Here are a few ‘good news’ items about jobs and hiring in the Chicago area…

Dow to bring 400 jobs to downtown

New Pizza Hut franchisee to add up to 250 jobs

Retail holiday hiring is up dramatically – by 93% in Chicago!

No, they don’t include being a sword swallower, or Charlie Sheen’s PR rep.  But they’re the list of jobs that hold the most risk of fatality, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Based on 2010 figures by the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CF0I), which is in turn part of the BLS Occupational Safety and Health Statistics (OSHS), the list measures the number of all fatal accidents during the calendar year.  It doesn’t include workplace injuries, but you can probably understand most of the choices.  So, in reverse order…

10. Driver/Sales Workers and Truck Drivers

9. Refuse and Recycling Collectors (we try to avoid imagining the kinds of accidents this implies…)

8. Roofers

7. Mining machine operators

6. Coal miners

5. Farmers and Ranchers

4. Miscellaneous Extraction Workers (the ones who inspect equipment, sites, work-in-progress on heavy-construction projects, etc.)

3. Pilots and Flight Engineers (including test pilots and pilots/crew of rescue aircraft)

2. Logging Workers

…and the most dangerous job out there…

1. Fish-Related Workers

…which should be no surprise to any of you Deadliest Catch fans.

Temporary staffing employment rose 2.4 percent from the second to the third quarter of this year, according to figures from the American Staffing Association.  U.S. staffing firms employed an average of 2.82 million temporary and contract workers per day from July through September – that’s 5.2 percent more workers than a year earlier, and it’s the seventh consecutive quarter of year-to-year staffing employment growth since the industry began its recovery. 

Temporary and contract staffing sales, which predict activity in the fourth quarter and going forward, also showed solid gains in the third quarter, totaling $25.2 billion, an increase of 4.2 percent over the second quarter. 

Continued good news for the temporary staffing category usually translates into good news for full-time employment in due time, based on past trends.

Here’s an infographic from CareerBuilder.com that gives an at-a-glance view of the seasonal hiring market.

Click here to view the full article.

There are several areas where contingent and temporary staffing saw interesting developments over the course of the year, and they’re representative of the dynamic changes in the overall talent marketplace.

Professional services saw increased contingent staffing; bringing in contingent workers who excelled at dealing with the demands of Sarbanes-Oxley, for example, convinced many hiring managers that professional-level talent should be considered for business services, financial services, IT and more.  Banks and insurance firms, forced to contend with new regulation and the lingering effects of the collapse, have also been converts to using professionally-skilled temporary workers.

Science and technology employers, many of them large corporations who have been stocking up cash, have begun to invest in short and long-term projects requiring expertise in highly-skilled and often very specialized roles.

Natural resources companies are in the market, too, as energy prices have risen, triggering greater investment, especially in the oil belt.   And light industry employers are bringing on temporaries, too, as their businesses ramp up.

We’ve covered these points before, but it never hurts, as the holiday season is upon us all, to go over some of the fundamentals for onboarding seasonal staff.  It’s a challenge that can put your HR processes to the test, so it’s always useful to have a seasoned, dependable staffing consultant (hint, hint!) in hand to help sort it out. 

You might have a process already in place…but check out these useful and worthwhile guardrails to see if you’ve taken them into account. 

They’re all about integrating seasonal and temp employees swiftly into your business.  No matter how long they’ll be on board your business, its crucial to have them understand your business, your products, your rules and structure, etc.  But in the limited time available, you’ve got to condense and focus on these key points to make it happen effectively:

1. Recruit ‘clearly’ – which means, recruit to the very specific needs of your workforce, in terms of who you’re after, the clear and direct messaging you put in front of them, and – especially – make sure any candidate understands that it’s a very temporary opportunity.  Don’t imply there’s further opportunity if that’s not the case.
2. Can you handle the extra hands?  Make sure your HR and staffing processes are adequate to the job of recruiting, screening and bringing on a raft of temporary workers.  It’s a lot of work – and if you’re not ready for it, it can be a flood of bother.
3. Do the due diligence – because all the legalities, paperwork and process you’d usually undertake should still hold.  Make sure you’re tracking hours, attending to federal and state hiring policies, and everything you’d be obligated to do under normal conditions.
4. Training can’t be slackened – make sure their technical skills are up to the tasks at hand.  Putting an untrained employee on the front lines (or in the back room) during rush times like the holidays is a recipe for trouble.
5. Cultural training – Be certain they understand your company’s culture as thoroughly as necessary.
6. Connections with coworkers – Making short-timers feel like they’re part of the team is a hugely motivating factor.  Figure out ways of making them feel at ease and contributing, and they’ll definitely do a better job!
7. Look for stars on the (org) tree – Keep an eye peeled for exceptional talents among your temporaries…you might want to call on them later, or consider them for longer-term opportunities.
8. Offboard diligently, too.  It might be tempting to just cut them loose with less of the process and ceremony of other workers, but by conducting exit interviews and one-on-ones, you’ll glean valuable objective insights into your business.

More than 30,000 jobs were created in Illinois in October, but the unemployment rate inched up to 10.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES).  Both of those might actually be positive developments.

The slight uptick in unemployment may owe to more people going back to job-seeking, as they feel more optimistic about the prospects of the economy.  When you consider the situation last year and the year before, they’ve got good reason: Illinois has added over 64,800 jobs so far this year, and over 108,000 jobs since January 2010, when growth restarted after 23 consecutive months of job losses.

“Illinois’ economy adding 30,000 jobs is encouraging during this challenging period of economic recovery,” IDES Director Jay Rowell said. “Consumer confidence is critical to a growing economy, and a growing economy creates jobs.”

In hiring contingent staff, there’s a common truth at work: you get what you pay for.  Or, in other words, paying a lower price for temporary employees doesn’t always make for smarter business.

Why not?  It may seem attractive to cut corners in hiring temporary or contingent labor.  But the few bucks (or, we admit, sometimes not-so-few bucks) you save by compromising your standards can hit your bottom line in other ways.

Higher-quality employees are often better-performing employees.  They’ve got the skills, the professionalism, and the efficiency that makes them sought-after.  What’s that mean to you?  It means higher productivity, fewer mistakes, and reduced labor cost as a share of sales. 

A more skilled contingent workforce can mean a reduced likelihood of needing permanent hires, too, so long-term hiring costs may be reduced.

And in the long run, if you’re considering assessing your contingent staff in hopes of finding some candidates for permanent positions, you’re going to be interested in the best available prospects anyway.

It was a “Great Recession,” but the “Great Recovery” hasn’t taken hold as quickly as any of us would like.  But staffing firms have led the way in generating jobs, according to American Staffing Association analysis.

In the two years since the official end of the recession in 2009, U.S. staffing firms created more new jobs than any other industry.  And the temporary services and staffing industry added nearly half a million workers, which made up 91% of all nonfarm job growth over those two years.

Staffing and recruitment is extremely cyclical – expansions and contractions affect it more markedly than other segments, for obvious reasons.  The bad times of 2008 hit this industry very hard, indeed, with a quarter-million positions disappearing in its fourth quarter.  The flipside?  When better times resume, the bounceback hits temporary staffing first, and most profoundly.

There’s an easy laundry list of best practices for getting the most out of the firms that supply your temporary hires.  Follow these tried-and-true rules, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how it nets out for your firm!

• Give temps complete job descriptions.  A good staffing firm will ask for these, but if they don’t, provide them, in detail.  Have them include your expectations for candidate skills, experience, the job goals and benchmarks you have in mind…all of it.
• Give your staffing service the maximum possible lead-time, because that increases your chances of finding an ideal candidate for the job.  And it may lead to more than one excellent candidate per position.
• Train your staffing partner.  Make sure they know your company inside and out.  If they offer to come on-site and find out more, welcome them with open arms and a good cup of coffee.  Familiarize them with everything, from the job particulars to the personality and idiosyncrasies of your firm. 
• Train yourself about your staffing partner.  Good staffing firms have a host of additional resources their clients can call upon to make their jobs easier; find out what your staffing firm offers.  And you’re completely free to shop around, too, if you think you need a broader spectrum of services.
• Identify the most critical candidate skills.  There’ll be instances where lack of time or the state of the candidate pool mean you can’t reasonably expect everything you want from any available candidate – so know the abilities that are most important to the task, and let the staffing firm know.
• Ask for the test scores.  Meaning, if your staffing firm subjects candidates to skills and profile testing, you’re within your rights to ask what kind of scores they got, and how those benchmarks stand up against the kind of qualifications you use for your own fulltime staff. 
• Feedback should be at the forefront.  Keep up a constant dialogue with your staffing reps, not just about temps but about your company situation, goals, new news and more.  Provide feedback on how their placements are working out for you, on their service and support…and don’t be afraid to ask them to tell you how you can help them serve you better.
• Benchmark performance. Find out what tests candidates are required to take at your staffing firm.  When candidates are referred to you, ask what their test scores are.  Establish preferred scoring levels for placements within your company, using your own employees as benchmarks.  Additionally, encourage your temporary employees to take advantage of training available at the staffing firm.
• Provide feedback. Maintain an ongoing dialogue and honest relationship with your staffing contacts, keeping them abreast of changes in your company.  Provide feedback on their service and the performance of their temporary employees.  Meet regularly to obtain their input on what you can do to improve the quality of service and placements.  By doing so, you’re making them a partner in your business, and building a relationship that’s a foundation for your own future success.
• Find deeper engagement.  Invite them to internal HR functions, or have them present staffing insights or participate in business planning or round tables; they’ve got insights and data that could undoubtedly help you in forward planning, so get them involved.
• You get what you pay for.  In other words, don’t think an incredibly cheap-to-engage staffing firm is giving you a miraculous break: they’re simply not delivering the same level of service, screening and candidate quality as you’d get from a more reasonably-priced resource.