We're almost into the last quarter of 2014, the busiest three months of the year. Of course, there are all the holidays, but these three months are also busy because many organizations are trying to meet end-of-the-year goals and preparing for the coming year. Those goals and preparations include hiring and recruiting, so this week's hiring and recruiting news roundup includes solutions and recruiting tips to help with this. We may not be able to clear your schedule so you can enjoy a little more holiday, but we can help make everything easier to balance.

The number of employee referrals a company receives is a major indicator of employee morale. If employees are referring people to open positions within the organization, then it's likely that they like their jobs and like their employer. So, how does an organization encourage employee referrals without coming across as tacky or desperate for talent?

A healthy company culture isn't just crucial to an organization's success, but it is also necessary in retaining and hiring the best employees. The employees that care about company culture, or who are good enough to get a job elsewhere, will leave your organization if they don't think the current work environment is a pleasant one. Potential candidates will also consider your organization's company culture when looking at where to apply and where to accept a job offer.

According to the 2014 Global Leadership Forecast, the number one leadership challenge for CEOs is human capital, followed by customer relations and innovation. To overcome the challenge of leadership and human capital, improving the effectiveness of management and improving leadership development program were cited as the top two strategies. This week's hiring and recruiting news roundup should help with both of those strategies, where development is possible and where management is currently ineffective. Both of these strategies may not necessarily require new staff and may instead simply need new ways to evaluate and to enhance each of your staff members individually.

Recruitment's black hole is the gap between all those job seekers looking for an open position and all those companies with open positions that are looking for the right candidates to fill them. We call it a black hole because so many candidates and open positions fall into this gap, not knowing the other existed. "Skills gap" may be a buzzword, but it's a very real problem for many organizations. This week's hiring and recruiting news roundup addresses the issue of the black hole, offering insight into who's falling into it and how we can retrieve those candidates and positions before they're gone forever.

This week's hiring and recruiting news roundup takes a twist that's different from our previous roundups: it's all about you. Not just articles informing you about different strategies and developments, or articles discussing the latest trends that you ought to know about, but articles that are about you. This week's roundup features articles that are meant to help you be a better you, whether it's finding your motive, improving your employment brand, or reading a good book about hiring and recruiting.

One can surmise that part of the reason why the skills gap is one of the biggest recruiting challenges of our time is because the skills needed to succeed in today's work environment is very different from the skills needed just five or 10 years ago. The skills needed include those necessary to do well in an interview and to get past applicant tracking systems and recruiting boards. This week's hiring and recruiting news roundup addresses today's recruiting challenge in a new light, focusing on the skills needed and the lessons learned from resisting the ongoing change in the recruiting landscape.

Since we didn't do a hiring and recruiting news roundup last week, this week's roundup features the best and most interesting articles of both this week and last week. As everyone settles back in until the next long holiday weekend, we've collected great news articles about employee turnover, talent acquisition, and other related stories.

The RPOA, in partnership with Software Advice and the National Human Resources Association, conducted a survey with 150 recruiters to determine the best job boards. We conducted this survey to figure out which job boards provide the best value for recruiters in terms of quality, quantity and price. Our best job boards survey asked asked recruiters specifically about six job boards: Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Monster, Craigslist, Indeed and Careerbuilder. Although all the recruiters didn't use all six of the job boards, all of them were used by some percentage of those surveyed. Here are the results of our survey:

In the first two parts of this series, we covered current statistics in hiring and recruiting as well as current trends in hiring and recruiting costs and efficiencies. In the final part of this series, we're presenting five great ideas that employers ought to consider for their talent acquisition initiatives. These ideas are specific recommendations that address the statistics and trends featured in the first two parts. Implementing one or all of these ideas effectively will enable employers to hire more creatively and efficiently, which is necessary in today's talent shortage in the marketplace.