One of the re-occurring themes I come across in my experiences with employer branding and recruiting is the seeming competitiveness for IT talent out of college and shortage there of.

Employers looking for the top IT talent often times find themselves competing for a small pool of qualified applicants. If there’s been one consistent trend in Universum’s resarch, it’s that Google is winning this battle. But it may not be that easy.

I recently came across a very telling graphic from the folks at Top Prospect Blog (blog.topprospect.com). The bloggers over at Top Prospect took on the task of visually illustrating the internal recruitment battle that goes on between some of the top employers for IT Talent.

In reviewing this graph you’ll notice that each arrow represents the ratio of employees leaving one company for another. Therefore, you’ll be able to see, which IT employers are winning the head to head.

Pretty cool, huh? It looks like for all the talent Google attracts out of college, they are still losing out to Facebook and LinkedIn. It also confirms what a lot of us have known for awhile – Yahoo! is in trouble.

I really would have liked to see this graph include some newcomers like Zynga or SalesForce, to see how they measure up against these tech giants.

Anyway, as you can plainly see the battle for tech talent is fierce between these tech giants and although Google may be winning the battle of attractiveness for those coming directly out of college, they aren’t always able to hold onto them.

To check out the article from Top Prospect and get a closer look at the graph go here:

http://blog.topprospect.com/2011/06/the-biggest-talent-losers-and-winners/

I recently came across a really interesting article on Recruiting Trends about Google’s social media effect on recruiting. The article discusses Google’s failed social media attempts before and discusses what is different in their strategy this time.

Google has an ambitious plan to extend social media across the entire Internet experience. You may have noticed the +1 sign that now accompanies a number of your favorite web pages, which is used to aid in future searches and the web experience as a whole.

This would be an incredibly ostentatious plan for anyone not named Google. It was only a matter of time before the most powerful brand on the Internet would break into the social media market. But what does this mean for recruiting? How could this affect companies like Linkedin?

In the article from Recruiting Trends, Vitaly Latush says, “If Google’s social overlay covers the entire Internet people may start choosing professional branding tools that better suit their professional/knowledge profile rather than accepting the one-size-fits-all options. ”

Google’s reach extends to nearly every corner of the Internet. Thus, building your recruiting brand through Google would be the most logical move should they develop the medium to deliver it. With Google+ they may have done just that. But only time will tell if Google+ can challenge and overtake Facebook and LinkedIn, or if it’ll wind up an afterthought like Google’s previous failed attempts.

Google Buzz anyone?

You can check out Latush’s article in its entirety by going here:

http://www.recruitingtrends.com/google-social-what-does-it-mean-for-recruiting

Last week I mentioned that Universum’s first annual employer rankings for young professionals was released. The rankings saw extensive coverage and really helped ignite the conversation on just what makes an employer seem like a good place to work?

While many were content with just listing the employers as ranked by the 10,000 plus professionals, some decided to delve in more deeply to uncover just what makes an employer seem attractive?

Laura Vanderkam from the CBS Interactive Business Network decided to look at the rankings more closely and question just why a company that very few people are qualified to work for consistently ranks high on desired employer lists.

Vanderkam writes:

“Google’s perks in particular are legendary (free lunches! ball pits!) and nearly 25% of young professionals said they wanted to work there.

“But if you think about it, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Google’s a great place to work… if you’re a software engineer. If you’re a writer, chemical engineer, musician, botanist or any of a host of other specialties, the opportunities are a bit more limited.”

And she’s right, there are very few of us out there that would be qualified to write code, but essentially it all comes down to branding and positioning, two of Google’s strong points.

The Universum Survey is incredibly straightforward. Students and professionals alike are asked the simple question “Where would you consider working?”

The result represents the strength of employer brands regardless of industry or the individual’s qualifications. It’s not so much a job application as it is a wish list, and where employers rank on this list depends heavily on its use of employer branding and strategy.

You can read Laura Vanderkam’s article in its entirety here:

http://www.bnet.com/blog/time-management/what-makes-a-company-a-cool-place-to-work/373

In a recent article from Recruiting Trends, Author Chad Storlie discusses how military experience can translate extremely well into the work place. The example Storlie uses is that of Operation Command Centers or OPCEN. Walt Disney World recently opened a brand new Operations Center, “to ensure that theme parks guests, employee, and services run smoothly, effectively, and on time.”

Globally, there are several  hundred military OPCENs running all day and under combat conditions. Certainly, that type of experience could prove invaluable to Walt Disney World when looking for candidates to run their brand new Operations Center.

Since Gulf War Veterans make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, Storlie listed some incredibly useful ways for recruiters to learn more about adding value to their company by utilizing military experience:

1. Leverage Their Military Experience to the Company & Job

2. Mentor an Individual or Group

3. Further Education One Class at a Time.

Storlie goes over each of these methods in great detail and the whole article is worth a look. You can see the article in its entirety here:

http://www.recruitingtrends.com/how-recruiters-can-leverage-military-experience

There are many things the come to mind when thinking about diversity: race, sex, religion, sexuality and age are some of the first we tend to think of.

However, there is another valuable group of people that are often overlooked when employers think about diversity in the workplace–the disabled.

There is a recent article from www.diversityinc.com that discusses disabilities in the workforce. John Kemp, executive director of the US Business Leadership Network (USBLN) discusses the stigma that surrounds disability, and how employees often hide their problem from coworkers.

John Kemp knows a thing or two about the disabled in the work place–he started his life with his disability, and has two prosthetic arms and legs. Now, he says, is the time for progress.

“In October, the percentage of people with disabilities in the labor force was about 21 percent,” Kemp said. “That percentage hasn’t changed since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990”

It’s clear that the definition of diversity has changed over the years, and will continue to change and keep evolving.

So what is your company doing to address the topic of disabilities in the workforce?

You can access the article here: http://diversityinc.com/article/8127/The-Valued-Employees-Youre-Missing-People-With-Disabilities/

Dr. John Sullivan from ere.net has posted an interesting article about the top 30 social media recruiting errors. Many employers think that just by saying they “use social media” they are using it effectively when in reality that is really not the case. In fact, there are a number of mistakes that employers make over and over again when trying to implement social media strategy into their recruitment plans.

The common errors that Dr. Sullivan includes are separated into five major categories: strategy related errors, channel and tool selection errors, message and coverage errors, recruiter and employee support errors and process and administrative errors.

Essentially, for social media to work for your overall recruiting plan, a solid strategy is a must. You need to know who you are targeting, how you are communicating and always keep in mind your employer brand. In fact, Dr. Sullivan lists underemphasizing employer branding as one of the biggest mistakes.

What it really boils down to is that social media makes it too easy for employers to flood their subscribers with too much information that isn’t targeted or consistent. It’s important for an employer to have a plan in place and to stick to it lest they lose potential recruitments.

The fact is that social media can be an incredibly useful tool in recruitment. But unless you have a good plan in place, you should avoid it. To see the full list of common social media errors, go to:

http://www.ere.net/2011/02/07/high-impact-social-recruiting-errors-the-top-30-to-avoid/

Even the President of the United States speaks of the War for Talent. If the US is going to lead the way into the 21st Century, much has to be done to “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world,” as Mr. Obama said. Considering the status quo, a lot needs to be done to keep up with the increasing knowledge and skill levels in emerging markets.

For employers in the US, the future looks grim. Nearly half of all new jobs will require more than just a high school degree, but a fourth of America’s students don’t have one. “The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to 9th in the proportion of young people with a college degree”, he said.
Unfortunately, the educational crisis goes beyond the high number of students not completing high school or the lack of competent teachers. With so many Baby Boomers retiring from classrooms, the US has to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math to secure the future quality of its education. In addition, these teachers face the challenge of educating and inspiring more students to go beyond their high school diplomas.

A long-term employer branding strategy will be needed in the US, as the talent shortage is further aggravated. Finding the right people, with the right skills, will be your challenge!

You see it on TV and hear it on the radio and it really makes you wonder. It makes you wonder how during a recession and fresh off government bailouts, many employers in the banking industry are still giving out record bonuses.

Many think during a period of such high unemployment, bonuses like these are completely indefensible. However, an expert in employer branding, Simon Barrow, asks why the banks aren’t defending these bonuses more vigorously.

Barrow doesn’t buy the classic excuse–that if the most talented executives don’t get bonuses, they’ll seek them elsewhere and move on to the competition. There are a number of factors that come in to why a person chooses their employer and remuneration is only one.

Instead, Barrow creates a list of a number of possible arguments banks could use to defend the practice of giving out bonuses–assuming his arguments are true, they would be powerful tools in defense of the practice.

Some of Barrow’s potential arguments include: the bonuses’ purpose of offsetting the high cost of education for those high ranking executives, the relatively short career of those in the banking industry and the high burn out/drop out rates of bankers.

Barrow admits he’s never been asked to defend the bonuses officially and thus can only speculate about ways to argue their validity. However, assuming his arguments are true to an extent, and they are quite believable, it makes you wonder why the banks haven’t fought harder to defend them.

To see Barrow’s whole article you can go here:

http://simon-barrow.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-are-bankers-not-defending-their.html

The Pros and Cons of Being Number One

By Annika Lagerhorn

Some companies have the advantage of being an employer-of-choice; these companies often have strong consumer brands and are generally the leading company in their industry. A number one position is a great resource in employer branding, but it also brings a number of challenges.

The Cons

• High expectations

Popularity increases expectations and the higher the expectations the more difficult it will be to meet those expectations as an employer.

• Too many applications

Popular employers typically receive an overwhelming amount of CVs and are unable to sort through the mountain of candidates to find the right type of employees. The employer branding strategy is therefore to narrow the focus to reach those that the company wants to recruit and retain.

The Pros

• Stick out from the crowd

Popular employers are the most successful to recruit and retain top talents. If the company is fairly small and the industry relatively new, the company will most probably have an anonymous existence on the recruitment market. For ‘unknown’ companies, an essential part of employer branding is to inform and explain what the company does and what it stands for― i.e. to build its brand awareness. Unknown employers spend more time and effort pulling people into their organization compared to popular employers that naturally attract key people― it’s a tug of war where the most popular team is the strongest.

An in-depth article by Universum Analyst Jens Trulsson recently appeared on RecrutingTrends.com. In the article, Trulsson discusses a number of key points about employer branding and talent attraction and how it relates to the Universum Student Survey.

Each year Universum surveys over 400,000 of the top students globally and asks them what they look for in an employer. There is no other survey out there that is as large, in-depth and to the core as Universum’s Student Survey.

To read the article in its entirety and also get an exclusive look at a page straight out of Universum Quarterly, go here:

http://www.recruitingtrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Universum-Quarterly-2010-Q4-Page-141.pdf