The Semper International Blog

Was a very interesting turn of events for us here at Semper. Our goal entering Second Life was to explore recruiting in this new type of environment as well as look for ways to use this space for training and collabrative work. What we did not expect was to gain business in developing other firms Second Life presence. The below PR piece is the first example of our work.

What is interesting is that we were able to use our resources in SL to create this situation. That recruiting in SL did work for us in that it opened doors that we did not see. At this point we are now able to use this new venue to prescreen people we invite into SL. To recruit people from SL to real world positions. To use the space for internal training and metings. And now, to help bring firms into SL.

Semper will not focus heavily on this new doorway and limit it to select firms that we approve of. However, it is very interesting where this ride has taken us in a very short period of time. Our primary goals still remains on recruitment and business to business application.

As Semper moves into phase three of its Second Life agenda, we are even more excited about the future of this budding division. Our focus on high quality, timely actions and successful ventures is making us able to stand out. The next phase will be quite interesting and we are ready to jump in.

Brian Regan
President
Semper International

Tower Consultants to open presence in Second Life

High-Level, Human Resource, Executive search firm enters the virtual world.

STUART, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Tower Consultants, a nationwide, female-owned boutique search firm specializing in the recruitment of human resource professionals for a myriad of Fortune 500 companies, announced today that the company has opened a presence in the virtual world of Second Life, at http://slurl.com/secondlife/HumanResource%20Island/115/70/27.

This online outpost, created under the supervision of Semper International, whom Tower shares in ownership of Human Resource Island, will serve as another point of outreach for the company as it expands operations and exposes Tower Consultants’ unique mission of combining highly talented human resource professionals with challenging and rewarding careers to the nearly eight million residents of Second Life.

“Working heavily with clients at the apex of talent acquisition, Tower Consultants is excited about expanding their staffing ability and further capturing the attention of up and coming highly progressive global talent,” said Founder, Chairperson and CEO Donna Friedman. “While our search firm focuses on experienced professional human resources hires, our clients and the candidates we place in staffing and university recruiting roles will strongly benefit by extending their reach to the Second Life community.”

Second Life has been used by companies such as IBM and Fidelity as online, virtual meeting spaces and other business-to-business needs. The software platform has also been used by American Apparel, Dell and Pontiac to advertise their goods and services to consumers. Career recruiting companies, such as careerbuilder.com, monster.com and Semper International have recently entered. Nearly one million new users sign up to be a Second Life resident every month.

Since 1998, Tower Consultants has focused on providing quality service and support for its retained search clients. Originally focused on compensation and benefit searches, it soon expanded into delivering a wide array of specialty searches, including talent acquisition, talent management, executive and management development, organizational effectiveness, HRIS and payroll, training, labor relations/employee relations and corporate and field-based HR generalist roles.

It has recently placed high-level executives in Fortune 500 firms such as ConAgra Foods, Arcelor Mittal, Tyco International and Charles Schwab. Tower Consultants spans all industries and clients also include premiere non-profit organizations such as Catholic Health West and Yale University. The company is proud to be affiliated with organizations that include Human Resource Planning Society, National Society for Executive Recruiters, International Association of Corporate and Professional Recruiters, Worlds@Work and the Society for Human Resource Management.

For more information, visit http://www.towerconsultants.com/.

About Tower Consultants: Founded in 1998 by Donna Friedman, Tower Consultants has focused on putting highly-qualified human resources executives in rewarding and challenging positions. It is committed to building relationships with both its candidates and the companies that hire them. Focusing on leading companies across all industries, the company targets global human resource leaders ripe for a career change and a step up the ladder of success.

Based in Stuart, Florida, the company can be reached at 772-288-3590 or by email at contact@towerconsultants.com.

August 22, 2007 01:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Semper International Opens New Island, HumanResource Island in the Virtual World, Second Life

New location coincides with company’s new venture into virtual world consulting

BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Semper International, the leading placement firm for skilled help in the graphic arts and printing industry, and a growing provider of trained, technical staffing in other high-tech areas, particularly video games, announces it has opened a new island location, HumanResource Island, in the Second Life® virtual world.

Second Life®, developed by Linden Labs®, is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Opening to the public in 2003, it is currently inhabited by over 4 million residents from around the globe. Second Life is an exciting new venue for collaboration, training, distance learning, new media studies and business.

HumanResource Island has been developed to allow Semper to augment its current capabilities in Second Life. With the additional land they will have a much larger location to handle their growing uses for Second Life. The collaborative nature of the virtual 3-D Second Life world makes it an exceptional resource for a recruiting company to interact with clients and talent.. They are already using it as a forum for seminars for clients. The company is also successfully inviting candidates to Second Life to listen to presentations offering job search advice while, concurrently, prescreening them for possible jobs.

With its knowledge and experience in virtual worlds, and its extensive list of programming resources, Semper International has also built a business around Second Life consulting. The company provides expert analysis of whether a client is prepared to build a Second Life location, rules of how to culturally engage with other ‘residents’, and programming resources to build an appropriate site. Companies interested in exploring more can visit http://www.semperllc.com/metaverse/.

“I think it is important to note that our continued use of Second Life is not specifically as a marketing platform. We’re not lining the streets with banners,” explains Brian Regan, Semper International president. “We continue to be impressed with the non-marketing utility of Second Life. For example, the introduction of voice in Second Life has allowed us to use the virtual world as a collaboration tool between Semper employees from different, real-world offices. They are able to meet in our Second Life office for conference meetings. New ideas of how to use it are generated almost on a weekly basis, which is why we were willing to invest in a complete island.”

Semper International’s HumanResource Island can be found at http://slurl.com/secondlife/HumanResource%20Island/196/112/27. A Semper International blog that further delves into their Second Life experiences can be found at http://semperllc.wordpress.com/

“Second Life” and “Linden Labs” are registered trademarks of Linden Research.

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About Semper International

Headquartered in Boston with branch offices nationwide, Semper International is a temporary help placement firm founded and staffed by professionals who understand the positions, equipment, and software essential to their core business areas, assuring a perfect employee-employer match.

To provide career growth, Semper University is an online training program to help employees prepare for upcoming changes in the industry. Realizing how the Internet is revolutionizing the industry, Semper also works with the most talented web designers, graphic designers, desktop publishers and production managers.

For more information, visit Semper International at www.semperllc.com. Semper International’s Second Life office can be found at http://slurl.com/secondlife/HumanResource%20Island/196/112/27.

Common myths about the video game industry.
By Tuan Pham (Contributing writer)

Whenever we chat with our friends in the game industry, there are a few common gripes that always appear. No matter if a development group is large or small, major issues always crop up. This isn’t just talking about lack of pizza or Chinese during Crunch Time; these are pretty serious.

1) Only young male teenagers or college students are into video gaming.

According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the average gamer is 33 years old and has been playing games for nearly 12 years. In fact, 38 percent of all gamers are female.

In fact, serious gaming, a genre in the whole video game industry, is dedicated to using video games as a solution in the fields of health care, education, training and public policy. This wildly deviates from the myth of all gamers are single males who hang out at the local GameStop or Best Buy.

2) Being in the video game industry is just like printing money. There’s a lot of it out there and everyone involved gets rich.

While video game sales are reaching record highs ($7.4 billion in 2006), not everyone is successful. With the release of every blockbuster, such as World of Warcraft, Halo and Grand Theft Auto, there are at least hundreds of titles that end up collecting dust on the store shelves.

3) Only games that are successful are violent bloodbaths.

In 2005, only 15 percent of all game sales were rated M for Mature by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, or ESRB. While action games do dominate the market to a degree, there are legions of puzzle, childrens’, sports and casual games that are stocked on today’s shelves.

4) Only established franchises or massively multiplayer online role playing games are successful in today’s market.

While franchises such as Madden, Halo and Grand Theft Auto and MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online dominate the headlines, there are other titles who have done well in the market. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games for a list of titles which sold more than 1 million copies. There’s a few that might be very suprising.

Last year, the eighth best selling game in the U.S. was Brain Age, a brain training game for the Nintendo DS. It sold even more copies in Japan. This brain-teasing serious game forces a person to take three educational tests each day to lessen mind fatigue over time. The follow-up, which has already shipped in Japan, will be released shortly in the U.S.

5) Staffing video game companies is cakewalk.

The pool of applicants for video game companies is extremely high right now. Schools are starting to tailor create game design degrees and people in the current generation have grown up with video gaming. However, there is a massive need for established project managers who have worked in high-stress, deadline-based environments as well as raw talent to think of the new games of tomorrow.

While degrees in game design or graphic design are valuable, one of the most important things to have is a solid portfolio of work when applying to game developer. Also, a major plus is experience in the software field in general.

As we chat with our contacts in the field, most of them do not have a game design degree. Some hold a degree in Computer Science, some in Liberal Arts, some that don’t even have college training. But, they are successful in their career.

Breaking into the industry has its challenges. Most, if not all, are surmountable.

Semper sent out the below to a large group of our database. The responses we received were quite interesting and we felt important to share. We decided to post it to our blog and invite people to share their responses in this public format.

Brian Regan
President
Semper International

Original message:

We keep hearing from our local offices that skilled, reliable print industry workers are hard to find.

We understand many of you are managers with hiring experience and some of you are skilled professionals happily working but your advice is really needed.

I am told we have had to decline or been slow in filling orders due to the lack of available candidates. Have you seen this recent scarcity of skilled workers? Are you or have you had similar trouble hiring? Are there many open spots that your company can not fill?

From the standpoint of those looking for work, what has changed in recent years, why are you coming into the industry or leaving it. What has your recent experience been looking for work in the print industry?

PLEASE feel free to post responses on this blog.

Q3 Survey Analysis - August 2007

The second quarter responses are now in and they indicate a large drop in profitability last quarter. Respondents reported a 17% drop from the previous period. If your firm experienced a similar situation, you’re not alone. Printing Impressions reports RR Donnelley with a 69.4 million dollar loss for the time significantly.

The question related to sales volume the two weeks before the survey showed a 7% drop in respondents with increased sales. 31% indicated an increase in sales while 49% indicated sales held as is and 21% showing a decrease in sales. Respondents reporting a decrease also dropped.

For the 3rd Quarter a full 72 % of companies feel sales will increase, 23% feel sales will stay the same and 5% are expecting a decrease. This is an overall improvement over the last quarter’s responses. Employers are staying the same regarding hiring, hedging their bet that business will pick up in the coming quarter.
We see some changes in investing in new plant and equipment. Most areas are either staying at the same level or increasing capacity. Under the current economic environment we question the wisdom of this. We understand investing to meet client requirements but the overall capacity of the industry has been growing compared to demand for many quarters now. Several respondents even feel “Too much capacity in this competitive industry” is the biggest concern facing their business. We feel this is part of the reason the consolidations are hitting with such force.

Last quarter we started asking what business segment had the most pricing pressure from clients. Offset had the heaviest pressure at 47%. Strangely this survey shows a drop for offset to 37% and an increase in the copy segment from 18% to 45%. This could be a seasonal variation. As we continue to collect data, we will see trends more clearly.

Two more areas of interest include the question regarding labor costs and hiring issues. Labor costs showed a much higher rate of concern on health insurance costs than the last quarter. We feel that this is due to the time of year, renewals typically hit mid-year so respondents are more aware of the pricing. The second highlight is that hiring issues jumped to the forefront of concerns facing businesses. Please note that labor costs have a separate area, so this section shows an increase in the scarcity of qualified labor. We have recently written an article that may be of interest to companies facing this type of issue: CLICK HERE

In summary, we feel this quarter will likely be a trying one for our industry (55% chance of downturn) as well as the economy in general. Some positives would be a surprise rate reduction by the Fed, or at least an improvement of the bias from inflation to growth. A continued reduction in the price of fuel would also have a positive impact. We feel the current debt scare is actually causing a serious hesitancy in the economy. People are truly concerned and aware that the shake out will take quarters, not weeks, to correct. We feel flexible costs and production planning are the way to go over the next quarters to help ride out this period.
We do hope our prediction is incorrect or that external events act in a very positive manner countering the hesitancy we see. May your quarter be a good one!

Housekeeping issue: we remind all, this quarter’s survey comes at the peak of the vacation season so the pool of responses is at it’s worst. We ask that each quarter you help all of us by immediately responding when you see the survey email. We are always looking for more people interested in taking the survey - referrals are welcome!

Review the report here - CLICK HERE

Spent some time on Friday evening googling “Second Life” and Recruiting. Found some interesting discussions happening from around the world. Decided to share some of Semper’s experiences and how we look at using Second Life as a business tool and as a recruitment platform.

Enjoy.

Brian Regan
Preident
Semper International

The first is from Fallon Planning. The actual blog post was rather short, but the people that posted responses had some good information. This is what I posted in response.

The issue as I see it that large corp’s just dont seem to want to put the effort into making the social networks work for them. I think they will put money into them and then jump out if it is not easily won success. Certainly they have their reasons and that is their call.

My firm Semper International is one of those first firms in, we were the first staffing firm in, although the big ones Like Kelly and Manpower are now saying they are.

These networks do work if you apply yourself to them and you develop the social side of it. We have been successful in Second Life in 3 primary ways.

1) We have extracted contractors out of SL and use them now.

2) We use it for Internal Semper training and communication.

3) We hold mass recruitment parties at our SIm and bring people into SL to prescreen them and pick the ones we want to interview in the RL. You can read more detail on our blog:

http://semperllc.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/semper-internationals-first-mass-presentation-and-pre-screening/

In the end, t takes a lot of people power and effort to message these things into a benefit. However, the next generation is going to be VERY adapted to this type of environment and that is something a lot of people need to understand.

I personally love SL for recruitment purposes.

The next Blog I hit was an HR consulting firm Engage. It was the third post of a three part serious on recruiting in SL.

First off I was flattered that they rightfully acknowledged Semper as the first one in and listed us at the beginning of the list in the first sentence, shows a lot of class. The write up on us was fair as well. They asked if any of the firms in SL wanted to comment, so I took that invitation.

I will respond.

Brian Regan from Semper International here.

I am loving SL as a part of our recruitment strategy. Sure being the first in was a cool PR thing, but we are not terribly interested in making PR posts about doing what we entered there to do.

The reality is that we use our SL presense for more than just recruiting residents out of SL. We actually bring a lot of new residents into SL for mass interviewing for our Video Game staffing division. This has been a great success in regards to mass pre-screening.

There has been a decent result in us extracting talent from SL and even more so, finding talented people for SL projects for us internally for non SL related things.

We tested voice last night and it was AWESOME, we plan on our first internal training seminar for our recruiters and sales force in the coming weeks, once the voice client is more stable.

In the end, we are making SL work for us. It is not a simple thing, but if you think it through and execute well you can make a very good well rounded situation for yourself.

True, some people should wait to enter. If your firm is not designed to be accustomed to change and adapt quicky it is likely better to let those of us that have entered learn and experiment and read our blogs or get the Recruiting in SL for dummies books etc.

We frequently hear the complaint that not enough people are entering our industry, that many skilled people are leaving the industry and that the over all supply of labor for the graphic arts industry is to low.

From my perspective, I tend to agree that asides from demographic constraints the industry has wider labor problems then normal. The recent articles about the dearth of students and the simplifying of the print process (PressTek’s and Frank Romano’s)are both good pieces to consider. One piece talks about the fact that less students are interested and links it to why students are attracted to being Graphic artists and creative and the other article reflects on making the print process easier IE: requiring less skill, and therefore enlarging the possible labor pool to attract from.

My contribution to the debate would be to look at the attraction part of the equation. The economics of our industry is critical to its ability to compete with other industries. If an industry is contracting, under intense margin pressure and is dealing with extreme change then it’s abilities to attract labor compared to other industries are substantially reduced. If we look at our industry we can see areas of growth and contraction it would be interesting to see if Trendwatch has any data on each industry segment and see if the growth, renewal and transformation part out weighs the decline side. We all see the consolidations and resulting reduction in supply happening in the industry but the increase in productivity in the industry vs the market penetration of print could well be a major cause of this. One way or the other the industry has clearly not been able to compete with other industries for the labor force it needs. The number one way to compete is in payrates for key positions, time after time we see companies looking for skilled workers at payrates the worker would be unable to afford a car on let alone cover room and board. Many of the positions in print do require a higher skill level and years of training to become expert so to lose existing skilled people to other industries and to not be able to attract new students will have a serious effect, Frank Ramono’s recent article mentions the industry needs a minimum of X workers a year just to cover retirement rates underscores the seriousness of the situation.

Payrates are one area but coolness or trendiness is important as well, in order to attract the next generation then the industry needs to understand that generation and use that understanding to get the attention of the labor force. I bet Apple has little problem attracting the labor it needs now. There are many other areas to discuss, if an industry is known to be in trouble then its longevity is in question. This longevity directly impacts our ability to attract labor, who wants to invest years to learn how to run a press and find that the positions will be phased out over the next 10 years. So, the real issue here is that in order to attract labor the industry needs to be successful, to be profitable and in such a way that the wealth generated can be shared with our labor force. The case studies on the airline industry, the steel, car and shoe industries are all to emblazoned in history to ignore. We must learn to embrace change and the potential for new rewards it brings. For without profits we will continue to lose the labor wars and our very industry would be in trouble.

We as an industry still have significant influence when we work together IE the recent Kinko/Adobe issue. Lets use our influence to address the very real labor issues we all face.

I look forward to your input.

David Regan
Semper International