HR is Essential to Implement New Ways to Work

Last modified on 2011-08-05 16:15:38 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

This is a guest post from Jim Creighton. Jim is Co-Director/Partner in the New Ways of Working Network, and is President of Creighton & Creighton, Inc., a consulting firm. Creighton holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the International Institute for Advanced Study. He is the author of six books, including CyberMeeting: How to Link People and Technology in Your Organization. Creighton has more than 35 years experience as an independent consultant with a focus on participatory processes, dispute resolution, team effectiveness, and partnering in multi-organizational teams. He is currently conducting studies on best practices in remote virtual teams.

HR is Essential to Implement New Ways to Work

by Jim Creighton

A few years ago, a group of workplace specialists were sitting around a table complaining that they’d just attended a conference where “they hadn’t learned anything.” At that table were some of the most experienced people at setting up and running “new ways of working” programs– programs involving remote work and alternative workplace.

They weren’t learning anything because the other people at the conference all wanted to learn from them. The people sitting around the table really wanted to talk with other people who had some real experience setting up and running these programs.

Out of that complaint session over a few beers grew the New Ways of Working Network (www.NewWOW.net). The network was founded to provide forums that satisfied two criteria: (1) Everybody at the table is expert in at least one aspect of new ways of working, and (2) all aspects of new ways of working – workplace design, IT, work practices, and company policies — are all represented in the discussion.

The Network has been hugely successful, with one exception. Our members report that when their companies plan corporate programs to permit new ways of working, HR is rarely at the table, even when explicitly invited.

This is a puzzle. Effective new ways of working programs require significant policy changes and different management skills than current practices, and many of these fall in the domain of human resources.

Let’s start at the most fundamental level. Experience shows that when employees are offered the choice of some form of distributed work, they see this as a benefit of working for that particular company. But if they are forced to be part of such a program – as some companies have done – they see it as a huge imposition and disincentive. That’s the kind of message HR should be bringing to the table.

More and more companies are employing remote virtual teams to perform key innovative tasks. This enables them to find uniquely talented and skilled people wherever they are. But effectively managing a remote virtual team requires careful planning and skillful management. Typically, working as a distributed team requires some changes in how people work and additional training. Managing a remote virtual team, for example, is challenging and requires skills beyond normal project management.

Our experience is if there is no explicit corporate policy specifying conditions for allowing new ways of working, then people do it anyway. But how and when it is done is determined by the employees or the personal biases of individual managers, ranging from the most enlightened to the least.

Also, distributed work is loved by some employees and hated by others. Those who love it talk about finding uninterrupted time for concentration, making most efficient use of time, and engaging with customers, partners and colleagues. Those who hate it report feeling isolated, and a weaker sense of identification with the company.  So it is important to be aware of these issues and permit managers to help individual employees to design an approach that fits their work and temperament.

Distributed work won’t work if your managers are not used to measuring performance by results. If your managers need to see people work in order to know they are working, your distributed work program won’t be effective. A results-oriented performance management approach is a necessary precondition for all the new ways of working.

As a minimum, establish an explicit policy that allows flexibility in work location and times of work (to acknowledge, for example, that employees need to attend to family matters or that work is being done across many time zones). Your policy won’t be able to address all situations, so the policy needs to empower your managers and supervisors to arrive at the best approach in one-on-one agreements reached with individual employees. Most companies that have experimented with remote work have discovered that employees know best when, how, and where to work. The important thing is to give them choice.

Both the manager and program participant may also need training to ensure the program is effective.

The biggest barrier to all the new ways of working is middle manager resistance based on their uncertainty about how to manage under these new conditions. These concerns need to be addressed with both training and clarity of policy.

That’s just the minimum. HR needs to be actively involved in helping develop and implement these new programs. They need the human touch. Companies that have established distributed work programs – and the number is growing exponentially (80% of the companies surveyed in the 2009 New Ways of Working Benchmark Study started their programs in the past five years)– have found that these policies give them a recruiting edge, and are a major factor in employee retention. Creative HR people need to be leaders in shaping these programs.

Solving the Jobs Problem the Wrong Way

Last modified on 2011-08-11 03:58:51 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

Susan Strayer, HRExaminer Editorial Advisory Board Member

From career coaching to recruiting strategy to social media, Susan has experience with in-house corporate HR and recruiting leadership roles, as a Fortune 500 consultant, and as a career and brand coach. She’s held positions with companies such as Marriott, The Ritz-Carlton, Arthur Andersen and The Home Depot and has consulted for hundreds of Fortune 500 organizations. Her perspective is unique having worked in all aspects of the organizational life-cycle in start-up ventures, high-growth organizations and mature billion-dollar companies. Full Bio »

Solving the Jobs Problem the Wrong Way by Susan Strayer

by Susan Strayer

I answered a tweet earlier this week from PBS News Hour asking what news stories listeners were interested in and here’s my answer:

“@NewsHour Jobs! why is no one talking about how, why and where to find? CEOs and politicians can’t answer those questions.“

Politicians and CEOs don’t know anything about finding jobs. Seriously, nothing. Nothing of importance anyway. The last time a crying John Boehner searched for a real job, there were no job boards. The last time Nancy Pelosi applying for a job that wasn’t electable, LinkedIn didn’t exist (and she hadn’t had any plastic surgery yet).

Since we entered the recession, when the jobs figures come out from the U.S. government each month, the news cycle is the same and today’s jobs news is no different. One set of news bytes is masculine, essentially focused on economic commenting: what the numbers mean, how they impact the stock market, and how they compare to last month. Another set feels much more feminine and emotional: clips and quotes from the unemployed about how they feel, what they’ll do, and pleas for help before time runs out.  None of this helpful.

Well then, let’s turn to the career coaches and HR experts like me for help. But media is so focused on short sound bytes and polarizing content, the unemployed are falling deaf to the repeated sounds of “resumes should be one page.” Or, “resumes are so passé.” Or “stop be lazy and get a job, any job.” Conflicting bytes

Ok then, what about the President’s Jobs Council? The list is one CEO after another with a few union bosses sprinkled in for good measure.  It’s always good to solve the unemployment problem with a room full of people that have an average salary that’s well beyond the top 5% of income earners. And the site lists their next meeting as June 13. Clearly, the issue seems top of mind.

So what’s a country to do? My proposal: shared, pop-up job centers. Take the money that Congress is wasting, combine that with high vacancy rate at strip malls and open pop-up job stores and networking centers. Instead of relying on government agencies no one has heard of (honestly, have you ever heard of the ETA?) offer organizations and job seekers a place to connect with each other.  Give job seekers actual space to sit, meet and network with each other in a place they can work (not while standing in an unemployment line). Give organizations a place to show up and meet people on the spot, show them how to apply for jobs, and provide immediate advice.

Sure, this has some logistical and cost challenges but regardless, this is the type of idea that won’t come from the Jobs Council. They’re too focused on broader economic measures that won’t have the immediate impact we need.

Did July’s month-end job numbers today help quell economic fears. Yes. But we’re living month to month and so are many job seekers.  The big picture and long-term matters.  But let’s also solve the real problem—helping actual people find actual jobs.

Top Influencers v 1.79 Carmen Hudson

Last modified on 2011-08-09 19:33:13 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Influence is not necessarily a popularity contest. Our culture has its fair share of shallow, well meaning people who are well liked. And, there is little reason to overlook the dramatic impact that charisma, good looks and the spotlight have on decision making. In some ways, popularity matters terribly. In others, it’s an irritant at best.

Power is the ability to make things happen. Influence is not so clear. It is the ability to have an affect on things. Where the use of power means that a thing will happen, the use of influence increases the likelihood that something will happen. Power causes; influence affects.

Imagine that there is a spectrum.

One one end, popularity is the dominant force. This is the arena in which pop stars, television personalities, professional athletes and cinema celebrities operate. They influence culture and decision making that ranges from fashion to politics. Advertisers routinely look to this group as a way of shaping potential customer perceptions. The link between popularity and the decision that wants to be influenced is tenuous. This is a realm in which knowing how to communicate is more important than what is communicated.

At the other end is deep professional competence. In this realm, influence is rooted in subject matter expertise. These are the thinkers and doers who work in or on the arena. They influence the culture by demonstrating what actually works and what doesn’t or by creating the structures through which the world is better understood. The link between the decision under consideration and expertise is a very clear thing. This is the world in which being right can matter more than saying it well.

If influence were only as simple as that spectrum.

Influence always happens in some context. Whether it’s decision making in the organization, electing a government, family politics, determining best practices for an industry or introducing new ideas to any group, influence is a part of the process. Its use can be sophisticated and smooth or amateurish and crude. Generally, the more subtle the influence, the more effective it is.

In the technology arena, where new ideas are the stock and trade, influence takes a variety of shapes. Marketers try to increase visibility and understanding. Technologists often bank on the quality of their insight and execution. Evangelists prod and persuade. Investors work to handicap the game.

Some of the most interesting stories come from practitioners who follow their passion to create technology companies. Fueled by subject matter expertise and that powerful wisdom that comes from knowing what you’re talking about, they pour themselves into tech companies. Along the way, they pick up lessons in software development, marketing, capitalization, cash flow and executive leadership.

Carmen Hudson, this week’s addition to our Top 100 Influencers list is one of those practitioners turned technologists. The founder of TweetAJob, Carmen comes to the tech startup scene with a deep background in Talent Acquisition. Here’s the meat of her bio:

Carmen’s expertise is in helping clients build the right sourcing and recruiting strategies, and implementing them in the real world of limited budgets, competing priorities, and highly competitive recruiting environments. She consults and trains companies to help them leverage high ROI solutions for big sourcing, social media, and technology implementation initiatives.

Carmen is a self-described “recruiting geek” who has spent years learning, creating, and sharing best practices around sourcing. She gets that technology – for all of its hype – is still a means to an end, not an end in itself. Her corporate experience includes Yahoo!, where she was Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition. At Yahoo! she led the strategic sourcing team, revitalizing the employee referral program and Yahoo’s employer brand. The team was awarded a coveted Yahoo! Superstar Award, an ERE Excellence award and various recruiting and advertising industry awards.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, she was manager, Global Strategic Sourcing for Starbucks Coffee Corporation, where she developed sourcing strategies and recommended resources and tactics to support U.S. retail management hiring. She has also held senior talent acquisition roles at Microsoft, Amazon.com and Capital One.

Anyone who spends time with Carmen knows her as an extrovert with an abiding passion for Talent Acquisition. She has paid her dues mastering the complexities of the profession. Along the way, she’s picked up plenty of awards and public recognition.

Like most of our influencers, Carmen has a crystal focus and executes in a number of settings. While she’s piloting TweetAJob, she’s also consorting with Jason Warner and John Vlastelica at Recruiting Toolbox. This consultancy is one of two or three national organizations with the capacity to really turbocharge corporate recruiting efforts.

Carmen and I talked for a while about the trends shaping HR today. She described the ‘perfect storm’. It’s the combination of

• Economic Disruption
• Extraordinary Productivity
• Technology Advances

In her eyes, these three things conspire to create an employment market in which supply and demand are mismatched. Today, Software literacy is an assumed baseline. The ability to navigate complex, changing concepts is an essential part of workplace participation. Finally, the economic disruption has created a class of people who don’t understand that they’ve become irrelevant and need to acquire new skills.

She tells a persuasive story about the disconnect between job hunters and the companies that want to employ them. The people on the inside have no understanding of the dynamics of the job hunt. The people on the outside do not understand the complexities inside the organization. This is the root of reported bad experiences in the job application process.

As a tech entrepreneur, Carmen is a spotter of new technologies and approaches. She says, "If I was a silicon Valley recruiter, I’d be watching all of the location based check ins on Castro Street". She is certain that the process needs a universal application and that games have a limited future.

One look at Carmen will tell you that, all modesty aside, she is a standout in the field. She’s focused on the development and delivery of excellence in her profession. She influences by doing.

Roger McNamee On The Future of Music.

Last modified on 2011-08-11 04:06:45 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Roger McNamee is an amazing combination of working musician and venture capitalist. He was an early Facebook investor. This is the text of a speech he gave to the National Association of Recording Merchandisers.

It’s worth taking a moment to read the speech. McNamee lays out a view of the world to come. In that world, Microsoft and Google get as disintermediated as the recording and news industries did over the past generation.

Audience development is central to the future of HR and Recruiting. Here’s how it works in the music business when it’s done well.

NARM Keynote address
Roger McNamee, Elevation Partners
May 12, 2011

It is an honor to be here today.

Our band – Moonalice – is inventing new opportunities in music. We would like you all to join us.

I have been a working musician for more than 30 years, and a technology investor for 29 years. I have played about 1000 concerts over the past 15 years, which means I have personally experienced everything in Spinal Tap except the exploding drummers. I also spent three years helping the Grateful Dead with technology and many more advising other bands, most notably U2.

My band is called Moonalice. We play 100 shows a year in clubs and small theaters, mostly on the coasts. Moonalice was the first band broken on social networks. What broke us was 845,000 downloads – and counting – of the single “It’s 4:20 Somewhere.” We’re the band that Mooncasts every show live, via satellite to thousands of fans on iPads, cell phones, and computers. We’re the band that has a unique psychedelic poster for every show. After four years, Moonalice has 371 poster images from the likes of Stanley Mouse, Wes Wilson, and David Singer. Licensing those images will eventually a big business for us. We’re the band that offers the EP of the Month for $5. And we’re the band that uses the latest technology to radically improve both the production cost and commercial value of the content we produce. Now I’m looking for people who want get on this bandwagon with me.

The first question I hope you ask is “Why now?” The world of technology is beginning a period of disruptive change. The old guard – represented in this case by Microsoft Windows and Google search – is under assault and hundreds of billions of dollars may become available for new and better ideas. I hope that gets your attention!!!

The biggest beneficiaries of this disruption should be the people who got the short end of Google’s business model, especially creators of differentiated content. For the past twelve years the technology of the internet has been static. Every tool commoditized content by eliminating differentiation. The most successful companies monetized content created by others. Google was king.

I believe Microsoft and Google are about to get a taste of what the music industry has been dealing with for a decade. Their world is going to change and they won’t be able to stop it. Not so long ago Microsoft’s Windows monopoly gave it control of 96% of internet connected devices. Thanks to smartphones and tables – especially the iPhone and iPad — Windows’ share of internet connected devices has fallen below 50% … and it will fall much further in the years ahead.

Consumers are abandoning Windows as fast as they can. I expect businesses to follow suit.

This is a HUGE deal. Businesses whose employees use smart phones and iPads instead of PCs will save up to $1000 per employee per year in support costs.If corporations buy fewer PCs, they will save tens, if not hundreds of billions per year.

This is happening because today’s strategic applications – email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other internet applications – don’t need a PC . . . in fact, they are far more useful on a phone.

Microsoft has been in trouble since it first missed the web in 1994. Then it was unable to prevent Google from taking charge in 1998. When Google showed up, the World Wide Web was a wild environment. No one was in charge. The prevailing philosophy was “open source” . . . and free software.

Google had a plan for organizing the web’s information that treated every piece of information as if all were equally valuable. To create order, Google ranked every page based on how many people linked to it.

What we all missed at the time is that by treating every piece of information the same, Google enforced a standard that permitted no differentiation. Every word on every Google page is in the same typeface. No brand images appear other than Google’s. This action essentially neutered the production values of every high end content creator. The Long Tail took off and the music industry got its ass kicked.

Google captured about 80% of the index search business, which gave it a huge percentage of total web advertising. Google’s success eventually filled the web with crap, so consumers began using other products to search: Wikipedia for facts, Facebook for matters of taste, time or money, Twitter for news, Yelp for restaurants, Realtor.com for places to live, LinkedIn for jobs. Over the past three years, these alternatives have gone from 10% of search volume to about half.

As if all this competition wasn’t bad enough for Google, then along came Apple with the iPhone and App Store. Apple offers a fundamentally different vision of the internet than Google. Google is about the long tail, open source, and free, but also had to remove 64 apps from the Android app store for stealing confidential information. Apple is about trusted brands, authority, security, copyright and the like. In Apple’s world, the web is just another app; it is called Safari.

People who have iPhones and iPads do far fewer Google searches than people on PCs. The reason is that Apple has branded, trustworthy apps for everything. If they want news, Apple customers use apps from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. If they want to know which camera to buy, they ask friends on Facebook. If they want to go to dinner, they use the Yelp app. These searches have economic value and its not going to Google, even on Android.

When Apple and the app model win, Google’s search business loses. Like Microsoft, Google has plenty of business opportunities, but the era of Google controlling all content is over. Consumers compared Google’s open source web to Apple’s app model and they overwhelmingly prefer Apple’s model. Software development and innovation has shifted from “web first” to “iPad first” . . . which is a monster long term advantage. Get this: Apple may sell nearly 100 million internet connected devices this year!

Apple’s strength can be seen best in the iPhone vs. Android competition. There are many Android vendors. Together they sell more phones than Apple does. But Apple gets around $750 wholesale for an iPhone. The other guys get between $300 and $450. This means Apple’s gross margin on the iPhone is nearly as big as its competitors’ gross revenues. Game over.

The other thing that makes Apple amazing is the iPad. No electronic product in history – not even the DVD player – can match the adoption rate of the iPad. Apple may sell another 30 million this year. At this point, the competing products have not put a dent in the iPad. Image what happens if Apple’s share of the tablet market remains closer to the iPod (at 80%) than to the iPhone (20%)?

This sounds like, “Game Over, Apple wins” . . . but it’s not . . . at least, not yet. The open source World Wide Web has finally responded to Apple. A new programming language has come to market called HTML 5. HTML is the foundation of the World Wide Web. For the past decade, HTML has been static, which allowed Google to dominate.

HTML 5 is a new generation of HTML and it changes the game fundamentally. It allows web developers replicate the iPhone experience, but with many extra bells and whistles … and no App Store. One reason HTML 5 matters is because it eliminates Adobe Flash, which has been an inadvertent barrier to creativity

Creativity enables differentiation. Differentiation can be monetized. Huge differentiation can be monetized hugely. With HTML 5, creative people can now use the entire web page as a single canvas. For the first time in a dozen years, web pages will be limited only by the creativity of the people making them. They can create experiences that will be more engaging to consumers and more profitable for advertisers than network television.

New forms of entertainment will emerge. New forms of business. Companies the size of Facebook and Google will develop in categories I can’t guess at. Companies as important as Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix will emerge to support what new content comes to market.

Whether you view Apple as friend or foe, HTML 5 offers real opportunity. Why?

Because you can deliver a better experience than an app . . . without an app. HTML 5 is cheaper to build, cheaper to support, no 30% fee . . . oh, and the apps perform better, too.

I believe Apple’s best response would be to focus on selling hardware and accept that consumers will demand products that happen to bypass the app store. Based on the argument with Amazon, I sense Apple is not ready to concede the point. That’s ironic, because the only way Apple can get hurt would be if they try to force all commerce through the App Store. The would create a real reason for customers to buy a tablet other than iPad.

Let me review my key points so far:

Google and Microsoft will remain huge, but their influence is evaporating, which means we can ignore them

Apple is winning big, which means we have to support their platforms first

For people who make content, Apple is a better monopolist to deal with than Google.

HTML 5 will give you a better product than the Apple app model at a lower cost and with more value.

Now let’s figure out what we can do together. My band Moonalice exists because T Bone Burnett wanted to produce an album of new and original hippie music in the old school San Francisco style. We put together an all-star band with in late 2006 and recorded the album. T Bone was about to win the GRAMMY for the Alison Krauss/Robert Plant album, Raising Sand, so we thought we were made.

We had a budget
We had an A-list PR guy
We had a really fine manager
We had custom label deal with a nice budget
T Bone’s innovative sound technology would make the album cutting edge

Old school music is good. Old school marketing wasn’t going to work for us. About four months before release, I reviewed the media plan with our PR guy. He said, “Sorry, man, but nobody cares.”

A few moments of somber reflection followed. Then, with great regret, I let our manager go. I let our publicist go. I let our label go. For all intents and purposes, we wrote off an album everyone was extremely proud of and which accounted for half of T. Bone’s portfolio the following year when he was nominated for Producer of the Year.

But I freed up most of our operating budget. Real money. And I focused it all on Twitter and Facebook. Our goal was to build an audience of dedicated fans around a Moonalice lifestyle. Three years later, we have 57,000 fans on Facebook and 75,000 on Twitter. We learned a great truth: as hard as it is to get people to spend money, it is much harder to persuade them to spend enough time listening to you to become a long term fan. We traded our music for their time. We discovered we could build an audience by giving away stuff that costs nothing to produce and distribute. These are serious fans who engage with us dozens and often hundreds of times a year.

The first thing we invented was the Twittercast. Before us, no one had ever done a concert over Twitter. Now we have done 103. Our marginal cost is exactly zero. Next we created Moonalice Radio, which has broadcast one song every hour on Twitter for the past two years. Then our drum tech bought a video camera and started recording the shows. Then he bought more cameras, put them on mic stands and started doing live video mixes. About a year ago, he figured out how to mooncast our concerts over the net for free.

Nearly all of our past 100 shows have been mooncast live on MoonaliceTV and then archived. Because we play mostly late shows on the west coast, only 10% of the audience watches in real time. But approximately 3,000 people watch EVERY show on a time shifted basis. Fans like the Moonalice Couch tour because they can chat, make friends, and do things that are not permitted at a live venue. They even buy Couch Tour tee shirts. And they are helping us create a new ecosystem where most of the music is free, because Moonalice art and life style products have huge economic value.

Thanks to HTML 5 and a satellite dish, Mooncasts can now be viewed on a smart phone without an app. Our video quality competes favorably with the best you have seen on an iPhone, and the technology to do all this costs the equivalent of six months of our former manager. He was a really good guy, but a satellite-based tv network is more valuable.

I want to finish up by recommending a course of action for you

Step 1: Remember that HTML 5 is just getting started, but the learning curve is less expensive and more profitable for those who commit to it from the beginning. The new business is going to emerge over a few years, not overnight

Step 2: Don’t wait for the labels to figure this out. Labels are not organized to get this right, which leaves a big hole in the new music market where labels used to be.

Step 3: Don’t wait for major artists to figure it out. The great new stuff is going to come from artists who have nothing to lose. Artists who come out of nowhere will create huge value for next to no cost.

Step 4: Make sure you are successful addressing the needs of next generation content creators … not just listeners. There are WAY more of content creators than you may realize. Thanks to Moore’s Law, Karl Marx is right at last: the means of production are in the hands of the proletariat. At the peak, there were 8 million bands registered on Myspace. They weren’t playing gigs, they were creating stuff, mostly for their own entertainment. Those people spent a lot more money creating the content they posted on Myspace than they did on recorded music. Thanks to Apple’s Garageband, the population of people capable of mixing something is now measured in tens of millions. Making these people successful is the key to creating new markets and new music products.

Step 5: Do everything in your power to encourage new product ideas and new forms of content. HTML 5 is a blank canvas and there is no telling what people will do with it. For all I know, HTML 5 may produce five or even ten amazing categories of product.

Contests, prizes and publicity will give you an opportunity to associate yourself with whoever creates the cool new stuff. If you have local stores, do local events. Think Alan Freed.

Step 6: Near term, focus your platform strategy on Apple.

Step 7: Long term, focus on HTML 5. The sooner you commit to HTML 5, the more likely you will produce something of economic value.

Step 8: Remember that HTML 5 will produce companies as important as Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix. It costs musicians practically nothing to create good digital video and fantastic audio, but they need distribution systems optimized for their content.

Step 9: Make music fun again

LinkUp Home Run

Last modified on 2011-08-11 04:11:04 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

It doesn’t get much better than this. Yesterday, LinkUp (a Minnesota based job aggregator) forecast the improved jobs report that moved the US stock market this morning. Here’s their press release.

Job search engine LinkUp.com released its 60-day job forecast today based on nearly 1,000,000 job openings indexed each month from over 20,000 company websites. Based on data from May and June, LinkUp is predicting that the July jobs report issued by the Labor Department on August 5th will be better than economists are expecting. Completely unique in the industry, LinkUp’s job search engine only indexes job listings from company websites, making its data highly correlated to future hiring.

Consensus estimates for this Friday’s jobs report forecast that non-farm payrolls grew by only 75,000 in July. While that would be an improvement from May and June’s anemic job growth, roughly 200,000 new jobs are needed each month to simply keep pace with population growth. LinkUp, however, is forecasting that 105,000 jobs were created in July. Even more encouragingly, the search engine is forecasting that 150,000 jobs will be added in August. Unfortunately, LinkUp’s jobs data from July indicates that the U.S. economy will add a scant 70,000 new jobs in September.

In July, new job postings on the 20,000 company websites indexed daily by LinkUp dropped 9% from June, while total job listings on those same company websites fell by 1%. Declines were spread throughout the country, with 42 states reporting a decrease in new job listings and 27 states reporting a decline in total job listings on company websites. In terms of jobs by category, new job listings fell in 27 of 31 industries, while total job listings dropped in 17 of 31 industries.

The education sector stands as perhaps the only bright spot in an otherwise grim report for July. Total education jobs on LinkUp rose 19% from June, while new job listings in the education industry increased by 36%. For more information on job growth in other industries, job growth by state, or LinkUp’s jobs data for Q1 and Q2 of 2011, please visit LinkUp.com.

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