Magic Pot of Jobs

More people had trouble finding jobs in Maryland during September than in previous months. The state’s unemployment rate rose 0.1 percent to 4.6 percent last month, according to the state’s Labor Department. Maryland is now ranked among 20 other states that have reported experiencing month-to-month increases in joblessness.

Last month state officials reported that 138,000 residents were without jobs in Maryland. This is a 33 percent increase in comparison with the beginning of this year.

“It’s pretty much the same story all over the country,” said Mark Vitner, who is a senior economist at Wachovia Corp. “Everything points in the direction of more job losses, because it looks like the economy is going to continue to deteriorate well into 2009.”

According to Vitner, issues with the housing market have caused the loss of many construction jobs in Maryland. With fewer people purchasing new homes, there is less of a need for new construction projects, which means fewer jobs.

He went on to say that the struggling stock market has made the economic situation even worse for the ordinary American. This has in turn caused a decrease in consumer spending, which has seriously affected the retail industry.

Maryland’s unemployment rate has been rising since July of this year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it first reached 4 percent in May of this year, which means that the state’s increasing joblessness is happening at a slower rate than many other states’ are experiencing.

Despite rising unemployment, Maryland is still fairing better than the national average. The country’s joblessness rate in September was once again 6.1 percent. During the same month last year the U.S. jobless rate was only 4.7 percent.

“Maryland and Baltimore, we do expect to outperform the U.S. average, as the U.S. falls into recession,” said Robert Dye, who is a senior economist with Pittsburgh’s PNC Financial Service Group. “Baltimore will enjoy a degree from the recession with its concentration of government and service sector employees.”

According to Vitner, the most recent stock market issues were not reflected in September’s data. Because of this, he expects to the state’s jobless rate to continue to rise in October. Vitner expects the numbers to soon be between 4.7 and 4.8 percent, while PNC Financial has predicted that the unemployment rate in Maryland will reach 5 percent around the beginning of next year.

For the most part, employers continue to create new jobs in Maryland. Rising unemployment is likely caused by the fact that employment growth can’t keep up with population increases. Despite this, September statistics showed that the state had 1,000 fewer jobs than in August. For the year, Maryland employers have create somewhere around 28,000 new jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

With the city-wide unemployment rate at it’s lowest in sevens years this August, those searching for San Antonio jobs won’t experience any undue difficultly. Spurred by the seasonal hiring related to the school year, only 4 percent of the city’s jobseekers were unable to find work. Educational services alone added 1,200 new employees during the first month of classes.

According to Aaron Smith, Alamo WorkSource’s labor market expert, “There was nothing out of the ordinary for the month.” He went on to say that “Unemployment, however, continues to hover at historically low levels, a situation that’s good for jobseekers but creates strain for employers looking to fill jobs.” With in the last year there have been 14,400 new San Antonio jobs created, giving the city a job growth rate of 1.8 percent.

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The internet has helped to pave the way for a more globalized community, giving recruiters in Wisconsin access to the same talent pool as those in New York and even Tokyo. With a variety of recruiting software existing to make internet recruiting easier, knowing which program will benefit one’s company best requires a basic understanding of the functions each type is capable of performing.

Recruiting software exists to help those interested in recruiting new employees from the internet by separating desirable candidates for those who are completely wrong for the company in question. One popular way that these software packages do this is by enabling hiring managers to create questionnaires which are uploaded to the company’s web page. Applicants interested in a job that has recently become available simply answer the survey and the program separates them into two different groups based on their responses. These programs help eliminate candidates who are not properly suited for the position for a variety of reasons.

Another time saving device are programs known as Resume Inhalers. These often come as part of larger recruiting software packages. These programs extract resumes from company e-mail inboxes or other storage spaces automatically and assemble them into the existing recruitment database. Instead of wasting time accessing resumes, hiring managers are able to simply click a button and have them all in one place.

No software can guarantee that the best possible employees will be found, but referral portals increase the likelihood of locating these individuals. The programs enable current employees to log on to a closed access page and suggest individuals that are of their acquaintance for open positions. Because the individuals doing to referrals already know what skills the company holds in the highest esteem, those who are suggested as possible employees are more likely to possess traits which could be assets to business.

For those looking to recruit top talent from the internet, talent search software may be the most pleasing. These programs use the web to locate highly prized workers based on articles they’ve published, public postings, and positive feedback they have received in journals or newspapers.

When deciding on which recruitment software will assists one’s online recruitment efforts to best, one has to consider what their company is looking for. For those that have a variety of needs that have to be met, software packages exists that offer more than one program in a bundled group.

Those of you who read Cheezhead already know that Joel Cheesman has acquired Magic Pot of Jobs.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve heard from several of my recruitosphere buddies, wondering what my plans were, whether I’d still be blogging anywhere, etc. (And many thanks for your kind words.) The truth is, I had no idea what to do with this space but couldn’t stand the thought of shutting it down. Meanwhile, my departure from recruiting was actually kind of a personally traumatic thing, and I didn’t have enough distance from it to talk about it at the time.

This move provided me with a great solution. I’m more interested in Joel’s ideas about the HR-meets-Web space than I am in my own. I’m pleased that I’m still able to contribute. And I’m relieved that I no longer have to feel guilty about letting my site sit static and unloved.

So while it’s kind of a weird feeling when I think of MPOJ as someone else’s now, I don’t think I could have asked for a better situation.

A little side rant before I get to the real content- some of you are so intent to get in touch with me despite the broken comment form (yes, I know, I’ll fix it tomorrow night when I have time) that you dig up my gmail address, which isn’t given anywhere on this site that I can find, and email me there. Heaven only knows where you keep finding it- I think I might have mentioned it once. On a different blog.

Anyway, the problem with this is that I don’t actually USE that email address for anything- which is why I don’t give it out- so your emails sit there for days or weeks or even months in some cases before I see them. Much better to use the email address I actually HAVE given in several posts (it’s tiffany -at- this domain right here). Or hey, the contact form that’s linked in the navbar for that very purpose. (Occasionally people complain that it’s broken, but I’ve never had a problem with it in any of my tests.)

I’ve been quiet for just about a month now. I had nothing to say that I could safely put out on the Internet. But now I can, so here goes:

It’s official. I’m not going to be a recruiter anymore.

My job took a turn for the, shall we say, significantly less enjoyable a few months ago. There’s a long story behind that statement, and I might even get to tell you about some of it when I have more time, but suffice it to say that I haven’t been happy for months and have been actively looking for a new situation.

I found my new situation- I’ll be working on web content/strategy for a nonprofit here in DC, and I start next week. No more recruiting, for a variety of reasons.

So now I have to figure out what to do with MPOJ. I don’t plan to take it down anytime soon- there’s a lot of useful stuff in the archives that I plan to leave up even if just for people to find through Google. And while I can now write some posts about my own job search experience and frustrations, I probably won’t have much in the way of new things to say on the topic of employment and recruiting for long.

So I’m taking suggestions. What should happen to this space? I’ve been pleasantly surprised and touched by how many of you have expressed your fondness for my little ranty corner of the web, so it seems like maybe you’ll have some good ideas for where I should go next.

I’ve got more to say on the topic of loyalty- for example, how loyalty between managers and team members can be the thing that turns a ho-hum job into a really fantastic experience, but it has been an exhausting day and the thoughts aren’t coming together yet.

Stay tuned, though; it’s coming. It’s not all cold calculation and self-interest here at the Magic Pot, no sirree…

Extra! Extra!

Originally uploaded by I Love Q8.

This is sort of how I’m feeling lately, which is why I’ve been quiet. Trying to take my mother’s advice…

Dear Talent,

The law gives employers until January 31st to send out W-2 forms. They are mailed out at the corporate level, not at the individual branch level. So please do not start calling me in mid-January, panicking that you haven’t received yours yet. Also, please do not schedule your appointment with your tax preparer for February 1 and then call me the morning of to whine that you do not have your MISF W-2 yet. Do not call me at 9:00 AM, before mail carriers have even started their routes, panicking that it is now February 2nd and you do not have a W-2 yet. No, I cannot just fax you one- I don’t have access to those records from my office for very good reasons.

Do not ask me for corporate’s number, call it, and then call me back to whine about how long you’ve been on hold there. No, there is not another number you can call, and no, there is nothing I can do to help you. The reason for the hold time is because of the thousands of people JUST LIKE YOU who are prematurely panicking about their W-2 forms. They are flooding our corporate services center and driving up the wait times for everyone, INCLUDING ME, and since you are part of the problem I will not have sympathy for you.

Chill out for a couple of days. It’ll make us all happier.

Love,

Tiff