "what do you do?" on a daily basis. Being a highly analytical, research driven guy, Donato developed a three step-process to building an elevator pitch. Here are Donato's questions, and my answers.

1. Talk about a problem. What is the problem in the market that caused you to create your product or service?

Many professionals who've lost their jobs after 5-10-15 years -- have no idea how to go about finding a new job. What's even more disturbing: many really smart people make the critical mistake of thinking their job is their career. It's not.

2. How do you solve that problem? Be concise and clear.

I've tried to solve this problem by creating a valuable resource - an audio podcast, using a talk radio format. Total Picture Radio is free and easily assessable — providing a "Total Picture" to assist knowledge workers in understanding all of the steps they need to take to successfully, and proactively manage their careers. Most busy professionals are reactive when it comes to their career choices -- I want arm people with the information and inspiration they need to change that paradigm.

What makes you unique? Don’t use generic terms like the “best”, craft something that truly differentiates you in the market.

Most people I interview for Total Picture Radio tell me "you ask really good questions." Obviously, that is my intent. Quality questions generate quality information. My interviews are not two minute sound bites: they're 15 to 20 minute in-depth conversations with diverse and opinionated thought leaders. One reviewer of Total Picture Radio's podcasts on iTunes calls me "the Terry Gross of Careers" which I take as a great complement.

Try Donato's three step process out at home folks, you'll enjoy the exercise!

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Guy Kawasaki, Twitter is Killer

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Nobody's Are the New Somebody's

Guy Kawasaki's presentation at SES New York focused on his favorite application, Twitter (there's a detailed overview of his keynote on ClickZ)

Guy Kawasaki

I wanted to share a brief list of the Twitter tools Guy uses to manage his accounts: @guykawasaki, and @alltop. Guy is one of the most "followed" people on Twitter (over 93,000). He is very strategic in his use of Twitter, calling Twitter "the most powerful marketing tool since television."

He uses SocialToo to automatically follow/unfollow users - you can track Facebook as well, and use it for surveys.
He uses Twitter Counter to track the number of followers, and his ranking. Twitter Counter shows Guy adds over 600 new followers per day.
Retweetist shows the most popular "retweets" (Guy is in a friendly competition in this category with Pete Cashmore, @Mashable). He combs StumbleUpon and AllTop for interesting information to "tweet." He found an article about peanut butter cake which he tweeted, (including the link), and sure enough, within minutes, it had been retweeted.
The killer Twitter app he uses, (from my perspective) is Adjix.com, allowing you to:
Create short links to Web sites, tweet them, track clicks, and earn revenue.
Adjix also ties in very nicely with Twitter using Adjix2Twitter feature that allows you to tweet a link now or have it scheduled to be sent later from multiple Twitter accounts.
Embed Ads in tweets Linkers can also earn revenue with Adjix2Twitter using our new Embed Ad option which allows you to embed an ad directly into your tweet. Watch a Demo
When people click on the Adjix link they run an optional text ad from the Adjix ad network at the top of the page. You'll earn revenue from these ads provided that you were logged into your free Adjix Linker account when you created your short link.
Ad-Free Links You also have the option to not have any ads associated with your link. Simply choose "No Ad" from the pop-up next to the "Shrink Link" button. The ad-free links are simple redirects to the destination Web site. But, Adjix will still collect click data for your ad-free links.
And this is what makes Adjix really powerful: Link Data You can see your link's data (who clicked on the link?, when?, how many times?)