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., already weak, has worsened; and demand for temporary staffing is declining at an even faster rate.”

“The current unemployment situation seems to be more of a reflection of employers’ reluctance to add new employees, rather than the result of aggressive layoffs.”

“Although up, just the slight bit, the unemployment rate for college graduates remains very low at 2.3%.”

“With the exception of France, which exhibited 4% growth, the rest of Western Europe and Scandinavia was down roughly 3%. On the other hand in Eastern Europe, we continue to see strong sales performances with revenue growth over 33%, largely driven by our strong performance in Russia.”

“Although manufacturing, financial services, and various other industries have experienced job losses, there continues to be opportunities in other sectors like education, government, energy, and engineering.”

“We are pushing ahead with geographic expansion to generate additional revenue and earnings growth. For example, Kelly recently announced an agreement to purchase 13 branch offices and 15 onsite locations from Randstad Holding, a transaction that establishes Kelly’s presence in Portugal.”

“While it’s been a long downturn, it has been a shallower downturn without the sharp inflexion down that crushed lot of firms the last time. So we haven’t seen the abundance of the business closings or distressed sales in this cycle that we’ve seen in the past.”

“We are not experiencing anywhere near the operating earnings declines that we did in the last cycle … while the unemployment rate has moved up to 5.5%, that still is significantly lower unemployment rate than it was on the last downturn …”

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

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 being a big biller. We’d like to have two tracks this time, one for owners, and one for recruiters, so indicate which track you see your presentation best fitting in. It’s particularly great to find big-billers who are less known but have great stories/tips to share. Email me at todd@ere.net.

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 paid by employers to recruiters.”

Your thoughts?

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

… check it out on the Forum site.

An anti-recruiting motion is denied.

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, or something else –  just stop me in the hall and let me know. I’d love to just hear about the topics you’d like to see addressed more often in the publication and on the site … as well as the topics you’ve heard more than enough about already.

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) to say about diversity, namely that the glass ceiling for women and minorities is partly to blame on search firms’ lack of diversity, since they’re the ones who fill so many high-level jobs … Jay Arnold, SVP of HR at DB Schenker Logistics, says he’d like to see third-party recruiters bring him great candidates more often even when there’s no job apparently open for them, as he wants to find a way to pass along good resumes to hiring managers regardless of whether there’s an official opening … Kensington International’s Joel Dant jokes that “race, sex, even disability” are becoming commonplace discussions in politics, “and that’s just the lieutenant governor”  … a couple of healthcare recruiters tell me the physical-therapist shortage is just dreadful, and that PTs are the equivalent of techies about eight years ago…the big search firms get bashed a bit for providing weak service, blowing off candidates who aren’t picked for jobs, and sometimes just riding high on their brand names vs. blood, sweat, and tears.