Minnesota Headhunter

Thoughts On 2014 Target Layoffs

Note the ADDED and UPDATED

I received a number of phone calls and email this morning from friends at Target HQ’s saying they had to be in a meeting in 15 minutes and asked if Target was laying off people today.

Yes, today was the day.

That this was coming was not a shock… there was “writing on the wall”:

The layoffs in November ‘13 were lower than some expected

After the November ‘13 layoff there were immediate rumors of a Q1 2014 layoff

Retail sales are down

Seeing that when some folks were leaving their jobs over the past months some were not being filled

Data breach (more on that below)

Canadian expansion not going as expected

The announcement yesterday that part time employees would no longer have health care coverage

I do think there is some pause from my perspective because of the numbers. I was not aware that this many people were going to be impacted.

Q4 2013 Trend: Minnesota Companies Hiring Jr Recruiters And Coordinators

There are a number of noticeable trends in the Minnesota hiring scene right now. One of the most obvious is the hiring of Junior Recruiters and Recruiting Coordinators.

To the point now that the I am asked the following almost equally:

Do you know any developers looking?

And…

Do you know any recruiters looking?

The recruiting of recruiters is always a positive sign. It means companies are hiring now and plan to in the near future.

Last year almost to the day I posted this:

Minnesota Recruiter Jobs Take A Q4 2012 Pause

I was little concerned about what I was seeing and it turns out all three points were true to some extent:

There was a natural pause after a long hiring frenzy

There was a seasonal pause

Some, many, companies were waiting until after the election to hire

Thankfully there was no long term slow down in the economy and hiring resumed in many skill sets as 2013 started. And it has continued through the year.

Dear Minnesota CEO’s... An Open Letter On IT Recruiting

Dear CEO’s,

Today in the StarTribune is an article from Adam Belz (@adambelz) Minnesota companies need IT workers, but stumble in hiring.

I missed Adam’s phone call, and his deadline, to contribute to the article. I agree with what he published and after speaking with him today look forward to future articles on this and related topics.

Here is what I want you to do…

Read it.

Right now... read it.

And then read the comments section. Try to get through some of the political comments and rants.

Do you really want to know what your IT staff is thinking? There it is.

Now what are you going to do about it?

See, you can’t sit in your office, board meeting, angel investor meeting and lament about the “talent shortage” without asking yourself these questions:

- Does anyone know we are hiring?

- Do we have an adequately staffed HR/Recruiter team? Do they have the resources they need to find who we are looking for? Do they have the time to recruit for what is needed today and also for next week, next month, next quarter?

MinneDemo 14 Recap | Thoughts On Recruiting

At CoCo Minneapolis this afternoon I was asked if I enjoyed MinneDemo last night.

And I paused... one of those awkward long ones.

Yeah, I said but... and then another long pause.

I had a great time last night. There were 500... 600+ folks in attendance. A lot of really smart tech people and friends I had not seen in months.

At the beginning of the 4^th demo I received a text from a tech friend who was in the lobby. There was a conversation about recruiting going on and he thought I should get out there and get in on it.

And this is where the but comes in...

The next 2+ hours was mostly spent having conversations with tech leaders about recruiting issues they were having.

Let me be clear, anyone who knows me knows that I enjoy this part of my job. This is my version of “geeking out”.

But... here it is again... last night I found myself annoyed. Frustrated may be a better word.

3 Minnesota Companies Rank In 100 Best Places To Work In IT 2013

Computerworld released their 2013 100 Best Places To Work In IT and 3 Minnesota companies make the list again.

I say again because these same companies always seem to be on the list (see notes below).

They are (click links for more stats and info):

#12 General Mills (2012 #4)

Why you want to work there:

Top 10 ranking: No. 1 for benefits

Want To Learn Ruby on Rails? Check Out Rails.MN

Last night I attended my first Rails.MN (@RailsMN) user group meeting.

This is not a typical user group meeting where developers demo, talk about what they are working on... cool tools they are building… a place to show how smart they are.

Rails.MN is more of a learning lab and a great opportunity to pick up the Rails skill set.

Derek Rockwell (@DerekRockwell) is leading the group with tutorials, hands on learning. The current learning series is on Building OpenCamp (a project management tool).

Minnesota IT Jobs Most In Demand By Title

Wanted Analytics used a recent report on cities seeing the most growth in IT jobs, Minneapolis was on the list, and did a little research to see which jobs were most in demand.

There are a few interesting points to note for Minneapolis (sorry St Paul friends, but you know you are included)…

- With Project Manager and Senior Project Manger both on the list we know this is good news for the IT community. This means we have a lot of work going on now and down the road. Good news for all in IT.

- Business Analyst and Senior Business Analyst same as above

- Software Engineer and Web Developer: I am mighty curious about what skill sets are listed with those jobs. it also leads me to believe that my Recruiter and HR friends could do a better job of listing the skill set needed… I wonder how many false positives candidates are seeing in searches. For example, a JavaScript developer is likely clicking on Web Developer and finding PHP jobs. That is a rant for a future blog post.

Here are the IT job titles by rank for Minneapolis, MN:

Minnesota Recruiter Jobs Take A Q4 2012 Pause

Since January 3, 2011 (the first work day of that new year) Minnesota companies have been on a hiring spree of recruiters. It was as if someone flipped a dimmer switch from off to on and then turned it up brighter and brighter

Not surprising since many of these jobs were eliminated during the recession and companies were going to start hiring… we do tend to be a leading indicator of how the economy is going.

The increase in hiring was a good thing... and we saw salary and hourly rate increases. And if you were a recruiter with a proven record in IT there was a competition of your services.

After seeing the many upticks and infrequent plateaus we are seeing a noticeable pause since Labor Day.

There are many fewer jobs posted on the job boards, Twin Cities Human Resources Association and here on my Minnesota Recruiter Jobs wall.

Call For Speakers: MidwestPHP Conference

 

The Midwest PHP Conference has put out a call for speakers:

Call for Speakers closes December 1, 2012

We're looking for fun, entertaining, and educational talks on pretty much anything related to PHP development! Can you help?

More specifically, we're looking for 45 minute talks that fall into one of these categories:

• PHP Basics - intros, how-tos, etc
• Advanced PHP - SPL, OOP, etc
• Frameworks - Zend, Symfony, Cake, etc
• Databases - SQL and NoSQL
• Other Components - Gearman, Varnish, etc
• Web Development - HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, etc

Tata Consulting Services Opening A Large Minneapolis Office

There have been a handful of rumors the past months about large organizations coming to or expanding their Minneapolis and St Paul offices.

A couple of weeks ago Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal had this article (premium content) Tata to open 300-person office.

While Tata already has a local presence with a sales office and a number of clients this is a large expansion.

In the article I was quoted:

Tata is a well-known name in the IT industry. However, if it plans to predominately hire tech workers, that will shake up the already tight labor market for IT workers, said Paul DeBettignies, vice president of recruiting for Minneapolis-based HireCast Consulting.

Best Buy recently swallowed up a lot of talent when it hired 200 workers for an in-house IT team, he added. “It’s not to say they won’t be able to do it, but the talent pool is only so big.”

Who Is The #1 Minnesota Executive Search Firm?

My colleagues in search and consulting firms are some of the most competitive people I know.

We have to be and for most of us it is in our DNA, to some extent.

We are always trying to find competitive edges, how we can do a search or project better than someone else, we have to find the best people, can we save the client time, etc.

And I like lists.

They may not always be accurate and some are subjective but it gives me an idea of who is doing well.

Last week the Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal released List Leaders: Twin Cities executive search firms with the 25 largest Twin Cities-area executive search firms ranked by revenue.

There are some curious things about the entries on the list:

• Revenue divided by Placements = Average fee
  • Those are some amazing, way above industry average fees
• Placements divided by Twin Cities recruiters
  • There are some very low and very high averages

16 Minnesota Companies Listed In Forbes Global 2,000

Forbes has come up with a Global 2,000 of the world’s biggest public companies.

How they came up with this list:

“Forbes annual ranking of the world’s biggest companies departs from lopsided lists based on a single metric, like sales. Instead we use an equal weighting of sales, profits, assets and market value to rank companies according to size.”

16 companies are based in Minnesota (524 in the U.S.) and are listed below. For more information on each company click the company name to go to their Forbes page:

#105 UnitedHealth Group 

#122 U.S. Bancorp

#159 Target

#193 3M

#259 Medtronic

Some Tech Companies Not Retaining Staff Because Of $5 An Hour

Last night I was chatting with Steven Sorsveen (my business partner) about how nearly every day a client says they lost a key employee to a competitor.

In this case it was a web development shop losing a mobile developer who was truly underpaid.

I told Steven I think it is silly that $10K more a year would have likely kept the person. They liked the company, culture and work.

Steven said, “Even more silly, that is $5 an hour”.

Think about that for a moment... $5 an hour.

The $10K would only have put the developer almost even with market rates. So no, they were not being greedy.

Why could that $5 an hour not have been added in to the projects when they were pitched?

I guess if you have 4 mobile developers working on a project that’s an extra $20 an hour and over a 160 hour project $3,200.

But $3,200 is cheap compared to the time and energy (those are dollars too) to recruit someone new. There is also the ramp up time of the new hire and likely lost revenue in the process.

All over $5 an hour.

Really does seem silly...

Click Recruiting for more posts on the topic, Minnesota Headhunter for most recent blog posts.

 
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MinneBar 7 | Recap

I am not sure how to start this post... do I talk about:

• How much fun I had
• That I learned a lot
• That nearly 12 hours left me completely wore out
• The conversations I had about recruiting and career maintenance

OK, maybe that is how I start the post.

I had a lot of fun at MinneBar 7 (@MinneBar). I was able to reconnect with folks from the tech, startup, entrepreneur community. I also bumped into an old friend after my second session. We had lunch together and then we spoke for more than an hour after that about life stuff. It was one of those conversations where after the first 20 seconds it was like we had seen each other last week. I hope he sees this and if so, thank you Friend.

Who’s Hiring In Minnesota: W3i

I am starting a new series highlighting Minnesota companies who are hiring. The idea being I know a lot of companies who are hiring and hopefully I can introduce them to a new audience.

These will not be paid advertisements and I will note any “disclaimers” if needed, like them being a current or former client.

For this first, this is the day before MinneBar 7, I am going with the folks at W3i who I have been able to get to know through Minneapolis and St Paul tech events.

Disclaimers: none

W3i is headquartered in Sartell, MN (just west of St Cloud) and have a “camp site” at CoCo MSP in the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and RocketSpace in San Francisco.

Getting Ready For MinneBar 7

Tomorrow is MinneBar 7 (@MinneBar) and I am looking to feeding my inner geek. After 3+ months of mostly hanging out with Recruiter and HR folks I need to satisfy the other part of my brain.

Before getting into this post a BIG thank you needs to be given to:

Host:

• Best Buy

Sponsors for the event and year long support to Minne*:

• Code 42 Software

• August Ash

• W3i

• ipHouse

• 8thBridge

• Fredrikson & Byron

• Bloom Health

• Split Rock Partners

• Chow Girls

• Ech03 

And the 80+ Community Supporters (I am one) who make an annual donation.

The Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge 2012 – Recap

Every year I stop by this event and every year I have failed to write a blog post about it which is odd because it is an intersection of my life: tech folks, friends and non profits.

The Nerdery hosted their Overnight Website Challenge at the University of Minnesota St Paul campus and the space was packed. How packed?

They had 18 web teams (10 folks in a team) and 18 non profits and community organizations.

Here are some photos of the three rooms:

List: 2012 Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal 40 Under Forty

Congratulations to this years Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal 40 Under Forty. A talented group for sure and very happy to call a few of them Friend.

Here is the list with the link back to the Business Journal and their profile:

• Jessica Boden

• Gina Brennan

• Michael Caguin

• Kate Cimino

• Katie Clark

• Gary Collins

• Scott Cummings

• Mike Derheim

• Paul Dzubnar

• Jonathan Fletcher

Minnesota Job And Career Fair: Jobs Summit 2012

The Minnesota Recruiting and Staffing Association will be hosting the 2012 Jobs Summit March 27^th (next week) from 9 am to 2 pm at the Minnesota School of Business in Richfield.

This is a FREE event for job seekers and has four parts:

Job Fair

30 staffing and recruiting companies will be interviewing for full time, part time and contract jobs.

Is Best Buy In Trouble?

Disclaimer:

• I am not an analyst.

• I have no inside info (although I was at Best Buy HQ’s yesterday)

• Best Buy is a frequent host of the Minnesota Recruiters group

Minnesota based Best Buy has been in the news the past two weeks and it is has not been pretty.

It started with the pre 2011 Christmas debacle of customers who placed orders online as early as Black Friday were notified that their gifts would not be shipped in time for the holiday.

Worse, they were not told until days before.

Today is the report of December 2011 same store sales being down. There was some good news in the report too but many headlines I have seen are focusing on the negative.

Earlier this week (and what has spread online very fast) is this article from Forbes Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually