The Perfect Labor Storm Blog – a one-stop source for expert advice about current and future workforce and workplace trends from workforce and talent management thought leader Ira S Wolfe. Articles are written to be both informative and provocative, to instruct, coach, and challenge our followers. Topics include recruiting and hiring best practices. generation gaps, and innovative solutions future work trends to name just a few. Comments are welcome and discussion encouraged.
Monster Acquisition: It’s an Epic Fail
Casual observers might consider the acquisition of Monster by Randstad as just another example of capitalism at work. It falls at the heels of Indeed’s recent acquisition of SimplyHired and Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn. Many analysts and talking heads suggest it is market consolidation. The real reason is one worth hearing. It’s an Epic Fail…
6 Employees Will Quit Their Jobs Before You Finish Reading This!
In the time it takes most of you to read this article – about a minute or two, here’s what will change around the world and inside our bodies. There were 5 earthquakes around the world Lightning struck the earth 6000 times 250 babies were born 144 people moved to a new home 116 people…
SHIFT – When Your Journey Is Only 1% Complete
“Our journey is only 1% complete.” Those words are the internal motto at Facebook. It’s a daily reminder that continuous success isn’t a destination but a journey. But how would you feel waking up each day knowing you are no further toward your goal than you were yesterday? Depressed and frustrated? Or motivated and…
Is it possible to bring the jobs back?
<This article was first published by the Herald-Tribune on June 27, 2016> Partially as a result of the great recession and the housing debacle, many jobs have disappeared in the United States. Where did these jobs go and will they come back? About China According to NBC News, 2.7 million jobs were lost to China…
Where Can Small Business Find Talent?
As much as things change, some things remain the same. That is certainly the case when it comes to recruiting new talent. Word of mouth has been and still is the best source. In a recent survey by LinkedIn, nearly one quarter of employees who were recently hired at a small or mid-sized business heard…
Welcome to the Exponential Age
The Exponential Age: That’s what Udo Gollub calls life as we now know it. He begins a recent article with this: In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot…
Podcast|Confessions from a Recovering Millennial Basher
I have a confession to make. I’m a recovering millennial basher. For several years I hopped on the stereotype bandwagon and spewed rhetoric about the narcissistic, digitally obsessed, trophy-kid millennial Generation. I even devoted a chapter or two to it in my book Geeks, Geezers and Googlization. Listen here or continue reading! But time and blinding…
9 More Workforce Trends Worth Knowing
1. There have been job gains at the highest paid level — engineering, finance, computer analysis; and there have been job gains at the lowest paid level — personal health care, retail, and food preparation. Source: Federal Reserve Bank 2. The jobs that kept the middle class out of poverty — education, construction, social services, transportation, administration —…
Is Your Company Ready to Welcome Millennials?
If your company is typical, the answer is probably NO! Few organizations welcome Millennials well. In fact, many companies consider Millennials the enemy and unwelcome outsiders. Traditional recruiting, hiring, and management techniques that survived the test of time are nearly worthless. Without an ambitious make-over of recruitment, selection, and talent management, almost every organization is…
4 Ways to Appeal to More Millennials
Asking for a quick show of hands, an overwhelming number of people at a recent workshop acknowledged that “frugal” and “no-nonsense labels” described the pre-WW II generations. Likewise coddled, entitled, and self-involved were typically accepted as descriptors of the Millennials. And there lies a problem for many companies. New studies are showing that…
Is The Pre-Employment Assessment Skating on Thin Ice?
What’s new in pre-employment assessment? The answer may surprise you. The talent assessment industry is thriving with growth expected to double by 2020. The value of pre-employment testing as well as leadership assessments is well-documented and less than half of the approximately 50 million hires made yearly in the U.S. are tested. According to Dr…
New Technologies Rewrite Business Playbook
R.I.P. to the way it was. An epic shift is underway. From social media to the Internet of Things, digital fabrication to robotics, virtual reality to synthetic biology, new technologies are rewriting the playbook for managing people and leading organizations. Is your business future proof? For some this shift is the light at the end of the tunnel…
Eight Trends That Will Transform Small Business Recruiting
8 Trends That Will Transform Small Business Recruiting in 2016 By Ira S Wolfe As 2016 revs up, many companies are facing the same challenges that were in place when last year began: recruiters are pressed for time, desperate for qualified candidates, and using every tool they can to unearth difficult to find qualified workers…
Millennial Females Enjoy Options Baby Boomers Didn’t
If you can believe what you read, the Millennials may not be left with a world that is better than the world Baby Boomers inherited. But that conclusion is not a given. It will take a few more decades sort things out. What we do know for sure right now is that life is different…
Is It True What They Say About Millennials?
Published in the November 9, 2015 issue of Lehigh Valley Business Journal What you hear (and maybe even believe) about millennials is not always true. That was the gist of my keynote at the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce Manufacturers’ Summit VIII on the morning of Oct. 28 and attended by more than 80…
Does this mean college education is not important?
For years employers have complained that our education systems were not preparing students to meet the demands and expectations of employers. Only 28 percent of recent college graduates were rated as excellent by employers in the area of critical thinking skills (and a disturbing 0 percent rating for high school grads). This comes at a…
What’s Ahead in Recruiting for Q4 2015
The success of your company depends on a team of qualified, competent, and engaged employees who keep every aspect of your business running smoothly. But according to the Jobvite 2015 Recruiting Nation Survey, the ability to be fully staffed and productive is getting much harder. Fifty-six percent of recruiters are hurting for skilled or qualified…
Millennials Aren’t So Different After All
Plato was said to have complained that young people “disrespect their elders” and “ignore the law”. Peter the Hermit griped that they “think of nothing but themselves” and are “impatient of all restraint”. Child-rearing expert Haim Ginott scolds parents who talk about the younger generation as if they didn’t have anything to do with it…
Best Practices for Creating a Multi-Generation Workforce
Today’s multigeneration workforce poses unique challenges to employers. If your organization lacks an understanding of what individuals in each generation need and want, you risk lower productivity, increased turnover and conflict within and between departments and teams. Older workers can become frustrated when they work with what they see as an aloof, spoiled younger generation…
Baby Boomers Still Got Game; Where Does That Leave Gen X, Gen Y?
Boomers still “got some game” in their life and work and, unfortunately for Gen X and Gen Y who were poised to take the field, they have hit what I called the “gray ceiling” – the inability of younger generations to be promoted and move up the organizational chart. Don’t worry Gen X and Gen Y…
Baby Boomers Then and Now
Before the Millennials, Baby Boomers were the most talked about demographic in the U.S. By virtue of their sheer numbers, 78 million strong, Boomers transformed everything from our housing market to Social Security to our workforce. But Baby Boomers, or those born during the post wartime ‘baby boom’ of 1946 and 1964, have grown up…
2 Trends Changing the Face of U.S. Jobs
You’ve heard it before! We’re working the Perfect Labor Storm. But there are two trends impacting U.S. jobs that are often pushed aside. They involve working women and teens. What the future workforce will look like is clear as mud. Demographic and job market surveys and studies produce contradictory and ambiguous results. But one thing…
Millennials’ Lack of Financial Literacy Costs Employers Too
Previously (in 9 Workplace Trends Worth Knowing,) Ira Wolfe wrote about the troubling statistic between recent graduates (Millennials) and their preparedness for professional environments. Specifically it was stated that four out of five CEOs worry about the availability of key skills, and that only 45 percent of young people believe they’re prepared to enter the…
The Truth, Myth, and Consequences of Skilled Worker Shortages
The combination of an improving but fickle economy, the accelerating integration of advanced automation into our daily life, and a seismic demographic shift in the workforce have all but pushed traditional recruiting strategies into obsolescence. Aside from all the economic and social disruptive changes, it’s created a tug-of-war between employers’ anguish about widening worker skill…
What Would You Do If Your Candidate Refused To…
The war for talent is hot. Last week I wrote about a company who recently lost many of its top sales producers to a competitor. This week a client called me in a panic after 3 key skilled workers left – at the start of his busiest season. Employee turnover is climbing and several surveys recently…