In this week’s BusinessWeek, Ultimate Software is promoting a “unique algorithm that looks at dozens of multidimentional aspects of an employee to help predict (with a high degree of accuracy) whether that employee is a flight risk.”

Further on, Sum Total offers “a centralized hub that can tap into multiple data sources to give you a full, comprehensive view of your employees and what they are trying to accomplish.”

The link between these two offerings is “big data,” a term that already triggers 22 million hits in a web search and appears well on its way to replacing “social media” as the most discussed new idea in human capital management.

Is it worth the fuss? Read More

We’ve received two calls this week asking for marketing cost breakouts as a percentage of the total recruiting budget, or alternatively a marketing cost-per-candidate number.

Here’s what you need to report back to the folks who are asking for the stat, and here’s how to properly calculate the answer.

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Companies that successfully strive for staffing effectiveness and high retention enter - from a staffing point of view - into a virtuous spiral driven by the power of talent’s natural attraction to other talent and the prestige value of scarcity.

Staffing efficiency, while desirable, does not create an equivalent spiral.

Virtuous spirals are series of events that self-reinforce in a positive direction, each event in a sequence helping to create another favorable event. We see virtuous spirals at work when:

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