Skype and Amazon are hiring in Silicon Valley

Microsoft’s latest acquisition, Skype, is going to stick to its plans to hire hundreds of people in Palo Alto. The company’s going to maintain its own offices rather than move into Microsoft’s campus in Mountain View. Also, Skype says it will continue to invest in Silicon Valley.

 Amazon’s also looks to be hiring in California. Lab126, the subsidiary that works on Kindle and other tablets, is supposedly renting “lots” more office space in Cupertino. The company’s reportedly working on a full-blown tablet and maybe a smartphone.

A new kind of brute-force recruiting is emerging. Engineering talent is so in demand that large companies are acquiring small companies not for their products or ideas but for the warm bodies they employ. The buzzword is acqhiring. So says The New York Times. Big companies and small ones just keep saying they can’t find enough good tech people. So, they’ll give them everything from free iPads to entrepreneurship lessons to attract them. Start-ups in particular are looking for people. Total job openings at venture-backed startups in Silicon Valley have risen to 3,609 from 1,739 in April 2008. Elsewhere in the U.S., they rose 69 percent in the same period.

McDonald's aims to hire 50,000 people

(Crain’s) — Big Mac wants you. 
Hyping what it calls National Hiring Day on April 19, McDonald’s Corp. launches an ambitious campaign Monday to recruit a whopping 50,000 people to its already massive workforce of 60,000.

The push aims to recast McJob — a derogatory slang for a low-paying, dead-end job — into a desirable employment opportunity.

“McJob is going to enter the conversation,” said Rick Wion, social media director at McDonald’s USA. “Rather than avoid the term, let’s embrace it and turn it on its ear.”

The company said it is looking for all types of employees, from crew members to managers to corporate employees, in anticipation of the busier summer months. Prospective employees can apply in person at any of the company’s 14,000 U.S. locations or through the McDonald’s website.

The campaign will appear in print magazines such as People, Us Weekly, Ebony, various ethnic publications, on the chain's social-media and digital channels such as Twitter, on local radio spots, as well as point-of-purchase, in-store marketing and on packaging on certain items.

And although the campaign is in conjunction with McDonald’s National Hiring Day, much of the advertising push -- especially in print -- is dedicated to highlighting McDonald’s restaurant employees in various ranks in an effort to improve the image of working at McDonald’s.

“The creative part is really highlighting the people at McDonald’s and dispelling the myths that there isn’t opportunity working here,” said Marlena Peleo-Lazar, global creative officer at McDonald’s USA. “We really wanted to highlight our crew.”

The McDonald’s effort was created by Citizen2, a consultancy and advocacy organization in Chicago and the Washington, D.C., area. The social-media effort is handled in-house, alongside the company's public-relations agency, Interpublic Group of Cos.’ GolinHarris.

One medium this campaign is not using is TV. “We found that print was the best medium to communicate the story about the brand and the opportunity people have here,” said Tania Haigh, marketing manager at McDonald’s USA. Video will be relegated to social media, which will include short videos of employees discussing why they love their McJobs.

While the campaign’s primary goal is to change the perception of working at McDonald’s and recruit prospective employees, it comes at a time when more marketers, including the likes of Pizza Hut, Overstock.com and Southwest Airlines, have put forth their own workforce as the stars of their advertising.

Oak Brook-based McDonald’s last week launched an internal campaign in which it asked employees to create their own video testimonials on why they love their McJobs, for possible future use in the campaign's social media effort.

While this is the first time the chain has done a hiring day on a national level, the company’s western division held a hiring event last spring, and in the process employed about 13,000 people.

McDonald’s is competing in an improving labor market where existing and potential McDonald’s employees have opportunities to pursue jobs at other companies with higher pay. The U.S. economy has added jobs for 13 consecutive months; the unemployment rate (8.8%) is at a two-year low, according to an Ad Age DataCenter analysis of data from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

McDonald’s campaign could give the company an advantage over competitors by making a potential pool of candidates think of McDonald’s first. It could also generate goodwill among customers who like the idea of seeing a company bring jobs into a community.

According to the fast-feeder, more than 50% of McDonald’s franchisees and 75% of restaurant managers started as restaurant-crew employees. Among long-term McDonald’s employees is McDonald’s USA President Jan Fields, who started by making fries at a restaurant.

For the national hiring event, McDonald’s drew on research extrapolated from company-owned restaurants and compiled by Dennis Tootelian, who studies business trends and policy at the Center for Small Business at California State University, Sacramento. Mr. Tootelian estimates that McDonald’s and its franchisees will lay out at least $518 million more in wages and salaries during 2011 than the prior year — an average of more than $1.4 million every day.

AOL to Cut Up to 900 Jobs as It Integrates Huffington Post

(Bloomberg) -- AOL Inc., the Internet company that agreed to buy the Huffington Post last month, said it will eliminate as many as 900 jobs as the company integrates the news website and restructures to try to return to revenue growth.

The company will cut as many as 700 jobs in India and 200 in the U.S., Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong wrote in a memo to employees today. In India, 300 of the affected employees will move to outsourcing partners and continue to do work for AOL, he said.

“The changes for me today are very personal,” said Armstrong at the Bloomberg Media Summit in New York. “AOL employees deserve a tremendous amount of credit because I don’t think it’s easy to go from managing decline to managing growth.”

Armstrong said he would discuss the job cuts with employees later today.

“Our strategy remains clear: create high quality content experiences for consumers, at scale,” Armstrong wrote in the memo. “Today, we are announcing an organizational structure that will significantly improve AOL’s ability to focus on growth.”

The company had 5,860 employees at the end of last year, according to regulatory filings. If the company sheds 900 jobs, that would be 15 percent of the total.

Declining Revenue

AOL, whose sales have declined for four straight quarters, agreed to buy the Huffington Post for $315 million, aiming to increase online content to help boost advertising revenue. In India, the company is outsourcing back-office work to cut costs and focus on increasing consumer product sales.

Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, joined AOL as president and editor-in-chief of a newly formed media group, which includes other AOL content. Her website will serve as the model for other journalism efforts, Armstrong said in the memo.

“AOL will invest more heavily in our in-house editorial team and transition away from a reliance on freelance journalists,” he said. “Journalists are the heart and soul of a media company.”

Armstrong said he recently made a personal purchase of $10 million in AOL stock. In May, the former Google executive, who became AOL’s CEO in 2009, bought $11.1 million worth of stock.

Borders files for bankruptcy protection, will lay off 6,000

The No. 2 U.S. bookseller, which operates namesake superstores as well as the smaller Waldenbooks chain, has contended with double-digit comparable sales declines for two years.

Here are some key dates in Borders' history:

1971:
Tom and Louis Border found Borders Book Shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

1992:
Kmart buys Borders, then a Michigan-based chain of 21 book superstores in the Midwest and Northeast. In 1984, KMart buys Waldenbooks.

1995:
Kmart spins off Borders-Walden Group in an IPO and changes its name to Borders Group.

1997:
Announces plans for an international superstore chain that would have 1,000 locations. At that point, it had 203 stores.

1998:
Launches Borders Online, but analysts fault it for being late to embrace e-commerce.

1999:
April: Company buys toy retailer All Wound Up, a deal that harms its liquidity. The plan foretells Borders' intention to expand its toys and games selection in late 2010 to diversify its offerings.

2000:
March: Hires Merrill Lynch & Co to review options, including a recapitalization, leveraged buyout or combination with another company.

2001:
April: Announces a deal with Amazon.com Inc to relaunch Borders' money-losing e-commerce site and feature Amazon.com's books and music offerings.

2006:

Bill Ackman's Pershing Square takes 11 percent stake in Borders, saying its shares are undervalued and could rise to $36 from $23.92. Ackman says fears of the threat from online retailer Amazon.com are "exaggerated."

2008:
March: Says it might put itself up for sale, but never finds a buyer. It also gets $42.5 million loan from Ackman's firm and says it would have faced imminent liquidity problems without it.

May: Barnes & Noble puts together a team to look at a merger with Borders. Separately, Borders launched its own web site.

2009:

April: Says it expects only 50-60 of its Waldenbooks stores to survive in the long term. It had 564 in 2006.

2010:

Jan 28: Announces cuts of 10 percent of corporate jobs.

March 31: Repays $42.5 million loan to Pershing Square, gets more credit and posts a profit on cost cuts. Shares jump.

July 7: Launches e-book store, eight months after Barnes & Noble.

December 6: Ackman offers to finance a merger with larger rival Barnes & Noble Inc..

2011
January 27: Borders says it gets conditional refinancing commitment from GE Capital and warns it may seek an "in court restructuring," meaning a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

January 30: Borders says it is delaying payment to vendors and landlords, among other creditors.

February 4: Borders gets warning from New York Stock Exchange about low share price, says it could be delisted.

February 16: Borders files for Ch. 11 bankruptcy protection in Manhattan.