Taleo offers Facebook to its small and mid-sized customers
Taleo, the talent management solutions provider, has just signed a new type of agreement with the current hot Web site Facebook.com. This social networking site for students is the online phenomenon of 2007—it now has 35 million active users and is the sixth most-visited U.S. site. Not bad at all, for a site that was only launched in February 2004. Starting this fall, Facebook users will be able to download a small program free of charge to view job ads posted by Taleo Business Edition customers that match their profile . And a single click will bring them directly to the text of the ad on the company's Web site. The agreement should help Taleo Business Edition customers, mainly small and mid-sized companies, recruit employees from Facebook's young users. This is definitely a considerable advantage to promote to potential customers of Taleo Business Edition. In fact, the success of Facebook is such that it would not be surprising for Taleo enterprise customers to also ask for their job ads to be posted on the site!
SNC Lavalin chooses Candidate Manager
SNC Lavalin, one of the largest engineering and construction companies in the world, has selected Candidate Manager software to manage its recruiting process. The tool will allow the company to post job openings on its Web site, send them to the main recruiting medias and gather the various applications. Its automatic CV pre-screening and ranking functionalities will save SNC Lavalin recruiters precious time in processing applications. The software's customization capability, flexibility and speed of implementation appealed to SNC Lavalin. The tool is today used by 150 organizations worldwide. Based in Ireland, Candidate Manager, the global software provide, now has offices in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and even China!
Launch of HealthCarejob.ca and PharmaJob.ca
jobWings Careers launched two new job sites at the 29th annual Montreal Job and Training Fair at the Montreal Palais des Congrès. The first, Pharmajob.ca, is for pharmaceutical industry professionals, while the second, HealthCarejob.ca, targets health care professionals (e.g. nurses, specialists, GPs). Pharmajob.ca will be oriented to the private sector while HealthCarejob.ca will target primarily public sector establishments. Each site is available in French and English and covers all of Canada. Many leading-edge services are offered to candidates free of charge including job alerts, advanced search, and personalization of the home page of the site. Recruiters can post their ads for $285 for 30 days, which also includes an e-mail alert and the display of their logo on the home page of the site during the entire posting period. These two new sites reinforce the jobWings Careers Publipac.ca service, which is the only service to post job openings on 16 specialized Canadian job sites.
Canadian companies increasingly tempted to outsource their computer departments
On September 19, the Ottawa-based Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) released two reports on ICT outsourcing and offshoring and its repercussions on the Canadian human resources market. These studies clearly show that Canadian companies are increasingly comfortable with offshoring their ICT. In Canada, 50% of companies use outsourcing of business or IT services. Canadian buyers no longer hesitate to resort to foreign suppliers as soon as they can achieve costs savings of at least 33%. These reports should help decision-makers take into account this new fundamental fact for our economy and our jobs—information and communications technologies represent more than 600,000 jobs and 5.9% of Canada's GDP!
33% of North American professionals paying back student loans
Philadelphia-based recruiting site technology provider Beyond.com asked visitors to its network of sites a simple question: "Do you still have student loans that you are paying off?" Out of the 3,100 visitors surveyed, almost 33% answered in the affirmative. Of those respondents with student loans, nearly 47% owe between $10,000 and $25,000, 32% owe $25,000 to $50,000, 19% owe more than $50,000, and only 2% owe less than $10,000. These results can be explained by the increase in tuition fees since 1976 in the U.S. Private college tuition costs an average of US$22,000 annually, for an increase of 248% over 1976—much higher than the inflation rate! The increase has been that much harder for students to handle, because entry-level salaries for graduates have not kept pace. Beyond.com maintains a network of 15,000 general, local and niche industry Web sites and online communities, including national sites like www.4jobs.com or specialty sites.
Birth of a new type of benefit
The U.S. job market is increasingly tight. Over the past five years, the percentage of organizations that are hiring has increased from 85.4% to 96.1%. Benefits and group insurance remain key factors in allowing companies to stand out. Compdata Surveys, a Kansas-based polling firm, each year conducts a survey of 5,000 organizations to find out about their benefits policies. The 2007 survey confirms a number of broad trends:
76.7 % of companies provide health care insurance for children, while only 3.4% have an on-site daycare. Relocation assistance continues to be very popular—offered by 77.5% of companies, along with the reimbursement of tuition fees, which 86.4% of companies cover. New benefits include the reimbursement of elder care fees, already offered by 1.6 % of companies. Although this benefit increased slowly between 2006 and 2007, it is bound to become more popular. With the aging of the population, more and more people are called on to pay for the care provided to elderly parents. These new types of benefits are a way for employers to differentiate themselves and attract new workers.
Jobboom tops threshold of 2 million members
Jobboom continues to grow and has just, for the first time in its history, passed the symbolic threshold of two million members in Canada. This result translates the continuous growth, in terms of members, that Jobboom has since its launch in January 2000. In 2003, the site had one million members, which it has succeeded in doubling in four years. Jobboom, which belongs to Quebecor Media, fully takes advantage of the synergies with the group's various medias. It has become the exclusive job partner of the canoe.ca portal, which has 7.8 million unique visitors a month. It also enjoys a lot of visibility in Quebecor newspapers like the Journal de Montréal. One of the objectives of Jobboom's managers is to duplicate Jobboom's success in Quebec in other provinces. To do this, the group is counting on the unique Jobboom model, i.e. the e-mailing of job openings to target candidates, and on its visibility in Quebecor Media publications like Sun Media newspapers. To keep an eye on…
Future of graduates continues to improve
The OECD has just published Education at a Glance 2007, its annual survey on the outlook for young graduates in its member countries. The first incontrovertible finding, increasingly true over the past few years for all countries, is that university graduates are better paid and find jobs more easily than people with no university education. This has resulted in a continuous increase in the enrollment rate for higher studies: 50% of high school graduates now go on to higher studies, a proportion which even exceeds 75% in some countries. Contrary to popular belief, this increase in the number of graduates has not increased the unemployment rate of unqualified workers. Countries are spending more than ever before on education. Since 1995, education spending has increased by more than 40% in real terms, although it could be much higher. Learning is always left behind although it is an excellent means of allowing people to join the labour force.