September 30, 2005

She got fired: a success story
Posted by at 5:49 PM

Here's a story from abcnews.com about a woman who took to heart the advice of the boss who showed anything but when he fired her:

When I walked into his office, he leaned back in his chair, put his arms behind his head and smiled smugly. Coldly, he said, "It's a big world out there, Tory, and I suggest you go explore it."

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I came up with an idea that eventually became a passion in my life, one that I hope illustrates how powerful and freeing the idea of owning your own business can be, especially if you're willing to take a chance, trust your instincts and work your butt off.

My idea was to start a company that produced career fairs for women. Even though career fairs are a dime a dozen, nothing existed specifically for women. And seeing as diversity in the corporate world is a growing priority, I thought that if I could connect smart, savvy women with some of the best employers in America, I would have a win-win-win situation.

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September 29, 2005

You think your job is tough?
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 1:25 PM

The 10 most dangerous professions in America.

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What to do while searching for a job
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 9:03 AM

Although some might view being out of work as a time to relax before getting their next job, the time off can quickly become stressful and depressing. A recent story from the El Paso Times advises keeping busy, pursuing a hobby, and exercise as healthy ways to fill the void between jobs.

BostonWorks weighed in on the subject recently as well with this article.

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September 27, 2005

There's work to be had
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:54 AM

Today's Globe carries a report on jobs for the asking, and pretty well-paying ones, at that:

Some jobs pay living wages, are in fast-growing fields, have lots of openings, and don't require bachelor's degrees.

Most of them aren't glamorous, but they won't be offshored any time soon either, according to a newly published analysis by the nonprofit agency Jobs for the Future. Among them: truck and bus driving, nursing, construction, and computer-tech jobs.

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More on the Ivy Leaguers planning already to opt out
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:41 AM

Thanks for the good news in your last post, Doug! But, here's more from the Boston Globe on the Yalies and Harvard women already planning to opt out of the workforce.

THE LATEST round in the mommy wars is being waged over women who aren't even mommies yet: They are high-achieving Ivy League students who are planning to scale down or even give up their careers once they have children.

A front-page New York Times article about these exotic creatures has caused a flurry of debate: Some conservatives see it as a blow to politically correct orthodoxy about women, some feminists see it as a sign of the dreaded ''backlash" against women's gains. Still others shrug it off as pseudo-journalistic fluff with more hype than substance. In fact, reading too much social significance into the Times story would be a mistake; but it still points to lessons that feminism ignores at its peril.

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September 26, 2005

New England firms among 100 best for working moms
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 3:38 PM

Following on from Diane's post, below, on working women, BostonWorks in the Sunday Globe reports a bit of good news for working mothers in the New England area:

Harvard is one of seven New England employers on Working Mother Magazine's 2005 list of the 100 Best Companies. The others are: Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. in Springfield; Timberland Co. in Stratham, N.H.; Yale-New Haven Hospital; General Electric Co. in Fairfield, Conn.; Lego Systems Inc., in Enfield, Conn.; and Phoenix Cos. in Hartford.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same (for women in corporate America, that is)
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:29 AM

Sunday's Bostonworks Out in the Field section reports on the slooooooooow progress women are making in many areas of corporate America.

Women in a variety of industries are moving more slowly up America's corporate ladder, lagging behind their male counterparts in joining corporate boards, obtaining venture capital funding, and being promoted, according to a recent report from the Committee of 200.

The ''2005 C200 Business Leadership Index'' noted there has been no increase in the pace of women's overall clout in the business world, ''which indicates that women's influence has been creeping forward slowly for at least the last four years and probably won't equal men's during this decade or the next.''

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September 23, 2005

Longer work hours=higher productivity? Not necessarily so
Posted by at 2:32 PM

It's one of those epidemics that doesn't get better with time: the 50 to 60 hour work week that you hear people complaining about just about everywhere you turn. In this article, Nick ("Ask the Headhunter") Corcodilos profiles a software engineer who finally managed to cut back on his work hours without jeopardizing his career. In fact, his work schedule actually benefits his company.

"I'd like to make a comment about the common assumption that extra hours worked equals extra productivity. It's true only up to a point, then it's totally false. In a short burst of overtime (days to a week or two), it is likely that most workers will get more done than if they had worked only 40 hours. In a long bout of overtime (months), as fatigue mounts, carelessness increases while concentration and creativity decrease. Taken to extremes this can lead to an increase in illness and increased likelihood of family problems such as divorce. None of this is good for productivity over the long run."

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September 21, 2005

Being diverse in Greater Boston
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:19 AM

What's it like to be the only Latino in a white-only workplace? How might you react in that situation?

Read the illuminating - and inspirational - story from today's Globe profiling Rosario Ubiera-Minaya and her work as internship program coordinator at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem:

The questions from co-workers started soon after Rosario Ubiera-Minaya began working as an internship coordinator two years ago in the Peabody Essex Museum's education department. ''Are you in security?," someone would inevitably ask the caramel-colored, 28-year-old Dominicana. ''Do you work in guest services?"

''They never think I might be [heading] the internship program," she says, ''or that I may be working in the education department."

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September 20, 2005

Jobs round up
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 2:51 PM

The Massachusetts Port Authority agreed to a $50 million plan yesterday to rebuild Subaru Pier in South Boston. According to the Globe, the project could create as much as 600 new jobs.

Now, the flip side: Federated Department Stores Inc., fresh off its puchase of Filene's and Lord & Taylor owner May Department Stores Co., announced it will make about 6,200 layoffs in 2006, including some in Boston.

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Opting out? But you haven't even opted in yet.
Posted by Diane Danielson at 11:29 AM

Yesterday's NYTimes ran a story about how college-aged women in elite schools like Harvard and Yale are planning to be stay-at-home moms.

Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.

Perhaps the best comment in the whole article came later, when a professor pointed out a possible reason for this:

Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale[:] "Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

"I really believed 25 years ago," Dr. Wexler added, "that this would be solved by now."

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September 19, 2005

Networking - the likeability factor
Posted by Diane Danielson at 2:23 PM

This Sunday's Bostonworks section takes a look at networking and how to blend the friends with career helpers.

When Ferrazzi talks about networking, he talks about being liked. If people like you, they will help you, so instead of concentrating on getting favors, focus on being likeable. Otherwise, ''you'll wake up when you're 40 years old in a cube and upset that a 30-year-old is your boss. And you'll say to yourself that the person got the job because the boss likes him better. And the answer will be, right.''

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September 15, 2005

Attention women entrepreneurs
Posted by at 6:39 PM

According to Mellody Hobson, Good Morning America's personal finance expert, there are 9.1 million women-owned businesses in the United States. And even though only 6 percent of women-owned businesses have revenues of $1 million or more, entrepreneurship is still the best route to becoming rich:

For those women considering starting up their own businesses, knowing which factors promote success is important, but it is equally important to understand why businesses fail. The No. 1 reason is poor management, followed closely by poor financing. Additional contributing factors include lack of experience, competition and low sales.

Read the entire article.

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September 12, 2005

It's Big Help Week!
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 4:23 PM

You saw the supersection in yesterday's Boston Sunday Globe - or if you didn't, catch all the great Job Hunt 101 tips and the thousands of new job postings online.

Then join us online all week long for an unprecedented series of events as we celebrate Big Help Week here at BostonWorks. Check out the full line-up of events, starting with today's chat with former Apprentice Andy Litinsky and continuing tomorrow with our Big Help Chat-a-thon from 11-5, featuring five leading career experts to answer your questions and concerns.

Also on tap:
Submit your Job Haikus
Tell us your work horror stories
Vote in our Big Help Makeover contest
. . .and more!

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September 9, 2005

Corporate chaplain: a fast-growing career?
Posted by at 3:27 PM

According to a recent article on csmonitor.com, company chaplains are finding their way into the American workplace, with some experts predicting that the service will grow annually by double digits.

It's not that businesses are trying to take on a religious role. Corporate chaplains serve people of any or no faith, and the use of their services is voluntary. But business leaders increasingly recognize that employees who face crises often can't help bringing their personal difficulties to work, and job performance can suffer. Making provision to care for their workforce becomes a part of good business practice.

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September 8, 2005

Death of the midlife crisis?
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 4:30 PM

Is it possible? The much-storied midlife crisis is a myth, is going away? What about the guy I knew who chucked it all at 50 - his business, his wife and family - married his secretary, and moved to the South Pacific to go scuba diving for the rest of his life?

Well, according to this piece from yesterday's Globe, the midlife crisis, which has roots stretching back to Carl Jung and beyond, may be a thing of the past:

As the very idea of the midlife crisis turns 40 this year -- it was coined in 1965 by Canadian psychologist Elliot Jacques -- it is undergoing something of a midlife crisis of its own. New research is challenging the notion that midlife often triggers a dramatic ''crisis" at all; instead, the idea of ''creative aging" is gaining altitude among experts and middle-age folks alike. Call it the midlife non-crisis. ''There is no 'midlife,' as far as I'm concerned," said Robin Shean, a 45-year-old personal trainer and fitness instructor from Millis. ''It's all a journey. If I say I'm half done, how stagnant! If you take yourself out of that whole, quote, 'crisis,' it's all a journey, with no beginning and no end."

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Was John Mellencamp right?
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 3:27 PM

Rocker John Mellencamp sang famously of small town life in America. But millions seek to escape such towns, attracted by the opportunities and bright lights of the big city.

Suppose, however, you could have it both ways - all the benefits of small town life with the income and career satisfaction of an urban professional?

For years, career mobility and security meant moving to larger cities, living in the sticks was a death knell for promising professionals, and small communities were drained of young adults heading to major metropolitan areas for jobs. Now, however, smaller cities and towns, aided by advances in technology and lower housing prices, are luring away urban professionals seeking a better life.

Sound appealing? Learn more in this piece from yesterday's Globe.

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September 7, 2005

Shire to hire 50 at former Transkaryotic location
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 8:32 AM

Shire Pharmaceuticals Group, a British company that purchased beleaguered local biotech firm Transkaryotic Therapies this summer, recently announced it plans to hire 50 new workers at the Cambridge office.

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September 6, 2005

Europe vs. the US
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:49 PM

OK, quick: who works more hours per week, the French or the Americans? And who takes more weeks of vacation per year, the French or the Americans? And who has higher worker productivity, the French or the Americans?

For the answers to these and other questions about working in Europe vs. the US, check out Career Journal's interview with Dartmouth College prof and National Bureau of Economic Research consultant Bruce Sacerdote. Here's a big hint:

Unions in Europe used their strength to bargain for more holidays, more vacation days and shorter regular work weeks. Rather than being one specific watershed event or regulation, this reduction in hours worked took place during the collective-bargaining process over a number of years. In addition to their strength at the collective-bargaining table, unions have also played a major role in the political process. Germany, France and Italy all have large amounts of federally mandated vacation time: 20, 25, and 20 days, respectively, on top of a generous number of holidays.

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September 2, 2005

Katrina takes toll on region's jobs
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:57 AM

Law and order, food and water are the immediate needs in devastated New Orleans. But following on from Steph Daniel's entry on the impact of Huricane Katrina on the economy, here's a piece from ABCNews.com about
the projected effect of the storm on the region's employment situation, where some anlaysts are predicting a jobless rate of Depression-era proportions:

Hundreds of thousands of people are finding themselves out of work and their livelihoods in limbo following the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.
- - - - -
"New Orleans is an economic disaster. This tragedy is so unprecedented people could be out of work for three, six, nine months or longer," said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the economic forecasting project at Georgia State University.

By Dhawan's estimates close to 1 million people have been thrust out of work in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama because of Katrina.
- - - - -
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the area of New Orleans. . .was 4.9 percent in July, [Phil] Hopkins [managing director of U.S. regional services for Global Insight] said based on his calculations. The jobless rate there could easily climb to 25 percent, he estimated.

Those in the Boston area can be thankful for their paychecks, while thinking about ways this nation and every one of us can help heal the long-term hurt that is settling upon that city and region.

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September 1, 2005

Hurricanes, oil prices and the job market
Posted by at 1:11 PM

While most of us are still trying to grasp the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on a human scale, analysts are scrambling to assess the storm's impact on the nation's job market and economy. The short-term prognosis is somewhat bleak, but the U.S. economy will be saved by its resilience, says Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute.

"I don't think we're going to see jobs collapse or disappear," said Achuthan, who projects 200,000 new jobs for August. "There is a bit of fear in the air with what's been going on with oil prices and the hurricane that there's going to be some kind of collapse. But I think this economy is resilient."

Read the entire piece on cnnmoney.com.

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