The August Jobs Report Is In. Here’s What It Tells Us About the Fall Hiring Market
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about whether we would actually see the traditional “September Surge” in hiring this year. Now we have another important piece of the puzzle: the August jobs report. The U.S. added 162,000 jobs in August, significantly stronger than expected. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%, and June and July were revised […]
Posting and Praying Won’t Win Talent. Strategic Preying Will.
Recruiting has quietly become one of the most reactive functions in business. Post the role. Turn on LinkedIn Easy Apply. Push it to job boards. Wait for applicants. Hope the right person appears. That is not strategic recruiting. That is posting and praying. And while companies are busy collecting hundreds of applications, their competitors are […]
Dolly Parton Was an Employer Brand Before Employer Branding Was a Thing
When we talk about great CEOs, we tend to talk about the same things: strategy, vision, financial performance, innovation and growth. but as a recruiter, I tend to look at something else too: How did they treat their people? By that measure, I think Dolly Parton gave us a pretty great example of leadership. Most people think […]
“Ghost jobs” used to be called evergreen requisitions but the rebrand didn’t fix the problem
For years, evergreen postings were used to build pipelines, signal growth, or prepare for anticipated hiring. Internally, they felt strategic. Externally, candidates were applying to roles that were never approved, funded, or actively open. That gap is no longer just a candidate experience issue, it’s becoming a compliance and credibility risk. Across the U.S., hiring […]
Small Businesses Are Quietly Winning the Talent Game (Here’s Why)
There’s always been a narrative out there that small businesses can’t compete for talent. They don’t have the brand recognition. They can’t match corporate salaries. They don’t have the same resources. And yet… that’s not what I’m seeing in the current market. Many of the strongest hires I’ve been a part of lately are going […]
The Hiring Hangover: What Comes After the Talent Binge
Remember 2021? Talent was the hottest commodity on the planet. Companies, flush with pandemic-era capital and optimistic growth projections, went on a hiring spree unlike anything we’d seen in a generation. Engineering teams doubled. Operations headcount ballooned. “Move fast and hire everyone” became the unofficial motto of the era. Then reality arrived. The Hangover Sets […]
Your Hiring Manager Has Never Been Trained to Interview. And It’s Costing You Millions.
Remember when “manager” meant the person who decided who got hired? It still does. We just stopped pretending they were qualified to do it. I spent twenty years inside Talent Acquisition before I went out on my own. I sat through the calibration meetings. I wrote the offer letters. I owned the funnel metrics. I […]
The Workforce Story Everyone Is Missing: Global Demographics
Lately it feels like everyone is talking about AI and how it will reshape the future of work, but the biggest workforce shift of the next 20 years might not be technology at all. It’s shifting demographics. Across much of the developed world, populations are aging rapidly. In the U.S., Europe, China, India and Japan, […]
Why Hiring Feels Harder Than Ever for Everyone Involved
Despite what the headlines tell us, there is a growing sense of frustration in today’s job market. Job seekers are frustrated because they can’t seem to land interviews, even after submitting hundreds of applications. Employers are frustrated because they can’t find qualified candidates, despite receiving hundreds of applications. Recruiters are frustrated because hiring processes are […]
Why the Workday AI Lawsuit May Be a Turning Point for Recruiting
Kim Dubé Founder & CEO | ReFlex: Recruiting FlexibilityTalent Acquisition Executive | HR Consultant Every so often, something happens that shifts the conversation across an entire industry. I believe the lawsuit against Workday has the potential to be one of those moments for Talent Acquisition. To be clear, this isn’t because AI is going away. […]