I find it extremely difficult to predict the future. Everytime I try to I am wrong.

So I provide this report from IPMA-HR on job losses in the government. There are of course two issues. One how many losses will there be over the next two years. Two, how will this impact the relative ratio of government to private sector to NGO.

From IPMA-HR, “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there was a decline of 263,000 jobs in September. This marked the 21st consecutive month of job losses and since the start of the recession the number of unemployed persons has increased by 7.6 million. The government sector lost 53,000 jobs in September. All sectors of the government experienced job losses, with the federal government including the United States Postal Service losing 6,000 jobs, state government including education declining by 10,000 jobs, and local government including education falling by 37,000 jobs.”

We have previously discussed the phenomena of employers searching social network sites for information on job candidates. The September issue of IPMA HR News report on a CareerBuilder Survey that finds 45% of employers use social network sites to research job candidates, up from 22%.

Of those:

1. 29% use FaceBook
2. 26% LinkedIn
3. 21% MySpace
4. 11% Blogs
5. 7% Twitter

My question would be what exactly people are searching for on Twitter? Are they following job candidates for a number of days? Again, the lesson, be careful of what you post online.

From Bryan Baldwin and the excellent blog at HR Tests.

Case in point: the state of Washington recently decided to abandon their efforts to implement SAP E-Recruiting after nearly three years and millions of dollars. The state will now go with a hosted solution which is estimated to be $700-800,000 a year cheaper (and hopefully much easier) to maintain.

Having been ringside for some of this, I can tell you the problem was not with motivation or energy, or even IT knowledge. I suspect that a lion’s share of the problem was related to the complexity of the program. This would match reports I’ve read that a significant number of organizations are moving away from single-vendor HR solutions and going with simpler, targeted products. Having heard about this program for a number of years, I have two thoughts:

1. As I commented the other day on another site, a problem in HR today is letting technology be the driver rather than scientifically sound HR practices. That is not to say that the State of Washington’s program was not based on sound practices, but a more general observation about issues with technology today in HR.
2. Again not specifically aimed at the State of Washington program, but a general observation, it is simply interesting how many times you see programs that receive a great number of accolades and attention, only to quickly slide into oblivion or be quickly replaced with the next hot program.

We have previously discussed googling for applicant information. According to a recent news item, the City of Bozeman, MT, takes this to a new extreme. According to the news item, and also our good friends at HR Tests:

Looking for a way to turn off qualified applicants in one easy step? The City of Bozeman, MT may have put its finger on it. Turns out they have had–for several years–a requirement that all applicants seeking a position with the City must, after a conditional job offer that required a background check, turn over their ID and passwords for all social networks they’re on, including Facebook and Twitter. After a firestorm of criticism, they decided to suspend the policy pending “a more comprehensive evaluation.”

When I start thinking about the issue of time-to-hire, I contrast two very different approaches. The two approaches are the 1) corporate – we need someone yesterday approach and the 2) academic – it takes us a year to fill a position approach.

So, I thought I would reflect on the academic approach. The very people who do writing and research on hr – somehow we now take more than a year to hire someone and bring them into the organization. And sometimes even longer than a year. Now I realize, that is partially because the offer and acceptance is sometimes made 6 – 9 months ahead of time, but it still often takes us a long time between posting and offer. Why? I have no idea, which is why I guess I am ruminating on this particular issue. Why does it take academics so long to recruit and select faculty? Any ideas? Should it take us so long?

In our society, there also seems to be a real distrust, perhaps even hatred, of testing. For me, the scary part is that as a result of the expansion of standardized testing in the schools, this distrust of testing is now being taught by teachers to their elementary school classes. Thus, from an early age, students often hear that standardized tests are tricky, or unfair, and that there are ways to beat the test.

The negative perception of testing is not limited to teachers or the media, it is shared by many psychologists. If you do not believe me, walk into an Introduction to Psychology class when testing or intelligence testing is being covered.

Thus, I fear the distrust of standardized testing, will only get worse. Given that environment, I think we, as assessment professionals, can take at least a small amount of pride in the fact that the majority of people seem to report being satisfied with the employment testing experience. There may be those who complain, but overall applicants appear to respond positively to well-designed assessments.

Although we regard public sector hiring in high stakes positions such as police as being based on “merit,” it is more of a competition. Because it is a competition, people get upset when they think someone else has an unfair advantage in that competition. 10,000 people may be competing for 10 positions and in such circumstances even a tenth of a point may make a huge difference. In addition, our tendency to add bonus or additional points for such factors as veteran’s status or residency may effectively shut out even those with perfect scores on our assessment device. That is not to say such additional points are not warranted, but it does impact people in real ways in public sector testing. So, even a small advantage may be huge, when there are large numbers of applicants and very few positions.

Maybe it is a cultural factor, but if you think people get upset over perceived unfairness in public sector testing, try going to a children’s baseball or soccer game (or for the Canadians, hockey). Watch some 12 year old referee or umpire make a call that upsets the soccer moms and dads.

Finally, we should probably be happy when people so desire public sector positions that they are willing to fight over points. It is certainly better than the alternative of having no one interested in the jobs.

(Note – this is a reprint of some of my comments from a recent discussion on the IPAT listserv)

One of the old beliefs in recruitment was that a job seeker would not take a job because of location, but might turn down certain jobs because of location. In recent years, a number of consultants and researchers have suggested that the old finding is no longer valid and that people will take a job because they like a location. Or put another way, they will first identify certain locations and then seek jobs in those locations.

Regardless of which view of the impact of location is correct, the data for Cleveland, and Ohio, are not good. According to a recent Pew Survey, Cleveland finished second to last in terms of popularity among 30 cities. Only Detroit finished below Cleveland. 

The question is – how do you change that ranking?

I received this question for discussion. Here goes:

Basically, some US Cities are starting to eliminate questions from their job applications asking whether prospective employees have been convicted of a crime. The purpose – to keep convicts from being shut out of the workforce.

They may still conduct background checks before hire, but the basic idea is to get more convicts in the workforce.

As an interesting side note, one of the cities is New Haven, CT, although a number of major cities have taken the same step or are considering doing so.

So what do you think? Should applicants be asked questions about their criminal record?

What should be the policy toward hiring people convicted of crimes?

I have published another column in the IPMA-HR News for September (access to the article usually requires membership). The article deals with Internet technology and selection.

Briefly, in the article I argue that Selection and Web-based recruitment strategies need not be seen as incompatible. Well-designed selection instruments can compliment the recruitment process by creating a positive image of the organization and offering applicants richer information on jobs and opportunities with the organization. Of course, such selection instruments should still be reliable and job-related.