Right now, 16% of all US retail hiring processes involve pre-screening job applicants with an online personality test created by Unicru, which was acquired recently by Massachusetts-based Kronos, Inc.

Kronos processed 10 million tests in 2008 alone, assessing things like self-control, adaptability and friendliness in an effort to weed out applicants poorly suited to retail work before the interview phase.

The test requires applicants to agree or disagree with 130 statements like, “you have to give up on some things that you start,” and “any trouble you have is your own fault.”

Many companies believe the test is effective. For example Kristopher Arnes, a Best Buy executive told the Wall Street Journal that Kronos’ automated screening process saves 250,000 to 300,000 hours in HR costs per year.

Whole Foods Market dropped the test however, finding that sunny personalities don’t necessarily translate into knowing how much cumin and allspice to throw into the couscous. 

Meanwhile, a whole subculture of cheating has bloomed around the test. Applicants often share answers and test-taking strategies, use answer sheets found online or even have a friend, presumably one with a pleasant disposition, take the test for them.

But Kronos isn’t worried about that, or if they are they aren’t saying. For one thing they claim, there’s been no drop-off in their tool’s performance when it comes to employee turnover, sales performance and what have you.

And Kronos executives don’t give much credence to those online answer sheets. “The way in which the answers relate to the job requirements is…not obvious,” test developer David Scarborough told the Journal.

They better hope not.

Normally a college degree helps people secure employment, even during economic downturns. It also confers job security in that college-educated employees are less likely to be riffed during a recession.

But no one is immune from the Great Economic Crisis of ’08-‘09.

Or, as Lawrence Mishel, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute told the Washington Post, “In a flood everyone gets swept away.”

In November, 3.1% of workers with at least a college diploma were unemployed. That’s less than half the national unemployment rate of 7.2% and far less than the rate of 10.5% among those who did not graduate high school, but it’s higher than at any point since 2003.

And many analysts believe the rate will soon exceed 4%, making it the highest unemployment rate among college grads since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking unemployment by educational level 38 years ago.

Part of the challenge facing college grads, especially younger ones, is that the few employers who are hiring can afford to be selective due to the surge in capable candidates. They’re looking for experience and mastery of a wide range of tasks, which recent graduates don’t have.

For many it seems, the best option is to trade down; accept positions for which you’re overqualified or even those outside your field, at least until things start brightening up out there.

“We’re telling candidates . . . your next job may not have the title you want or the pay you want,” John Owen told the Post. Post helps Robert Half place finance and accounting professionals.

A lot of people in South Korea had November 13 circled on their calendars. That was College Entrance Exam Day, an annual event that affects and perhaps reflects modern South Korean society as much as any on the calendar.

In South Korea, 80% of high school seniors attend college, and the results of last week’s 9-hour mostly multiple choice test will strongly impact the college they attend. Years hence, it will impact their success in securing desirable entry positions in large companies and the public sector.

So it was a big deal for the 600,000 students that took the Exam this year, and practically the whole country rose up, as it does every year, to help them do their best.

Offices and the stock market opened an hour late to assure the roads were open just when students needed a stress-free trip to the Exam sites. Non test-taking school children were given the day off to minimize noise. The nations’ national utility had 4,000 people on standby in case the power went out. Airplane take-offs and landings were halted during listening comprehension.

By 6pm though, it was over. Newspapers had published every question and the correct answer. Poorly performing students could hope for a better showing next year. The test prep industry began a new cycle and media outlets shelved their tip lines which had helped students improve concentration, study habits and dietary intake in the days before the test.

Many colleges and government officials feel it’s not right to have so much riding on a single test. They want to add essays, recommendations and related subjective material to college acceptance criteria.

But others like things as they are. They like a system that gives every student the same chance to succeed and the objectivity with which grades are assigned. 

No matter, everybody’s holding the date in 2009.

When 24-year old Hidekazu Nishikido got promoted at his staffing company, it bummed him out. Forget the spiffy title and the salary bump, the promotion obligated Mr. Nishikido to spend more time at work and this meant less time with his girlfriend. So he asked his bosses not to promote him anymore.

Mr. Nishikido’s behavior is not unusual in modern Japan, where young employees increasingly reject promotions so they can remain in positions that carry few responsibilities.

Until recently, the trend seemed unthinkable in a country where top companies enjoy hard-earned reputations for quality and glossy consumerism is a way of life. And it comes at a precarious time for Japan, since its aging population relies on young adults to maintain productivity and drive its economy.

Workforce experts call these workers hodo-hodo zoku, the “so-so folks,” but many choose their words more pointedly. “They’ll ruin Japan with their lax work ethic,” labor consultant Yukiko Takita told the Wall Street Journal. “They’re supposed to be the leaders of the next generation.”

What could cause such a phenomenon?  Chiaki Arai, who has written extensively about hodo-hodo, believes it has roots in the nation’s economic woes of the last decade. During that painful downturn, young Japanese saw the dreams of older generations vaporize amid job cuts and corporate reorganizations. They became skeptical about the value of hard work and inclined towards short-term pleasures like a quiet night at home.

A happy irony of hodo-hodo is that women now have more opportunities to advance in Japanese companies, which are traditionally dominated by men.  Nothing frays social customs so much as a down economy.

After reporting a 28% decrease in Q3 net income, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. announced it will cut 7,200 jobs over the next 3 years. This amounts to 12% of its workforce and it comes on top of 10,400 job cuts the company has made during the last 3 years.

Merck said workforce reductions will coincide with the shuttering of research facilities in Seattle, Italy and Japan. Executive positions will be reduced by 25%. 40% of the reductions will involve US-based employees.

CEO Richard Clark indicated the moves were part of the company’s plans to reengineer its R & D, manufacturing and sales processes. “New business models have to be put in place for our industry to survive,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

Merck’s Q3 sales dropped 2% to $5.9 billion. The company attributed the fall to decreased revenue from three key drugs: Gardasil, a cervical cancer vaccine, Vytorin, a cholesterol-lowering drug whose effectiveness has been questioned, and Fosamax a bone mineralization drug that faces generic competition in the US. Merck also cited the economic downturn as a cause of its troubles. The Great Economic Crisis of 2008 has triggered a nearly unprecedented drop in US health care consumption.

Merck did report sales growth for its diabetes drugs, Januvia and Janumet. Sales of the former increased 250% to $379 million. Sales of the latter increased 500% to $101 million.

The Great Economic Crisis of 2008 has darkened the mood of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, according to a study published this week by Mark Cannice, director of the Entrepreneurship Program at University of San Francisco.

Each quarter since 2004, Mr. Cannice has asked VCs to assess on a five-point scale their own confidence about start-ups and entrepreneurialism generally for the ensuing 6-18 months. His just completed Q3 2008 survey revealed the VC’s confidence level to be 2.89 (with 5 being the most confident), the lowest ever recorded and the fourth new low in a row.

The VCs cited, what else, the impact of the Crisis on their business models and in particular their ability to cash in their investments. There have been only six IPOs this year for example. That’s the lowest number in 30 years. The prognosis for acquisitions is also gloomy since companies are cash-strapped and can’t secure loans easily.

Beyond this, it’s probably just a matter of time before institutional investors decide to allocate less money towards risky VC-type investments.

Mr. Cannice did note that some unperturbed VCs actually scored the current period a 5, the most optimistic rating possible. These people see high-tech entrepreneurs flooding their inboxes with superb ideas and plans, and point out that in the past, many successful start-ups began during economic downturns. 

What’s in their Kool-Aid?

For decades, finance had been the “it” career for college graduates, but that’s changing fast.

The economy is a mess and financial companies have lost their luster. More to the point, they have shed 250,000 jobs since January, 2007, according to the job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. 

Now, Wall Street recruiters are nixing campus recruiting visits altogether, even to elite schools like Princeton, Harvard and Stanford. Since Princeton opened this fall for example, Deutsche Bank, J. P. Morgan Chase and Lehman Brothers have all cancelled campus sessions, according to the New York Times.

Students don’t seem to be panicking like the rest of us, however. They’re simply redirecting their short-term goals.

“No one I’ve talked to is worried about moving back home yet,” Princeton senior Kenton Murray told the Times. “But everyone I know is studying for the LSATs right now, people who a month ago had no intention of ever going to law school.”

Other students will consider sectors like energy, health care and consulting which seem positioned to survive and perhaps thrive during the economic turmoil. And it’s possible that more students will opt for public service, just like what happened following Hurricane Katrina and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

This week’s Fortune magazine includes its annual list of the 50 most powerful women in business. The remarkable people on the list include Sunoco’s Lynn Elsenhans, the first woman to run a major US oil company and Google’s Marissa Mayer, who at 33 oversees thousands of engineers and is the youngest woman ever to make the list.

Congratulations to the women in health care who made the list:

Angela Braly, President and CEO of Wellpoint
Susan Desmond-Hellmann, President, Product Development, Genentech
Colleen Goggins, Worldwide Chairman, Consumer Group, J & J
Carrie Cox, EVP and President Global Pharmaceuticals, Schering-Plough
Melanie Healey, Group President, Global Feminine and Health Care, P & G
Dierdre Connelly, President, Lilly USA, Eli Lilly
Sherilyn McCoy, Worldwide Chairman, Surgical Care Group, J & J
Gail Boudreaux, President UnitedHealthcare, and EVP UnitedHealth Group

Last week, co-founder and head engineer Dustin Moskovitz left Facebook to start a new software company. Joining him in the venture will be Facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein.

Their departure follows by a few months the exit of Facebook’s chief technology officer and a former chief operating officer.

As its early employees move on, Facebook has added grizzled vets from Google, Yahoo and other established tech companies. With the seasoning have come things like new performance review systems, formal training programs and recruiting processes.

Moskovitz founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 while they were roommates at Harvard.  Zuckerberg indicated he will continue to seek advice from Moskovitz as they move forward separately.

Facebook has never been more popular. It now has 100 million users and a staff of 700. It has increased advertising revenue to $350 million, although much of that comes from a single display-ad agreement with Microsoft which took a small ownership position in Facebook when the deal was consummated.

Meanwhile, a lot of Facebook employees have November 1 circled on their calendars. That’s the day the company starts permitting employees to sell some shares in Facebook at its internally determined valuation of $4 billion.

Census Bureau data reveal that during the recent economic expansion, workers with professional degrees (e.g. physicians, lawyers) were the only educational group to see an increase in inflation-adjusted income. Every other group from Ph.D.s to high school dropouts experienced declining income.

In 2007 for example, professionals had an inflation adjusted median salary of $89,602, a 3% increase from 2000. In 2007, people with bachelor’s degrees earned $47,240 and high school graduates earned $28,290, respectively-a 3% drop for both groups during the period.

At least the data suggest there’s value to higher education. Master’s prepared people earned 20% more than those with bachelor’s degrees, and they in turn earned 67% more than those with high school diplomas.

These differences are shrinking though. In 2000 workers with a college degree earned twice as much as workers with high school diplomas. So when are those college loans due anyway?

Congratulations to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which this week celebrated the 25th anniversary of one of its most successful initiatives, the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program (AMFDP).

Harold Amos, PhD

AMFDP is designed to increase “the number of individuals from historically underrepresented groups who achieve senior-level rank in academic medicine.”  It is based at Indiana University. Each year, AMFDP awards up to twelve 4-year postdoctoral research grants to physicians from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to establish careers in academic medicine.  Scholars receive an annual stipend of $75,000, and another $30,000 goes to their medical school.

AMFDP has graduated 181 scholars to date. More than 80% remain in academic medicine, including 35 professors. Recently, Harold Amos Scholar Dr. Lisa Cooper received a Genius Award from the MacArthur Foundation for her efforts to improve communication between patients and physicians.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has invested more than $110 million in the project since its inception in 1983. The Foundation renamed the project 5 years ago to honor Harold Amos, PhD, the first African American chair of a department at Harvard Medical School and a founding advisor for the program.

More information on AMFDP can be found here.

Few companies are benefiting from the financial crisis, but business networking sites such as LinkedIn and Xing are doing just that. These sites have grown rapidly as economic conditions have soured. In the last several weeks, an unprecedented number of LinkedIn members updated their profiles, preparing themselves perhaps for the possibility they may lose their jobs.

LinkedIn and Xing provide platforms allowing business professionals to get their names out there, keep track of peers and industry leaders, establish new contacts and form groups with common interests.

LinkedIn is a privately held, Silicon Valley based company that has 29 million members. It was started in 2002 and is now valued at $1 billion on revenues of approximately $100m. LinkedIn’s revenues derive from members as well as headhunters and companies that pay to troll their databases.

Xing is a German company that has 6 million members. It was founded in 2003 and went public in 2006. It had revenues $24m in the first half of this year. Xing’s revenues derive primarily from subscription fees, because the site emphasizes networking rather than job search.

Their business concept now proven, these two companies now must fend off competition. Facebook has the capacity to play in this space, for example. Even the venerable Wall Street Journal and New York Times have nascent professional networking features on their sites.

Twenty years ago, we were aware that US medical school graduates tended to enter disciplines having the highest earning potential. Since then, income disparity between specialists and primary care physicians has widened, and medical student debt has ballooned to an astounding median of $140,000 per graduating senior.

So there is no reason to be surprised by the results of a recently published survey of graduating students from 11 US medical schools. Only 2% of respondents to this survey indicated that they planned to work in primary care internal medicine. That’s down from 9% in 1990. This year, 2,600 fewer US doctors enrolled in primary care training programs than did so just 6 years ago. 

The survey revealed that low income is just one reason why US medical students steer clear of general internal medicine. They are turned off by heavy workloads, continuous hassling with insurance companies and inadequate ancillary support as well.

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As China’s economy morphs from state-controlled to consumer-driven and its companies play increasingly important roles in international commerce, people naturally start to wonder about executive compensation in these companies.

An article in this week’s The Economist summarizes the results of a new study of the matter by investigators at the University of Hong Kong and Penn State. It provides enticing, though narrow insights.

The investigators studied “red chip” companies-those which operate in China, are incorporated abroad and are listed in Hong Kong. Until recently this was the traditional method by which state-controlled companies related to capital markets, and even today red chips comprise more than half the total market cap of all Chinese firms.

In these companies, executive salaries were found to average $180,000-low by international standards. Nearly every company offered stock options (valued at $140,000), but surprisingly, more than half the Chinese executives never exercised these options.

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Blogpulse has identified 78 million blogs out there. It estimates that 100,000 new blogs will be started today. There are thousands of excellent blogs covering health care. So why bother?