Weakness in the consumer sector of the economy hasn’t stopped the most aggressive – or, some would say, simply the most creative – retail employers from pulling out all the stops to attract the best talent to their storefronts. Take the case of Apple, which must hire thousands of new retail associates each year to keep pace with the opening of new stores across the country and which recently started targeting other retailers’ best employees – that is, the ones who provide Apple recruiters with the most outstanding customer experience in other stores. Or the unfolding bid by casino magnate Steve Wynn to attract 5,000 new employees who’ll bring a certain happy disposition to their interactions with Las Vegas guests. The availability of retail industry talent has improved in recent months from a sheer numbers perspective. But the quality of individual recruitment prospects is really where the search for top retail management, in particular, really becomes apparent. Retail employers won’t do as much hiring this summer as they did last year, and predictions for slow holiday hiring are already envisioned for the end of this calendar year. Retail companies will, however, calibrate their hiring plans to the eventual recovery of the consumer market, and they will use a variety of approaches to attract new college graduates and people who bring an outstanding service orientation to their jobs. That’s true for retail employers with a compelling mission to sell, and others that haven’t yet realized the benefit of selling career opportunity in a compelling and creative way.

This article was provided by ExecuNet, a trusted executive network committed to the career-long success of the $100K+ executive, providing networking opportunities and critical insights to accelerate your executive career and job search success.

Despite the softness of other sectors of the U.S. economy, the competition to attract and retain construction management and engineering leaders is being revealed as one of the most difficult, long-term challenges facing today’s construction firms. While projected construction industry hiring for the second-half of the year has moderated considerably from earlier forecasts, the longer-term demographics suggesting a deficit in skilled construction labor remain sobering. The need for a long-term strategy to attract construction management talent is so great that the Construction Industry Institute has launched a special task force focused on promoting construction management as a rewarding career to lure new professionals into the business. The Institute found that competitive pay and benefits topped its survey respondents’ chief staffing concerns, but not far behind was the registered desire for a clearly delineated career path and organizational investment in developing construction managers’ skills.

North of the border, the demand for construction management and other personnel is also a major concern, as the Ontario Construction Sector Council’s just-released report on the construction market projects the need for 74,000 new construction personnel over the next eight years in that province alone. The need to promote construction and construction management careers and to attract young people and experience managers alike will likely result in the investment of a tremendous amount of money in market education and training.

This suggests that construction and engineering firms will spend significantly more money in employer branding to gain a competitive edge to compete for the best construction talent in the years to come.

This article was provided by ExecuNet, a trusted executive network committed to the career-long success of the $100K+ executive, providing networking opportunities and critical insights to accelerate your executive career and job search success.

The competition for the sharpest minds in the legal profession may have lost some intensity in recent months due to the weakness of the broader economy. But the smart money is betting on an eventual reopening of what promises to be a long-term battle to attract and retain top legal talent.

There is no doubt that the current business climate is pressuring law firms and corporate legal departments to trim expenses (and people) in order to cope with lingering economic uncertainty. But it’s equally clear that today’s law firms and corporate in-house legal teams are struggling to keep pace with their respective workloads and that, increasingly, the quality of the work they produce will be tied inexorably to the quality of the lawyers they’re capable of recruiting and retaining. Much in the same way the skills and experience of generals counsel is leading more of them to the CEO role, the legal and business acumen of the most accomplished mid-career lawyers is increasingly in demand. Law firms are already turning to increasingly creative lures to attract the best and brightest graduates from today’s law schools. More firms and corporate legal departments are spending more to develop – and retain – the skills of lawyers who might be more risk tolerant in today’s marketplace but who also recognize the long-term demand for their know-how. And business professionals in many non-legal functions are coming to realize the value of having a legal expert at their side to help mitigate risk exposure and grow new markets.

This article was provided by ExecuNet, a trusted executive network committed to the career-long success of the $100K+ executive, providing networking opportunities and critical insights to accelerate your executive career and job search success.

Management level hiring in the pharmaceutical, medical device and biotech markets will outstrip hiring in most other industries this year, according to the findings of the 2008 Executive Job Market Intelligence Report by ExecuNet, a leading executive business and recruiting network.

Its biggest annual research report benchmarking key management hiring trends reveals that the pharmaceutical, medical device and biotech sectors of the U.S. economy will rank among the four highest growth industries in hiring terms, based on surveys of executive recruiters.

This marks at least the third straight year that hiring in the pharmaceutical and medical fields is expected to rank among the leading industries for management job growth.

“Companies are placing a greater emphasis on research and development as well as operating efficiency,” says ExecuNet president and chief economist Mark Anderson, and the focus on new research initiatives is expected to drive hiring for established and emerging companies on all sides of the biotech and medical device markets.

Given the aging of the U.S. population, foreign demand for new pharmaceutical and medical device innovation and continued private investment in biotech employers, ExecuNet’s data suggests robust hiring in this industry space, albeit on perhaps a more tempered pace than was ultimately recorded last year.

If 2007 was the year corporate executive staffing and talent management leaders realized the opening salvos of a burgeoning global war for executive talent, ExecuNet observes, 2008 promises more of the same challenges to building and developing high performance management teams in the pharmaceutical, medical device and biotech markets.

This article was provided by ExecuNet, a trusted executive network committed to the career-long success of the $100K+ executive, providing networking opportunities and critical insights to accelerate your executive career and job search success.