ShaneCreamer's blog

June Employment Numbers are in - more reason for optimism

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:29:43 -0500

Definitely a strong indicator of the rebound we are all seeing in the market. Some key points from the report are below.

- Employment rose by 93,000 in June, pushing the unemployment rate down 0.2 percentage points to 7.9%. This is the first time the rate has been below the 8% mark since January 2009
- Since July 2009, most of the employment gains have been in full-time work, up 355,000 or 2.6%, while part-time work rose by 1.5%

Signs of positive economic growth - April 2010 Labour Force Survey

Fri, 07 May 2010 08:12:42 -0500

Statistics Canada released it's April 2010 Labour Force Survey results this morning. Strong signs of positive economic growth:

"Employment increased by 109,000 in April, the largest monthly gain in percentage terms since August 2002. The unemployment rate edged down 0.1 percentage points in April to 8.1%, as more people participated in the labour market."

Signs of positive economic growth - April 2010 Labour Force Survey

Fri, 07 May 2010 08:12:33 -0500

Statistics Canada released it's April 2010 Labour Force Survey results this morning. Strong signs of positive economic growth:

Riding the Emotional Roller Coaster – The Candidate Offer Experience

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:45:36 -0500

We all get busy, welcome to the wonderful world of a Recruiter. It’s easy to fill our days sourcing, interviewing, managing Hiring Leader relationships and expectations, updating the ATS, and reporting on our successes. It has become trendy over the last couple of years to say we are “refocusing on the candidate experience”, but what does that really mean?

• Are we unplugging our careers portal that takes a candidate 60 minutes to apply to job with us? Probably not.

2010 Recruitment Trend and Strategy Predictions

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:50:32 -0600

Hello everyone. As you may have noticed, I took a little break from the blogging world in 2009. It wasn't that I didn't have anything interesting to say, life got busy and I simply stopped making the time. The good/bad news is that I am back.....and I have so much to talk about!!

Let's start 2010 off right, with 10 recruitment trend and strategy predictions:

1) The ice is starting to come off recruitment in 2010, but hiring will continue to be conservative over the first 2 quarters. We expect things to pick up considerably in quarters 3 and 4

Tweet-tastic ! Who wouldn’t want hundreds of “followers”?

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:48:41 -0500

I am not sure when I first heard about twitter, but I do remember the first time I took notice of it. I signed up to see what all the buzz was about, next thing you know I am following Shaq/Shaquille O’Neal (famous basketball player). I am following along with Shaq as he struggles through a new diet, laughing at the fact he slips once in a while and indulges in a cinnamon bun or 2. Recently, Shaq announced that he was at a certain Starbucks and that he would give his game basketball tickets away to the first person that asked him for then. That’s when the penny dropped for me, and I recognized Twitter’s tremendous potential and power as a recruitment vehicle. Your first reaction might be....who cares? As recruitment professional you should care, and here’s why.

Canadian economy "fell off a cliff" in early 2009?

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:00:27 -0500

The Conference Board of Canada laid out a grim outlook for employment for this year and next last week, saying the Canadian economy fell "off a cliff" in the first three months of 2009. The Board is predicting that unemployment in Canada will steadily rise this year, and peak at 9.5 per cent in the middle of 2010. The March Statistics Canada 2009 numbers seem to support the Board`s forecast, confirming that the unemployment rate was up 0.3 percentage points to 8.0%, the highest rate in seven years.

What the mainstream media isn't telling us about the latest job loss #'s

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:56:55 -0600

The latest Canadian job numbers came out last week. The news certainly wasn't good, but upon further review something interesting jumped out at me. Popular media has been all over job losses in Canada as of late, and you have probably heard these stats many times in the news over the last couple of days:

- Employment fell by (-0.8%), almost all in full time, pushing the unemployment rate up 0.6 percentage points to 7.2%.

How are you managing your external search partners? Is a true open market the way of the future? Bounty Jobs certainly hopes so.

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:35:03 -0600

We have all been there before. Spending half our day fielding calls from our search partners, and the over half of our day avoiding calls from want-to-be search partners. Like it or not, as a corporate recruitment professional, search agencies and vendors are an essential component of our overall recruitment strategy. Most of us recognize the facts, but what strategies, programs and tools do you have in place to manage these vendors? How do we track their successes, failures, and account for their overall spend?

What Species of Recruiter Are You?

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:54:02 -0600

I must have interviewed around 200 recruitment professionals over my career. I am also guessing that I have had 50+ recruiter direct reports over these years. These numbers seem exaggerated for sure, but maybe not considering that most of my career has been spent in large corporations building and managing large insourced recruitment teams. A good chunk of my time over the last year has been spent interviewing and evaluating recruiters, only logical given that Granite Consulting is in the business of recruiting recruitment professionals for their clients. I like to think that I have learned a thing or two about recruiters, and am as qualified as any to make some generalized comments about the types of recruiters I come across.

Check out the new RNG job postings section - RNG is now the leading site for Recruitment opportunities in Canada!

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:40:47 -0500

RNG has partnered with Eluta.ca to bring our members the most Canadian Recruitment job postings anywhere. Currently there are over 100 open recruitment positions posted with top employers across Canada.

RNG is the top destination for Recruitment professionals in Canada to network. At RNG you can join discussion groups, ask questions, blog and share your Recruitment experiences, challenges and best practices, and now to find your next opportunity in Recruitment.

September employment in Canada Soars!

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:10:37 -0500

Finally, a piece of good news: Canadian employers created 107,000 new jobs in September, mainly part-time.

The employment numbers exceeded market forecasts, although the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.1 per cent.

Economists had been expecting a small increase in the number of new jobs, of about 8,000, after a modest 15,000 increase in August. They had also forecast a slight rise in the unemployment rate to 6.2 per cent from August's 6.1 per cent.

Anyone else in an Olympic mood these days?

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:55:52 -0500

It’s hard not to be in an Olympic mood these days. The passion and excitement of the competition and spirit of the games is hard to ignore. It’s hard not to feel that deep sense of National pride and throw on some red and white’s while we cheer from our couches for our favourite athlete’s in Beijing. The Olympics just have a way of suckering you into cheering through the wee hours of the night for some obscure fencing hopeful that you never ever heard of before.

The Candidate Experience - why all the buzz?

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:06:31 -0500

We have all heard the buzz of late around the “candidate experience”, but what the heck is it? Why is it important? Usually this is a conversation had in the context of the online application process, but the experience is much broader than that. The candidate experience is a sum of all the job seeker touch points with your organization including, but not limited to:

• The application process (online, paper based, other)

Top 10 signs that you are a career corporate recruiter

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:30:17 -0500

Hi everyone. Something different this week.......from the lighter side of recruitment. I thought a Letterman style top 10 list might be fun.

Top 10 signs that you are a career corporate recruiter:

10. You regularly use buzzwords like “passive candidate”, “talent acquisition specialist”, and “resume parsing”
9. You signed up for Facebook and LinkedIn the day they were launched
8. You have 286 LinkedIn connections, and they are all other recruiters
7. You wear nicer clothes to work than the CEO of your company
6. You think call display was the best invention since electricity
5. Your work day starts at the crack of 9:30am
4. Your lunch schedule is booked out until early 2009
3. You get annoyed when people refer to you as "that HR person"
2. You change jobs and companies every year