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SHRM: Life is Good

By Todd Raphael

Peopleclick SVP Ginny Gomez says five clients are testing out the company’s new [1] onboarding product, and it’ll more generally available in Q4. Also, she says, “we’re not really seeing the big downturn” — and that the company’s European business is going strong. …

[2] Personified (the new CareerBuilder subsidiary) has about 110 employees and is charging roughly $120,000 to do employer brand consulting, roughly $50,000 to evaluate a company’s applicant-tracking needs, and roughly $3,000-$10,000 monthly for outsourcing work, such as hiring people to staff a small part of a company. Mary Delaney, the endearing president of Personified (shown), says there’s a “very thick wall” between Personified and CareerBuilder to reduce conflicts-of-interest when companies are looking for sourcing advice and Personified is in the position of recommending and not recommending CareerBuilder. …

From the booth-size battles: Ultimate Software’s booth and People-Trak’s booth are surprisingly similar in size given that the former is a company with somewhere around a [4] billion-dollar market cap. … People-Trak’s Jim Witschger, a former USC baseballer, says “I thought we’d see a lot of the whole gloom and doom thing” at the SHRM conference, but instead he found the opposite — people doing demos at his booth 15 minutes after the close Monday. He said the vibe at the conference was “very encouraging.” …

Enough talk of gloom and doom — onto boom: Jobing ([5] a company we mentioned yesterday) held a blowout party Monday night, complete with fireworks off a barge near Navy Pier. It was a scene right out of … 10 years ago. …

Over at HRworks ([6] profile), president Kurt Ronn says that companies are “falling asleep at the wheel” right now. Instead of using the slower economy as a chance to grab newly available talent they’ll desperately need soon, they’re cutting. Ronn realizes there’s pressure to cut costs and improve short-term earnings, but, he says, “you might as well miss it [earnings] a little bit more and get the talent.” He’s also working on some pilot programs with companies interested in hiring disabled veterans. …

Newlyweds AIRS ([7] profile) and The RightThing ([8] profile) seem to be adjusting to life together quite well. During the SHRM conference, the company closed a 6,000-hires-a-year outsourcing deal, and recruiter training is up about 10% over last year. Says AIRS prez Chris Forman: “Life is good in Internet sourcing.”

Article printed from ERE.net: www.ere.net

URL to original article: http://www.ere.net/2008/06/24/shrm-day-2/

URLs in this post:
[1] onboarding: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080623/20080623006261.html?.v=1
[2] Personified: http://www.personified.com/
[4] billion-dollar market cap: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=ULTI
[5] a company we mentioned yesterday: http://www.ere.net/2008/06/23/shrm/
[6] profile: http://directory.ere.net/profiles/hrworks
[7] profile: http://directory.ere.net/profiles/airs-human-capital-solutions
[8] profile: http://directory.ere.net/profiles/the-rightthing-inc