Hiring Budgets & Strategies
by Michele O’Connor
There has been frequent discussions on the topic of “budgets & strategies” among the HR media. This is in relation to the recent economic downturn. Various writers, authors & newsgroups have approached GoliathJobs as a means of gauging how the economy has affected hiring, especially in the job board sector.
I thought I would post some information on this topic.
As the #1 job site that supports students & alumni, we are seeing a variety of scenarios due to the current economic climate. In some cases employers are hiring more interns and less staff. This is a cost-effective way to get motivated employees that could potentially join your team full-time post graduation. They are also hiring more recent grads as entry-level candidates and training from within versus hiring experienced candidates that require a higher pay scale. Obviously the career service centers favor these scenarios.
In other cases employers are freezing hiring initiatives & budgets completely. They prefer to delegate more responsibility to existing staff and curtail the expenses associated with workforce development. They assert that this will change once the uncertainty subsides or their bottom line improves if they are affected that way.
Due to our growth at GoliathJobs we are still hiring. We need to have more HR staff on-campus and present at career fairs in order to source the best talent from the sea of job seekers. As a result, we have had to beef up our college recruiting budgets & strategies substantially. We are using this time to hire interns (students), entry-level (recent grads) and management (alumni).
In general, our HR team feels that this is a good time to source candidates that would not normally be looking for a job. One of our execs made an interesting comment at a company meeting last month. He said “passive candidates have better hearing right now.” Great metaphor.
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About GoliathJobs & JobsOver50:
GoliathJobs is a free web-based employment service for students & alumni. We connect job seekers to employers via schools & alma maters. GoliathJobs creates partnerships with schools throughout North America which serve as liaisons. This model delivers a powerful career service edge to schools at no charge, a competitive edge to job seekers and high-quality results to employers.
JobsOver50.com, launching soon, is a dedicated employment portal for baby boomers & retirees built on the same platform.