REBSTÖCK CONSULTING is launching www.BrainSourz.com – a new online recruitment  tool for professional contractors, freelancers, recruiters and companies – completely for free

What if firms could get the reliability and skill of permanent employees, without renting an office and filling it with staff? What if contractors could network, advertize and find jobs on one site? Now they can with BrainSourz.com, a new contractor and freelancer recruitment website launching this week.

What it is

BrainSourz.com connects contractors and freelancers to jobs and clients worldwide. For contractors it provides free online advertising space, an international database of jobs and projects to browse, and the chance to create virtual companies with other members to win bigger jobs. For employers BrainSourz means the chance to hunt for talent globally with just a few clicks, and hire highly skilled workers quickly and affordably. “BrainSourz appeals to business because it does not entail the risk of a contractor website, and does not mean the cost of an agency,” says company CEO Martin Rebstock.

What it isn’t

BrainSourz is not an online Jobs Forum where semi-anonymous freelancers outbid each other to offer the lowest price on jobs. It marks a complete departure from that model.  “Websites for recruiting contractors have always been based on the idea that using freelance workers is about a quick fix – you want someone cheap, fast and disposable,” says Rebstock. “But in today’s market companies are turning to contractors to provide affordable skilled labor rather than a stop-gap – contractors are a valuable part of the workforce.”

How it works

BrainSourz.com is based around interactive user profiles: Each freelancer has a homepage with a resume, work samples, a calendar, references and reviews. Employers also have their own homepages, giving candidates information on who they are and what they’re looking for. Employers can post jobs in a forum, and can headhunt contractors using a powerful search engine. However they find a candidate, they can access all the information they need to decide whether this is the right person for their job. “The site’s agile development makes recruitment into a fast, effective process,” BrainSourz’s IT Director Sam Davis.

Why it’s needed

Contractors are on the rise. 10.3 million workers in the US (7.4% of the workforce) are independent contractors, and in the past three years companies have increased their outsourcing by 22% on the internet. In Europe the situation is the same; UK businesses without employees generate an estimated £222 billion per year – approximately 8 per cent of private sector turnover.

“Freelancing is here to stay, so businesses are looking for the most effective ways to make it work,” says BrainSourz Corporate Manager Martin Rebstock. “Companies are looking for quick and affordable staffing solutions – but of course they don’t want to lose the quality and reliability you get from permanent staff. We’re giving them the best of both worlds.”

Executive Search consultants, selected in number of interview rounds and negotiations will represent REBSTÖCK CONSULTING as Partners and Heads of the Company in each respective Central Eastern European country, with additional experienced Executive Search staff to cover particular sectors, according to Clients’ needs and area of their expertise. The expansion answers Rebstöck’s clients’ requests to serve Executive Search and Technology Recruitment services around the CEE Region, including Russia, as companies are starting to recover from the worldwide financial crisis and looking for new growth opportunities.

A survey of more than 2,000 British workers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), which says it is Europe’s largest HR professional body, reports “plummeting” levels of happiness in the workplace.

More than 60 percent of respondents believed it would be either difficult or very difficult to find a new job should they lose their current position. Almost a fifth thought it likely they would lose their jobs as a result of the recession.

The effects of the downturn have also been felt outside the workplace, with nearly a third of respondents reporting a fall in their living standards — compared to only nine percent who said they had improved.

But figures among young workers (aged 18 to 24) were perhaps the most alarming. The survey reported job satisfaction levels have fallen nearly 90 percent since the CIPD last reported in summer 2009.

Claire McCartney, CIPD lead adviser, co-authored the CIPD quarterly report Employee Outlook. She told CNN: “We know that young people have been hard hit by the recession but what this survey is telling us is that those who are in work were really frustrated and job satisfaction had decreased quiet significantly. That for me is the key area.”

McCartney says the data suggests young people are finding there are fewer opportunities to learn new skills and consequently are not being able to progress.

The quarterly report was released on the same day it was announced that the UK left recession in the fourth quarter of 2009, when the economy grew 0.1 percent.

The CIPD says the survey, conducted with polling organization YouGov, highlights the impact of the recession on the UK.

“What’s come through from a number of the surveys is a lack of trust in senior leaders — employees not being able to discuss changes and feed in their view,” McCartney said.

While this isn’t too much of a surprise, employers she says would be wise to consider carefully how they engage employees now to stop losing talent further down the line.

“When things do start to pick up people will leave if they don’t feel they trust their leaders or that they are being consulted.”

Philip Dewe, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the UK’s Birkbeck College, University of London said that happiness in the workplace is always a hard thing to get right.

“Job satisfaction is a fairly complicated issue at the best of times,” Dewe told CNN, “but we do know what makes people happy at work is being engaged in what they do and getting some sort of satisfaction from it.”

Dewe said employers should be focusing on the needs of the individual and how those needs can be matched along with recognizing the need for a work/life balance.

“Employers can also look at how individuals learn and develop in organizations and put in strategies which allow them to take place,” he said.

For employees, measuring job satisfaction, at least in theory, is relatively straightforward, Dewe said.

“It’s just a question of what people in my trade call the psychological contract — that is having a belief that you are being treated fairly and openly and that your wants and needs and your employers wants and needs are in alignment,” he added.

By Matt Knight, for CNN

I’m getting ready to move on. Should I look for my successor inside the organization or find a candidate on the outside?

Developing a great successor is one of the most important accomplishments that a CEO — or any senior-level executive — can achieve. But, what’s best for your organization, and for you? Should you develop an internal or an external successor?

There are many reasons, both personal and professional, to invest in development for an internal candidate. To start, if a new CEO comes from outside the company, the board will expect a name-brand leader who has a proven track record of success. There aren’t that many of those out there, and to hire such an executive, you’re going to have to pay a ton of money and provide an expensive golden parachute if things don’t work out.

High-profile disaster stories — Home Depot, Hewlett-Packard — have shown exactly how much this type of failure can cost the company. The main damage, however, is not the amount of money spent; it’s the damage to the organization’s reputation if its new rainmaker fails.

CEOs from the outside who fail — and then get tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars from the company for getting fired — provide incredibly negative stories for the business press that can lead to long-term PR damage for the organization.

The damage is even worse inside the organization. When CEOs fail, employees are often dismissed and resources cut, and it’s very hard to explain to 20-year veteran employees why they have to take less so a failed, externally-hired CEO can get more.

In short, hiring a name-brand CEO from outside the company who fails is usually a disaster. The board of directors looks like a group of idiots, and this sad drama only reinforces the increasingly common perception that CEOs are overpaid and that executives and board members are ultimately looking out for their own interests, not the interests of the company.

I am not suggesting that organizations should always hire internal candidates. Obviously there have been cases where external CEOs made a huge difference — IBM, for instance — but external candidates come with extremely high risk. Talent managers should develop an internal successor if at all possible, if only because the need to look outside sends the wrong message about an organization’s leadership development capabilities.

I teach in a corporate leadership development program with one very famous CEO who was hired from outside the company. This executive personally instructs management training courses for vice presidents and above. In each session he makes the point that his own hiring is indicative of a failure in leadership development for the company. He clearly states his personal commitment to nurture talent from within, and to develop his own successor.

Your company should ask leaders at all levels to develop talent. Every manager has to answer the question, “If you were hit by a bus tomorrow, who could take your place?” When you, the CEO or senior-level executive, cannot develop your own successor, it indicates you have not been practicing what you preach. Do you want to send a message that you have not succeeded in something you’ve been asking frontline supervisors to do for years?

Hiring an external successor brings great risk and sends the wrong message about development. Effective internal succession can produce the opposite, positive outcomes.

Hiring an internal candidate shows that you have made the same effort to develop internal talent that you are asking of everyone else. As your successor moves up to the C-suite, a top-level position opens up so that another internal executive can be promoted.

You have a vision for the company. After putting in years to make this vision a reality, you find it important that you vision continue after you leave. By developing an internal successor, you can be assured your vision will be carried out after you depart. You want your successor to bring a fresh perspective, but you don’t want him or her to negate all you did in the past.

By carefully developing your successor from inside the company, you can dramatically increase the probability of a positive transition and a successful future.

When developing your successor, remember that a senior-level executive — especially the CEO — transition process is extremely personal. Prior columns have been aimed at helping you face the reality of passing the baton of leadership — and getting you ready for the hand-off — developing an internal successor is all about getting that person ready to take the baton and ultimately become a great leader for your company.

Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders achieve positive, lasting change in behavior. Dr. Goldmith’s 24 books include What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, an NYT best seller, WSJ #1 business book and Harold Longman Award winner for Business Book of the Year. He has been recognized as one of the world’s leading executive educators and coaches in BusinessWeek, the Economist, Forbes and The Times of London. His articles and videos are available online at MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com

http://bx.businessweek.com/human-capital-strategy/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.harvardbusiness.org%2Fgoldsmith%2F2009%2F09%2Fwhy_you_should_choose_an_inter.html

In the early years at Microsoft, earning a perfect 5.0 rating on your performance review was like winning a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. There were special financial rewards, but the thing that seemed to turn recipients on the most was that Bill Gates would come to their office for a 1:1 visit.

Not an e-mail or a phone call, but a face-to-face meeting on your own turf. Why did Bill’s visit carry so much weight? What’s so special about face-to-face?

As humans, we are hard-wired to be most responsive to a person who is right in front of us. All the senses are engaged and all channels are buzzing. When you need to connect at the deepest, most engaging level, there’s nothing like face-to-face. But you’ve got to be smart about it. Used carelessly, face-to-face can waste your time, drain your energy and set off emotional chain reactions that make things worse, not better.

Face-to-face meetings are expensive. But when you need to build a bond of trust and understanding, e-mail and phone will only take you so far. Invest in face-to-face early on and you’ll have a much easier time down the road. Once you’ve decided to invest in a face-to-face, there are things you can do before, during and after the meeting to maximize your return–and minimize the risks.

Before the Meeting: Prepare
When you meet face-to-face, it’s easy to get into a dance that takes on an unproductive life of its own. You say this is a problem, they explain why it’s not. You get frustrated, and an edge comes into your voice. They get defensive and pull away. The meeting devolves into a spiral of reactions and digressions.

But with a little preparation, you can choose the dance, rather than having it choose you. Here’s how.

First, boil down what you want to accomplish in the meeting to three key things.

Second, have some good questions ready. This will help you resist the temptation to talk too much and listen too little.

Third, identify topics and dramas that have gotten you off track in the past with this person or group. Be ready to steer away.

Fourth, share your objectives and expectations ahead of time with the others so they can be organized and ready to hold up their end.

During the Meeting: Connect
Now you’re in real time and the dance begins. You have two primary jobs: 1) keep your objectives in mind at all times, and 2) connect in an open, positive way with the other person or persons in the room.

Behave in a way that puts them on their toes, not on their heels.

Take time at the start to connect on a personal level. Don’t get stuck there, but make the investment. Bonding is important. It increases the chances that you will give each other the benefit of the doubt under pressure.

Be so organized in your own mind about what you need to accomplish that you are free to listen most of the time; 60% listening and 40% talking is a good goal.

Getting into the flow and having a lively conversation is fine. But notice when it’s getting away from your agenda and the time is slipping away. Then find a tactful way to steer things back on course.

Venting and blaming is not constructive. Don’t allow it, and don’t indulge in it.

Take a break every hour or so. Face-to-face is a big drain on your brain. Soldiering through may seem like a good idea, but it’s a formula for sloppy thinking, misunderstanding and emotional entanglements. When you sense your attention drifting and your mind getting fuzzy, others are probably feeling the same way. Call a time-out.

After the Meeting: Follow-Up
You can extend the impact of a face-to-face meeting with thoughtful follow-up. Relationship building is a discipline, not a drive-by. Here’s how you can keep the engine running.

Within 24 hours, follow-up with an e-mail summarizing your key takeaways and expressing your appreciation for their investment in the face-to-face.

Make it personal. Identify a fresh insight, a humorous moment or even a lively disagreement that materialized in the meeting. Then figure out an easy way to build on it. For example: Send them a link to a relevant article, book or Web site. Or check in with them after they run a marathon several weeks from now.

Put reminders on your calendar to stay in periodic contact until your next face-to-face with touches by e-mail, phone, or text.

Finally, if you want to become a face-to-face master, take a moment to reflect on what you learned from the face-to-face. Not just about the work, but about the person and how to connect with them more effectively next time.

Douglas McKenna is chief executive officer and co-founder of the Oceanside Institute. Formerly head of leadership development at Microsoft, he coaches senior executives around the world.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/08/making-most-meetings-leadership-mckenna.html

It has happened–so be very careful.

Before the recession hit, allowing a flexible work schedule was one of the ways employers retained the best talent. Some staffers opted to telecommute a few days a week. Others worked a compressed work week of four 10-hour days. Some did a more traditional part-time schedule.

But as the economy has worsened and layoffs multiplied, many of those employees are wondering if their flexible schedules are making them targets for layoffs. They fear that out of sight means out of mind–and out of a job.

Manhattan-based employment lawyer Matthew Blit was recently approached by someone who until recently been working in advertising sales. The person had been the only one in his group who regularly worked from home; he was also the only one laid off in a recent round of downsizing.

Blit spoke to the company’s lawyer and learned one reason his client was let go was because he had been telecommuting two days a week–even though his sales numbers were higher than most of his group’s. But since there were no discriminatory factors involved in the layoff, such as being fired because of race, sex, age, national origin or religion, so there was no basis for a lawsuit.

Examples like that are very frustrating for advocates of flexible work arrangements, because when done right, flextime is a good business decision. Employees who work reduced hours save money for the company, and those who work from home tend to be more productive, experts say. And don’t discount the importance of keeping employees happy, particularly top performers. They’re the people with the most options for leaving a company, now and especially when the economy rebounds.

What a shame! When is the media going to stop using the bad economy to scare everyone away from requesting flexibility? Just last week, Families and Work Institute published a report that found 9

More than 20 years of documented data show that working remotely improves productivity, usually by double digits,” says Pat Katepoo, a flexible-work adviser and founder of WorkOptions.com, a resource for career professionals who want to negotiate flexible work arrangements. “People aren’t afraid of working hard. They just want to do it with more control.”

Deborah Epstein Henry, founder of Flex-Time Lawyers, a national consulting firm that advises the legal field on work-life balance and the retention and promotion of women attorneys, set out to prove that. She and three other attorneys recently published an analysis using an economic model from NERA Economic Consulting showing that the legal profession could save millions of dollars and avoid layoffs if it offered attorneys reduced hours with commensurate salary reductions.

Attorneys at big law firms are typically paid based on working 2,000 billable hours a year. In the NERA model, hours were reduced across the board from 2,000 to either 1,900 or 1,800. Henry and her colleagues found that the economic benefit was just as great if associates worked varying billable hours–ranging from 1,200 per year to 2,000 per year depending on their practice areas, market demands and other considerations–as if they all worked the same reduced number.

“We demonstrated savings in firm revenues in the millions over a five-year period,” Henry says. “We’re saying now that there’s an economic reason to encourage reduced hours. We’re saying that you can move to realize profitability and not lay as many people off.”

Despite that evidence, there’s still a stigma attached to asking for a flexible work arrangement. Lots of managers think that if you’re not sitting in a cubicle near their office, you’re goofing off. Or if you work fewer hours, it must mean you’re less dedicated. Still, there are ways to do it and still keep from becoming a layoff target.

Before filing a request for flextime, assess your company’s economic situation. If business is lackluster and there are rumors of layoffs, hold off. Also, consider whether there’s a precedent for working from home. Will you be the first person to ask for it?

If so, emphasize how much work you’ll get done without the continual interruptions of daily life in an office. Also, start off slowly, asking to work from home a few times a month, not several days a week. “Make a strong business case as to why this should work,” says Lisa Martin, a career coach and the author of Briefcase Mom: 10 Proven Practices to Balance Working Mothers’ Lives.

Whether you’re working from home or putting in reduced hours in the office, be accessible and responsive to clients and co-workers. “Part of the anxiety is that they won’t be able to reach you when they need to,” Henry says.

Also, send status reports to your manager every few days, with updates on the projects you’re working on. “Make sure your accomplishments are highlighted, without being too self-congratulatory,” says Susan Lill, president of Align HR, a human resources consulting firm.

Schedule your time in the office to coincide with departmental meetings, and show up at company social functions. Make a point of dropping by the offices of your higher-ups, so they’ll see that you’re in the office. “The burden is on the telecommuter to foster a good working relationship with co-workers,” says Lill.

Most important, be flexible. If your boss needs you in the office, be there. And if a co-worker leaves the firm, offer to take on extra work. You should go out of your way to prove that you’re a dedicated member of the team.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/15/flextime-layoff-danger-leadership-careers-advice.html?partner=leadership_newsletter

Corporate recruiter Elisa Bannon of US Cellular in Chicago used to spend up to $4 million a year to post jobs and screen résumés through the three heavyweights of online job search—Monster (MWW), CareerBuilder, and Yahoo! (YHOO) HotJobs.

But with her 2009 budget slashed to $1 million and 2,500 openings to fill, the wireless carrier’s director of talent acquisition ditched the big job boards and instead inked a deal with social networking site LinkedIn. For an annual fee of $60,000, Bannon’s team now has access to the network’s 42 million members, many of whom are employed—the so-called passive candidates that recruiters covet, since conventional wisdom is the best people already have jobs. Using LinkedIn, Bannon made a hire in 30 days for a position that typically takes six months to fill. “It’s a great product at an attractive price,” she says.

SHRINKING SHARE
For Monster, a publicly traded online job site with $1 billion in sales and 80 million résumés on file, the growing appeal of LinkedIn to recruiters is just one more headache to contend with. Other social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are also becoming popular destinations for employers. And niche sites such as TheLadders and BlueSteps, both of which target high earners, are gaining followers among recruiters and job seekers alike. While traffic to Monster is up because of the growing ranks of the newly unemployed, its share of job listings among the big three has declined from nearly 40% in December 2007 to 34% in May of this year, according to job market research and analysis firm Wanted Technologies. And the site saw a 31% drop in revenue last quarter. (Monster gets 90% of its revenues from fees it charges recruiters to post jobs and search its résumé database; the rest comes from advertising.) “The big job boards have peaked,” says Gerry Crispin of consultancy CareerXroads.

Monster CEO Sal Iannuzzi, a Wall Street veteran who in 2007 came to the top job, is trying to fight back. “I’ve spent a significant part of my career fixing things,” he says. He has slashed $400 million in costs over the past year, even eliminating paper cups in the break rooms. Iannuzzi also lowered prices for some key customers and hired 130 salespeople—a 31% increase—to win back business. In January, Monster unveiled a cleaner site that, among other things, reduced the number of steps required to upload a résumé from 20 to 4. A career-mapping feature shows job hunters how they can transfer from one field to another.

PLAYING CATCH-UP?
Iannuzzi is also trying to improve customer service, moving call centers back from India to South Carolina. Those efforts pleased customers such as Michael O’Connell, a recruiter in Los Angeles whose firm works for Disney (DIS) and Toyota (TM). He was close to scrapping Monster last month but stayed on thanks to better service, a monthly payment plan, and a price cut. O’Connell is also a fan of LinkedIn—”I use it all day,” he says—but argues that it’s not yet big enough to supplant Monster. And he stopped using TheLadders two years ago when the company began charging recruiters. (Originally, TheLadders charged only job seekers.)

Iannuzzi’s next step is to address the one-size-fits-all nature of Monster’s site, which gets about 12 million unique visitors a month. It’s rolling out “contextual search” technology that distinguishes between, say, someone who went to Harvard and someone who lives on Harvard Avenue. Iannuzzi calls the technology “game-changing,” but rivals beg to differ. “It’s an attempt to catch up,” says Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder, which saw its North American revenue drop 27% in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, on June 25, HotJobs launched a “pay-per-performance” product whereby recruiters pay only for qualified candidates.

Unlike listing jobs on the big boards—a process that one recruiter describes as “post and pray”—companies can now choose sites with more distinct services. Along with specialized sites such as TheLadders and Dice, which focuses on technology and health care, there are job search engines such as SimplyHired and Indeed, which trawl the job boards and corporate employment sites to grab every available posting. The employment sections of corporate Web sites have also become more sophisticated. And craigslist has cornered the market for lower-paying jobs with free postings in most areas. By one estimate, there are now 50,000 job sites in the U.S. alone and an equal amount abroad.

SOUPED-UP SEARCH
Perhaps the biggest threat comes from LinkedIn, a six-year-old social networking site with a distinctly professional bent. In January the privately held Mountain View (Calif.) company consolidated the various tools it had been selling to corporate hiring departments into a suite of services called Talent Advantage, which now boasts more than 1,000 customers, double the number it had last year. For $7,000 per user at a client company, hiring managers get a customized Web site, or “dashboard,” and souped-up search capability so they can reach out to qualified candidates, individually or in groups. (Recruiters can also buy job postings.) The network even “pushes” candidates to employers who meet preset criteria. While some LinkedIn members may not want to hear from a recruiter, they’ll often send the message along to someone else in their network. “Finding passive candidates—that’s our sweet spot,” says David Hahn, LinkedIn’s director of product management. Recruiters agree. “We could not believe the candidates we got” from LinkedIn, says Scott Morrison, director of global recruiting programs at software giant salesforce.com (CRM). “This is a gold mine for us.”

Twitter is also gaining traction in the realm of job search. Kara Nickels got an e-mail one morning from an insurance industry client that needed 40 lawyers immediately for a big document review. The legal recruiter quickly sent a message—or “tweet”—to her 150 followers, which was re-twittered by legal blogs that follow her. By the time she arrived at her Chicago office, Nickels had 10 replies and filled every post by lunch. “With job boards it takes a couple days before people look,” she says. “But Twitter is immediate. I’ll still use the job boards, but if you don’t use social media now, you’re behind the curve.”

With that kind of competition, analysts are skeptical that Monster can retain its top spot. “I’m not convinced [Monster's] new projects are going to revolutionize its portfolio to the point where users and recruiters think about Monster in a new light,” says William Morrison, an analyst at investment bank ThinkEquity Partners. “If the job boards don’t innovate more often and more quickly, they are going to have a very difficult time growing their businesses over the next several years.”

Iannuzzi knows this. “We are not done,” he says, hinting that acquisitions could be forthcoming. But even Monster’s architects see the writing on the wall. Bill Warren, the founder of an early job board that morphed into Monster, is now executive director of the DirectEmployers Assn., a consortium of corporate employers. He’s partnering with the owner of the “.jobs” domain and will launch job sites under that domain later this year. Says Warren: “The days of the big, expensive job boards are over.”

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_27/b4138043180664.htm