February 28, 2007

Know thyself
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:10 AM

As many of you know, we recently announced our partnership with Monster.com as we move forward to provide the best available job postings, tools, and career advice here in the Greater Boston market.

Here's a glimpse of one cool tool Monster has. It's called JASPER, which stands for "Job Assets & Strengths Profiler." It's an online self-assessment that helps tell you more about yourself as an aid in your job search and career development:

The JASPER test is the new standard in career testing and assessment.

Based on over 60 years of research, this fun and enlightening test will uncover your job strengths and preferences and help you use them to your advantage.

Discover your work and leadership style

Gain confidence in your job related skills

Enhance your ability to work with others

Improve your resume, job search and more.

After you've completed the interactive steps, your results will place you in one of nine different profile types. Are you a Thinker, a Visionary, an Organizer, an Advocate, or one of the other five types?

Check it out here. It's free and you do not need to be a registered Monster user.

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February 26, 2007

A night at the office
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:31 AM

Regular readers of this blog may have seen my post-Super Bowl post on work environments, Peyton Manning's day at the office.

Well, yesterday evening a group of folks had a night at the office. For them, the uniforms bear no numbers. What they don is their showiest dress and best (well, sometimes) behavior as they, too, are performing in front of an estimated 1 billion people worldwide.

Yes, it's the Academy Awards show, and the annual program is another part of the job for the Hollywood and global entertainment elite. Check out the work clothes adopted by some of this year's players (er, attendees).

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Techies, start here
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:46 AM

Each Monday the Globe publishes an update called the "High Tech 25" with info on the top 25 Greater Boston technology firms and how they are performing. The online coverage includes links to company profiles and more. If you're a local IT job seeker, not a bad place to start your company research.

Then, for local tech job listings, start here on BostonWorks.

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February 25, 2007

The Narrows, Part 2
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:23 AM

Following up on my post on Feb. 21 on Sara Davidson's Leap!, you can now read Dan Wakefield's review of the book from today's Globe:

When she looked around with her journalistic eye, she saw that "others are going through similar transitions and that as a group [the baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964] we're being stripped of our relevance, our primacy. We're turning fifty at the rate of one every seven seconds, and the advance guard, the icons who set the tone -- Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Joni Mitchell . . . are well into their sixties or would be if they were alive. We did not plan for this; we did not know that at fifty-five we might have thirty more years of vigorous health, lust, and a desire to contribute and create." She set out to interview "friends and strangers who led me to others who are making their way, experimenting and asking: What's the next part of life about? How do we make the leap?"

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February 21, 2007

Piloting "The Narrows"
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:39 AM

If you are 50 or older, perhaps you have encountered "The Narrows", what author Sara Davidson defines as "the rough passage to the next part of life."

Davidson, best known for her book Loose Change about three women during the 1960's, has researched and written a new book called Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?, published yesterday by Random House.

The book takes a close look at the period of our lives after 50 - often 30 years or more these days - when many feel compelled to turn the page on one chapter of life and head into another. But how do we do that? How does one decide what to do next? And not just for 3 or 6 months, but for 30 years!

In her research, Davidson interviewed luminaries Carly Simon, Tom Hayden, and many other known and unknown names. You can hear the author speak about these interviews, her own passage through The Narrows, and her book on NPR's "On Point" radio program, where she was a featured guest. Segment running time is just over 48 minutes. If you have the time, it's worth it.

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February 20, 2007

Get ahead: Yale on $0 a day
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 3:01 PM

Want to get an Ivy League education without having to negotiate the near-impossible admissions gauntlet or pay those outrageous tuitions?

Well, amazingly, your dream is coming true. As CareerJournal reports, there is an increasing number of institutions of higher learning, MIT and Yale among them, offering their courses for free - albeit virtually:

Following the lead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other highly competitive schools, more institutions are posting online everything from lecture notes to sample tests, and even making audio and video files of actual lectures publicly available. The sites attract anywhere from thousands to more than one million unique visitors each month.
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Yale University. . .has announced it will produce digital videos of undergraduate lecture classes and make them available free to the public. This academic year, it is taping seven classes -- from Introduction to the Old Testament to Fundamentals of Physics -- to be posted online this fall.

At this point, no degree is attached. But who knows what the future might hold.

Learn more.

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February 15, 2007

Monster news from BostonWorks
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 2:19 PM

OK, so I missed Lincoln's birthday and even Valentine's Day, a workplace favorite with chocolate treats and, this year, a nasty storm - the first of the winter - and horrendous commute that kept many at home.

But we've been busy preparing the most important news for BostonWorks readers and users, which came out yesterday when the New York Times, parent organization of the Boston Globe, announced their new partnership with Monster.com in the online jobs space:

The Monster-Times Co. alliance brings together a leading online employment network boasting 25 million unique visitors a month with 19 Times Co. papers with strong positions in their markets. The deal will create co-branded helped-wanted and recruitment sites within the websites of Times Co. papers, including the Globe and The New York Times.

For example, readers of Boston.com, the Globe's online affiliate, will be able to click through to the co-branded site, offering advertising, job listings, and features from both the Globe's BostonWorks and Monster.com. The new sites will begin to appear in March. The print products, such as the Globe's BostonWorks sections, also will be co-branded with Monster, the companies said.

What does this mean for you as a BostonWorks user? You'll get the best of both worlds, the familiar local stories from the Boston Globe and resources on Boston.com, combined with the power and reach of the online recruitment leader, Monster.com.

Got questions? Check out our article with FAQs. If you want more info you can also read The New York Times press release from yesterday announcing the alliance.

And stick around for more news as things get moving over the next several weeks. We expect the transition to Monster technology to happen sometime around May. We'll keep you posted.

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February 12, 2007

Hanging up their blazers
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 12:24 PM

Sister employment site Career Journal, from the Wall Street Journal, reports that the cooling housing market has finally had the expected impact on residential real estate brokers:

The long-awaited shakeout among real-estate agents is finally happening -- much to the relief of those who are sticking with the business and prefer a bit less competition.

When David Lereah, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, addressed the group's convention in New Orleans in November, he got one of the biggest bursts of applause by predicting there would be fewer Realtors around in a year. Mr. Lereah said in an interview that he expects membership in the trade group to decrease by about 6% to 8% from the record of nearly 1.4 million reached in 2006.

So if you were considering moving in that direction career-wise, you may want to reconsider your timing.

Read the entire article.

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Limits to employer background checks?
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:04 AM

The Globe reports today that newly installed Bay State Governor Deval Patrick is revisiting the issue of background checks by employers:

Governor Deval Patrick, returning to one of the more contentious issues of his campaign, has begun quietly putting together a plan to limit employers' access to the criminal records of potential employees.

Aides have been meeting with lawmakers and advocates working to limit the scope of the Criminal Offender Record Information law, which gives many employers broad access to criminal records. Activists argue that many applicants are rejected for jobs based on minor criminal convictions, crimes unrelated to the post, or records that contain errors.
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Patrick has not yet settled on specific legislation, an aide said, but wants to give employers access only to criminal information that is relevant to the job being sought. Under current law, employers approved by the state's Criminal History Records Board can review an applicant's entire record.

Read the whole article here. Then join the conversation on this controversial topic on the Boston.com message board.

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February 8, 2007

You are what you write
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:45 AM

Question: have you ever posted anything on MySpace? FaceBook? YouTube? Or have you ever communicated with a prospective hiring company via e-mail?

Well, my guess is that just about 100% of you would say "yes" to the above. And career management guru Peter Weddle has some advice for you:

A recent survey of human resource professionals found that over one-third have visited social networking sites to look for information about employment candidates. Personal pages and videos posted on MySpace.com, YouTube.com, FaceBook.com and similar sites are now fair game when employers conduct “background checks” on job applicants. With concerns about office security, employee theft, and malicious behavior on the rise, they want to learn as much as they can about the character of a person as well as their capabilities on-the-job.

This assessment, however, is not limited to what can be found on social networking sites. It also encompasses virtually every interaction you have with an organization online. To put it another way, your evaluation now begins with the first e-mail message you send and continues through every subsequent communication you have with the organization. From an employer’s perspective, then, you are what you write.

Read the entire piece, the lead story from Weddle's latest newsletter. It includes his "three simple rules to help make sure that what you write is you at your best."

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February 5, 2007

U.S. is a world leader - NOT
Posted by Diane Danielson at 11:36 AM

At least not when it comes to being family friendly.  According to a new study from Harvard and McGill Universities, the U.S. trails most nations on family-oriented workplace policies.

Among the study's findings:

• Fathers are granted paid paternity leave or paid parental leave in 65 countries, including 31 offering at least 14 weeks of paid leave. The U.S. guarantees fathers no such paid leaves.
• At least 107 countries protect working women's right to breast-feed; the breaks are paid in at least 73 of them. The U.S. does not have federal legislation guaranteeing the right to breast-feed at work.
• At least 145 countries provide paid sick days, with 127 providing a week or more annually. The U.S. provides unpaid leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act, which does not cover all workers; there is no federal law providing for paid sick days.
• At least 134 countries have laws setting the maximum length of the work week. The U.S. does not have a maximum work week length or a limit on mandatory overtime per week.

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Another day at the office
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:25 AM

Readers of this blog may recall my interest, addressed from time to time, in the importance of work environments, the place you spend your time doing your work day after day.

Think classroom teacher versus accountant. One spends his or her days in front of a group of children getting them focused on the task at hand, while the other is head down poring over lines of figures on a spreadsheet or a computer screen. Or think registered nurse versus beat cop, research chemist versus financial advisor. My recent post on "Top 50 in-demand occupations" provides access to videos that show glimpses of a variety of different work environments.

So where did Peyton Manning spend his day yesterday? In the howling wind and pelting rain, in front of tens of thousands of screaming people with an estimated billion more watching on TV around the world. In other words, just another day at the office.

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In interviews and resume, tell your story
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:41 AM

Many people panic when the big open-ended question is dropped on them in a job interview: "So, tell me about yourself."

Do you think the interviewer really wants to hear everything you know about your past, the intimate details of your childhood and emergence into the brilliant, self-confident young adult you are today? Probably not.

As BostonWorks "Climb" columnist Penelope Trunk points out in yesterday's column, this is your opportunity to present a concise summary, in words you choose, of who you are - your professional, not your personal, self:

You have to find your one sentence if you want people to remember it. Try it out whenever someone asks you, "What do you do?" or "Tell me about yourself." You can judge how you're doing by how engaged the person's response to you is.

Sometimes this is known as your "elevator pitch", the brief professional summary you only have enough time to tell someone in the space of one elevator ride.

Then, from your summary, your story will unfold in a more conversational manner. And that, says Trunk, along with the summary, is the key to a successful interview: not just a recitation of dates and places, but your own story.

Why? Because stories have a narrative thread and are naturally compelling. Trunk even suggests three possible plotlines for your story.

Note, too, that all this must jibe with your resume, the document that your interviewer has most likely already seen and is the written summary of your story. And, of course, this is a document you authored, choosing to emphasize the key dates, facts, and plotline - always truthfully - of your individual story.

Great advice for job seekers. Keep it concise, keep it consistent, keep it honest, make it compelling. And, as with any good story-teller, be mindful of your audience.

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February 1, 2007

Salary trends for 2007: the news is good
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 3:06 PM

Concerned about compensation? Looking for more moula in 2007?

If so, you're in the right place. A new article from Waltham-based Salary.com takes a look at what's going on with compensation in 2007, and the word from these experts is good:

There's good news on the horizon for employees - leading indicators show that there will be plenty of opportunities in 2007 to improve your total compensation package through a better salary, bigger bonus and better work/life conditions.

With unemployment at a 5 year low, the labor market is tight in the US. Such conditions would typically lead to larger than average pay increases for workers – but employers are aiming to keep wages at a comfortable growth rate of 3.8% to 4.0%, keeping their overhead costs down. Despite the modest base pay increases, employees stand to make gains in other forms of compensation like one-time bonuses, performance based incentives, training or education programs, and work/life benefits (e.g., work from home, flexible hours, etc.). So while you may see only a slight bump in your base pay, you can leverage your experience against a tightening labor market to secure a better overall compensation package.

Jared Jost's article goes on to list and detail nine major salary trends for the coming year. Example: "Bonuses will be a major part of many employees’ pay package."

Learn more now.

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