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Articles by Todd Raphael

Rethinking Your Worst Clients

by Todd Raphael February 17th, 2010
tags:

Some clients are written off as unbearably difficult to deal with. But in the video below, Alan Fluhrer, who specializes in energy, engineering, finance, and technology recruiting, says that sometimes there’s more to an annoying client than meets the eye.

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industry news

Hiring, But Not Full Throttle

by Todd Raphael February 8th, 2010

Tech companies are hiring, but not “full throttle,” according to a Boyden’s rundown of various industries and their executive hiring plans around the world. Financial services firms are “cautiously optimistic.” Demand for execs in life sciences is increasing. Retail companies are looking for people who can integrate online and offline sales. Energy companies worldwide are searching [...]

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industry news

Pharma, Manufacturing Leading the Way Globally

by Todd Raphael February 1st, 2010

Pharma’s the hottest industry worldwide, according to a Feb. 1 survey from Antal, in partnership with SearchPath International. What’s Hot In order, these sectors have the the highest levels of recruitment at the professional and managerial level 1) Pharmaceuticals; 2) Manufacturing; 3) Engineering; 4) IT software; and 5) [...]

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industry news

Companies Are Willing to Rehire Laid-off Candidates

by Todd Raphael November 24th, 2009
tags:

Good news for laid-off employees comes today from Right Management, which finds that only 10% of employers say they don’t rehire past employees. It also found that 18% of laid-off workers are rehired by their former employer. Employers cited the following as their top reason for the rehires: 37% – Familiarity with the job 33% – Understanding [...]

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industry news

Korn/Ferry Up

by Todd Raphael September 9th, 2009

Good to see some not-too-bad news: Korn/Ferry is up pretty sharply (8%) as the market opens. The company says: -Things are stabilizing but the future economy and labor markets are up in the air -Executive searches opened are down 30% (1,352 vs. 1,920) -Average fee per engagement is down 16% More details here.

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From Korn/Ferry’s Senior Management

by Todd Raphael August 5th, 2009

Some short notes from a conversation I just had with Robert Damon, president, North America, for Korn/Ferry: “Things are better today than they were yesterday,” Damon says. The strongest area: Mid-market companies, in all industries, bringing in about $50 million to $2 billion. That’s because, he says, they lack bench strength, are lean, and have held [...]

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Salary Offers They Can’t Refuse

by Todd Raphael July 8th, 2009

How much money, above what an employee’s currently making, does it take to get them to switch jobs? It depends, of course. (And of course, it’s not all about money.) But as part of its 2009 Employee Job Satisfaction report, SHRM (the big association of HR people) asked employees what percentage salary increase would motivate them to [...]

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industry news

What a Time to Start a Business

by Todd Raphael April 16th, 2009

Even in the uber-cyclical recruiting business, where search firms like Heidrick & Struggles are taking their names literally, there’s no time like the present, apparently. That is the case at least for Jeff Perkins. He had been managing the corporate recruiting team at Invista, a subsidiary of Koch. His team went from 13 people to five. [...]

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Lean Staffing

by Todd Raphael August 6th, 2008

A Minnesota recruiting company is slimming down and is reportedly more productive. Its PR person Erin Wombacher tells me she lost 10 pounds in three months and her energy level is up.

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Kelly Flop

by Todd Raphael July 22nd, 2008

Some highlights (mainly lowlights, actually) from Kelly Services’ CEO Carl Camden today; thanks to Seeking Alpha for help. Kelly’s earnings were lower than expected. “The second quarter was a rough one. Analyst’s reports and media have well documented the economic challenges faced by our industry and the global economy. Overall demand for labor in the U.S., [...]

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8 Ways to Control the Hiring Process

by Todd Raphael July 21st, 2008

Get these eight ducks in a row — or miss out on a placement.

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Speaking in Vegas

by Todd Raphael July 21st, 2008

We’re starting to think about speakers for next year’s Fordyce Forum (even though June 10-12, 2009 seems awfully futuristic). Let me know if you are interested in proposing a presentation, or if you know of someone who’d be great. We’re headed back to Las Vegas — hotel to be determined. The emphasis is still on [...]

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Insurance on Candidates

by Todd Raphael July 17th, 2008

I noticed this company ExecuSure today, which acts as sort of insurance policy for recruiting. As I understand it, if a recruiter places a candidate and that candidate quits after 2-3 months, ExecuSure refunds the employer the recruiting fee. The company says that this is “the first 12-month, money-back guarantee ever offered on recruitment fees [...]

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What People Are Searching for on Google

by Todd Raphael July 11th, 2008

Cool stuff — you can see how many people are searching Google for various jobs.

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Video’s Going Up From the Fordyce Forum …

by Todd Raphael June 8th, 2008

… check it out on the Forum site.

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Recruiter 1, Wells Fargo 0

by Todd Raphael June 6th, 2008

An anti-recruiting motion is denied.

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The Fordyce Forum and the Fordyce Letter

by Todd Raphael June 5th, 2008

If you’re here in Vegas, hope you’re having a good time and are getting useful information. I’m bouncing back and forth between Frank’s presentation and Michael’s presentation at the moment. If you’re here at the Flamingo and you’d like to get more involved in Fordyce … whether it be writing for the Letter, speaking next year, [...]

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industry news

A little Friday news

by Todd Raphael May 2nd, 2008

SearchPath going public. The company says it is “the nation’s fast-growing talent acquisition professional services firm, with more than 60 offices opened in its first 30 months.”

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More from NAER

by Todd Raphael April 24th, 2008

Darth Vader didn’t come up this afternon at NAER but these things did … Joe McCool, amped about his new book, jokes that specialist recruiters are in such demand nowadays that a generalist recruiter should call themselves a “multispecialist” … McCool also has some interesting stuff (which he goes into more detail about in the book) [...]

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Finding Darth Vader

by Todd Raphael April 24th, 2008

Chris Murdock, executive sourcer & knowledge manager, Yahoo!, shared some of his thoughts on popular sourcing tools today at the NAER conference in Redondo Beach (a good place for a weekend afternoon but a pain in the kiester to get to on a work day). ZoomInfo: Murdock notes that he has seen Darth Vader listed as [...]

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industry news

Acquisition

by Todd Raphael April 23rd, 2008

Addison buys HireSynergy.

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industry news

Express’ Bday Present

by Todd Raphael April 18th, 2008

For its 25th anniversary, Express does its part to banish the word “personnel” from the business lexicon.

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industry news

Spherion’s Seasonal Staffing Struggles

by Todd Raphael April 17th, 2008

It was a bad day for Spherion and its stock, which was down a sharp 11% Thursday. Pessimists may see it as a sign of a bad recession; optimists (me) are saying, “wait a second, it’s still doing well over half a billion dollars in revenue in three months.” We’ll know more on the 29th.

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industry news

Korn/Ferry’s Facelift

by Todd Raphael April 10th, 2008

The search giant is running a new campaign for itself, called “The Art & Science of Talent.” Meanwhile, it redid its website in keeping with the new theme. Korn/Ferry’s emphasizing what most every HR/recruiting/talent/OD/related consulting company and their brother are emphasizing … that they handle the full-life cycle of talent acquisition and talent management — they don’t just [...]

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industry news

Contract vs. Full-time Recruiters

by Todd Raphael March 19th, 2008

Alan Lee, who has been involved in recruiting (and downsizing) at Coca-Cola and NationsBank, and Gregg McCormick, a Gartner VP, share how their experiences in tough economic times have shaped their views on the use of contract recruiters vs. full-time recruiters. Lee: In the downsizing at The Coca-Cola Company, we did have some contract recruiters on our [...]

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