A reporter from the Wall Street Journal once asked me what I thought was the greatest secret in recruiting. Such a broad question would usually cause one to ponder, but my immediate response was that abusive hiring processes cost organizations millions of dollars by turning possible customers into lifelong “haters.”

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One thing about the hiring process is true: It leaves much room for speculation. Whether you got the job — or you didn’t — most job seekers want to know why. Why were you chosen over the next guy? Or, better yet, why weren’t you? Was it your experience, your attitude, your interview answers, your outfit?

We decided to ask hiring managers directly: What seals the deal when you choose to hire a candidate? Why do you choose one person over another Their answers will give you some insight as to what you should pay attention to the next time you’re up for a job.

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Searching for a job is not always easy, no matter what state the economy is in. And when you’re on the hunt, your best weapon is your resume. This document must emphasize the best of your experience, education and skills and sell you to your future employer. It’s a lot to ask, but it is possible to get your CV into fighting shape. Don’t let your effort go to waste by having these glaring red flags on your resume.

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Ever applied to a job online only to have your résumé seemingly vanish into a void?

From crafting a winning cover letter to acing an interview, landing a job is tough enough in this market. But millions of job seekers can’t even get a foot in the door as they apply to countless positions and seldom hear anything in response.

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The online job marketplace Monster has just acquired HotJobs away from Yahoo for a stunning $225 million in cash. Part of this deal is a three-year “commercial traffic agreement,” which will begin on the closing of the deal.

This seems to mean that Yahoo will shunt jobs related traffic to Monster for three years, as its “provider of career and job content on the Yahoo! homepage in the United States and Canada.”

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More employers plan to increase college graduate hiring than decrease it for the first time in more than a year.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers‘ index for college hiring rose to 98.2, up from 87.2 in November. The index, based on the organization of career counselors’ survey of 122 employers and released Tuesday, covers employer expectations for January through March.

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Most applicant tracking systems do not have auto referral source tracking because it’s really hard to do and it is cumbersome to implement. Those that do have it typically require users to generate site-specific tracking codes that need to be placed in external postings. We think those are bad ideas and require too much manual labor, so we’ve automated the process and made it ridiculously easy to implement. Simply log in to your Hirebridge account, click on the Administration tab and look for the Automated Candidate Referral Source Tracking Maintenance link.

If you need any help setting this up, send an email to support@hirebridge.com and we’ll get back to you promptly with details.

With unemployment over 10 percent for the first time in 26 years, The Daily Beast crunches the numbers to determine the careers with the best—and worst—prospects. The results: the 10 high-growth and 10 worst-growth jobs out there.

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For thirty years as an employment counselor I spent a lot of time getting jobseekers to write résumés that would capture the attention of a human reader. Occasionally, companies would assign initial résumé screening to trainee fresh out of college. I taught 1970s jobseekers to write catchy résumés with impressive bullet points and bold print. The challenge I gave my charges: “Your job is to write a résumé that gets through to Bill, my mythical screener, in 15 seconds.”

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More employers than ever are researching job candidates on sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter in order to find out more about their activities and character. And, it turns out, many candidates are doing a great job of showing their potential bosses poor communication skills, inappropriate pictures, and even how many workplace secrets they can leak.

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