The era of the two-job employee (let us call him “Sam”) has emerged as a result of the global recession. Sam is a new breed who developed entrepreneurial survival skills to battle the recession, and learned how find and keep a second job.

You, the employer, do not need to be too alarmed if Sam takes on a second job as a baker, or a mechanic, because this would require Sam to be physically present at that location. However the situation is more complicated if Sam takes on a second job that he can do from any remote location.

Suppose that Sam takes on a consulting project to do bookkeeping, or write code for a website, or maybe even develop a training program, how do you think that Sam’s productivity will be affected at your work place? Read more…

Dear Recruiters and Bloggers,

Thank you for the overwhelming response on our social media discussion, “Which of the two holds more importance for recruiters in pre-employment assessments: Skills Tests or Behavior Tests”.

With more than 250 comments on 10 different social media sites, it has attracted one of the hottest recruitment-related discussions on the internet this month. Read more…

Just like a fine tailored suit, customization is a new feature that is added to the assessment tool that helps assessments fit to your needs.

Our research discovered that companies that were using a generic assessment to test applicants were screening people ineffectively, and they continued recruiting less capable applicants. This was because a generic assessment was being used to test a sales position at a luxury goods store New York, oddly enough, that same generic assessment was used to test a position for a sales person at a software company in Singapore. The flaw here is that when using generic assessment, it is assumed that both Job Descriptions for both the sales position were the same.

To address this major flaw and help companies in screening effectively and recruit the best talent, HireLabs develops customized assessments for that reflect your: Read more…

A few days back, we ran a discussion on several social networking platforms to reach out to the recruiting community and asked them if recruiters should develop their own assessment tools or hire the services of assessment specialists. A strong majority shared the same idea – focus on what you do best i.e. understand the client’s needs, pool in candidates, perform pre-screening to generate qualified leads etc. and allow specialists to take care of the assessment design and development. Read more…

HireLabs ProfileSense 3.0

ProfileSense™ is an employee assessment tool created to provide HR personnel with powerful data to make the most accurate hiring decisions faster than ever before. Unlike current assessment products, ProfileSense™ adapts to your specific needs, allowing you to measure applicants against your “perfect” employee.
ProfileSense is our flagship product that makes it really easy to manage, identify and filter out the best of the best from a pool of applicants applying for a position in your company. ProfileSense makes the difficult and time consuming process very simple and at the same time very effective, providing top notch comparative analysis of applicants in real time, so you can spend more time doing business than finding people. Read more…

Are you starting to make money in recruitment again? I don’t mean the nickels and dimes, I mean are you starting to make some serious money that you made earlier in this decade? If not then, maybe you should see how to reposition yourself.

The first thing you should do when repositioning yourself is understand where the economy is heading and what the economy will demand in the coming quarters. One of the best resources for recruiters who want to follow recruitment trends is the Monster Employment Index.

This is a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities gathered from career sites and job boards, and presents a snapshot of employer online recruitment activity nationwide. Read more…

While providing consulting services to the governments of the Middle East on how to build cities that are powerhouses of talent, we at HireLabs realized the true meaning of the saying ‘birds of a feather flock together’. The same logic holds true for talent. True talent usually has a hunger to learn and innovate, and when you create an environment where talent lives  and works in close proximity to each other, you are on your way to building a knowledge economy. Before we started our research, we made a claim: Talent attracts talent!

Our research noted how history points to Baghdad at the turn of the first millennium as a thriving knowledge economy. The next major knowledge economy was created when Venice and Florence took Europe from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance era. In modern times, England transitioned into the industrial age from an agricultural society. Read more…

New data from ExecuNet Survey 2009 on C-class trends proves a distinct point – Executives do not spend enough time on the job to hit peak performance.

This is made worse by the fact that executives spend half of a year actively searching for jobs.

So the questions is not what competencies must executives possess to stay motivated – rather it is how well can executives understand the business.

Having asked that question, it shouldn’t be difficult to grasp the underlying factor that executives must speak finance. Add to that a strong leadership ability, and you’ve got a true superstar executive who can really begin to rake in greater benefits for the business while staying motivated.

It has, thus, come to pass, that given the new dynamics of a new economy, the best person to have on the helm will be the one with a strong financial background. After all, Read more…

If you are anything like most of us, you wouldn’t be able to help but be in absolute awe of the phenomena that is the CEO. Go on. Admit it!

But often it has been observed that most CEOs haven’t always been the performing types (must I post a link here to confirm the claim!?), and that’s because so few of them can get beyond the glamor of the title!

So many of them don’t even understand what is being expected of them, let alone measuring against some performance metrics. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being impossible), how hard do you think a CEO’s job is? Answer: 10! But do you believe the job is simple to do? Absolutely Yes! Read more…

Evaluate a CEO: The HireLabs Talent Assessment Tool-Kit

A CEO stands for the corporate board. How it operates, and what strategies the board develop? The whole image of what is the corporate board-room reflects through the CEO.

Setting the tone for everything that the company eventually undertakes, a CEO’s decision will impact the business from all corners. Corporate strategic plans are mostly between a 3 to 5 years period. That’s a lifetime (in corporate life terms). A CEO’s evaluation should not wait for the end of that period. A regular CEO assessment will need to be conducted.

The regular assessments will increase and improve the board by ensuring across-the-board accountability. This will form a unique partnership between the proverbial shepherd and the herd.

Hirelabs recommends having a fiscal dimension in the CEO assessment. As detailed here, the CEO must Read more…