Advice from a hiring firm’s CEO could help give a recent pledge from President Obama some pull. Also: An ad that didn’t air during the Super Bowl—but still made a huge impact.

In spite of all the improvement we’ve seen in the economy in recent years, unemployment remains a problem.

While the overall unemployment figure reported each month has been dipping lower, there’s still the matter of the long-term unemployed, who often find themselves struggling to convince employers that they’re able to jump back into the game effectively.

It’s a problem that President Obama is working on—and you can help. Learn how in today’s Lunchtime Links:

A pledge worth watching: Last week, President Obama got 21 CEOs to pledge to stop something that has made it hard for many to shake off the effects of the recession: discriminatory hiring practices against the long-term employed. As a CEO, promising that might sound like a good idea—but it’s a directive that might never get properly implemented because it’s a lot more complicated than simply taking a pledge. However, Lou Adler, CEO of consulting and search firm The Adler Group, says it isn’t as complicated as some might think. “Surprisingly, there is a simple solution that addresses all of these problems without discriminating against anyone,” he writes on LinkedIn. “All you need to do is stop filtering people on their skills and experiences, and start filtering them on their accomplishments.” Read Adler’s post for a few ideas on making this idea something completely feasible for an organization to implement.

The power of advertising: The National Congress of American Indians didn’t once need to use the NFL team’s nickname it was protesting against in its powerful ad (shown above). The ad didn’t air on Fox during Sunday’s big game, but it has drawn plenty of attention—especially on Twitter, where the corresponding #NotYourMascot hashtag was used roughly 18,000 times during the Super Bowl, according to Al Jazeera America. The advocacy group says the goal of the ad is to raise awareness and create the potential for change. “This week’s celebration of football is exactly why we need to keep talking about the D.C. mascot,” the group told the Indian Country Today Media Network about the ad. “Cheering for a football team should never include the casual use of a racial slur. It is important for all teams and all of their fans that the name of the D.C. team is changed.”

The future of indoor navigation? Sure, it’s easy to follow a GPS while you’re walking down the street, but how can you navigate a giant conference center with the same technology? If this is a problem at your events, you may want to keep an eye on the work of the Israeli startup Shopcloud. On Tuesday, the company announced a new indoor-mapping technology it calls Inside, which it claims is accurate to within a meter of where a person is standing inside a large building like a mall. Plus, unlike other available options, it works with existing technology inside a smartphone. “We’re basically looking at how humans navigate, and how the natural human navigation works,” Michael Bar Zeev, the company’s vice president of product, told TechCrunch. “We use the [smartphone] device’s cameras, through computer vision algorithms, to understand the spacial data around us and then position us super accurately.”

Anything cool you’ve seen online today? Let us know in the comments.

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