March 30, 2006

April 15th is right around the corner...
Posted by at 2:21 PM

And if you're looking for some last-minute tax advice, take a look at this article by the Tax Mama herself, Eva Rosenberg.

Your Business Expenses Cost Too Much - When your company just provides a monthly allowance without having you turn in expense reports, those amounts are often added to your wages. You're meant to report your car and business expenses on Form 2106. Using Form 2106, you actually lose the benefit of many of those deductions.

Convince your employer to put you on an 'accountable plan' instead. You'll have to submit monthly expense reports. The benefits are worth the effort:
You wouldn't lose 50% of business meals expenses.
When reporting employee business expenses, 2% of your AGI ('adjusted gross income' is the last line on page 1 of your Form 1040) is subtracted from your total expenses. With wages of only $30,000, you lose $600. Earning $100,000 - that's a whopping $2,000.
If you don't own a home, you probably wouldn't itemize at all if not for the business expenses. You're losing the benefit of your standard deduction worth $5,000 if you're single; $7,000 head of household; $10,000 married.
This will reduce your AGI, and keep you out of the alternative minimum taxes, increase your tax credits, and more.

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A cautionary tale for job seekers
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:40 AM

Attention, job seekers: blogging can be hazardous to your professional health.

So reports the Globe today in relating the story of a job seeker whose potential employer checked out her blog and chose not to hire her:

On a routine check of her server logs, [job seeker Lis Riba] found that somebody from the nonprofit's site read her blog after her interview. "I really believe I lost that job offer because of careless blogging," said Riba, 35, of Melrose. "It was something I hadn't considered, and it taught me a lesson about discretion."

Riba, who now designs and writes software requirements for a Massachusetts company, hasn't stopped blogging, but she's developed a personal blogging policy, with rules such as not identifying her employer in online postings, not identifying colleagues, and not revealing proprietary information.

It's not just bloggers who may be at risk. College kids splashing personal information and photos across sites such as Facebook and MySpace may also be open to scrutiny by potential employers:

Employers hoping to gain insight into the character and personalities of job applicants are increasingly likely to peruse blogs, Google, and social sites such as MySpace.com and Friendster for clues about the applicants' likes, dislikes, and habits.
- - - - -
Aware of the trend, college counselors are also advising students to watch what they say on social websites or post in blogs. The message: A suggestive photo, an obscene comment, or unsavory postings about one's private life could nix a job offer.

Probably the best policy is to be discrete. Have fun and be yourself. But also realize that what's out on the web is there for the world to see, and it represents you just as much as an in-person interview or resume does. It's all part of your personal, and professional, reputation, so think twice before you put it - whatever "it" may be - out there for all to see.

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March 27, 2006

One-stop career centers in danger?
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:07 AM

The government-backed, community-based one-stop career centers, which provide critical grass roots career management assistance for tens if not hundreds of thousands of workers nationwide, may be in jeopardy:

. . .The future of those centers is in some doubt. As part of its fiscal year 2007 budget, the Bush administration is proposing $3.4 billion for "career advancement accounts." The initiative would allocate $3,000 in federal training funds directly to workers each year for two years, potentially obviating their need to use one-stop centers.

Read the piece from Workforce Management magazine online.

You can also visit the websites for several one-step centers in the Greater Boston area and the commonwealth. Check out the Mass. Department of Workforce Development for a comprehensive listing of such centers, or go directly to the Boston Career Link for downtown Boston services or to The Career Place, Woburn, for the Metro North area.

(A tip of the hat to Elaine Sullivan of Lee Hecht Harrison for the find.)

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March 22, 2006

Journalism internship in the wild
Posted by Jason Butler at 6:33 AM

Wow, this looks interesting. Nick Kristof, a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, is running a contest to find a journalism student who will travel with him to Africa. Kristof is well known for his coverage of Darfur, among other global hotspots. Here's a quick description:

"I'm looking for a masochist. If your dream trip doesn't involve a five-star hotel in Rome or Bora-Bora, but a bedbug-infested mattress in a malarial jungle as hungry jackals yelp outside - then read on.

I would have loved this when I was in college. Syracuse University (my alma mater) had a travel-abroad program, but it was nothing compared to this type of learning.

(Disclaimer: BostonWorks is part of the New York Times company. But, other than sharing the same stock-ticker symbol, we don't have much to do with the Times' editorial staff. So, I can't help you win. Sorry.)

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March 20, 2006

The truth about interviewing
Posted by Jason Butler at 1:15 PM

Just because you know how to program doesn't mean you're qualified for a software engineering position, any more than training your dog to sit won't qualify you to replace a lion-tamer.

Putting together a pretty Ruby on Rails site is no small feat. Learning to program is no small feat. Many people try and fail to get even that far. But it's 3- to 5-ball juggling, and it just doesn't cut it for the Cirque du Soleils and private hospitals of the software industry. I'm sure you want to be a racecar driver, a hang-gliding instructor, a corporate lawyer, a movie sound editor, a rocket scientist. But you know you don't have the requisite training or experience. Why do you think knowing a little (or even a lot) about programming automatically qualifies you to get hired at Microsoft?

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Where did all the women lawyers go?
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:49 AM

The New York Times takes a look at why women are graduating law schools in equal numbers to the men, yet the women are still not making it into the partnership:

Although the nation's law schools for years have been graduating classes that are almost evenly split between men and women, and although firms are absorbing new associates in numbers that largely reflect that balance, something unusual happens to most women after they begin to climb into the upper tiers of law firms. They disappear.

According to the National Association for Law Placement, a trade group that provides career counseling to lawyers and law students, only about 17 percent of the partners at major law firms nationwide were women in 2005, a figure that has risen only slightly since 1995, when about 13 percent of partners were women.

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March 18, 2006

Another side of the "opt out" story
Posted by Diane Danielson at 7:32 PM

The New York Times finally prints an article that doesn't promote the media myth that all women are opting out.

HIGHLY educated women are getting a bum rap from the press. There has recently been a spate of news and opinion articles telling us that these women, especially graduates of the best universities and professional schools, are "opting out" in record numbers, choosing the comforts of home and family over careers.

And because there are now 1.33 women graduating from college for every man, the best and brightest women will either have to "marry down" or, more likely, we are told, remain single. Taken together, highly educated women will have either family or career. Half of it all, rather than "having it all."

But the facts speak loudly and clearly against such suppositions. Women who graduated 25 years ago from the nation's top colleges did not "opt out" in large numbers, and today's graduates aren't likely to do so either.

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March 17, 2006

This is the year
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 8:04 AM

No, not the year for your team to win the NCAA's (sorry, Jason, about the Orangemen).

This is the year that the job market for college grads has really heated up, to the point where some seniors are holding multiple offers - and it's only March:

Job prospects for the class of 2006 are expected to increase by 14.5 percent over last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a professional group of about 1,000 corporate recruiters and career counselors at 2,000 campuses that forecasts hiring trends. This graduating class will garner higher starting salaries, too, according to the association, which polled 256 of its corporate members.

Employers' growing confidence in the US economy coupled with a need for skilled workers is expected to make members of the class of 2006 the hottest recruits in years.

For those of you still in the hunt, check out the listings on BostonWorks' Student Center. As of today, there are over 450 entry-level job openings posted.

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March 16, 2006

How to best communicate with a high-performer boss
Posted by at 5:09 PM

Are you working for someone whose high expectations have you running in circles? (And, no, we're not talking about the boss in "The Office." He's in a class of his own.) This week's WorldWit newsletter offers some useful pointers.

Tip #1: Get down to business when communicating with your high-maintenance high-performer boss.

When a high-maintenance high-performer boss wants to chitchat, he’ll let you know. Watch for clues before assuming he’s in the mood to talk about anything other than the project at hand.

This boss’s sense of urgency and drive can be difficult to work with, especially if you’re someone who tends to get caught up in the analytical side of things or you don’t like change. If you think the analytical work you’re doing is important, communicate to your boss what the benefit and result will be. Always deliver your project on time because a high-maintenance high-performer boss does not want to be slowed down by missed deadlines.

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March 15, 2006

"Beware the Ides of March"
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:27 AM

How many of us remember this line from our high school reading of Shakespeare's tragedy, Julius Caesar? Today, March 15, marks the Ides, and these words were the seer's warning to Caesar to be wary on that day which, in 44 BC, was to be his last.

Being a Roman Emperor was a hazardous job indeed. But through self-aggrandizement, Caesar had perhaps already assured his own demise:

The Romans had no love for kings. According to legend, they expelled their last one in 509 B.C. While Caesar had made pointed and public displays of turning down offers of kingship, he showed no reluctance to accept the office of "dictator for life" in February 44 B.C. According to [assistant professor of classics at Georgetown University, Josiah] Osgood, this action may have sealed his fate in the minds of his enemies. "We can see [now] that that was enough to get him killed," Osgood said.

Lessons for the modern workplace? I will let you ponder, friends and countrymen, the meanings within.

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March 13, 2006

Proudly stands my alma mater on her hilltop high
Posted by Jason Butler at 2:32 PM

It's that time of year again, time to analyze the brackets and tune in online to the opening rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament. As always when watching basketball during work hours, Alt-tab is your friend. When you hear the boss coming, make sure to flip your screen over to the TPS reports. Your boss will suspect nothing.

Consultants will say that office pools drain productivity, but they're just sad to see us enjoying ourselves.

U.S. businesses are poised to lose as much as $3.8 billion in worker productivity during the next three weeks, as employees enter office pools, track their picks and otherwise watch and gab about games that culminate with the NCAA basketball championship April 3 in Indianapolis.

And yes, Syracuse got robbed, only getting a #4 seed. They'll prove everyone wrong when they win the national championship. And I, a proud member of the class of 1994, will lord it over all my co-workers for weeks to come.

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The deadly sins of conference calls
Posted by Jason Butler at 2:21 PM

Conference calls ruin my days. Endless "What?"s, clacking keyboards, side conversations and the lure of incoming emails and instant messages all conspire against me when I'm trying to remain engaged with the call. At least I'm not alone -- Worthwhile chronicles the deadly sins of conference calls.

Thou shalt not:

1) Read unrelated internet sites while listening. Yes, you may be a little bored and daydreamy, but this makes the call more pointless and may well get you busted when someone breaks in to ask what you thought of the last 20-minute soliloquy. If thou art really so bored, take thee some good notes.

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March 10, 2006

Glass ceiling or sticky floor?
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:55 AM

Rebecca Shambaugh of www.shambaughleadership.com raises the question of whether there are certain things holding women back rather than just someone keeping them down in a recentWashington Business Journal article.

Social barriers still exist. But when I see women capable of C-suite leadership mired in middle management, I don't look toward a glass ceiling. Instead, I look toward a sticky floor.

In fact, our most useful insights may come from exploring what keeps us stuck: our outmoded, self-defeating and, let's face it, unconscious behaviors. I am not saying this to discount women.

Quite the opposite -- I say this because I want women to reap the professional and financial rewards they have earned. I believe we are stuck because of habits we learned years ago.

I'll address more sticky floor issues in future columns, but here's one example. Women are generally good at building friendships that are nurturing and supportive. But those relationships will not leverage a workplace promotion. Instead, women need to develop contacts with people outside their circle.

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March 9, 2006

More on the Mommy Wars
Posted by Diane Danielson at 10:11 AM

BusinessWeek had the latest on the "Mommy Wars." Click here to read the extended version on their new parenting blog.

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Secrets of how some smart people work
Posted by Jason Butler at 6:17 AM

Fortune has a series of interviews asking high achievers how they get things done.

The challenge is to continue to do it well, when the responsibilities and complexities keep increasing. One common answer is to get up early -- real early. Note to MBA students: If you can't rise at dawn, you might just reconsider your goal of making it as a CEO.

I suppose that one makes me look good. I'm up before five each day, at my desk before seven. Of course, that may have more to do with a sleepless infant than my corner-office aspirations, but I'll take credit for it anyway.

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March 8, 2006

There's the ticket
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 2:54 PM

If you're looking for a job in Boston, you may want to consider the "airport effect."

What is that, you say? A new study, just out from the Massachusetts Port Authority and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, makes an emphatic case for the significance of Boston's Logan Airport to the region's economy:

. . .[A] new study being released today estimates that Logan supports, directly and indirectly, more than 82,000 jobs and $7.6 billion worth of annual economic activity. That's equivalent to one in every seven jobs in Boston.

The study. . .found that the airport and other Massport waterfront and shipping facilities employed 18,462 people as of 2004, the most recent data available. That's slightly more people than worked at the four biggest high-tech employers in Greater Boston, or at all 20 of the area's top 20 biotechnology companies, according to the study.

Chamber president Paul Guzzi said "In terms of economic impacts, if anything, this [study] is conservative."

And with the fall of the Great Wall of Boston (aka the Central Artery) and the completion of the Big Dig, the pending development of the Rose Kennedy Greenway through the heart of downtown, the rejoining of the North End with the rest of the city, and the continuing development of the Seaport District, including the opening of the new Convention and Exhibition Center, the city will undoubtedly experience a renewed influx of tourism dollars.

Did anyone say hospitality industry? Travel and tourism, here we come!

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March 6, 2006

Alliance for an experienced workforce
Posted by at 10:38 AM

Hey, baby boomers, the talk about the impending talent shortage is true. Within the next four years, nearly a third of all U.S. workers will be over the age of 50, creating a potential gap of business-tech and vertical industry skills, according to a recent article from Information Week. Here's an organization that's tackling the issue.

Nearly two dozen industry associations, ranging from technology to trucking organizations, have bonded together to create a new Alliance for an Experienced Workforce, a collaborative effort aimed at getting employers to develop strategies of keeping aging American workers viable in the workplace.

"The older worker brings a benefit of knowing how things are done at a company and in an industry, and why," says John Venator, president and CEO of the Computing Technology Industry Association, a member of the new Alliance. CompTIA is encouraging employers to offer older IT workers programs, such as skills certification and training opportunities, to help those pros acquire new tech skills that can complement their decades of industry and business experience, boosting their workforce relevance in the years to come.

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Most Greater Boston job listings, period
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:04 AM

Last week we announced that we are now carrying job listings from Indeed.com. This means that job seekers can search more Greater Boston job listings at BostonWorks - currently over 100,000 openings - than anywhere on the web. The link to Indeed listings is provided at the end of the BostonWorks search results.

Indeed, in which BostonWorks and the Globe's parent company, the New York Times, owns a minority share, is an aggregator of job listings from around the web, including national job boards such as Monster, Career Builder, and Hot Jobs and corporate employment sites, association sites, and others. Read Indeed's blog entry about the partnership.

So next time someone says there aren't any jobs around, steer them to BostonWorks.com. Searching and sorting 100,000 listings should keep them busy for a little bit.

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March 3, 2006

Boston's 10 wealthiest people
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:24 AM

Something to aim for, perhaps? See what hard work - and the right vision - can get you. Check out this photo gallery of Boston's richest individuals. Hint: the first two on the list have the same last name (all right, sometimes it isn't just about hard work).

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March 1, 2006

A year abroad as a career move
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 12:22 PM

A couple of decades ago, when I first got out of college, I spent a year in France. Parents and peers looked askance at this distinctly off-the-treadmill move. "Get a job!" was oft intoned in the words of the then popular movie The Graduate. I was Benjamin Braddock redux.

But my college had not offered a study abroad program, or any kind of foreign study option, and I was determined to go overseas and immerse myself in a foreign culture and language. I came back the following year and got a job, but I have never regretted the year abroad. In fact, it still stands out as one of the most memorable - and formative - years of my life.

So it was with some measure of interest that I read this piece from The New York Times attesting to the growing popularity of a year abroad after college and its potentially positive impact on one's career:

According to one estimate, 35,000 young Americans realize that working abroad, whether teaching, bartending, taking care of children, typing or picking grapes, has moved well beyond just trust-fund children. Far from being career suicide, it can actually provide a professional boost.

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