This summer hiring managers and human resources personnel, together with Independent Recruiters, are feeling the squeeze. Midsummer was once the season for long walks in the sand, sunsets at the cottage or lazy days on the boat, but in 2018, the talent war has not paused to draw a breath.

With the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting a 2.3% jobless rate for managers/professional workers, it’s little wonder.

Globally, employers continue to struggle to find workers with the right skills. According to ManpowerGroup’s 2018 Talent Shortage Survey, almost half of US employers (46%) said they can’t find the candidates with the skills they need, up from 32% in 2015. Many of the toughest positions to fill are categories of special interest to Phoenix Partners and its clientele, including Engineers (#3), IT (#6), and White Collar professionals (#8). Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve probably heard a lot of buzz about blockchain and cryptography, but if you’re like most people, you may have only a foggy notion of what it is and what it can do, specifically for you.

To understand the way in which blockchain technology may revolutionize hiring, it’s important to first have a clear picture of what it is, and why it’s different than databases or applicant tracking systems.
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In an article published by Australian NPA network member Scott Van Heurck of Wood Recruitment, he suggested that the three keys to the successful selection of a recruiter are diligence, trust, and value added. We thought this topic would be interesting to expand upon.

Types of Recruitment

Recruiting firms offer different types of search proposals, with different terms, so it’s important for employers to understand the distinctions in order to determine if a firm offers the type of recruitment desired.

The three types of recruiting searches usually performed are Contingency, Engaged, and Retained search. In a contingency search, the recruiter is only paid when successfully filling a job opening. In an engaged search which is almost always done on an exclusive basis, the recruiter is given a deposit to cover research and other upfront costs; the deposit is then deducted from the final placement fee on successful completion of the search. In a retained search, the recruiter, by contrast, is paid a retainer fee whether or not a candidate is hired.

Phoenix Partners performs both contingency and engaged searches for clients. In today’s competitive hiring climate, engaged searches usually warrant prioritized time and attention. Read the rest of this entry »

In the technical professions, it can be tough to recruit a gender-balanced and diverse field of applicants when a mere 26% of American women are programmers, and 11% are engineers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Monoculture is bad for business, and not just in terms of meeting equal opportunity employment benchmarks. A study on the economic impact of diversity in the workplace by McKinsey & Co. reports that companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. Read the rest of this entry »

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic in 2018, with pundits from both the positive and negative camps predicting a paradigm shift in employment and productivity rivaled only by the industrial revolution. From robotic task execution to predictive algorithms, various strains of AI are already disrupting the workplace. Rapid advances in Machine Learning (ML), such as facial recognition, natural language understanding and computer vision, are increasingly in use in fraud detection, market analysis and medical diagnosis.

According to Forrester forecasts, automation will eliminate 17 percent of US jobs by 2027, offset by the growth of 10 percent new jobs from the automation economy. A McKinsey & Co report released recently projects that as many as one-third of American workers may need to find new lines of work by 2030.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based world research institution, has hosted symposiums and published research in an effort to analyze the impact of AI on labor markets. It predicts that there will be a further polarization of low-skilled and high-skilled jobs. Contributing researcher, Stuart Elliot of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, notes that only 11% of adults are currently above the skill level that AI is close to replicating. Read the rest of this entry »