Category Archives: News for Companies

The Video Powered Hiring Solution

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Sooner or later, if you are the manager, owner or superior in your department you are going to have to hire someone new. It’s an inevitable occurrence for a growing company. It’s great news overall, but thinking of all of the work and time you are going to have to put into this search can really take all of the fun out of the hiring process. Because, in all honesty, searching for and hiring a new employee can be really fun. It’s great to get to know new people and to see how this potential candidate will fit into your company or department. Unfortunately, most of the job search platforms out make it difficult and time-consuming. It would be so much easier if you could execute every part of the hiring process on one platform, wouldn’t it? Thankfully with Spark Hire, you can! Spark Hire is the top video powered hiring solution and it is here to simplify your hiring process today.
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Top Cities for Manufacturing Employment

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The manufacturing industry in the United States has no doubt been increasing as of late. The U.S. has added more manufacturing jobs since the beginning of 2010 than all of the other developed countries combined. In light of this news, Spark News thought it would be interesting to take a look at where the most growth was taking place in the country.

Recently, the Manufacturers’ News, Inc. generated a list of top U.S. cities according to the number of manufacturing jobs as of January 1st 2012. Their findings show that the city with the most manufacturing jobs is currently Houston with 235,038 manufacturing jobs. That’s a 2.9 percent increase from their numbers last year. In second is New York with 140,952 jobs, up 1.3 percent from last year. Chicago is the third city with the most manufacturing employees with 107,264, which is actually down 1.3 percent. St. Louis and Los Angeles are the fourth and fifth highest respectively, both down well over 1 percent from last year.

When looked at carefully, you can see from the list that five of the top 50 cities for manufacturing are located in California and five are located in Texas. This shows that these states are particularly strong for manufacturing and hold a promising employment for job seekers looking for this kind of work. Furthermore, 17 of the cities experienced job gains compared to last year. Salt Lake City, UT saw the greatest increase with a 4.3 percent gain in jobs. Seattle came in next with a 3.3 percent increase.

If the rest of the country’s industries could increase as the manufacturing industry has, we could be on our way to a closer recovery. With increased manufacturing and job gains within the industry, it seems as though things may be beginning to get a little better for the United States.

SOURCE: Market Watch
IMAGE: Courtesy of CNN Money

Global Jobs Growth is a Must For Future Global Success

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The United States job market has been slowly picking up and the unemployment rate has slowly but steadily risen in the past couple of months. However, the global markets have not been faring as well.

In its annual report released on Monday of this week, the International Labor Organization stated there is cause for concern in relation to the global job market. As a result, they called for “more coordination of fiscal policies, repair and regulation of the financial sector and support for the real economy.” According to their report, there are currently 200 million unemployed people in the world and in order to mend the situation there needs to be 40 million jobs created each year for a decade. That is quite a big number, but bear in mind that this is the number of jobs that needs to be created across continents and not just in the United States.

“What has changed with respect to last year is that our forecast has become much more pessimistic,” said Ekkehard Ernst, one of the report’s authors. This seems to contradict the feelings that were recently swirling around the U.S., but in locations such as the United Kingdom the unemployment rate continues to rise and the hopes of workers are rapidly plummeting. “We had expected a gradual stagnation or coming down of unemployment numbers. That’s not something we foresee this year any more. Even in our baseline the unemployment numbers are increasing. With a possibility of a serious deterioration of global growth these numbers actually increase very much.” This, overall, is not the best of news for any country, developed or not.

The ILO suggests that every country rise to the occasion and take actions that would improve not just their markets, but the global job market in general. “Hence, to generate sustainable growth while maintaining social cohesion, the world must rise to the urgent challenge of creating 600 million productive jobs over the next decade,” quotes the report. If focusing on our own job market wasn’t motivation enough, the potential drop of the global job market should be. Now, not only does the increase of jobs help us, but it in turn helps the global market overall. This kind of news does a great job of lowering peoples optimism, but in order to push through and mend the job market, optimism and hope needs to be a main goal of the people- both employed and unemployed. Even though the ILO predicts that the unemployment rate will remain at around 6 percent until 2016, every person and every country needs to do whatever they can to uplift the markets in order to pull ourselves out of this mess.

SOURCE: News Daily
IMAGE: Foreign Policy Association

The End May Be Near For U.S. Postal Service

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The U.S. Postal Service is rumored to cut its spending by $3 billion in 2012. What does that mean? Well, a few things. None of which are good. Starting with the worst news, aka the K.O. punch of this story, 3,700 local post offices are scheduled to be closed this year and 250 of 500 mail-processing centers as early as March. That means roughly 100,000 workers will be out of a job. This cutback was inevitable given the lack of help from Congress.

Currently, if you opt for first-class priority on your postage, you can expect the mail to be delivered between 1-3 business days and usually the next day if it’s within the continental U.S. The cutbacks are going to push that ETA to 2-3 business days, meaning no more next-day deliveries in your own neighborhood. Say goodbye to Netflix DVD’s next-day. Phone your doctor to set up a new arrangement for your mail-order drug prescriptions. This also means no more favorite newspapers or magazines with breakfast, seeing as their delivery period would now be between 2-9 business days.

Jim Corridore, analyst for S&P Capital IQ, predicts, “It’s a potentially major change, but I don’t think consumers are focused on it, and it won’t register until the service goes away. Over time, to the extent the customer-service experience gets worse, it will only increase the shift away from mail to alternatives. There’s almost nothing you can’t do online that you can do by mail.”

This hard truth is the type of reality facing Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, who waits for Congress to permit his workers to cut their duties to 5 days a week, raise stamp prices and reduce health care and other labor costs. If these requests aren’t answered, harsh actions will be taken in order to eliminate more red ink. With an expected $14.1 billion in losses coming this year, the U.S. Postal Service must makes cuts to the upwards of $20 billion by 2015, in order to turn a profit.

“We have a business model that is failing,” said Donahoe. One of the oldest and most trusted independent government agencies is beginning the downward spiral towards bankruptcy. With the continued progression of online communication, there is increasingly less doubt that within our lifetime, we will see the fall of the United States Postal Service.

SOURCE: USA Today
IMAGE: Glassdoor

Pre-State of the Union Address Poll

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President Obama’s third State of the Union address is set to take place tonight, Tuesday January 24 and he will likely use it to get part of his campaign 2012 message out. According to CNN, the address will describe a “blueprint” for an economy that will endure and last. It will focus on manufacturing, education, energy and middle-class values. However, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked American’s what they thought the top priority should be.

The poll results that were released Monday revealed that most Americans cite strengthening the economy as their top priority for 2012 and the majority of American’s want the president to focus on domestic issues rather than foreign. Let’s take a look at the numbers, though. According to Politico, 86 percent of those that took the poll said the economy is the top priority and 82 percent said that the employment situation, or lack of employment, should be the governments and leading politicians first and foremost concern. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, seeing as though the economy and job market have both been struggling the past couple of years. There are signs that show it is slightly improving, but to recover 100 percent, or anywhere near 100 percent, there needs to be a lot more work put in by both the government and Americans alike.

The poll also showed that 69 percent of American’s feel that protecting the United States from terrorism and reducing the budget deficit are top priorities. Illegal immigration has less of a priority among Americans with only 39 percent saying that it is a top issue. Just back in 2007, 55 percent of Americans said this was a top priority and in 2011 it was 46 percent. Clearly, as more economic and job market issues inch their way forward, immigration frustrations sit on the back burner of American’s priority list.

In addition to what American’s deem as priority, the poll revealed what countries many feel are a threat to the U.S. According to the poll and the opinions of Americans, Iran is our top danger with China right behind it. If Obama’s goal is to satisfy Americans and reel them in with his third State of the Union address, it is important that he cover most of what was mentioned above. After all, it is what Americans want and they are the ones voting come November.

The poll interviewed 1,502 adults Jan. 11-16. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

SOURCE: Politico, CNN
IMAGE: Courtesy of CBS News

There’s No Such Thing As Overpaying A Teacher, Is There?

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Most people have heard the saying, “Not on a teacher’s salary…” Educators most often mutter it to sway others into believing they’re underpaid, but is that a fallacy? Can someone in such a vital professional position as education actually be overpaid? A few professionals within the educational sector are debating in The New York Times, that many teachers are being overpaid.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics data has consistently shown that on a per-hour basis, teacher income is very respectable. Research has also indicated that public school teachers are near even with private school teachers in terms of salary, but those statistics have not accounted for the fringe benefits the public sector workers are being rewarded – magnanimous vacation time, respectable pensions and retiree health plans being the most common. Do the math and you’ll find that these benefits accumulate roughly 50 percent more total compensation for public teachers over private sector levels.

It’s no secret public school teachers are compensated well above fair market rates. One point of concern though within the debate is that schools need to pay more for recruiting purposes. However, Andrew G. Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute and Jason Richwine, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, believe the extra money is currently there, the quality of educators is what’s lacking. This belief presents a fundamental problem with the way teachers are hired. The allocation of funds within the institution should hold more consequence than simply rewarding each teacher with a higher salary. Warranting pay to reward the best teachers could yield positive results.

Perhaps the bigger issue is in the numbers. 3.6 million to be exact, which accounts for all elementary and secondary school teachers as of Fall 2010. That number has risen 8 percent since 2000. And with the rate of pupils per teacher dropping to 15.6 in 2010 from 16.0 in 2000, there is only one conclusion: schools are hiring more teachers than they are admitting students. Our tax dollars are paying far too many teachers without any differentiation of pay based on quality.

Competition is a great conductor for efficient production and it’s time our schools implement that common business tactic. Our best private institutions have always recognized that salaries matter. Just as they reward their student body for the distribution of talent found within, so then are teachers rewarded for advanced training and credentials. Quantity over quality is the name of this debate and until our educational institutions find a solution to demand the best performances from their staff, teachers will continue to be overpaid and students under taught.

SOURCE: The New York Times
IMAGE: The Faculty Lounge

U.S. High Schools Are Dramatically Falling Behind Federal Standards

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The “No Children Left Behind” Act is finally leaving children behind, just as most thought it would. Approximately half of U.S. high schools failed to meet federal achievement standards this year, marking the worst failure rate since the decade old act that swore to eradicate this issue. The Center on Education Policy reports that more than 43,000 schools fell short of the proposed standards.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan had predicted failure rates as bad as the 82 percentile earlier this year, but the revelation of rates worse than that are motivating her to take action now. The law, as it stands, states that students must be performing at grade level in math and reading by 2014 – a pipe dream in most educators eyes. Educational reforms must be put in place in order to create flexibility for states to move forward. Duncan said, “whether it’s 50%, 80% or 100% of schools being incorrectly labeled as failing, one thing is clear: No Child Left Behind is broken.”

Federal officials such as Jack Jennings, president of the Washington, D.C.- based center have labeled the law, “too crude a measure.” The law is actually four years overdue for a rewrite, mostly due to the confusion in Congress of the best approach to fixing it. ”It (No Child Left Behind) needs to be changed. If Congress can’t do it, then the administration is right to move ahead with waivers,” Jennings said. While the waivers can fix the immediate issues, parents might have difficulty gauging any progress since schools would be rated differently then; using more than just one test score for reference.

A couple factors that could render beneficial would be including college-entrance exam scores and adding the performance of students on Advanced Placement tests. Some members of Congress are saying that the President and Duncan are creating with these waivers a “backdoor education agenda,” that will ultimately let schools off the hook.

The largest issue with the exhaustively debated law is that the schools with tougher standards are being punished. And the schools showing signs of success, albeit aren’t reaching the sanctioned goals, get the same treatment as schools producing below reproach.

SOURCE: U.S.A. Today
IMAGE:Fits News

Federal Reserve Claims Signs of Life For Economy

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While the Federal Reserve has found sufficient evidence to believe the U.S. economy is in remission, they still feel a passive stance is necessary for continued good fortune. There will be no new economic stimulus initiated by the government this coming year, regardless of the ancient Mayan’s claim that 2012 shall bring forth the armageddon.

The government boasts its mediocre improvement perhaps to cloak the metastasizing fear of a European economic meltdown. Global conditions have been deteriorating for some time now, ironically coinciding with the recent, but modest drop in the unemployment rate. This conclusion was concurred by 9 of 10 members of the Free Open Market Committee. However, the President of The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Charles Evans, is still unimpressed with the minuscule success. He is still greatly concerned with the number of Americans who haven’t found a job.

Regardless, there is no speculation over the good vibes surrounding the Fed’s third consecutive decision to hold short-term interest rates near zero. And within the next month, the Fed plans to disseminate its goals and methods to the public, so that any critics may then discern from the source, their own unbiased opinions. Fed officials have also continued their argument that Congress holds more power to stimulate the economy via change in fiscal policy. Basically, one government official shakes their head at another government official, blame is brushed off and all is right in the United States of America again.

All in all, the central bank saw nothing significantly different from the past several depressing years of recession. The winter is spent searching for some trace of recovery, while spring shows signs of life only to bring about the summer which, except for some exciting super-hero action films, leaves us back at, “What happened this time?” The status of our economy is beginning to resemble the mentality of a degenerate gambler: anything, as long as it’s not a big loss, is good for business.

SOURCE:The New York Times
IMAGE: KipNews.org