Hiring

Disabled veteran Tracy Kendall’s odyssey in pursuit of an engineering technician job at Bay Pines VA Medical Center near St. Petersburg has taken him from mopping floors to the home of the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs—but it still hasn’t landed him the job.

Last year, U.S. employees filed the second highest number of EEOC complaints claiming they suffered discrimination at work. You know that U.S. anti-discrimination laws require treating all applicants and employees equally. But do your organization’s supervisors understand the relevant laws? Pass along this primer on federal anti-bias laws to make sure your compliance efforts start right on the front line.

If you’re a leader who employs a prima donna (one who produces great results but alienates everyone), what should you do? It’s simple. Bite the bullet and fire that person. Here are three reasons why you should:

Since January 2009, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have audited more than 3,200 employers suspected of hiring undocumented workers, which ICE says is more than the total amount of audits during the entire Bush administration.

Be ready to tell your manager how you’d like to grow professionally. In a recent survey, nearly half of all human resources managers say their No. 1 focus is continuing education for workers.

Year-end tax planning doesn’t have to be personal. Here are nine ideas for cutting taxes that are “strictly business.” Consider the following techniques for calendar-year companies:

While there is no “correct” HR-to-staff ratio, one HR professional per 100 employees is a generally accepted starting point. But HR-to-staff ratios have become less precise—and harder to interpret—due to the economic downturn, layoffs and the continued growth of outsourcing. Still worth measuring?

As you hire employees to replace the ones who leave your organization as the economy improves, you might find that experienced, mature workers are willing to work as interns to get their feet in the door. Nearly a quarter of employers said workers with 10-plus years of experience who are age 50 or older are applying for internships, according to a CareerBuilder poll.

Online tools can be highly valuable in recruiting and selecting the best candidates and screening out bad hires. Despite the potential advantages, those activities come with potential employment law risks that are still evolving due to the relatively recent emergence and growth of social media. Some of the obvious and not-so-obvious legal risks:

Know how sometimes you “click” with your colleagues while other times you don’t? This phenomenon might actually have a real neurological basis—what you might even call a “mind meld,” after the fictional practice from the TV series “Star Trek.”