Category Archives: Transhuman News

Personnel Operations

The personnel operations section of this division processes all personnel actions. In fiscal year 2019, more than 3,673 separate actions were processed manually, including appointments, separations, leaves without pay, three and six-month probationary paperwork, and longevity bonuses, preparing and distributing salary adjustment invoices, as well as, other miscellaneous actions such as tax, address, and name changes. The operations section maintains all employee personnel records and position control for the judicial branch of government, using an automated information system and periodic reports. This section also audits all Unified Judicial System payrolls and certifies state service for the annual longevity bonus and conducts background checks and E-verify for applicants for the pre-employment screening process.

The payroll section of the Human Resources Division provides or processes services such as: daily data entry, timesheets, one-time pay, supplemental pay, circuit clerks restitution, reimbursement checks, Title IV-D payments, duplicate/cancelled warrants, county supplement, FICA cut offs, W-2 and eMap service requests through the year, JPO fund updates, insurance, reimbursement for separated/terminated/retired employees, longevity bonuses, deferred compensation (e.g., Great-West, RSA-1, United Way) funding source/organization code changes, unemployment compensation, insurance billing, direct deposits, employment verifications, retirement contributions, and miscellaneous deduction.

The Human Resources Division is responsible for monitoring a leave program (Human Resources Desktop) for approximately 1,500 leave-earning UJS employees. Because leave represents a potential debt of the UJS, the Human Resources Division audits leave accounts annually. In fiscal year 2019, the Unified Judicial Systems total leave liability exceeded $863,334.60 and separation costs exceeded $936.757.00.

For fiscal year 2019, approximately 450 applicants took the written court specialist examinations that were given in the State of Alabama. In addition to maintaining the open and promotional court specialist registers, the division issued numerous special job announcements for positions at the AOC, the trial courts, the appellate courts, and the State Law Library. Approximately 800 total applications were received from these announcements.

As of December 2019, there were 487 minorities employed in the UJS. This included 67 elected officials. Minorities comprised 24.45 percent of the total Unified Judicial System work force. The Human Resources Director is also the EEOC Officer for the UJS.

Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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State of Alabama AOC: Human Resources Division

Demographers predict that as many as half of the children born in the developed world since 2000 will reach the age of 100 and beyond. Once a rare event, century-long lives will become commonplace by 2050. The near doubling of life expectancy presents a range of challenges along with yet unrealized opportunities.

To the extent that we continue to live our lives according to the norms, institutions and policies based on lives half as long as the ones we now enjoy, we will surely face a crisis. However, if we act quickly to apply scientific and technological solutions and change the ways we live, theadded yearscan improve quality of life atallages.

In 2018, the Stanford Center on Longevity launched an initiative we callThe New Map of Life, premised on the belief that this profound transformation in human longevity calls for equally momentous and creative changes in the ways we lead 100-year lives. Building on the work of Stanford Center on Longevity research fellows, who analyzed central life domains affecting long life outcomes, we argue that if we act now, we can not only meet the challenges longer lives present, but we can also use added years to improve quality of life at all ages. We have distilled this work into a set of crosscutting principles that can act as guideposts for The New Map of Life.

We must first recognize that the unprecedented age diversity in society today is a net positive.The speed, strength and zest for discovery common in younger people, combined with the emotional intelligence, prosocial tendencies and wisdom prevalent among older people, create new possibilities for families, communities and workplaces that havent existed before.

Rather than dwelling so anxiously on the costs incurred by an aging society, we can instead measure and reap the remarkable dividends of our increasingly age-diverse world.

The process begins by investing in todays children the futurecentenariansof the 21stcentury. Early childhood investments deliver big returns, as benefits can compound for decades, while allowing for more time to recover from disadvantages and setbacks.

The pivotal years between birth and kindergarten are an optimal time for children to acquire many of the cognitive, emotional and social skills needed for a healthy, happy and active life. Beyond childhood, we must invest in public health ateverylife stage.

Also see: 90% of people want to grow old in their own home whats the real cost of doing so?

Rather than lifespan, we should makehealth span the years when people are healthy, mobile, mentally sharp and free of pain the new metric for determining how, when and where to allocate our resources.

To ensure that all people reap these benefits, we should invest not only in better access to health care, but in the health of communities, especially those affected by poverty, discrimination and environmental damage.

Read: The best ways to save for retirement at every age

Over the course of 100-year lives, we may work 60 years or more. But we should not work the way we do now, cramming 40-hour weeks into lives impossibly packed from morning until night with parenting, family, caregiving, schooling and other obligations.

Workers seek flexibility, whether that means working from home at times or having flexible routes in and out of the workplace, including paid and unpaid intervals for caregiving, health needs, lifelong learning and other transitions to be expected over century-long lives.

As we move in and out of careers and life roles, we will need to also buildflexibility into how we learn. Rather than front-loading formal education into the first two decades of life, The New Map of Life envisions new options for learning outside the confines of formal education, with people of all ages able to acquire the knowledge they need at each stage of their lives and to access it in ways that fit their needs, interests, abilities, schedules and budgets.

We cannot ignore the impact of the physical world around us. The impacts of the physical environment begin before birth, with advantages and disadvantages accumulating over the entire course of life, determining how likely an individual is to be physically active, whether they are isolated or socially engaged, and how likely they are to develop obesity, respiratory, cardiovascular or neurodegenerative disease.

Currently, individual life expectancies in the U.S. can vary by as much as 20 years, depending on where a person is born and raised. We must start now to design and build neighborhoods that are longevity-ready, and to assess potential investments through a lens of long life, considering not only current quality of life, but the impact of our homes and communities on our future selves.

Finally, we must all be prepared to be amazed by the future of aging!

Todays children will grow up in tomorrows world. Medical advances will lead to treatments both more effective and more personalized than what we currently experience. Progress in artificial intelligence, ubiquitous high-speed connectivity, materials and manufacturing hold the promise of redesigning a more flexible and equitable world.

And while there is currently no way to stop the process of aging, the emerging field ofgeroscienceholds the potential to transformhowwe age, by seeking to identify and reprogram the genetic and molecular mechanisms behind aging at a cellular level. Such interventions would simultaneously reduce the risk of the host of diseases and degenerative conditions for which age is the dominant risk factor.

Meeting the challenges of longevity is not the sole responsibility of government, employers, health care providers or insurance companies. It is an all-hands, all-sector undertaking, requiring the best ideas from the private sector, government, medicine, academia and philanthropy.

Read next: This couple retired 2 years ago on about $27,000 a year. Heres how thats going

It is not enough to reimagine or rethink society to become longevity-ready; we must build it, and fast. The policies and investments we undertake today will determine how the current young become the future old and whether we make the most of the 30 extra years of life that have been handed to us.

Laura Carstensenis the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity and professor of psychology and Fairleigh S. Dickinson professor in public policy at Stanford University.

This article is reprinted by permission fromNextAvenue.org, 2021 Twin Cities Public Television, Inc. All rights reserved.

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How will we make the most of an extra 30 years of life? - MarketWatch

Evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman takes the long view of physical activity. His name has been connected to running and human evolution ever since his seminal Nature study Endurance running and the evolution of Homo appeared in 2004, and hes been linked to barefoot running in particular after a 2010 study, also in Nature, explored the impact of modern padded running shoes on our strides.

Liebermans research interests range wider than running, spanning physical activity across the evolutionary history of what moves humans, in the industrialized world and in traditional hunter-gatherer societies. In a new review published Monday in PNAS, Lieberman and his Harvard co-authors grapple with the active grandparent hypothesis, using biomedical research and evolutionary studies to explain how humans evolved to need physical activity, particularly in and after middle age, to increase life span and reduce the risk of disease.

Lieberman spoke with STAT from Copenhagen, where he is pursuing further research, about health span vs. life span, why stress from exercise is good for us, and which animals are couch potatoes. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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When you study physical activity, whats your starting point?

Im interested in how and why humans evolved to be physically active and how changes in our physical activity patterns affect health. My dog hangs out all day on the couch and you know, her health is not as affected by physical activity as humans. So, what is it about us? And furthermore, why?

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Studies by Ralph Paffenbarger shows that as we get older, physical activity actually becomes more, not less, important as we age. The effect is greater. That seems really interesting because humans are unusual in that we evolve to be grandparents. We evolve to live after we stop reproducing. I started thinking about how hunter-gatherers dont retire, they stay really physically active.

Do we know why physical activity keeps us healthy longer?

There are some hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that in humans, physical activity evolved to help extend health span. Prior to medicine, health span equaled life span. Today, when we get sick in our 50s or 60s from diabetes or heart disease or whatever ails us, we go to the doctor, but that didnt exist until recently.

Our general hypothesis is that we evolved all kinds of responses to physical activity that improve health span over the long term, not just when youre young, but when youre old. And that those responses are largely due to energy allocation. Until recently, energy was limited, people couldnt go to the 7-Eleven and grab 200 calories. People had to be very physically active, which takes energy.

Where does that energy go?

One previous idea is that physical activity prevents us from spending extra energy on things that may be good for reproductive success but arent good for our health. And thats fat and hormones. When youre physically inactive, you increase your reproductive output by increasing hormones like estrogen, for example, and progesterone, which increases your risk of cancer. Testosterone as well. Also, you store fat. Fats babies. Until recently it was all about storing energy to improve your reproductive success. Now we live in this weird world where people consume more than enough.

What does exercise do, beyond burning calories?

The other hypothesis is that physical activity is also important for health because its stressful. If I were to go for a run right now, my mitochondria would start pumping out reactive oxygen species, Id be putting a little micro cracks in my bone, Id be glycating proteins. But of course, physical activity isnt bad for us. Its good for us. And the reason its good for us is that our bodies mount a whole series of responses to those stresses that are beneficial.

The analogy I sometimes like to use is, imagine you spill a cup of coffee on the floor. And then you clean up the floor, but you actually end up cleaning the floor a little bit more than it was before. Its like an overshoot.

We know from all kinds of data that physical activity turns on all these repair and maintenance mechanisms. Crucially, we never evolved to turn them on as effectively in the absence of physical activity because we never were physically inactive, right? Nobody ever had machines to do their work for them. So weve never evolved to keep our bodies ticking along and preventing senescence in the absence of physical activity.

How does that play out in diseases more common as we get older?

Therere so many examples: cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimers. In cardiovascular disease, people who are not physically active dont generate stress in their peripheral circulatory system that causes arteries to stay elastic. As a result, people who arent physically active tend to become hypertensive as they get older, and hypertension is arguably the major cause of illness in the world today. People who stay physically active dont become hypertensive. People in subsistence populations who stay physically active dont become hypertensive. Im not discounting the effect of diet, but physical activity plays a very important role in keeping our hearts strong and our cardiovascular systems from becoming hypertensive.

Cancer is another one. Physical activity upregulates all kinds of cells, like natural killer cells, a white blood cell type that actually seek out and eliminate cells that are cancerous. Physical activity decreases blood sugar levels and cancer cells tend to have a sugar addiction.

One of the most important things about physical activity is that it lowers systemic inflammation. It turns out that the major organ that regulates inflammation in your body is muscle.

People today are living longer than our hunter-gatherer ancestors but were living longer with chronic disease.

What differences do you see between life span and health span?

If youre a cynic, you can say people today are living longer than our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Thats true, but were living longer with chronic disease. Looking at life span is a very, I would say, impoverished way of looking at health. When you die is important, but its not the only thing. How long youre healthy and free from disease is also very important.

What can we learn from hunter-gatherers today, like the Hadza people you study?

Exercise is not a magic bullet, but they dont get sick from the kinds of diseases we get. They dont get diabetes. As far as we can tell, cancer rates are much lower. Heart disease doesnt exist or its very, very rare. Remember, cancer and heart disease kill 2 out of 3 Americans.

And for most populations, calories are limited. They have to optimally allocate energy across the life span to grow up, to take care of their bodies, and reproduce. So we evolved to take it easy when possible, but there wasnt that much opportunity to take it easy.

How much activity do we need now to have a good health span?

We have lots of epidemiological evidence that just a little bit of activity, like 10 minutes a day or an hour a week, can lower your relative risk of mortality considerably. You dont need to swim the English Channel or run a marathon. With the commercialization and commodification of exercise, we make people feel like they have to do an Ironman or CrossFit, but you dont need that to get the benefits of physical activity.

You mentioned your sleeping dog. What about other animals?

Apes are very inactive. Theyre couch potatoes. People today are more active than your average wild chimpanzee. That tells us weve been selected in our evolutionary history to be more active than our close relatives. Thats important to our health. It looks like there might be something different about humans, and we dont have conclusive evidence. So in the paper, we called for more data. More studies need to be done.

And does that something different help some of us become grandparents?

Were selected to live after we stop reproducing in order to increase our reproductive success. And we do so by helping our children and our grandchildren. Thats the secret of human longevity. Plenty of other anthropologists have written about this. Were sort of just adding physical activity to the fact that humans evolved to be grandparents.

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New research explores the 'active grandparent hypothesis' and evolution - STAT

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing has enabled millions of individuals to determine their ancestry and gain insights about their genetic pre-disposition to inherited diseases. While individual genotyping information is stored securely, some people consent to share their genomic data for further study.

This data sharing has raised some valid concerns about genomic privacy. For example, could hackers reidentify a person perhaps construct a picture of their face based on genotype data downloaded legally from open-source web platforms?

In 2017, genomics-based health intelligence company Human Longevity and other research groups reported that it was feasible to predict a persons facial appearance from their DNA.

Intrigued by the privacy risk implications of this work, Washington University in St. Louis Yevgeniy Eugene Vorobeychik, an expert in applying game theory to determine privacy risks in data sharing settings, undertook his own study.

We wanted to see to what extent these results can generalize to the real world, said Vorobeychik, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering. We explored whether it was possible to demonstrate in a more practical situation that these concerns were real.

Vorobeychik and his co-authors WashU graduate student Rajagopal Venkatesaramani and Bradley Malin, biomedical informatics professorat Vanderbilt University found the task of linking faces and genomes is much harder on average than previously reported. They published their findings inScience AdvancesNov. 17.

In the study, they developed a method to calculate the risk of reidentifying individuals from a carefully curated dataset of 126 genomes obtained from the OpenSNP genome-sharing platform by linking these to publicly posted face images. Specifically, they used neural network models to predict visible physical traits, such as hair, eye and skin color, as well as sex, and then used this information along with known genotype-trait correlations to score possible genome-face matches.

Earlier phenotype association studies used high-quality photos taken in a laboratory setting with professional quality lighting. Vorobeychiks team, on the other hand, conducted their research using real-world photographs found on social media sites.

What we did was construct probabilistic models for these different kinds of visual characteristics and essentially connected the dots by scoring the matching quality between particular genomes and particular faces, Vorobeychik explained. We then used that scoring system to predict which matches are most likely.

Overall, their results suggest that its sometimes possible to link public face images with public genomic data, but the success rates are well below what prior research papers suggest in idealized settings.

However, our observations are about average privacy risk for a collection of individuals; it is possible that for some people the privacy risk is indeed high, Vorobeychik said.

To protect those individuals privacy, Vorobeychiks team created a method that alters a social media photo just enough to prevent the neural network from reliably identifying visible traits, and thereby reducing the risk of those who have publicly released their genomic data and whose images appear elsewhere online.

Our method adds enough imperceptible noise to the image so its difficult for a deep neural network to link the phenotype of the face to a particular genome, he said. This carefully crafted noise doesnt change ones perception of [the face] to the naked eye.

This tool could be further developed into image filters that individuals could use to protect their social media photos from hackers who might try to link their images to genetic data theyve publicly shared on OpenSNP or other online sites.

Venkatesaramani R, Malin BA, Vorobeychik Y. Reidentification of individuals in genomic datasets using public face images.Science Advances. Nov. 17, 2021. DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abg3296

This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under grant RM1HG009034 and the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award program under grant IIS-1905558.

The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis promotes independent inquiry and education with an emphasis on scientific excellence, innovation and collaboration without boundaries. McKelvey Engineering has top-ranked research and graduate programs across departments, particularly in biomedical engineering, environmental engineering and computing, and has one of the most selective undergraduate programs in the country. With 140 full-time faculty, 1,387 undergraduate students, 1,448 graduate students and 21,000 living alumni, we are working to solve some of societys greatest challenges; to prepare students to become leaders and innovate throughout their careers; and to be a catalyst of economic development for the St. Louis region and beyond.

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Reidentifying faces from genomic data more difficult than previously thought - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis - Washington University...

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The Best and Worst States for Health Care - Route Fifty

image:Political scientists from the University of Rochester and the University of California, San Diego, found that party competition at the state level is linked to increased spending on human capital and infrastructure and measurable improvements in public welfare. view more

Credit: (University of Rochester illustration / Julia Joshpe)

Today, the two major political parties are often blamed for a plethora of problems in American governance. But for most of the last century and a half, political party competition has had positive effects on the welfare of Americans.

Thats according to new research byGerald Gamm, a professor of political science and history at theUniversity of Rochester, andThad Kousser,a political science professor at theUniversity of California, San Diego.

The pair conducted a historical analysis spanning all 50 states for the period 18802010. In the studyLife, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Prosperity: Party Competition and Policy Outcomes in 50 States,published in theAmerican Political Science Reviewthey present two related findings:

Competition between parties is not just healthy for a political system but for the life prospects of the population, says Gamm, whose research focuses on Congress, state legislatures, urban politics, and modern party politics.

The data show that states in which the same party won most elections and held an overwhelming majority of seats in the state legislature were likely to have populations with lower life expectancy, levels of education, and incomecoupled with higher infant mortality. But as soon as competition among parties within a state increased and a second party started winning seats and more elections, state spending on infrastructure and human capital went upand with it, literacy, earnings, and longevity.

We find that states that spend moreand spend more because of party competitionbecome places where children are more likely to survive infancy, where they learn to read and where they graduate from high school, where adults live longer lives, and, at least in the pre-New Deal era, where people earn higher incomes, says Kousser, an expert on term limits, governors, and state politics.

How do the researchers explain the data?

According to Gamm and Kousser, when one party holds overwhelming power, it tends to divide into factions. Moreover, legislators have an incentive to push for pork-barrel projects that narrowly target groups of constituents.

By contrast, when two parties closely compete for control of a statehouse, lawmakers find they can improve their individual reputations by helping their parties pursue a statewide program. Democrats have an incentive to show how they differ from Republicans and vice versa. Demonstrating what their party stands for, not through district bills or pork-barrel spending but through statewide policy making, provides a route to electoral success.

In turn, the authors write, Party competition creates bonds between copartisans from across the state and between the executive and legislative branches, leading both parties to work for programs that benefit a broad set of constituents.

That question has, indeed, hovered over their latest work. Arguably, American politics began changing profoundly in the 1980s. Gamm notes that the last four decades have been a time of unremitting and closely fought party competition in national politics, new social and cultural cleavages, historically high levels of partisan polarization, a collapse in mediating institutions, shifting norms and rules in Congress, geographic sorting, and the growth of social media. Whereas in the past, voters and elites alike agreed on many policy goals, politics nowadays has increasingly become a zero-sum game, with the two major parties in fundamental conflict on most important issues.

In the contemporary environment, we recognize that the historic importance of party competition may be attenuated, negated, or even reversed, the team writes. They caution that the rise of the Democratic Party in this era as a distinctively liberal party may also mean that the party in control matters more now than it did in the past.

With often a lag of decades between cause and effect, Gamm and Kousser posit that readers in a generation or two may conclude that party competitiona hallmark of American politics since the days of Madison, Hamilton, and Jackson and perhaps the nations greatest contribution to modern democracyceased to be beneficial in the 1980s. But its too early to know whether the contemporary shift toward party polarization will prove permanent.

That means our generation cant (yet) render the verdict.

What we show here, they conclude, drawing on a full century of data on party competition and spending, as well as data on health, literacy, and prosperity through 2010, is the central importance of two-party competition to the rise of the American state and the flourishing of the American people.

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American Political Science Review

Data/statistical analysis

People

Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Prosperity: Party Competition and Policy Outcomes in 50 States

2-Nov-2021

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Are political parties getting in the way of our health? - EurekAlert

Hal Crimmel, professor of English and author of Utahs Air Quality Issues: Problems and Solutions, presented his lecture Summer Wildfire Smoke and Wintertime Inversions for Weber State Universitys sustainability series that continued on Nov. 16.

According to IQAir, a site that provides a worldwide air quality index, Utah had the worst air quality in the world on Aug. 6, largely due to smoke from wildfires pouring into the Wasatch Front.

Summer fires arent the only continuing problem that affects Utahs air. Crimmel says that communication may be the key to collectively moving towards cleaner air.

Crimmel said the three main types of pollution that Utahns are likely to notice are inversion, summer smog and wildfire smoke. He pointed out that there is a difference between inversions, naturally-occurring weather phenomena in mountain valleys, and what is popularly called the inversion, which is mainly human fossil fuel pollution.

We really need to stop using the inversion to shorthand wintertime pollution, Crimmel said.

Often, local media will use vague terms such as haze when describing poor air quality. He reasons that this leads to the belief that this is purely a natural phenomenon, when in reality, humans have a significant influence.

Call it smog, Crimmel said. Were getting to the season where people will say haze. Haze is not as scary as pollution or smog.

According to HEAL Utah, a local group advocating for clean air, emissions come from three primary sources vehicles, area sources and industry. Cars, trucks and heavy-duty vehicles are the biggest contributors to our air quality problems.

Human-caused emissions from burning fuels are a large factor of poor air quality in Utah.

Another major factor is wildfire smoke. According to a July report from National Geographic, wildfire smoke can account for 25% of dangerous air pollution in the U.S.

Around one-fourth of the pollutants in air is from fires. This has been a devastating year for fires, both within the state of Utah and neighboring states, and has greatly impacted the air quality.

Crimmel emphasized the importance of improving air quality by providing the components of determining longevity and quality of life: behavior accounts for up to 40%, genetics 30% and healthcare 5-10%.

The remaining nearly one-fourth of life expectancy and quality can be linked to environmental factors. A 2020 study published in the scientific journal Atmosphere revealed that air pollution can shorten the life of the average Utahn by an estimated two years.

Often what gets in the way of trying to work towards a solution is simply language, Crimmel said.

In addition to transparent language, he also stressed the importance of using more accessible language.

We gotta find a way to talk to people in a language where they dont feel like theyre being spoken down to, where they feel like their knowledge and experience is valued, Crimmel said.

Clear air benefits all Utahns, but how to get there may depend on teamwork and communication in the search for common ground.

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Clearing the air: Sustainability series tackles Utah pollution - The Signpost

Back in the early days of the virus outbreak, recruiting professionals, in-house corporate human ... [+] resources and talent acquisition personnel were furloughed or fired, as hiring screeched to a dead stop. Now, it's the polar opposite.

There has been much heated discussion over the hot job marketlengthy discourse around the war for talent and Great Resignation trends creating one of the wildest job markets weve ever seen. From the March and April 2020 depths of despairas millions of Americans lost their jobsit's hard to wrap your mind around the fact that businesses now cant find enough workers to meet the insatiable demands at their companies.

Whats left out of the conversation is an important part of the hiring processthe recruiters. Back in the early days of the virus outbreak, recruiting professionals, in-house corporate human resources and talent acquisition personnel were furloughed or fired, as hiring screeched to a dead stop.

Now, it's the polar opposite. The Wall Street Journal reports that there are not enough recruiters around to help place people. Recruiters are busier than ever in todays labor market, and there arent enough of them to go around. As companies strain to fill openings, from the C-suite to the shop floor, postings for recruiter positions have exploded, more than doubling since the start of the year. A search for recruiters on LinkedIn shows 421,918 job listings.

Recruiters are in a unique profession. They generally don't require a college degree, certifications, licensing or accreditation. The industry isnt heavily regulated. You could have a high-school degree, no recruiting experience, hang out a shingle and call yourself a recruiter. It is an area that people oftentimes fall into after trying and failing at many other endeavors (including myself). It's rare that a young child tells their parents, When I grow up, I want to be a doctor, fireman, pro athlete or recruiter.

Since the barrier to entry for becoming a recruiter is low, the industry gets saturated in booming times. Fast-growing sectors, such as tech, attract recruiters trying to make a quick buck. Many will move to the next hot industry when the former cools down. The upswing in job openings was so swift that there wasnt adequate time for recruiting firms to hire and train people. Another reason for the lack of recruiters is attributed to the fact that a sizable number of people quit the industry and pivoted to other roles during the pandemic.

The vast majority of recruiting firms work on a contingency basis. In this relationship, the recruiter and their firm only get paid if they deliver the winning candidate who is offered, accepts and remains at the job for a specified period of time. Contingency recruiting is the type of search in which a company gives a job requisition to multiple agencies at the same time. The company is free to simultaneously search for applicants too, in direct competition with the recruiters theyve asked to help. There is no exclusivity offered or a monetary reward for trying, but not succeeding in the search. It is a brutal, Darwinian eat what you kill environment. If you dont succeed in the placement of a candidate, you dont get paidits all or nothing.

The life of a recruiter is intensely competitive. In a typical contingency search assignment, there could be three to six recruiting firms all competing to fill the same open position. Each firm could have at least three or four people on the assignment. In addition to the recruiting firms, the company also posts the job on LinkedIn, the career section of its website and on numerous other job boards. The jobs further end up on aggregation sites, such as Indeed.

The recruiter must race against time to find the best candidate before all of their competitors, or the company itself. They dont have the luxury to waste time on people who arent a fit. The business model forces a recruiter to become relentlessly focused on potential candidates that meet the job description demands. The dynamics make the recruiter lavish time, attention and love on the few strong contenders and neglect everyone else. If the search professional spends too much time with every person who submits a rsum that isnt on target, the recruiter will lose out to the competition. This may help you understand why a recruiter becomes pushy or blows you off. If you possess the right skills, theyll love you. If you dont, theyll want to quickly move on to a better prospect.

Many recruiters get discouraged within the first year or two and quit the industry. The majority that remain grind out a meager living for a few more years, then they also leave or try to obtain an in-house corporate recruiting role. A small minority, however, gets really good at their craft, gaining a wide network of corporate clients and pipeline of candidates.

Another type of recruiting is referred to as a retained executive search. This is characterized by a company selecting only one firm to manage the search process. This recruiter will be the only one working on the job assignment. Since this is an exclusive relationship, the recruiter does not have to be concerned about any other competition. The firm will be paid an upfront fee to start the search and receive the remaining fee upon completion. The rates are about 30% or more of the placed candidates compensation.

The company and recruiter will have a close, deep and personal collaborative relationship. Retained search firms usually have a rigorous process to search and select candidates that are appropriate for the role. The retained firm will compile a shortlist of candidates to present and the company will select a person after the interview process is completed. It is a much cleaner and more efficient setup for the recruiter, as they know they will be paid for all of their time spent and hard work. Since retained searches are structured primarily for C-suite and top executives, these executive search professionals wont generally be able or interested in helping someone who is not at that level.

Start by asking current colleagues and former co-workers with similar backgrounds as yourself who they would recommend. It is always a little tricky, as you dont want too many people at work to know that you are thinking about finding a new job.

Search LinkedIn to find recruiters that specialize in placing people in your field. Send an introduction and invitation to connect on the social media platform. Once connected, see if there are any people you recognize in their network. If you find some familiar faces, ask them about their experiences with the recruiter.

Look at the recruiters activity on LinkedIn. Check if they post jobs that are in line with the types of opportunities you are seeking out. Review any negative or positive comments posted about the recruiter. Check if the recruiter has been with the same firm for a reasonable amount of time or if they seem to jump around a lot. If you see a lot of movement, it could be a warning sign.

You want a recruiter who specializes in your niche, as theyll know the space and hold relationships with the important players. If they have longevity, it is fair to say that they will have many contacts and clients that could help you in your search. You want to see that the recruiter is connected with relevant human resources and applicable managers in your area of expertise. If so, that is a good sign they have many connections to help you. Search to find out if the recruiter has a website and how many relevant jobs they have on it. If there are a large number of current jobs that match up with your skills, it is a good sign.

Check out all of the job boards and search for opportunities in your space. Are there a few recruiters who consistently post jobs that are relevant to you? If so, bounce the names off of your work associates to find if they have any insights.

Recruiters are required by the companieswho pay the billsto find on-target candidates. The business, which is the client, demands that the recruiter produces people who possess all the relevant, specific experiences, background, credentials and academic degrees for the job.

It's important that the job seekers demonstrate the ability to clearly and concisely articulate what they do and how they can add value to the company. It's important that a prospect has a positive attitude, is motivated and easy to work with. Hiring managers want people who want to specifically work for their company and are put off by people who are obviously seeking out a big payday. Recruiters love candidates that possess strong social skills that show the candidate will sail through the interview process. They understand that people on the job hunt want the most money possible, but would like to see that they are also realistic when it comes to salary, benefits, corporate titles and the ability to adjust to a new fluid in-office and at-home hybrid work model.

Unless it's one of those clearly obvious suspicious solicitations, you should at least respond to a message from a recruiter. Even if youre not searching for a new job, it's a great way to inquire about the job market in your field and the compensation ranges for your particular role. If, however, you are open to looking for a new opportunity, it's a fortuitous contact at the right time.

If you are free to talk or engage, take advantage of the situation. It's fine to ask the recruiter how they found you and inquire about who they are and the types of roles the person specializes in. The goal is to feel out the recruiter to see if they are a good person to work with. Just be yourself. Theres no need to play games, like playing hard to get.

If you are interested in the opportunity that is being shared with you, let them know. If not, be direct and honest. Respectfully decline and ask for you to be kept on their radar for future opportunities. If you feel guilty turning down the offer, recruiters love referrals. You can point them to someone you know that has a similar background to you and is interested in seeking out a new opportunity. As weve seen in 2020, as the pandemic raged and millions of Americans lost their jobs, you never know when having a relationship with a recruiter will come in handy.

The recruiter should not ask for any money, since it is standard procedure for corporations to pay a placement fee to the executive search firm. If the role presented seems intriguing, let the recruiter know that you'd like to pursue the opportunity. To ensure that you are both on the same page, be direct. Share a brief summary of your background, responsibilities, prior employment history, compensation requirements and the specific roles and target companies you desire.

Since the communication wasnt planned, you may have a legitimate commitment and cant engage right now. Be honest with the person. Let them know that you have a meeting, but would like to continue the conversation (via email, text, video or phone call). If you find a couple of good recruiters, keep in touch with them. Theyll be a great resource for you throughout your career.

Excerpt from:
Recruiters Are In Hot Demand: Heres Everything You Need To Know About Them - Forbes

LONDON November 23, 2021 An award-winning sustainable fashion brand is hitting the catwalk at next years London Fashion Week with a new mens collection designed using a research and development (R&D) tax rebate.

Premium British fashion brand Aqua & Rock was founded in 2018 as an alternative to fast fashion with a complete focus on accessible sustainable fashion for all. The business believes in The Power of One, meaning a single closed-loop fashion chain where one piece of clothing lasts a long time, and can be returned to become either another piece of clothing, or be made into fertiliser that will also continue the loop.

Since the launch, the business has gone from strength to strength, opening its first store in a prime London location and with founder Dea Baker winning Innovator of the Year at the Drapers Independent Awards last month.

Baker said: We hope that our business model acts as a guide to others around the world; our clothes are a statement to say that the person wearing them really cares about the planet. Not only that, but we have created sustainable clothing that people want to wear. We went through a lot of trial and error to get to where we are, but it was all worth it and we are excited to showcase our new mens line soon!

To keep the carbon footprint to a minimum, the business source all material from U.K. or E.U. suppliers and most of the manufacturing is based in the U.K. and E.U. This also ensures that the supply chain will always adhere to the latest U.K. and E.U. environmental and employment standards, and thus be treating people fairly while helping to look after the planet.

The new line wouldnt have been possible without R&D tax credits, claimed through tax specialists Access2Funding. A lot of research went in to sourcing and creating the correct materials and fabrics, with the businesss founder Baker pointing out that often ethical and completely sustainable fabrics dont appeal to the wider consumer audience.

One such material created by the business that was eligible for R&D was Aqua Triblend, a material that combines recycled plastics, organic cotton, and upcycled clothing to create a sustainable solution for its premium fashion.

Whilst recycled yarn and cotton already existed, clothing made from these materials was inflexible and subject to damage when washing and through everyday use. Aqua & Rock sought to provide clothing made from these resources that advanced upon that which was already available by achieving high quality and longevity.

Samuel Lobb, client account manager at Access2Funding helped Aqua & Rock with the claim, he said: To work with a business with such a high ethical standpoint was a privilege. Dea was careful to avoid green washing throughout the process and ultimately is helping global effort to decrease negative human impact on the planet. R&D can be found in many places and Im glad to see the money is being invested back into creating more sustainable products!

Access2Funding is the fastest growing R&D specialist in the United Kingdom. It has so far claimed back over 44m of R&D tax credits for businesses and has offices across the country, from the Scottish Highlands, to Wales and down south to Kent. The business has more than quadrupled its workforce in the last year and increased turnover by 119 percent.

Posted November 23, 2021

Source: Access2Funding

See the article here:
Sustainable Brand Heading To London Fashion Week With Help Of R&D Tax Credits - Textile World Magazine