Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Over the last 3 months, we’ve watched the labor market lurch from one extreme to the other. This time last year, there were reports of thousands of workers applying for every open position. Fast-forward to the present day, and we’re seeing a jobs market where employers are struggling to hire the workers they need. Supply […]
Soft skills are related to how individuals act, interact, react, and more and are often considered components of one’s personality. However, they can be learned or improved upon, though doing so isn’t as simple as with hard skills, and include things like resilience, communication, emotional intelligence, and more. Employers have always looked for soft skills […]
The post-pandemic race is on to attract new employees—and as HR and finance executives both know, the solution can’t always be higher wages. Fortunately, other factors still mean a lot to jobseekers in the revived economy. Casual Fridays and office snack bars may help, but as research shows, health insurance is still at or near […]
More than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic upended the nature of work as we knew it, it’s no surprise that there has also been a transformation in how people are recruited and hired for work. As a cascade of layoffs in hard-hit sectors flooded the labor market with job candidates and as other fields […]
A day after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) completed the H-1B cap-subject lottery selection process in late March, the winners were eligible to start filing. But what if your employee wasn’t selected? Fortunately, numerous other options are available so your business can continue to employ valuable foreign national workers. Optional Practical Training Foreign national […]
When it comes to understanding the hiring market, it’s all about which numbers you look at and how. For example, in April, job openings in the United States hit a record 9.3 million. With so many jobs to fill, you might view that as a crisis. However, forecasting for hiring by some organizations paints a […]
More companies are returning to a pre-pandemic head count, and recruiters need to look at other avenues to manage the hiring frenzy. This has created more job opportunities for top talent while removing preexisting geographic barriers. Remote work has allowed a recruiter in St. Louis to expand his or her candidate search from coast to […]
An issue I’ve returned to again and again is the skills shortage. According to ManpowerGroup, 69% of U.S. employers are struggling to fill vacancies, particularly in skilled trades, IT, sales, and marketing. At the same time, we’ve seen workers in low-skill jobs displaced at distressingly high rates in the recent wave of COVID layoffs. Many […]
Illinois employers now have yet another law to navigate. The state human rights statute now bans discrimination based on a candidate’s or employee’s criminal conviction unless the employer can show a “substantial relationship” exists between the conviction and the job or that the employment would involve an “unreasonable risk” to property or safety. Conviction Records […]
The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows there are currently 8.1 million job openings. After record-high unemployment rates, that number should be a positive indicator of recovery, but it could create problems for employers if those jobs remain unfilled. HR professionals have pulled out all the stops to attract talent, yet […]