May 31, 2007

Google growth - in Cambridge
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 3:13 PM

If you've got what it takes, you might be interested to know that one of the world's hottest web outfits - if not the hottest - Google, is expanding operations right here in Cambridge:

The company, which had just two engineers and a handful of advertising sales people in Boston at the end of 2005, dramatically expanded its operations here in February to work on projects such as extending search to digital books and cellphones, and to tap the expertise of area universities and start - ups. For its new staff of 50, Google leased the seventh floor of the One Broadway office building.

And the Googlers on the Charles, like their colleagues at the Googleplex campus in Mountain View, Calif., are in growth mode, planning to double again by year's end.

Check out the whole piece.

And check out Google position listings here.

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May 30, 2007

Don't work too hard; it's bad for you
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 2:43 PM

Who doesn't want to hear those words, especially if they came from an authoritative source?

In this case, the voice of authority is our own CLIMB columnist and author of the new book, Brazen Careerist, Penelope Trunk. From her column in the "Careers" section of this past Sunday's Globe:

People cannot work full-speed until they die. Pace yourself so you don't burn out before you reach your potential. But don't blame your long hours on your boss, your CEO, or your underlings. Someone who does not make a conscious, organized effort to take responsibility for the number of hours they work can be thrown off course by anyone. But the person who systematically follows the steps below will not be thrown off course, even by a workaholic boss in a workaholic industry:

Interested? To read Trunk's tips, continue here.

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MySpace vs . Workplace
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:27 AM

Ah, the web. That new phenomenon in our lives. It's simultaneously ubiquitous and nowhere. It's the phone, the TV, the mall, and the newspaper all rolled into one. And it's much more, too, including the 21st century printing press for you, for me - for everybody.

And as with all new technologies, it is full of wonder, and it has its unintended downside, as well.

As this piece from yesterday's Boston Globe makes clear, there is a battleground emerging between the freedom provided by the social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, where everyone can create their own pages, and the more constrained demands of the workplace:

Like it or not -- and many employees emphatically do not -- social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are creating an increasingly murky workplace terrain.

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens on MySpace can make it into the wider world, whether it is office gossip, racy photographs, or first-person accounts of weekend revelry. Conversations -- about work, about bosses, about co - workers -- that used to take place at water coolers or on barstools now potentially have a much larger audience. With one high-speed collision after another between MySpace and the workplace, the personal and the professional are converging in new and unpredictable ways.

This is a challenging arena. While your own pages on these sites may be private, they are also quite often public, and therein lies the rub. Remember, it ain't called the World Wide Web for nothin'. People can see what you post.

So caveat postor: become your own editor as well as a writer. Think twice about what you put out there for the world to see. Rule of thumb: if you don't care if any unintended audience sees it - even a potential hiring manager, boss, or co-worker - then fine, go ahead and put it up. If it's something of a more private nature that you'd rather not have anyone and everyone see, then maybe you want to think twice before sharing it with the world.

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Agree? Disagree? Want to add your own thoughts on the topic, and read what others are saying? Check out the message board here.

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May 22, 2007

The 2007 Globe 100
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:15 PM

If you're looking for a job, this is not a bad place to start.

It's the annual Globe 100, with rankings of the top public companies in Massachusetts. Our multimedia wizards have captured the entire magazine (yes, it's a glossy mag this year, available as part of today's paper) and added dozens of features - video, audio, an interactive quiz, and more - that lend even more value to the core information.

Whether you're interested in biotech or high tech, the largest employers in Massachusetts, or any of dozens of different slices of information, if it's about business in the Commonwealth, it's all here.

So what are you waiting for? Check it all out now.

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May 16, 2007

Vocation vacations
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:28 AM

You know the expression "Try before you buy?" Usually it applies to things like toothpaste, where you might get a mini-tube sample through the mail, or a new food item at the supermarket, dispensed by somebody with a smile and a card table at the end of an aisle.

Well, how about this for a novel idea? Now you can try out careers, as well, before you "buy" them.

Ever want to be an architect? General manager of a baseball team? A comedian? Coffeehouse owner? Golf pro? Restaurant critic?

You can test drive all of these and dozens more via the website called Vocation Vacations, based on the west coast but with a range of different career samplers - typically one or two-day paid stays, shadowing the job's incumbent - all around the country.

So check it out, and while you're at it read the the related article from CareerJournal on "How to explore another career if you started on the wrong path."

Also, don't overlook other tried and true methods of career exploration, including internships, volunteering, and informational interviews. You can always draw upon your local network of contacts to pursue these local, usually cheaper, options.

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May 13, 2007

A novel proposal: align school days with workhours
Posted by Diane Danielson at 10:37 PM

In today's Boston Globe, E.J. Graff questions why we still let schools get out at 2:30 pm when the workday goes until 5 pm (o.k., theoretically 5 pm, we all know that that's only for part-time workers).

Consider the bizarre mismatch between our 21st century's 24-7 workday and our schools' 19th-century agrarian schedules. Why are children still let out of schools at 2:30 p.m. to milk the cows, when their parents' jobs don't end until 5 p.m. or later? In 2006, only 1.6 percent of American workers were down on the farm, and yet schools still follow that vestigial schedule. As a result, millions of American working families are forced to patch together afterschool care plans, one by one.

If parents are well off, they shell out big bucks for au pairs, nannies, enrichment programs, or -- even in high-end districts like Newton or Wellesley -- send their children to private schools with family-friendly afternoon schedules. Some lower-income families work tag-team schedules, so that someone's always at home, even if that consigns the parents to a mere virtual marriage. Other women take "mothers' hours" jobs that pay less than "regular" jobs, as if the need to care for children were a private disability rather than a demand facing 75 percent of American workers at some phase in their working lives.

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May 11, 2007

Not just a glass ceiling, but a mommy wall
Posted by Diane Danielson at 9:09 AM

It's almost Mother's Day and Ellen Goodman discusses the bias against "moms" in the office.

Here's a Mother's Day card from a study just published by Shelley Correll in the American Journal of Sociology. Correll performed an experiment to see if there was a motherhood penalty in the job market. She and her colleagues at Cornell University created an ideal job applicant with a successful track record, an uninterrupted work history, a boffo resume, the whole deal.

Then they tucked a little telltale factoid into some of the resumes with a tip-off about mom-ness. It described her as an officer in a parent-teacher association. And -- zap -- she was mommified.

Moms were seen as less competent and committed. Moms were half as likely to be hired as childless women or men with or without kids. Moms were offered $11,000 less in starting pay than non-moms. And, just for good measure, they were also judged more harshly for tardiness.

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May 9, 2007

Boston's biggest and best job site
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 12:58 PM

You're looking at it, the new Boston.com/Monster. We just launched the new partner site this week, Monday, May 7. We are not even three days old.

Perhaps the biggest single change you will notice, aside from the new name and logo, is the job listings: over 50,000 of them! This is double what we carried on the BostonWorks site.

That's because Monster is the de facto online listing choice for employers - gotta be on Monster! - so any Greater Boston jobs Monster carries are now on Boston.com, too. It's that simple.

You also now have access to all of Monster's industry-leading advanced features and functionality, not just the job listings but the free My Monster personal account set-up, where you can post your resume in new and easier ways, get multiple job alerts, and much more.

And because we're Boston.com, the online home of The Boston Globe, you'll still get all the great career and employment stories you're used to seeing from the Boston Sunday Globe, which will start appearing this Sunday in the new "Careers" section. Be sure to check it out.

What more could you ask for? It's one-stop shopping: Monster's industry leading functionality and job listings; the great Globe coverage you've come to know and love; and our continuing series of career fairs, special events, special sections, and more. Not to mention all the rest of Boston.com's unparalleled local resources, all in one place. And all about Boston, Boston, Boston.

So welcome to what is unquestionably Boston's biggest and best careers site: Boston.com/Monster. Come on in, settle down, and stay awhile.

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High heels and flip-flops
Posted by Diane Danielson at 9:44 AM

Just when I thought it was another generic article about how bad high heels are for women, they toss in the bit about how bad flip flops are too!  I have to admit, while I love most things about Generation Y, the flip-flops in the office drives me nuts.  (Sorry, I'm just not a fan of any open toe shoes in the office - or as one of my pals says: no cleavage at all in the office- no frontal cleavage, no butt cleavage and no toe cleavage). 

Women often think they're doing their feet a favor when they ditch the heels and put on flip-flops or ballet flats because there's no heel, no pointed toe, no reason to worry. Right?

Not so, say podiatrists, who treat foot problems often exacerbated by improper footwear. "The thing that flip-flops do best is carry patients into my office," said Stephen Pribut, a D.C. podiatrist. The repeated process of lifting your heel away from the shoe surface (creating that characteristic flip-flop sound) creates tension in the foot, said Pribut, which can worsen such painful inflammatory conditions as plantar fasciitis.

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May 3, 2007

Boston's inner city ranks high in booming firms
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:22 AM

Diversity - and thriving diversity at that - is the new watchword of inner city Boston, according to a new economic report cited in today's Boston Globe:

Boston has more of the fastest-growing inner-city companies than all but one other US city, according to a report due out today.

Five companies on the annual Inner City 100 list, compiled by Inc. magazine and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a group founded by Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter, are based here. Three are owned by minority women, which Porter said reflects a national explosion in the number of minorities becoming entrepreneurs.
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The report, [Initiative for a Competitive Inner City senior vice president Deirdre] Coyle said, foreshadows a shift that will force corporate America to drastically alter how it does business.

"In 10 to 20 years, we will be an extremely heterogeneous population everywhere, and we will be majority ethnic-minority. If you're a business owner or you're a corporation and you're not doing business in the inner cities now, you're missing an opportunity," she said.

Read the full article here.

For more local diversity info, read the latest DiversityBoston - Spring, 2007 special magazine supplement, found exclusively here on BostonWorks.

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Mom's annual worth: $138,000
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:08 AM

How much is a mother worth?

Well, most would say there is no way to quantify the value of a mother - priceless, in the current advertising catch phrase. But Waltham-based Salary.com has plunged right in again this year and put a monetary value on a stay-at-home mom's worth:

The work of a stay-at-home mother has an annual monetary value of $138,095, up 3 percent from last year, according to a survey out today.

Those are some findings from the seventh annual Mom Salary Survey issued by Salary.com, a Waltham compensation software and consulting firm.

This makes for interesting reading - catch the piece from yesterday's "Daily Business Update."

Then post your opinion on how much you think stay-at-home moms are worth.

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Many female lawyers dropping off path to partnership
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:46 AM

From yesterday's Boston Globe, more fuel on the fire about women leaving their careers and the workplace:

Female lawyers continue to face intractable challenges in their attempts to become partners, causing them to abandon law firm careers -- and the legal profession entirely -- at a dramatically higher rate than men, according to a local study to be released today.
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The report, "Women Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership," which was produced by the MIT Workplace Center in conjunction with several of the state's major bar associations, is rife with devastating commentaries on law firm life, including one female lawyer's remark that "I would not encourage my daughters to enter the legal profession."

Read the full piece.

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May 1, 2007

Massachusetts lags nation in women leaders
Posted by Diane Danielson at 9:37 AM

Judith H. Dobrzynski has a good editorial in this morning's Globe about how Massachusetts still lags behind national averages for women leaders in corporate America.

There's been a lot of talk lately about women fleeing corporate America because they are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to advance. Perhaps. But doesn't it seem just as likely that women are leaving because they are not allowed into corridors of real power even after they've made the sacrifices?

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Among the 30 that have neither a woman officer nor a woman director are Perini, Watts Water Technologies, Safety Insurance Group, Progress Software, Boston Beer, Zoll Medical, Cognex, and iBasis.

There's also Kronos, which calls itself a "human capital management software company" and clearly ought to know better. And there's American Dental Partners, which tellingly uses a large image of a woman on its home page, but has no women in its top ranks.

Among those who managed to find a woman director but lack women officers are Thermo Fisher Scientific, Boston Properties, CMGI, Investor Financial Services, Clean Harbors Inc, Varian Semiconductor, PolyMedica, and Lojack.

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