Todd Palmer

If the purpose of the new State of Michigan job connect website is to match employers with job seekers, the upgrades that have been made miss that goal — for both employers and job seekers.

Our business, Diversified Industrial Staffing in Troy, recently celebrated its 14th year in business. During that time, we have had several dozen internal employees and have placed several thousand in various jobs.

Recent reports indicate that there are labor shortages for IT, manufacturing, mining, and medical professional jobs.

The average cost of making a bad hire, according to 41 percent of companies surveyed by CareerBuilder, is $25,000.

One of the biggest costs to any business is employee turnover. Regardless of the industry you are in, there is a significant cost to losing employees (often to competitors), recruiting potential new employees, screening, testing and evaluating the applicants, conducting multiple interviews, making job offers and sometimes counter-offers, onboarding new hires, and often many months of training.

Career Builder verified last week what many local manufacturers already know — there is a severe lack of manufacturing talent seeking new jobs in Metro Detroit. The Career Builder Active Candidate Ratio shows that there are 4 jobs for every 1 machinist in Metro Detroit.

The same week when increased unemployment numbers were issued by the U.S. Labor Department, a Harris Interactive/CareerBuilder survey sent a much different message to the nation's businesses.

Baseball umpires and public school teachers, what could they possibly have in common?

It has been discovered that recently appointed Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson lied about his educational background on his resume. The Yahoo! Board Member who vetted Thompson has since decided not to stand for re-election to the Board, while Thompson has refused to leave amid calls for his resignation.

The recently released unemployment numbers, showing a slight decrease to 8.2% in March 2012 from 8.3% the month before, are filled with false optimism. First of all, that extends the longest streak of 8%-plus unemployment since the Great Depression. Secondly, the U.S. economy hasn’t been below 8% unemployment since January 2009 and once you delve into the Labor Participation Rate, it is not an optimistic picture.