Business Trends
More Pink Slips at The Hartford
At The Hartford, 200 Layoffs In ’09, And More To Come — Courant.com
“Congratulations on driving The Hartford into the ground,” Justin Winthrop, 88, of West Hartford, told Ayer. “You’ve destroyed the image, reputation and the name of The Hartford. When may we expect your resignation?”
The Hartford has received $3.4 billion in TARP funds. But even this amount of money won’t be enough to save jobs.
Looking For a Remote Underwriting Job? Good Luck.
EconomPic: Can We Inflate Our Way out of this Mess?
Looking for a remote underwriting job? Maybe you’re looking for any underwriting job. If the answer is “yes” please read this article on EconomPic. And if you’re a visual type, I’ve reproduced the graphics from the article.
Take Home Lesson – Plan B…now. Time to create a new and different future.

Scary stuff

Scarier stuff
B-A-I-L-O-U-T
Prudential Among Insurers Cleared for U.S. Bailout (Update2) – Bloomberg.com
According to Bloomberg, six insurance companies have been approved for TARP funds.
Lincoln Financial Update – May 2009
Lean and Lame – Downside to Downsizing
The Tricky Truth About Downsizing – BusinessWeek
Click the link above to read a short, interesting viewpoint on downsizing.

The Morbid Niche
Investors Find Morbid Niche In Surrendered Life Insurance – washingtonpost.com
Check out Lenaburg’s quote below. This is kind of creepy and an angle I never thought of before. I always wondered what the cartels did with all that clean cash.
David S. Lenaburg, chief executive of Rockville-based Banner Life Insurance, gave voice to the ultimate fear. Citing court records of a 2006 money-laundering case, Lenaburg wrote to a regulator that the seller of one policy “apparently ended up with a drug cartel owning a vested interest in his early demise.”

Indian Recruiters (live in India)
Here is an interesting post from Fistful of Talent. This article will shed even more insight into the world of Indian recruiters. By the way, I emailed the sender of the email I got two days ago. No response yet.
Fistful of Talent: All My Recruiters…. Live in India…..
So, here’s what I found out in the lunch with the recruiting firm in question, which I consider to be a pretty sharp bunch. They’ve long used outsourcing as a means to “source” candidates, but they’ve now moved to the next level. In addition to sourcing candidates using resources in India, they’ve also handed off the next level of activity to outsourced recruiters in India. That means outsourced recruiters who understand the technologies in play are making the initial calls to prospects, qualifying them, and locking them down for the next step, which might be a phone screen or in-person with the actual recruiting firm, or if the specs are nailed, a phone screen or in-person with the client company in question.
Here’s the kicker – low cost, robust technologies like Bullhorn, which allow recruiting shops to manage the lifecycle of the recruiting process for a single candidate from anywhere on the globe, have enabled the manager in question to outsource this function. All he needs is the right talent overseas, and he pays 20-30% of what he would pay a full life cycle recruiter located in Birmingham to do the same job.

Indian Recruiters (coming to your email inbox soon)
I would have found this trend surprising if I had not received my first Indian recruiting email two days ago. Do read the comments to the online article for a better understanding of the issues.
Cost-Conscious Firms Find India Offers a Down-Home Recruiting Touch | workforce.com

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