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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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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Employers throughout the world are increasingly struggling to keep pace with expanding hiring needs. A recent workforce planning study conducted by Aon Consulting for one of its clients showed that nearly 60 percent of its key knowledge workers and leaders would need to be replaced in the next five years.

But, demand for talented employees exceeds the supply, leaving many organizations wondering what strategies to adopt to retain and expand the workforce to maintain competitive advantage. Systematic workforce planning linked to key strategies and business challenges is a foundation for informed talent strategies and processes that will impact the bottom line favorably.

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Once the recession ends, there could be a hiring boom. Using jobs numbers as an indicator to get in to an investment has worked before.

The national unemployment rate in July was 9.4%, down slightly from 9.5% in June. A theory is emerging that there will be a hiring boom once the economy gets back on its feet, in response to employers possibly cutting too many positions during the recession. You might want to check the job ads–not just for your own employment possibilities but as a way to spot companies that are bouncing back.

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Recently, Stephanie Somogyi Miller was interviewing candidates for an entry-level public relations position at her company, Spread PR, a Miller/Hamilton company. Over the course of 20 candidates Miller quickly realized — much to her shock — that many job seekers were unprepared when she asked them, “Why should I hire you?”

“I thought it gave people the opportunity to tell me what they wanted to tell me, versus me asking a million questions,” Miller says.

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GETTING a rejection letter is a painful part of job hunting, but at least it means you’ve been noticed. These days, I’ve been hearing about more job hunters who respond to online job postings, only to hear nothing back from the company. Ever.

Was the position filled? Is the company just taking a long time to fill it? Did the hiring manager even see the application? You may never know.

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