We had a lot of fun last night.  The bullpen was alive and the large conference room was packed with our Operations Staff and Patricia Dsupin banging the phones.  Everyone called at least 72 people.  We only managed to eat 4 of the 8 pizzas that we ordered from Little Italy, so it will be a Pizza Party at lunch today. 

I would like to thank everyone at Talener Group and the PTA Council for helping to make last night a great success. 

Among Mike’s most insightful advice:

“Tell your boss before anyone else. “It’s embarrassing if you’re the boss and you hear from someone else that your employee is leaving,” says Michael Dsupin, CEO of Talener, an information technology staffing company with offices in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Have a concise resignation letter prepared in advance with your last date of employment and contact information for future correspondence. “We always stress that it’s not important why you’re leaving,” Dsupin says. “If asked why, just say you feel like it’s time to make a move and try something new.””

You can find the full article HERE or at: http://contentthatworks.com/jobs/overview.php

Let us know what you think!

Using a script provided by the PT Council Budget Communications team, on Monday night, May 14, 2012 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm (the night before voting begins), Talener will have its NYC staff of 23+ place calls to registered voters in the Mamaroneck School District, reminding them to get out and vote the next day at their local elementary schools.

Talener has been looking for a way to give back to communities and support causes that are important to the Talener Family beyond just writing a check.  Putting our trained professional sales staff and our corporate operations staff to work to support this initiative is a fantastic initial step.  Social responsibility and community involvement are important values of Talener Group and our employees and we are happy to be able to support this “Get Out and Vote!” initiative for the Mamaroneck-Larchmont PT Council and the Murray School PTA! 

This round of updates includes:

1. On the home page, we have a new “News” section.  This will be for announcements, sharing any press we are involved in and exciting company news we want to share with our clients and candidates.

2. The “For Candidates” section now contains some Frequently Asked Questions as well as links to download the new time sheet (which is also available on every page under “Resources” in the bottom right hand corner) and the pay dates.

3. Addition of the Boston office to the website!  Specific information will be added (address along the bottom, showing the team on the “Team” page) as soon as we get the rest of the details for that office nailed down. 

We’re very excited to bring this round of updates to you and we hope that it is helpful, informative and easy to use.  Let us know what you think!

In it, Mike stresses the need of recruiting professionals to adopt and execute a social media strategy as well as the need for candidates and recruiters to be aware of privacy settings on various social media/networking sites and be sure that all parties are comfortable with it’s use for recruiting purposes.

If you can’t see the link above, here it is again: http://www.recruitingtrends.com/leveraging-social-media-and-social-networks-for-effective-technology-recruiting

Let us know what you think!

Mike acknowledged that it can be difficult for non HR hiring managers to realize when a conversation may turn from trying to find a common ground into potentially illegal territory.  Mike said “Interviewers are looking for a person’s ability to shift gears and how they handle tricky questions. An interview is about finding common ground with someone and that’s a good thing. But lines get crossed, and if you’re looking for a job you have to be prepared for certain things.”

The main thing to remember is that whatever happens with your interview and whatever questions you may get asked:  Know yourself, know your resume and be ready to answer everything that comes your way honestly.

What are your thoughts and experiences with interviewing or being interviewed?  Let us know in the comments or tweet @TalenerGroup

(If the link to the article above doesn’t work, here is the URL: http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/03/29/how-to-answer-tricky-and-illegal-interview-questions/)

What are your thoughts on Hybrid roles and what are you seeing out there?  Let us know in the comments or tweet it to us @TalenerGroup!

Almost 42% of all the mobile users, or about 98 million subscribers in the United States, use smartphones.  There are over 400 different smartphone devices, and the leaders of the industry are Google with their Android platform, taking almost half the market share in the US, with Apples IOS taking about 30%.  The total number of smart phone users continues to rise year over year, with last July being the first month ever that the number of smart phones purchases exceeded all other mobile purchases, and by the end of last year almost 60% of all mobile devices bought were smart phones.  There is no reason to believe that this trend will slow down anytime soon, and smartphones will eventually become the new standard. 

Mobile users engage in a wide variety of activities, from surfing the web and accessing social networking sites, to shopping and downloading content.  Nearly twice as many smartphone users are downloading and playing games compared to last year.  Streaming online music or radio is the third fastest growing activity among smartphone users and App downloads are up 53%. Companies and Brands are recognizing the importance of this new growing trend and trying to capture their share of the market by creating mobile websites and mobile applications.  Mobile websites are different than traditional websites in that they are specifically designed to be viewed and interacted with from a smartphone device.  

For many technology and internet companies, more traffic is starting to come in through the mobile avenue vs. the traditional web.  For example, Twitter’s mobile traffic is up to 55% and Pandora is up to 60%, and Facebook is seeing the same trend where about 350 million of its 800 million active users access the site through mobile channels.  Similarly, Groupon reported in December that nearly a fifth of its vouchers sold were via mobile channels.  More companies are being forced to create mobile websites in an effort to not to miss out on this growing opportunity.  A study last year found that 61% of mobile users won’t return to a site if they have trouble accessing it from their phone, highlighting how important it is for companies to build out clean and intuitive mobile websites and the need for developers specializing in mobile languages such as WML and XHMTL.

In addition to the growth of mobile websites, the mobile app market has been exploding as well.  A study found that iPhone users had an average of 44 apps and Android users had an average of 32 apps.  YouTube was the top app for the iPhone, followed by Google Maps, Facebook, and Yahoo!  Other top apps include popular games such as Angry Birds and Words with Friends.

 But the top apps were always changing, with new apps becoming popular every day.  This is great news for mobile web developers, as the constantly shifting and dynamic industry is always creating new opportunities for the next big bright idea.  With the success of Twitter, Yelp and Zynga, Venture Capitalist firms are seeking to fund multimillion dollar deals with mobile app focused companies such as Instagram, Foursquare labs, and Flipboard.  Developers specializing in Objective C, HTML +, JavaScript, and java will be in high demand as mobile focused startups continue to spring up.  Comparison shopping engine PriceGrabber.com had to outsource the development of its mobile website to a company that specializes in building mobile websites, because it had a lack of in house developers and couldn’t find the developers in time.  So this shows that internet companies are quickly looking for experiences mobile web developers that Talener can help recruit. 

For a look at the presentation click the link below:

Why companies are in need of Mobile Developers

The featured speaker at the inaugural event was Jane Silberstein, QA Manager at Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc. Jane provided insights from her own successes and challenges as a woman in the technology industry, as well as spoke on the importance of creating a community for women in the field to share ideas and discuss leadership development. She commented on the amount of younger faces who have a lot to benefit from a group like WIT.

Our next WIT event will take place Thursday, March 29^th at 7pm at Talener’s NYC office. Our hope is that through this continued grass-roots initiative, women professionals will inspire each other to reach higher and speak louder. If you are interested in attending, please R.S.V.P. to Tiffany Roesler at troesler@talener.com

Check out Talener CEO Mike Dsupin’s comment heavily featured in this PC World article: 12 Ways to Make Your Online Profile Work for You.  The same article/story was picked up by IT World as well. In case you can’t click on or view the link, here is the URL: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/250858/12_ways_to_make_your_online_profile_work_for_you.html

Let us know what you think!