The view from here

By Peter Jeewan, CA, President & CEO

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, experts disagree on whether or not the tradition generally yields positive results or not. One thing they do agree on, however, is that we are all much more likely to succeed if we set clear, realistic and measurable goals...

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The New Year´s resolution: sign of hope or harbinger of doom?

By Christine Johnston

Ahhh.... the New Year’s resolution. The clock struck twelve, you made the promise, and here you are, almost a month later. Did you live up to it? If you are like more than 50 percent of us, the answer is ‘no’. Here is some advice to help you stick to it...

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Job seekers & the 2012 economic outlook

By Denise Barnard

We may have left 2011 behind, but economists agree these are still challenging times... so what does this mean for job seekers? You must find a way to stand out in this competitive marketplace. To help you do that, career consultants offer 10 tactics for 2012...

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Achieve win-win through social change: the trends are your friends...

By Mike Lipkin, Motivational Speaker and Coach

It’s getting harder and harder to love your work. But if you don’t love what you do, you can never be the best at what you do. Read up on the seven most powerful trends that you can leverage to create your own personal magic. Each trend reflects a movement on values that drive people at the deepest level...

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 Candidate Corner

Featured Candidate

By Denise Barnard

Name: Sri Buwan
Recruitment Company: Pro Count Staffing, Temporary Division
Recruitment Associate: Chris Gotsis, Manager, Recruitment Services - Financial & Accounting, Temporary Division
Client Associate: Asher Khan, Senior Associate, Client Services - Accounting & Finance, Temporary Staffing

Who says it’s not who you know? In the case of Sri Buwan, a stint at GE on an earlier contract served him well when another opportunity came up. Of course, the fact that he was working toward his CGA designation, had experience with SAP and needed little training was important, too...

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Effective (and non-creepy) ways to stalk people on LinkedIn

Forbes, Daily Muse, Contributor

If you don’t have friends and family who can help you get a foot in the door when jobseeking, how do you get this elusive access? By stalking... And not in some weird “I’ve loved you forever and one day you’ll be mine” fashion... You need to go out and find contacts in your network who could help you out, and you need to be clever and resourceful about how you get to them...

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Where the IT dollars are headed in 2012

By Guy Currier, CIO Insight

Mobility and wireless network infrastructures are the big takers when it comes to IT budget planning for 2012. Even so, organizations are moving to the next stage of the IT infrastructure build-out across multiple budget areas, and our Study shows how the strategy trends of innovation, integration and reversion are having a significant impact on 2012 spending patterns...

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New horizons, no boundaries

14th annual Towers Watson 2011 - 2012 HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey

Nearly 450 organizations participated in the 14th annual Towers Watson 2011–2012 HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey. The results show respondents are well positioned to take advantage of enhanced talent management strategies, including integrated SaaS-based solutions, HR shared services organizations (HRSSOs) and new outsourcing opportunities...

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The 12 most unusual excuses for calling in sick

By Brandon Miller, Contributing Writer, YourMoney.ca

CareerBuilder has released its annual list of the most unusual excuses people have used to call in sick, provided by their real-life employers. It seems that there is no shortage of ludicrous scenarios people will concoct to get out of working, with each excuse more unbelievable than the next. Whatever happened to faking a cold or the stomach flu...

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Human capital in review:
focus on human capital analytics, employment trends

Offered by The Conference Board Human Capital Researchers

This article will help answer the question: How can organizations use human capital analytics as a catalyst to drive human capital strategy, thereby enhancing human capital´s financial and non-financial contribution to the organization? In this issue, we look at analytics from the organizational standpoint and how generating, analyzing, and managing big data create value...

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Canada´s job market ends year on a positive note

by Ksenia Bushmeneva, Economist, The Conference Board

Canada’s labour market ended the year on a positive note, adding 18,000 jobs in December. The gain followed two disappointing months of declines, and it brought employment growth for 2011 as a whole to 1.2 per cent. Despite the December gain, the unemployment rate edged up 0.1 percentage points to 7.5 per cent, as more people entered the labour force in search of jobs.

Read full report | Or go to Labour Force Survey on StatCan

Salary Benchmark Bulletin now online

As a service to our clients and the finance and accounting community at large, we periodically publish details of some of the talented professionals we place to keep you informed of the competitive marketplace and to help with benchmarking or comparing similar positions within your own organization.

Go to Bulletin Index

Functional Role Salary Survey

Look for our first annual "Functional Role Salary Survey" in early 2012! This survey will provide average salary figures for standard finance and accounting roles. Watch for announcements of it by email or on our website.

Industry numbers

The employment market remained steady during the fall months with Lannick Recruitment placing contractors and permanent candidates in a wide range of accounting, finance and technology roles in the Greater Toronto and Ottawa Areas. We also placed a range of legal, government, HR and administrative professionals in the Nation´s Capital.

For finance and accounting contractors that we placed in the GTA, the average rate of pay was $48 per hour; and across all practice areas in our Ottawa office, $61 per hour (the higher rate in Ottawa reflects higher level positions); and $54 for candidates placed in the GTA by our Technology practice.

Finance and accounting professionals placed in permanent roles had an average annual base salary of $85,000 in the GTA and $60,000 in Ottawa, while GTA technology professionals averaged $87,500.

Say hello

Our bench strength of talent continues to grow with the addition of: Mark Xamin, Associate, Client Services in our Technology Division and Nadine Dajani, CMA, Research and Recruitment Associate in our Finance & Accounting Division.

Specializing in mid- to senior-level roles, Lannick Recruitment is a member of the Lannick Group of Companies. Learn more about our team of Recruitment and Client Services Associates.

Industry numbers

Throughout the months of November & December, Pro Count Staffing placed non-managerial to managerial-level finance and accounting professionals in a broad range of roles and industries in the GTA. Average temporary professionals earned $19 per hour while permanent roles averaged $50,000 per annum.

Specializing in junior to intermediate finance and accounting roles, Pro Count Staffing is a member of Lannick Group of Companies. Learn more about our team of Account Executives and Recruitment Associates.