Latinos In America

By ALINA DIZIK

Selcuk Demirel

Even after spending hours behind a computer screen, we’re often surprised by how little we get done during a workday.

Indeed, frittering time away is epidemic in the office: A 2007 survey of 2,000 workers from
Salary.com
Inc.,

a Web site that provides compensation data, found that Americans waste about 20% of their time at work; with 34.7% of those surveyed saying surfing the Internet is the biggest distraction.

An emerging crop of software now aims to make individuals more conscious of how they spend their screen time. Previously meant for free-lancers looking to keep track of billable hours, software developers are realizing that time-management applications are useful for anyone who wants to track which Web sites they visit and how much of their day is spent on certain work tasks or computer applications.

Some services record and categorize users’ computer activities—often allowing workers to classify chunks of time as either productive or unproductive. Other services operate by having users set goals for how much they’ll get done in a set period of time.

While it is easy to see how hours spent on YouTube or Facebook can crush your productivity, time-management experts say one of the biggest culprits is the constant transitioning from one computer-based task to another.

“Multi-tasking is a complete myth,” says Peter Bregman, a time-management expert and chief executive of Bregman Partners Inc., a management-consulting company. “We lose time in the switch from one task to another,” since it takes time for the brain to adjust to each project.

Tony Wright co-founder of Seattle-based RescueTime Inc., a time-tracking software company, agrees. In an October data audit, Mr. Wright found that RescueTime users switch to an instant message window 71 times per day, which means every 5.2 minutes or 11.5 times per hour. Users to the site visit an average of 57 Web sites or applications per day, he says.

To track our productivity, we tested four online services for a week each: RescueTime, Slife, Klok and ManicTime. Each site provided an eye-opening look at our workday without too much of a hassle. We also found that just knowing our activities were being watched made us a bit less likely to dawdle on non-work-related sites. But the services themselves required some upkeep—which, ironically, took time away from our work.

After signing up for a free two-week trial of RescueTime Pro (usually $5.30 per month), the software downloaded quickly and showed up on our task bar. The site recorded our activities accurately, assigned them to categories and put them into graphs. Some of the findings were surprising: When looking at the day’s graph on a random Friday, for example, we realized we spent about 10 minutes of every hour reading the news.

But we thought some of the category titles—such as “Business”—were a bit vague. “We’re still chipping away to distill this stuff into something actionable,” says RescueTime’s Mr. Wright. We liked the feature that let us designate individual sites and applications as productive or unproductive. Additionally, each time our computer was idle and we returned to our desk we were prompted to say whether our task away from the computer was work related, like a phone call, or something that shouldn’t be recorded, like a trip to the fridge for a snack.

Klok doesn’t automatically track what you do on the computer (so no Internet connection is required). Instead, it asks users to set tasks for themselves throughout the day to help manage projects. Then users note when they start and stop each project, making it easy to compare your goals to reality. One morning, for example, we saw that a writing assignment took 3½-hours instead of the two we thought it should. We also realized we did far fewer tasks than anticipated each day.

Overall, the service helped us get more tasks done because setting goals required us to think through how we would build our days’ work. Tasks can be broken up into subcategories, making larger projects seem more manageable. But it was a bit of a pain to remember to notify the service every time we stopped and started a task. And even when we did make sure to mark our stop time, the service sometimes didn’t register it, making our data inaccurate. Rob McKeown, co-founder of Mcgraphix Inc., which developed Klok, says this issue will be resolved in the next version.

Next up was Slife. The service costs $5 per month, but a 30-day trial is free. To sign up for the trial, however, we had to provide a credit-card number. (A redesign will soon enable users to log on without one, says Edison Thomaz founder of Atlanta-based Slife Labs LLC.) After a quick download, we could see an icon on our task bar. Clicking on the icon took us to various time-management graphs, which were easy to read. The software lets users customize their own categories, such as news or research. You can also add labels to specify your activity even further, such as detailing what kind of research is being done.

During one particularly unproductive day, the service showed us that we spent 22 minutes on Twitter, 40 minutes on Facebook and almost three hours on email. There was also a “private” mode that turned the tracking function off, allowing us to browse frivolous stuff guilt-free.

One big headache was that we were often randomly bounced off the Slife service, causing it to miss some of our activities and requiring us to repeatedly log in. (Mr. Thomaz says Slife is working on fixing the problem.)

ManicTime, a desktop program that only runs on Windows systems, was next. Our computer usage was tracked with line and bar graphs; we could color code activities and tags to better understand how we spent our time. That made it clear that email was our biggest time waster. (Though the service doesn’t distinguish between work and non-work related emails.)

One nice feature: The service spit out a summary showing what percentage of our total time was spent with each application (like a Microsoft Word document) or Web site. The graphs also showed when our computer was idle, which helped us see how many little breaks we tend to take throughout the day.

All in all, the services really helped us get a handle on how we spend our work time. And having a written account of where our minutes went pushed us to modify our work habits—and get more done. The guilt element was motivating, too: Just knowing that the length of our Facebook session was going to be recorded made us think twice about lingering

Write to Alina Dizik at alina.dizik@dowjones.com

By RAYMUND FLANDEZ

If everything goes according to plan, blustery winds and frigid temperatures won’t snuff out a Grecian flame that began traveling across Canada last week in the 106-day kick-off event for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

The responsibility for the relay’s success falls on Ignition Inc., a small family-owned business that has found success by making itself an expert in an unusual niche: The Atlanta company has organized six Olympic torch relays since 1998, often battling elements that make the event a challenge befitting the Games themselves.

For last year’s Beijing Olympics, Ignition had to manage China’s bumpy roads and poor infrastructure. In Turin, Italy, in 2006, the company resorted to scooters to travel steep and narrow roads. And for Athens’s international torch relay in 2004, the company shepherded torch bearers through 27 countries in 35 days, dealing with the logistical hassle of securing visas, clearing security and dealing with a multitude of languages nearly every step of the way.

“They have found a nice little niche,” says Ken Bernhardt, a marketing professor at Robinson College of Business of Georgia State University, who says the company’s strength lies in its ability to pull a part-time work force. “Ignition is the poster child of how to do it well.”

The marketing company, which has 53 employees and $23 million in annual revenue, manages the often-chaotic event for Coca-Cola Co.,

a main sponsor of the Olympic Torch Relay. In 1996, the International Olympic Committee opened up the traditional touring of the Olympic flame as a commercial property that could be sponsored; since then, Coca-Cola has sponsored the event for every Olympics except the 2000 Games in Sydney.

Ignition’s co-founder, Susan McWhorter Driscoll, was a marketing director at Coca-Cola and directed its first sponsorship of a torch relay for Atlanta’s 1996 Games. A year later, she and husband Mark Driscoll founded Ignition to host future sporting events, eventually turning over day-to-day operations in 2007 to their nephew, Mike Hersom, who is Ignition’s president, and his wife, Cindy-Ann Hersom, who serves as Ignition’s chief marketing officer.

Coca-Cola says it works with Ignition because of the company’s “specialty expertise.” The Olympics torch relay is one of Ignition’s largest businesses, but the company also provides event-based marketing for a few corporate clients like BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd.

Ignition’s main task is to engineer a party-like atmosphere throughout the communities that the torch travels. In past Olympics, that’s been difficult because of language and cultural barriers, or because of rules imposed by the host country. In China, for example, Ignition wasn’t permitted to hand out Coca-Cola products, shake people’s hands or distribute flags—its usual methods of firing up crowds. Instead, Ignition’s staff hired locals to engage Chinese fans by singing, cheering and dancing while riding on the relay’s caravan of vehicles.

Ignition’s biggest challenge in the Canadian relay is expected to be the weather—snow, blizzards and 50 mile-per-hour winds are anticipated—and the sheer distance of the event, which will require 40% of the relay to be run at night. By day, Ignition, which hires hundreds of local workers along the way, must rally crowds and host two community celebrations daily.

And that will be tough, says Mr. Hersom. “This will be bloody cold,” he says. “It’s incredibly difficult to keep these people motivated.”

The weather will also make it difficult to keep the torch lit. The entourage will carry several backup flames in a truck that follows the runner—all of which were lit from the mother flame in Olympia, Greece.

The Vancouver Olympics is the longest torch relay that Ignition has managed in a single country.To counteract torch-relay fatigue this year, Amanda Daniels, Ignition’s vice president of global projects, has set up a team whose main job is to motivate employees, from evening massages and movie nights to helping with laundry and giving a huge Christmas celebration. “It’s quite a logistical challenge for sure,” Ms. Daniels says.

Write to Raymund Flandez at raymund.flandez@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A24

By ALEXANDRA LEVIT

When the oldest members of Generation Y (born roughly 1978 to 1993) began graduating from college several years ago, a collective groan was heard in offices throughout Corporate America.

People said many Gen Y-ers, also called Millennials, had an excess sense of entitlement and were arrogant and lazy. They wanted to do work on their terms and it seemed they wanted feedback on that work every five minutes.

But then the economy tanked. Now, millions of Gen Y-ers are reinventing themselves to show how much, and how quickly, they can add value to their organizations.

The Millennials I’ve met recently are aware of the changes taking place in the work world, and they perceive themselves — and their jobs — as vulnerable. Bruce Tulgan, author of “Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y,” says he has seen the same thing.

“There is a growing sense of casualties, [along with] the fact that you have to work double time to earn the credit and rewards you need,” he says. “Gen Y-ers are thinking it might be a good idea to keep their thoughts, words, and actions a little more cautious, especially since they are facing less support from parents who are busy scrambling to keep their own lives afloat.”

Adding More Value

Holly Hoffman, a 27-year-old market-research manager at a national newspaper corporation in Texas, was accustomed to simply doing the work that was handed to her — until the recession hit. “As the bottom person, I knew that I would be eliminated unless I could directly tie my position to profits,” she says. “So instead of just using the sales program I was given, I interviewed our field reps to see how we could improve it.”

Ms. Hoffman’s revamped sales program was expanded to three additional newspapers, earning her a promotion even as many of her friends were being laid off. Now that she is supporting four times as many people in the advertising and circulation departments, she’s flourishing in the current downturn.

“Instead of looking for what you can get out of your company, focus on what you can put in,” Ms. Hoffman advises fellow Millennials.

‘Good Citizens’

Many Gen Y-ers are also becoming what Mr. Tulgan terms “good workplace citizens.” That is, rather than demanding to be catered to, they’re instead becoming prompt, dressing more appropriately, following up on obligations, and using better judgment. “They’re also shifting their attention from peer relationships to building rapport with managers, customers, vendors, and other decision makers,” says Mr. Tulgan.

Savvy Gen Y-ers are using forums such as social networks, professional associations and company gatherings to gain access to valuable contacts. They are ready and willing to volunteer any assistance they can in exchange for information or mentoring.

Strengthening her ties with other internal departments has been a key element of Ms. Hoffman’s survival strategy. “I found that once I was able to get buy-in for my initiatives, I was applauded and rewarded,” she says.

Please send your career questions to reinvent@wsj.com. Alexandra Levit will answer some in the paper and online at wsj.com/careers
.

Write to Alexandra Levit at reinvent@wsj.com

By DONALD RUMSFELD

At their worst, meetings can be both useless and mind-numbing. It calls to mind an observation made in that endless font of wise management advice, the comic strip Dilbert: “There is no specific agenda for this meeting. As usual, we’ll just make unrelated emotional statements about things which bother us.”

David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the White House, Jan. 14, 2002.

Not every meeting has to be a source of dread. If you think about it, a meeting’s function is to pool an organization’s collective wisdom and knowledge in one room, making it easier for a manager to learn what his team knows that he doesn’t, and to provide guidance to all of those involved in one place at one time. Well-managed meetings can be valuable—indeed, indispensable.

The first consideration for meetings is whether to call one at all. The default tendency in any bureaucracy, especially in government, is to substitute discussion for decision-making. If you are the leader of an organization and call a meeting, make sure you have something to communicate or need to learn in a group setting. If the meeting is to be purely informational, without much back and forth, that information could probably be as easily relayed in a memo or email. One of the reasons President Nixon preferred to have important proposals put in writing was to ensure that a meeting’s outcome would not be unduly affected by whoever had the more assertive voice.

Second, when you decide to hold a meeting, it is important to avoid meandering sessions. When I moved into my first executive position in government in 1969, I had a stand-up desk. I use it to this day. Aside from the more recently heralded health benefits, standing up while working tends to be an incentive for those who come in for a discussion to say what they need to say, and not linger. I want folks to be comfortable in my office—just not too comfortable.

Third, pay close attention to who is invited and, for goodness’ sake, avoid making meetings so large that it feels you should have rented an amphitheater. During my last tour as secretary of defense, I found it not uncommon to walk into meetings in the White House Situation Room and see more than a dozen people packed in. In previous administrations, a single note-taker sufficed. Who knows exactly how many damaging leaks may have resulted from Hollywood-size entourages sitting in on sensitive high-level sessions.

Fourth, start and end meetings on time. Consider how much time is wasted by starting a meeting 15 minutes late. If 20 people are in attendance, that means that cumulatively you will have wasted five hours of time that could have been spent on something productive.

Fifth, encourage others to give their views, even if it may ruffle some feathers. “Stay in your lane” is not my favorite phrase. Usually it is deployed by those who don’t like other people commenting on their activities. An organization with impenetrable silos is not benefiting from the brains of its people. In meetings, endeavor to foster a culture in which people can comment on anything as long as their comments are relevant and constructive.

Sixth, as the saying goes, “Nothing betrays imbecility so much as insensitivity to it.” During meetings, I confess to being less than patient with folks who bring up irrelevant information or are ill-prepared. I also tend to lack patience with PowerPoint presentations that convey obvious information or slides with grammatical errors and that lack page numbers.

There were occasions when I abruptly ended a meeting in progress and advised the participants that we would reconvene when everyone had had time to fully prepare. The response was usually surprised looks all around. In my experience some leaders don’t end meetings when it’s clear they’ve become a waste of time. Instead they sit there and let the meeting experience a slow, painful death.

Seventh, keep in mind that when new ideas are broached in a meeting, there is often an instinctive and immediate opposition. Large bureaucracies can be masterful at creating an insular and self-serving culture in which people reinforce each other and become captive to what becomes the conventional wisdom. Meetings are a good place to discover whether an organization might be suffering from groupthink. If everyone in the room seems convinced of the brilliance of an idea, it may be a sign that the organization would benefit from more dissent and debate.

Finally, when ending a meeting, make a practice of summarizing the salient points and take-aways, making sure that all participants know precisely what actions you intend to be taken and by whom. I’ve found it can also be helpful to offer a last opportunity for anyone in the room to speak up by my asking, “Is there anything else?” or “What have we missed?” There often is something important that someone was thinking of saying and never found the opportunity for.

Hopefully, when a meeting does end, it has been valuable enough that people look forward to the next one. But then again, that’s probably too much to ask.

—Adapted from “Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War and Life,” which will be published Tuesday by Broadside Books. Copyright © 2013 by Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Rumsfeld served as U.S. secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 and from 2001 to 2006, and as the chief executive officer of two Fortune 500 companies.

A version of this article appeared May 11, 2013, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Rumsfeld’s Rules For Meetings.

Por NICHOLAS HASTINGS

La confianza de los inversionistas en el euro finalmente podría ceder ahora.

Durante meses, la moneda única recibió el respaldo internacional de las inversiones en bonos de los países altamente endeudados de la zona euro, lo que redujo los rendimientos de sus bonos y les permitió endeudarse una vez más a tasas razonables.

El deteriorado estado de la economía de la eurozona ha sido largamente ignorado y el euro se ha mostrado resistente.

En las últimas semanas, por ejemplo, cualquier debilidad del euro frente al dólar se debió principalmente por la fortaleza de la moneda estadounidense más que por otros factores.

Las esperanzas de que lo peor de la crisis de la deuda de la zona euro había pasado se vieron fortalecidas esta semana por las noticias de que los ministros de finanzas de la eurozona estimaban que Grecia y Chipre eran elegibles para sus últimos tramos de rescate.

La decisión de Fitch de elevar la calificación crediticia de Grecia, a “B-” desde “CCC”, hizo caer los rendimientos de los bonos griegos a 10 años a su nivel más bajo desde junio de 2010.

Y esta sensación de alivio también es evidente en los mercados europeos de acciones, donde el índice DAX de Alemania está alcanzando máximos récord.

Pero es discutible si todo esto se debe a que realmente está regresando la confianza de los inversionistas en la zona euro, o si solo se debe a los altos niveles de liquidez mundial.

La verdadera razón podría revelarse pronto, especialmente si, pese a la euforia en otras partes, la economía de la zona euro continúa mostrando pocas señales de recuperación.

De hecho, nuevos datos de crecimiento para el primer trimestre sugieren que la región se está desempeñando incluso peor de lo esperado, con una contracción de 0,2% en vez de la caída de 0,1% que se anticipaba.

El crecimiento alemán, en particular, ha sido inquietantemente lento, con su economía expandiéndose solo 0,1% en los tres primeros meses del año.

Aunque algunos analistas han culpado a las malas condiciones meteorológicas por la debilidad alemana, esto no significa que la región será capaz de protagonizar un repunte en el corto plazo.

Ben May, economista europeo de Capital Economics, lo resume de la siguiente manera: “Aún creemos que las proyecciones de consenso de un retroceso de 0,4% en el PIB de la eurozona para este año son demasiado optimistas, y esperamos algo más cercano a -2%”.

En el más largo plazo, esto no será una buena noticia para el euro por más de una razón.

Para comenzar, los datos incrementarán la presión sobre el Banco Central Europeo para volver a reducir las tasas de interés, una medida que bien podría implicar llevar la tasa de los depósitos hacia territorio negativo a medida que el banco central trata de estimular el crecimiento.

Debido a que las cifras de inflación en Alemania fueron revisados a la baja a comienzos de esta semana, el banco central difícilmente pueda usar la inflación como excusa para no relajar aún más su política.

El otro aspecto negativo de los datos para el euro es la sugerencia de que pese a todos los esfuerzos del BCE para fomentar los créditos bancarios, el mecanismo de transmisión para ayudar a las empresas más pequeñas y los consumidores de muchas de las naciones deudoras está fallando. Si ese es el caso, las posibilidades de una recuperación anticipada de la eurozona se harán mucho más remotas.

Otro foco de preocupación para la moneda única fue el fracaso esta semana de los ministros de finanzas de la región para alcanzar algún progreso significativo en las negociaciones sobre una unión bancaria.

La creación de un organismo regulador para promover la uniformidad sigue siendo vital para la seguridad del sistema financiero de la eurozona en el más largo plazo, y mientras más tiempo tome su conformación, más tiempo el sistema permanecerá vulnerable a contagios.

Pero, en lo que respecta al euro, muchas de estas cosas aún no lo han afectado.

La fortaleza del dólar, así como algunas preocupaciones iniciales sobre la eurozona, tal vez hayan ayudado a que la moneda única se debilitara a un mínimo de cinco semanas frente al dólar esta semana.

No obstante, con el fin en los próximos días de la reciente caída de los rendimientos de los bonos de los países deudores, la confianza de los inversionistas tal vez comience a disminuir, y la moneda única podría comenzar a sufrir las consecuencias del débil estado económico de la región.

By STEPHANIE SIMON

Entrepreneur Rob Israel believes he has found a winning recipe.

The founder of Doc Popcorn, which sells fresh-popped snacks in flavors such as “sinfully cinnamon” and “hoppin’ jalapeno,” has supervised the opening of 54 franchise outlets in five years and says he is working with another 200 in development.

Matt Nager for The Wall Street Journal

Doc Popcorn franchisees can open full-scale stores, mall kiosks or mobile carts. Above, founder Rob Israel in Denver on Tuesday.

Mr. Israel would like to credit his product’s popularity for the steady growth. But he also attributes his success to a flexible franchise system that allows local entrepreneurs to buy into the brand at a level that fits their budget. Franchisees can open a full-scale store for an investment of up to $150,000, or they can opt for a mall kiosk at a cost of about $100,000. A mobile cart requires an initial investment of about $70,000.

“It’s efficient, very simple and affordable,” Mr. Israel says.

It’s also a fast-growing trend in the franchise world.

Franchise consultants say they are seeing more corporations offering potential investors an array of business models, at different price points. In an era where credit is tight and investors are cautious, both franchisers and franchisees say this type of flexibility is the key to expansion.

“Many investors have difficulty finding credit to build out full-size stores,” says Steve Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, a trade group. “There has been an explosion of different franchise models within the same brand.”

Huntington Learning Center, a tutoring service, recently began offering prospective franchisees two tiers of investment. For a franchise fee of $10,000 (plus build-out expenses and a 9.5% royalty fee), investors could open a “standard” tutoring center in a retail space of about 1,200 square feet. For a franchise fee of $59,000—and a lower, 8% royalty—they could open an “expanded” center, with more room to tutor not just in the traditional subjects of math and reading, but also in science and other academic fields.

“This has not been a strong year for us in terms of new sales,” says Raymond Huntington, the company’s chairman, who attributes the slump to tough competition in the tutoring industry, tight credit and the shaky economy. He hopes the lower up-front costs of the standard option will encourage more entrepreneurs to give the Huntington brand a try.

For franchisers, one risk of the tiered model is losing control of the brand image. A successful company will take the time to spell out precise standards for customer interaction, product presentation and corporate oversight—and do this well before launching a new business model, says Benjamin Litalien, who runs the consulting firm Franchise Well LLC.

Franchisers likely already have detailed standards for lighting, signage, product display and sales patter in a traditional store, but those rules don’t necessarily translate well to a mall kiosk or a food truck, Mr. Litalien says.

When the truck is emblazoned with the brand name, everything from how the driver navigates traffic to where he pulls over to sell his wares can affect the product’s image.

Mr. Litalien also warns franchisers to think through the implications of new formats on loyal, long-time franchisees. Someone who has invested $500,000 in building a standalone donut shop may not be pleased to see a rival selling the same brand from an inexpensive mobile cart, especially if they compete for the same customer base.

Prospective franchisees, meanwhile, should take a hard look at whether corporate executives have the expertise to help them pioneer a new means of reaching customers, Mr. Litalien says. “They may not have the field support,” he says.

Nazrul Islam says he recognizes the risks but was still happy to hear that a food vendor he enjoys, BannaStrow’s Crepes and Coffee, was offering a tiered franchise system that let him choose whether to launch with a food truck, a kiosk, a food-court counter or a traditional restaurant.

Mr. Islam found a location he liked at the entrance to a mall food court in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., invested more than $200,000 and recently opened for business. “In the economic downturn, I thought it was better to open in a mall,” at a location with heavy foot traffic, he says.

Doc Popcorn franchisee Nate Godo also started small, with a mobile cart that he wheeled to events at the convention center in his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., in 2010. Retail sales were new to Mr. Godo; he had spent his career up to that point managing an automotive business. So he wasn’t about to invest a fortune in popcorn without first testing out the viability on a small scale, he says.

Mr. Godo’s mobile cart did so well that he moved into the popcorn business full-time a year ago; he recently stationed a second cart in a local mall.

He likes the way the tiered system “allows me to gradually ramp up,” he says.

Write to
Smalltalk@wsj.com

By JESSICA C. WAKEMAN

While talk of employment growth has been circulating for the last several months and experts expect Friday’s unemployment report to show job gains for the second month in a row, another group of key players say they plan to add jobs in 2010.

According to the Society for Human Resources Management, 35% of the 1,625 employers who responded to a March survey say they expect to add full-time workers in 2010, more than double last year’s 16% of respondents who said their firms would add staff.

The increase might be a reflection of a renewed sense of calm about the business climate, experts say.

“Many organizations have a sense that the market is improving, giving them the confidence they need to start rebuilding,” said John Dooney, SHRM’s manager of strategic research.

One firm adding employees now is Bank of America

which has 6,000 open positions spanning human resources to investment banking, says Kelly E. Sapp, a spokeswoman for Bank of America. She says that the company has more than doubled the size of its intern program and also doubled graduate hiring over 2009, a shift she attributes to business need and growth from acquisitions.

iStock Photo

Friday’s job report is expected to show job growth.

Mark Anderson, president of ExecuNet, a network for business leaders providing recruiting, research and advice, says that recruiters and companies have been talking about the improving market for the last six months–and now companies are finally acting on those feelings by filling in the talent gaps left behind by layoffs and hiring freezes.

“One thing businesses do not like is uncertainity and now that things are starting to look positive, companies feel that they can add positions instead of trading up,” said Mr. Anderson.

ExecuNet’s own May benchmark Recruiter Confidence Index, a monthly survey that measures the executive job market, shows 65% of 185 responding executive recruiters are “confident” or “very confident” that the executive employment market will improve over the next six months, making May 2010 the second consecutive month that index remained over 60% since June 2008.

The SHRM report showed that 52% of professional, scientific and technical services firms will add jobs, up from 21% in 2009. Some 43% of high-tech companies also plan to add jobs.

And Mr. Dooney says that the report also shows salary freezes are being lifted and fewer employers expect to make layoffs in 2010 than in the last two years. On average across all industries, salaries are expected to rise 2.2 percent in 2010, the report showed.