December 31, 2005

Pregnancy discrimination - that's one way to keep women barefoot and in the kitchen
Posted by Diane Danielson at 9:15 AM

Today's Washington Post looks at the increase of pregnancy bias claims:

"You have this volatile combination of Generation X and Y women feeling entitled to be in the workplace and live up to widely held ideals of motherhood," said Joan C. Williams, law professor and director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings. "And employers who simply appear not to know that it's gender discrimination to push them out."

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December 29, 2005

The world wide web of women
Posted by Diane Danielson at 9:37 AM

Looks like the boys are playing gameboys while the girls are surfing the web. For the first time the Washington Post reports on a study tracks how young women are outpacing the young men on the adoption of internet technologies (note registration may be required on the Post site to view the full article).

Traditionally, women have lagged behind men in adoption of Internet technologies, but a study released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that women under age 65 now outpace men in Internet usage, though only by a few percentage points. But the survey also noted that the disparity between women and men on the Web is even greater among the 18-to-29 age group and African Americans.

The report, "How Women and Men Use the Internet," examined use by both sexes, looking at what men and women are doing online as well as their rate of adopting new Web-based technologies.

"I think the real interesting story is the young women, because that is the one age cohort where there are many more women online," said Deborah Fallows, who wrote the report based on findings from surveys conducted over the past five years. "The younger women are just much more comfortable with the Internet."

The report found that 86 percent of women ages 18 to 29 were online, compared with 80 percent of men in the same age group. Among African Americans, 60 percent of women are online, compared with 50 percent of men.

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December 27, 2005

They don't need your life story
Posted by Jason Butler at 7:59 AM

Good advice from the Blue Sky Resumes blog: Your resume is a brochure, not the product catalog.

You cannot communicate everything there is to know and you shouldn't try. Instead, you should try to communicate the key selling points. Why should a company hire you? What problems will you solve for them? How can you show you have solved these type of problems in the past?

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Lab vs. Life
Posted by Jason Butler at 6:12 AM

Today's Globe writes about the pressures of balancing graduate school with motherhood, an issue critical to the future of Boston's Life Sciences industry.

As a graduate student at Harvard University and also a mother, [Debrah] Rud hopes to inspire female undergraduates to pursue both a career in science and a family. The trouble is, she's still figuring out if she herself can have both.
Rud nearly dropped out of her doctorate program after she gave birth, and she still fears that her family would suffer if she devoted herself to an academic research career.

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December 22, 2005

Modern-day witch hunts?
Posted by Diane Danielson at 12:11 PM

USA Today writes about the dismal performance of the few Fortune 500 female CEO's. The article cites issues like the declining numbers of women CEOs and the fact that three of the companies have turned around since being run by men.

Proponents for the advancement of women pooh-pooh drawing any conclusions. Betty Spence, president of the National Association For Female Executives, says it's no different than a stretch when the majority of baseball managers were fired within three years after being named American League Manager of the Year. "The only thing they had in common was that they're men," Spence says. "The only logical conclusion is that men don't make good baseball managers."

But even if the numbers are statistically meaningless, Spence acknowledges that another year or two like 2004 and 2005 could feed perceptions and biases, and impede women's progress to the top. "The level of scrutiny — or skirtiny — goes up," she says. (Last year's story: Female CEOs struggle in '04 | 2003 story: Year of the woman among the 'Fortune' 500?)

"It's very damaging to women," says Judy Rosener of the University of California-Irvine Graduate School of Management, adding that it is unfair to compare the performance of the seven women against the S&P 500. "You could pick out 30 men from that list who have the same story. Look at General Motors and Ford."

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Wage rage
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 7:17 AM

Mary Helen Gillespie hits upon a lighting rod topic with her latest column "A case of wage rage." She points to a recent book on the wage gap between genders in America that claims women make anywhere between $700,000 and $2 million less than men over the course of their careers. From the article:

"For every dollar earned by a working male, a working female will earn 77 cents. The gap: 23 cents. Doesn't even add up to two dimes and one nickel. Until you do the math, and realize that over the career of a working female, this adds up to thousands and thousands of dollars less than what her male equal in the workplace will earn."

However, that's only part of the story. Many readers who sounded off on the BostonWorks message board charged that such wage gap studies incorporate fuzzy math and warped statistics to make the difference seem larger than it really is. From one reader:

"What that oft-quoted study (77 cent) neglects to mention is that women typically enter the workforce later than men, work less hours over their lifetime than men, often remove themselves voluntarily from the workforce for extended periods (usually for family reasons)"

What do you think?

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December 21, 2005

"Corporate Peace Corps" a draw for many
Posted by at 7:38 PM

Businesses like PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Pfizer are expanding philanthropy by giving more than cash, they're offering employees. Is a stint in the "Corporate Peace Corps" in the cards for you?

"In the past five years, there has been a burst of interest for international fellowships," said Jennifer Anastasoff, chief executive officer of Building Blocks International, a nonprofit organization that advises companies in developing corporate service fellowships. In the past 30 years, 2,100 employees have participated in what some call the "Corporate Peace Corps." She wants to double the number in the next five years.

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December 20, 2005

Be glad you're not in New York
Posted by Jason Butler at 8:55 AM

How was your commute? I bet it was better than the average New Yorker's this morning. Public transportation in New York has shut down due to a transit-worker strike.

An average of seven million people ride the subway every day, and the disruption will prevent people from going to work, cause millions of dollars in economic damage and seriously upend the life of the city in the week before Christmas. Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, which represents 33,700 subway and bus workers, announced its first strike in 25 years this morning after feverish last-minute negotiations faltered over the transportation authority's demands for concessions on pension and health benefits for future employees.

I listened to 1010 WINS on my drive in from Holliston this morning, and it was an ugly scene. You can read some of their listeners' commuting experiences.

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December 19, 2005

Stay home
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 8:03 AM

The Boston Globe today covers a story on "presenteeism," better known as the act of going to work while sick.

Health problems, from cancer diagnoses to backaches to the flu, result in $225 billion in lost work time annually in the United States. And most of that -- 71 percent -- can be traced to workers who showed up feeling punk, largely because of respiratory and gastrointestinal bugs.

This estimate is actually about $75 billion higher than one made last year in a BostonWorks article. So, presenteeism isn't just rampant in the workplace -- it's spreading.

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December 16, 2005

Student Center
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 7:43 AM

BostonWorks launched Student Center this week, a section specifically designed for college seniors and recent grads looking for jobs. We've loaded the page up with entry-level job searches, internship listings, job advice, photo galleries, and message boards. So check it out!

Also, employers can post internships for free.

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December 15, 2005

There's still time this year
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:24 PM

For those of you that are still out there pounding the (now frozen) pavement, do not lose heart. As this insightful article from Career Journal, "A Recruiter's View: Five Myths About Holiday Job Hunting," informs us, hiring does take place right into December and the holiday period.

Here's just the first response to the first myth:

Myth No.1: "Nobody hires in December"
- - - - -
Many companies must spend the money in their budgets before the end of the year. Hiring "heats up in December because hiring managers are trying to reach deadlines to use budgets," says Susie Basanda, principal of Basanda Consulting, a recruitment management company in Ventura County, Calif.

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December 13, 2005

Can you share power?
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 5:58 PM

By now, everybody in New England knows that the Boston Red Sox filled the void left by Theo Epstein in naming Ben Cherington and Jed Hoyer as co-general managers of the team. Although the decision may give some Red Sox fans worried about who was controlling the team closure, it brings up another issue -- can you share power in a position this important?

Co-CEOs and Co-GMs are rare in the business world, and the last baseball organization to try the co-GM thing -- the Baltimore Orioles, with Mike Flanagan and Jim Beattie -- ended the experiment this year by firing Beattie and naming Flanagan executive vice president of baseball operations. Are the Sox setting themselves up for an inevitable power struggle by giving two people claim to the title of head of baseball operations?

Actually, according to this Harvard Business School study, the head of a company should rarely, if ever, autocratically wield power, and must instead rely on the well-reasoned decisions of intelligent subordinates. A more thorough break down from the report:

"...it is rarely a good idea to unilaterally overrule a thoughtful decision that has cleared several other organizational hurdles. Indeed, a key indicator the CEO subsequently used to judge the health of the company's management processes was how enthusiastically he could approve the decisions that came his way. The need to overrule something is a sure sign of a broader organizational failure."

So maybe newbies Cherington and Hoyer just need to sit back and watch the success roll in after all.

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Business travel about to become even more of a hassle
Posted by Jason Butler at 6:55 AM

I'm not much of a road warrior, but I still end up traveling about once a month on business. I really hope the New York Times Company doesn't feel the need to install one of the newly popular pre-travel audit programs.

Pre-trip audits are beginning to catch on in corporate America. Unlike post-trip auditing tools, they can save companies money by spotting unauthorized spending before the employee hits the road. ...

"I was told that I couldn't stay at the Waldorf and that my best option was to get a room in New Jersey," [Visa VP] Mr. Chu recalled. "But that didn't make sense." Instead of a short walk from the Waldorf to the industry conference he planned to attend at the nearby Grand Hyatt, it meant a commute across the Hudson. In the end, he stayed with a college friend in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan and rode a cab to the conference.

This is insane. Visa trusts Mr. Chu to run a multi-million dollar business, but doesn't trust him to spend wisely while traveling? At his equivalent-hourly-rate, the time he spent dealing with this aggravation cost far more than the room itself. Penny wise, pound foolish.

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Job results in RSS
Posted by Jason Butler at 6:46 AM

Fun little early holiday present for us all: you can now get your job search results in RSS. Do any search on BostonWorks and save the results as a feed.

Happy hunting!

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December 12, 2005

Do yourself a favor
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:57 AM

. . . and read the latest column from BostonWorks Hire Authority Elaine Varelas. Why? Well, it might just be a career-saving move.

It's that time of year, the holidays, when everyone stands a chance of making a real fool of him or herself in the office, or worse, even tanking their careers. Fortunately, we have Varelas' well-timed words of wisdom to help us out.

Here's a sample tip:

Know Your Limit - Having a glass of champagne at the office party is fine, just don't end up passed out on the bathroom floor. There's a reason why there's a spike in firings near the holidays. It's all about the office party.

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December 9, 2005

Fleeing the scene of the job
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 11:23 AM

New Bedford's seaside economy took a minor hit this week as an immigration search led to the arrest of eight workers at the AML International fish processing plant and scared away many others. According to the Globe:

"After the arrests, cellphones all over the waterfront started ringing, and fish cutters and packers from Central America, who make up the bulk of the workforce at the city's fish processing plants, fled the squat seafood warehouses."

Since illegal immigration is such a "hot button" topic, some politicians may call for more such raids. However, this could adversely affect economies that rely on heavily on immigrant workers, such as New Bedford's. More from the article:

"The fish processing industry in New Bedford has become increasingly dependent on immigrant labor, particularly on young men from Guatemala. At least 3,000 Guatemalans, most of them undocumented, work in the plants, cleaning, cutting, and packing seafood...'If they are not there, the industry will die,' Juillard said." [Louis Juillard is the owner of AML, the packaging plant the feds raided.]

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Business is booming for background checkers
Posted by at 6:26 AM

Background screening is a $3 billion industry in the United States, so if you're a finalist for a job, don't be surprised if your prospective employer asks you to sign a consent form giving them the okay to investigate your background. CSmonitor.com reports on the type of information employers can find out about you and also raises questions about the screening companies themselves. Who checks their research and what happens if their findings are incorrect?

As the background-checking industry continues to grow, who screens the screeners? While laws concerning background checks vary from state to state, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act sets the minimum standard. Under the law, employers must seek the written consent of applicants prior to the screening. And before an employer can reject a potential employee based on his or her background check, the applicant has the right to receive, review, and dispute the findings.

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December 6, 2005

Look out for the 4th
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 2:44 PM

A little nugget buried in this week's BostonWorks notes that the fourth quarter of the fiscal year tends to be layoff heavy. New Year's resolution? Work on resume.

Also, not to brazenly plug BostonWorks, but check out this piece (with photo gallery) featuring a Cambridge lawyer who's about to turn 102. Apparently, he's a mean card shark.

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Bush touts economic policies in job resurgence
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 2:44 PM

President George W. Bush on Monday cited last month's 215,000 new jobs as proof that his economic policies work. The job resurgence not only gives the president a political victory, but also marks an impressive rebound from the chaos of Hurricane Katrina. As our sister paper, The New York Times, puts it:

Friday's announcement by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was heartening in the sense that the number of new jobs was considerably higher than the 150,000 or so needed each month to keep up with population growth. (Some of the November surge was attributed to the rebound from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.)

Cue up the music for "The Star Spangled Banner"...

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Want to help design this site?
Posted by Jason Butler at 2:06 PM

We're hiring a designer. Could it be you? Here's the job description:

Ever want to transform a Web 1.0 company that makes money into a Web 2.0 company that makes money? Ever want to help people find jobs? Wish you could improve this very site? Here's the opportunity. Boston.com is redesigning its BostonWorks site, and we need an outstanding interactive designer to help us dominate the Boston recruitment marketplace.

Strange things are afoot in the recruitment space. Monster.com is strong; Yahoo HotJobs keeps getting better; CareerBuilder does great things with its guided search; vertical search engines like SimplyHired and corporate-cousin Indeed are shaking up the industry business model. Many are experimenting with different ways of connecting job-seekers to employers, but no one has really nailed it yet. Chaos reigns.

But, in chaos lies opportunity, and Boston.com is well-placed to stake its claim as the powerhouse in the market. We have the most job listings in Boston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom and the ability to localize and customize in a way our friendly national competitors can't touch.

We need someone who can think through an interactive design that will win, someone who can design a site so useful that job-seekers love it, employers will give us lots of money to be on it, a site that's just so damn good it'll shoot onto del.icio.us/popular when it launches.

We have a strong position to build from. We have the rest of the team on board. You are the final piece.

So, who are you?

You love the web and its endless possibilities. You play around with websites for fun. You've likely already done your own Google Maps hack, just to see what it could do. You have your own domain to show off your work. You don't use a Hotmail address.

You like the idea of being able to help tens of millions of monthly visitors, help regular folks trying to improve their lives.

You were writing XHTML before it was all the rage. You know the ins and outs of box-model hacks. You curse IE, but make it work.

You have a strong presentation and design skills as well as familiarity with web usability. You know your way around Photoshop and know how to translate your designs to the web. You have an eye for design and a respect for the information you are trying to communicate. You can wrangle a roomful of opinions into a thoughtful, accessible and dazzling design. When you spill your coffee, your first thought is "command Z."

You can spell. You write emails in full sentences with proper capitalization.

You believe in the power of the media (Boston.com, The Boston Globe, The New York Times) to improve our community.

You believe the Standells when they sing "Boston, you're my home."

You believe in doing right by the job-seeker.

You know there's more than one way to do it.

So, what's the job?

You'll start by designing the BostonWorks.com website. The building blocks are all here, scattered on the living-room rug. You get to put the design the building and help put the blocks together. You'll handle the visual design (with help from the rest of the design department) and plan the interactive design (with help from our developers and product people). You'll get your hands dirty (in a good way).

After launch, you'll keep working on BostonWorks, but we'll also find you more worlds to conquer. Recruitment is only one of our many sections.

So, is this right for you?

Can you design an application that does right by the job-seekers and the employers? Can you design in a way that accentuates our unique strengths and differentiates us in the marketplace?

Can you do it in a collaborative atmosphere?

If you're really interested, we'd love a thoughtful letter telling us why. Please write us a note, along with your resume and (most importantly) links to interesting things you've done. We run a job board, so believe us when we say we can smell boilerplate a mile away -- it's worth a few minutes to think it through :-)

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CLM*
Posted by Jason Butler at 1:32 PM

From the "some things are funnier when the happen to other people" file: I got drunk and asked my boss out.

I work as a recruiter for a third-party agency. I recently attended a company sales meeting, where I had a few too many drinks. While somewhat intoxicated, I asked my boss out on a date. She said no, and things haven't been the same at work since.

(via the Monster Blog)

* CLM, of course, is shorthand for "Career-limiting Move."

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Top execs surveyed on 2006 hiring outlook
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:40 AM

From Boston.com TV partner New England Cable News (NECN), a new survey of executives from NFI Research in New Hampshire shows optimism about the hiring outlook for 2006. Check out this video clip of R.D. Sahl with NFI's Chuck Martin. (Playing time: 3:41) I think you'll like what you see and hear.

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Loving the job you hate
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:48 AM

If you wake up every morning, drag yourself out of bed, and grumble all the way into work about your job, you're not alone. As Forbes.com reports, the condition is so endemic that about 1 million people call in sick every day. That's not good.

But take heart. You can do something about it. Start by reading these ten tips to make your worklife better. Here's a sample to get you going:

The question is simple: How do you make things better in a job that doesn't rouse your interest when the alarm clock goes off? [Author Jane] Boucher offers ten tips:

1. Communicate. Let the boss know your achievements and problems. Don't boast and don't gripe. Create a sense of teamwork. Define the problem at hand and offer ways to solve it.

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The dumbest project manager in the world
Posted by Jason Butler at 7:04 AM

In my illustrious decade+ of project management, I've done some dumb things. Brick-dumb. Asinine, even. At least I've never been quite as bad as the project manager described in the highly entertaining dumbest project manager in the world.

Baltar asked me how long it would take to implement this feature (or program or whatever it was).

I thought about it for a few seconds, then said it would take eights weeks.

Baltar said ``Ah, no. We need it in two weeks.''

I shrugged.

Baltar asked if I could do it in six weeks. I thought for a few seconds & then, with overflowing reluctance, said ``Maaaaaybeeee''.

Without missing a beet, Baltar said ``Then we'll split the difference & call it four weeks.'' The meeting was over.

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December 4, 2005

Extreme sports the new golf?
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:44 PM

The New York Times writes about "Wheels and Deals in Silicon Alley" where high powered VC and tech types are testing their physical limits and getting a little business done.

But the sweat and strain are not just about fitness or blowing off steam, Mr. Komisar said. Cycling, he explained, plays the same role in his professional circle today as squash did when he started out in business as a lawyer in Boston in the early 1980's: as both a social outlet and a business opportunity for professionals to make contacts, get face time with the boss and even sign off on deals. Networking in a crash helmet, in other words.

"You'll see some of the most influential people in the valley out there on bikes on the weekends," Mr. Komisar said. "There's lots of playful competition, lots of joshing."

"Cycling," he added, "is the new golf."

And it's not just the boys who are participating.

Traditionally the country club golf course or the exclusive urban racquet club has functioned as a locus for the old boy networks that kept a firm's business humming. In the forward-looking Bay Area, however, a region that places a high premium on egalitarian, meritocratic principles, no shortage of women have made their mark in the extreme-sports culture.

Hey ladies, maybe it's time to leave the golf to the boys and take up something more girl-friendly. Maybe rock-climbing? Kayaking? Triathalons?

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