(Los Angeles)Corra Group has seen steady recruiting in the healthcare industry. Despite the hiring freezes and even the layoffs at hospitals, Corra Group reports certain healthcare related clients are still staffing for their respective sectors.
“Corra Group is a specialist in the healthcare sector and is providing pre-employment background checks that meet or surpass the compliance mandates of the industry,” said Nick Gustavson, Co-Founder of the Corra Group. “We can service large facilities, such as hospitals, or boutique staffing agencies that recruit everything from nurses and therapists to home care service personnel.”
Greg Donnelly, Owner of First Select Enterprises, a healthcare staffing agency in the Cleveland, Ohio area sees healthcare as a growth industry. “As the country’s population continues to age, there will be an increased need for more healthcare workers,” he said.
“The fact is there are not enough younger people to fill the healthcare positions. Even now, we are staffing nurses from offshore. This trend will continue well into the future.”
Paschal Duru, President of Synergy Staffing, a healthcare staffing service in the San Francisco Bay area, saw a slowdown in the healthcare industry, but thought it was only a temporary condition.
“Hospitals may be holding back because of the recession, but many employers are still hiring,” he said. “Maybe not at the pace they were doing, but it’s still a strong hiring market. I think we will see a strong resurgence by the spring of next year.”
“More than 16 million people are working in healthcare, “added Gustavson. “Since the Recession, more college students are looking at the healthcare industry as a viable alternative to Wall Street and media.”
He noted that with more college students switching their majors to healthcare, recruiters will ultimately have better choices and access to more qualified talent from a deeper pool of applicants. “Right now, it is cool to be studying healthcare,” he said.
Month: July 2009
Okay, so you have been working in a certain capacity for umpteen years and then your find out that either the industrial sector is obsolete or that everyone above the age of ten is being laid off as part of the downsizing plan. You are told, depending on the politician that is speaking, that he will be working to assure the jobs return to your part of the country, or that, forget it, just like Elvis, your job has left the building.
So what to do? Retrain. Good advice. You go back to school and learn new skills. Only to discover that the job you just trained for is in an obsolete industry or that the only ones retaining employment are under the age of ten. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, thousands and thousands of laid off workers are in retraining programs of some kind.
In Michigan alone, where unemployment is fearsome and the economy is so far down in the hole anything looks up, nearly 80,000 persons are retraining for new careers. But the sad fact is that federal statistics revealed there was relatively little difference in the success and the salaries between those who have been retrained for new employment and those who had not. Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe the federal government has erred in its calculations. It wouldn’t be the first time.
One sensible reason that has been cited is that many of the laid off workers are older. Because they need to find jobs fast, they enroll in short term retraining programs which yield relatively small benefits. In other cases predictions of an expanding job market in certain, emerging industries have proven less substantial than initial projections. Another thing, said one person, you train so long that by the time you are ready for work the jobs in your area have already been filled.
While laid off employees have been advised by HR counselors to demonstrate in your resume how you can make transitions to a new industry, it should also be incumbent upon employers to seek ways to use the skills that some workers have developed for decades. Not all job sectors are so specific that people couldn’t possible make the transition. As part of an employer’s background checks, the company should incorporate assessment tests.
It’s a tough economy, after all. But it will turn around, and employers will need workers. Look for the diamonds in the rough, so to speak. They may give you more value for the buck, and they may be more inclined to show their loyalty. After all, you gave them a job.
The recession has brought on one increase other than in foreclosures. Background checks. More employers are not only conducting background checks, but they are adding searches to their preemployment screening program.
With the economy being in a tailspin, more employers have requested financial background searches on their employment candidates. With the increased job pool of skilled workers, employers seek to reduce their risk in employee theft of malfeasance. Checking out a job candidate’s credit report or at the very least his record for Bankruptcies, Liens, and Judgments, can help discern financial desperation on a personal level. Such desperation can often cause employees to do things they normally wouldn’t, be it embezzlement or by stealing sensitive data or proprietary information.
Additionally, employment candidates in dire financial straits, may have had credit accounts put into collections. Collections can lead to annoying phone calls and possible wage garnishment. Wage garnishment is one extra responsibility that will cost an employer in time and money.
More employers are requesting drug tests. Testing job candidates for drugs helps alleviate accidents in the workplace that can cause injury and loss of life, and allt he incumbent liability issues. There is also the hard issue of recruiting and retraining to replace those employees who couldn’t function due to substance abuse. And substance abuse always seems more prevalent in harsher economic times.
Employment standards are higher. Employers are more demanding in the job skills and potential they ask of their new recruits. With the economy in a downturn, employers realize they need the best out there and the few extra dollars they pay for education verification, and employment verification, as well as reference verifications, will go a long way in determining the right fit for the position. In essence, employers have raised the bar, a sing of a shoppers market in the labor pool.
All told, the economy has cause a tightening in the job market but an increase in the number of background searches per job candidate. Clearly, the recession has caused more employers to check them out before they hire.
These days of the economic downturn when most companies are pretty risk adverse, KFC made a bold move. It added grilled chicken to its menu. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a bold move, but considering that KFC was known for decades for fried chicken and only for fried chicken, the grilled chicken marketing move was a very risky step.
If nothing else, such a marketing maneuver could backfire. It almost did when KFC handed out too many coupons through the Oprah Winfrey and other outlets, only to have customers discover that the KFC stand were out of the free meals. Big public relations debacle with everyone upset. So not only was their confusion, but now you had disappointed customers to boot.
But KFC remaiend undaunted. It moved on its advertising campaign that included celebrity endorsements and product placement opportunities. Sales are up somewhat, and it is reported that the alternative branding effort is appearing successful. Customers who try the grilled chicken alternative say they will go back for more.
So what the advertising community first considered a disaster is proving, at least for the moment, as a success. In spite of a recession, KFC is moving forward with its doubled edge, grilled chicken and fried chickent menu choices. All may end well in chickenville, after all.
It was a bold step, for sure. As with most bold steps, perhaps it was perceived from inside the offices of KFC a dramatic need for change. And the change, managed in-house and with advertising agencies has turned failure into success.
Are you as an employer willing to take dramatic steps to increase business in a bad economy? Do you think you have the right people and the right partners to alter your brand or at least the public perception of your brand to accommodate new products and services? Are you hiring the right people, and are you undergoing the kind of background checks that will augment your interview process and your pre-employment screening efforts? In short, are you prepared to make the necessary changes?
As we watch even iconic companies sink slowly into the sunset, these are the questions worth asking. Then it is a matter of confronting these economic issues and hiring the right people to effect positive change in branding and revenue channels. And then taking the necessary bold steps.
Check them out before you hire.