April 29, 2006

Resume padders: they're onto you
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:37 AM

You know the old maxim "You don't get a second chance to make a first impression?" Never were truer words spoken, especially in the professional realm.

Translation: don't lie on your resume. Not even the least little bit. Once you do, you're sunk. And, sadly, because more and more job seekers are stretching the truth to stay ahead of the competition, more and more companies are taking action:

Employers' fears have sparked a boom in the background-screening industry. About 700 firms exist now, compared to only a handful 10 years ago. Analysts say revenues for the industry are growing 7% to 10% a year. Though exhaustive checks on CEO-level individuals can cost $10,000 or more, some companies offer basic vetting for as little as $10. HireRight of Irvine, Calif., screens 1 million résumés a year and says business has grown tenfold over the past five years: employers have grown so watchful, says David Nachman, the company's head of marketing and business development, that they now check the résumés of temporary staff and local hires in their offices overseas.

Get the picture? If you're still not convinced, read the rest of the article, "Getting wise to lies," from this week's TIME magazine.

Then think twice each time you write that resume. If you can't speak truthfully in an interview to every word and number in the document, then it shouldn't be in there. Period.

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April 27, 2006

Handling the dingbat
Posted by Diane Danielson at 11:08 AM

O.k., even I couldn't improve on that title. Here's an article from Forbes that looks at conflict in the workplace.

There's always some dingbat at work who will drive you nuts.

How you handle the situation says a lot about you--and your future prospects with the company.

"Some people allow a conflict to grow by putting the blame on others," says Florence M. Stone, editorial director at the American Management Association in New York and author of Coaching, Counseling & Mentoring: How to Choose & Use the Right Tool to Boost Employee Performance. "Instead of accepting that there's a conflict, some say, 'What's the problem?,' which is like saying, 'Whatever it is, it's your problem--not mine.' "

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April 26, 2006

Top ten national job sites
Posted by at 5:26 PM

Despite BostonWorks.com's leadership in the Greater Boston market - consistently the most jobs listed and best power rankings (page views per visit), big name-brand boards also play a role in our market. It will come as no surprise that Monster still holds the top spot on a national level, but there are a few other sites according to the Internet Biz Bugler that are gaining ground. Of particular interest are aggregators like Simplyhired.com and Indeed.com. In fact, the Boston Globe is a player in the aggregator space as its parent firm, the New York Times, has a minority stake in Indeed.com. All Bostonworks.com job listings carry a link to Indeed. Click here for an example.

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Networking at parties, the gym, on a date, and even in the restroom
Posted by Diane Danielson at 1:11 PM

The Washington Post ran this tidbit on a recent DowntownWomensClub.com survey about how women are networking on the go, and even when they "have to go!"

RESTROOM NETWORKING?: Do you ever have the feeling that the great business ritual of networking is slowly creeping into every facet of life? A January poll of 1,000 women suggests that it is.

A party remained the most popular schmoozing venue, cited by 81 percent. That was followed by travel (plane, train or bus) by 53 percent, and the gym, by 41 percent. But some other spots might surprise you.

More than a third, 36 percent, said they have talked business in the ladies room, and more than 10 percent said they had done so while on a date. One woman even did her networking while having surgery.

"When do you get three doctors together?" she quipped.

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April 25, 2006

The sloooooow road to partnership for female attorneys
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:38 AM

The Boston Business Journal once again spotlights the slow track for female attorneys to become partners.

As female law school enrollments edge close to the 50 percent mark -- up from 20 percent in 1974 and 40 percent in 1985, according to the American Bar Association -- Boston's largest firms report female partnership percentages in the mid-teens to the 25 percent range. A number of firms are sufficiently worried about attrition in the ranks of up-and-coming females to change policies and add support systems in an effort to keep them on the partner track.

Firms are testing everything from business development training classes to retreats for female lawyers to policies that explicitly sanction partnership tracks for lawyers on a part-time and flex-time schedules. Such programs are working, but experts say the legal profession needs to do more to catch up to its accounting and consulting peers.

Interesting rehash of flextime and reduced hours debate, but no mention of the fact that if you bring in clients and are a real rainmaker, it doesn't matter how little you work. So, ladies, why not get out there and make it rain?

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April 24, 2006

It's not your grandfather's trade school
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 4:56 PM

As one who is footing the bill for one four-year liberal arts education at the moment with another to come, the prospect of vocational education at the secondary level - with its earlier focus, definable skill set, and far more immediate payback - is increasingly appealing.

Obviously others across the Commonwealth agree as vocational education enrollments have jumped 21 percent in the last 11 years. Something's going on here.

So it is with some interest that I read this AP article on the evolution of the trade school:

The smell of sawdust from carpentry classes still wafts down the hall at Upper Cape Tech and other technical high schools across the country. But a new crop of course work -- biotechnology, DNA forensics, robotics, golf course management, aquaculture -- has enlivened traditional vocational shops.

The offerings have helped fuel an apparent surge in vocational enrollment across the country in the last five years. The swell in traditional and newfangled shop classes comes, however, at a time when federal funding for the programs is again in danger.

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April 21, 2006

Work-life balance: what future workers think
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:59 AM

OK, I'll get the disclaimer out of the way first, that this is an indirect plug for my alma mater. But the newsworthy item of note for Job Blog readers is that the article in question provides some interesting insights into the attitudes of the future workforce.

A current Princeton University senior's thesis - a major capstone research project that is a graduation requirement - reports the results of a survey of her classmates on work-life balance issues. Specifically, Amy Sennett asked her fellow seniors to envision themselves in the workplace several years down the line:

Sennett found that most students understood issues of work-life balance to be important, if not currently pressing. “A lot of the women felt realistic about what the challenges would be, and saw childrearing as their primary responsibility,” she said, noting that there was no indication that they would explicitly opt to leave the workplace permanently for the domestic setting.

She did find a significant difference between the responses of women and men. Her data show that 62 percent of women and only 33 percent of men foresaw a conflict between career and family plans. In dealing with this conflict, 57 percent of women said they would work part time in order to raise children, in contrast to 13 percent of men. Women also seemed intent on having a career early and building a resume before leaving for childcare and then returning to work later on. For men, this was not an issue.

Read the full piece from the university's publication, the Princeton Weekly Bulletin.

For further insight into the minds and habits of this Millennial generation in the workplace, see Maureen Crawford's post today over in BostonWorks' HR Blog.

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April 20, 2006

Good news for MBAs
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:13 PM

As BostonWorks reported in the Globe this past Sunday, things are looking good for newly minted MBA's this spring:

The job market for graduates with master's degrees in business administration is strengthening rapidly after several sluggish years, according to a survey of corporate recruiters by the Graduate Management Admission Council.

"Everything is definitely better than last year," says David Wilson, the council's president and chief executive. "Bottom line is, every way you look at it, the boom is back on the MBA."

Read the full piece.

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April 16, 2006

Why blogging may be good for your career
Posted by Diane Danielson at 11:30 AM

We've all heard the horror stories of people getting fired for blogs. But what if you blogged in a way that might be good for your career? Today's Bostonworks section of the Globe features a story about how blogging can be a competitive advantage. Some reasons cited include: creating a network; controlling your reputation on the web; and helping to market and promote your business.

Employers regularly Google prospective employees to learn more about them. Blogging gives you a way to control what employers see, because Google's system works in such a way that blogs that are heavily networked with others come up high in Google searches.

So have you ego-googled lately? Do you know whether you "give good Google or not?" You might want to check and then think about what blogging might do for you. Don't have enough time to blog? There's groups like www.gather.com where you can post on occasion without having to maintain a daily blog. But beware the rants and ravings as they may come back to bite you! And please, do be witty! The world can always use more wit!

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April 14, 2006

Screensucking, EMV, and logonorrhea
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:36 AM

What do you think: is daily life more, or less, hectic these days? What about life on the job, with its laptops, cellphones, Blackberries, IM, WiFi, and the like, making us on the go and in touch 24/7/365?

That's what I thought you'd say. Now, from the man who brought us the term Adult A.D.D. (aka, adult attention deficit disorder), Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, comes a book about what he sees as a new trend. In "CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone A.D.D." (Ballantine Books, 2006), Hallowell argues that the frenzy of the wired (and wireless) world is making us all display the symptoms of A.D.D., and he gives names to the new phenomena.

Here's a sample:

EMV, or E-Mail Voice. This, Dr. Hallowell writes, is "the unearthly tone a person's voice takes on when he is reading e-mail while talking to you on the telephone." Researchers at M.I.T., he tells us, have developed a program that can electronically measure how engaged people are in a conversation, giving scientific certainty to your suspicion that you are not being listened to.

To learn about screensucking, logonorrhea, and other contemporary afflictions, read the piece from BostonWorks' sister publication in New York, The New York Times Job Market.

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April 11, 2006

It's Opening Day, and hope springs eternal
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 12:07 PM

You can't beat it. Opening Day at Fenway Park, a gorgeous early spring day, the Sox are in first place, the Yankees in last, and hope is in the air once again.

That goes for you job seekers, too. Take a page from the Red Sox: new year, new look, new faces. Organizations are constantly looking to improve their performance, to stay competitive, to find the best talent they can. And that's good news for you.

Know yourself. Get your resume in order. Post it on BostonWorks.com. Research the employers you think will respond to what you have to offer, your talent, your experience. Keep at it, and the results will come.

Meanwhile, job search or not, here is unofficial dispensation to keep one eye on the game so you too can be inspired by new talent out to prove what it can do. Just like you.

PS A note to my friends in Toronto: sorry, I know you're supposed to be a threat this year, but you're going down today.

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Scratching the surface: tips for researching a company prior to the interview
Posted by at 11:25 AM

Most job seekers know the value of exploring a company's web site prior to an interview, but here are some additional research methods from Liz Ryan that you might want to try next time you're getting ready for that all-important interview.

Troll the groups.

Check out the Yahoo! Message Boards, the discussion groups at Topica.com and Yahoo! Groups. There may be no mention of the company you're interviewing with or there could be tons. That depends on its size, how long it has been around and other factors.

You could learn that all former employees despise the place and are preparing a class-action lawsuit or that its alums have formed a corporate alumni group and have friendly feelings toward the organization even after being downsized. You never know.

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April 5, 2006

Mutiny at the cafe
Posted by Jason Butler at 8:02 AM

Power to the people! Four employees (well, ex-employees) of a Vancouver coffee shop wrote a public resignation note to their former boss, captured by a local blog. Check out the picture.

I discovered a few notes taped to the door. Four employees, sick of slave wage labour and an ungrateful boss, up and left. Walked out, en masse, in the ultimate act of defiance against corporate middle management.

For that one moment, anyone who has ever had a [bad] boss stood and rejoiced. Every one who has worked for minimum wage stood together in defiance. We raise our glass to you.

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