September 30, 2005

How to get and keep Gen-Y'ers
Posted by Kim Provencher at 4:18 PM

If you are at all concerned about recruiting and retaining young talent (and you should be given the pending labor shortage as Baby Boomers prepare for retirement) this article published in the Link&Learn eNewsletter, Ready or Not, Here They Come! is a must read about what makes Gen-Y'ers tick. I have to admit I had to look up the dates because the author refers to Gen-Y'rs as those born between 1984 and 2002. I knew I was a Gen-X'r having been born between 1965 and 1975, but what about those born after 1975? What category do they fall into? Spend some time surfing the net and you'll see that the Generation Y years are still being defined. Its a generation born any where from 1977 to 2005. Well, whatever the case, you know the group. They are young. They are smart. And they expect a lot from their employer or they are gone. So read on...

involving their own families, which means they don't believe security is guaranteed. They want to acquire the skills and networks that will make them more marketable now - and in the future. And they're idealistic. As they search for meaning, volunteerism among 16- to 24-year-olds is way up. Family and religious values are central, and "jobs that matter" hold great appeal.

There's more you should know about them. They have a high tolerance for change and innovation and aren't afraid of being fired. They're more afraid of being bored. The high number of college graduates among them don't expect to stay with their first employer for more than two years. They have been told they will have many jobs in a variety of organizations over the course of several different careers.

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September 29, 2005

Gift rap
Posted by at 2:54 PM

Most organizations don't have "gift" policies per se. But this story in today's Globe involving First Marblehead and Bank of America reflects the need for an organization to have a code of ethics to guide employee behavior to mitigate reputation and ethics risk.

Bank of America Corp. touched off a chain events that ultimately led to the resignation of First Marblehead Corp. chief executive Daniel M. Meyers when the bank fired a high-ranking student loan executive several weeks ago, then alerted First Marblehead's general counsel that Meyers had given expensive personal gifts to her.
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The gifts violate the codes of ethics at both companies, which place limits on such exchanges to avoid appearances that the firms' business could be swayed.

Kudos to both First Marblehead and Bank of America for doing the right thing. Compliance with codes of ethics should not be optional. It is mandatory regardless of where the employee sits on the org chart.

(P.S. Speaking of ethics, in the interest of full disclosure, Bank of America is a former client of Gillespie Interactive.)

-- Mary Helen Gillespie

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You think your job is tough?
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 1:30 PM

The 10 most dangerous professions in America.

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Army recruiting
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 9:19 AM

It may sound silly at first, but HR professionals might want to look to the US Army for recruiting ideas. With enrollment down by about 16 percent, Army recruiters are becoming increasingly creative, enlisting the help of celebrities, targeting events popular with their demographic, and raffling off free iPods, as this PBS report notes.

"The Army is now spending nearly $100 million a year to sponsor outreach events like professional bull riding, rock concerts and NASCAR races. They are events that typically attract crowds of young men and women who are considered most likely to be receptive to the Army sales pitch."

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September 28, 2005

Another take on hiring techical people
Posted by Jason Butler at 8:32 AM

Here's a well-written guide for when you have to hire quickly.

We could argue all day about the drawbacks to growing a team this quickly, but assume that you've been told to hire 16 developers or find yourself a new job (hire or be hired, in other words). Think about it in these terms: any start-up attempting to dominate a rapidly-growing market must take this approach or be consumed by competitors who will.

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September 27, 2005

A win-win hiring solution
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:10 AM

Today's Globe carries an op-ed piece by Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School David Elwood with an elegant and uplifting proposal for rebuilding the devastated Gulf Coast region in a way that also tackles the problem of the chronically poor:

Hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent. The danger is that the rebuilding will be done by outsiders who earn the money and move on, taking with them both their skills and their incomes. The obvious solution is to link our training for poorer residents to the efforts to rebuild. Training programs work best when they are tied to the needs of real employers with real jobs. Give Gulf Coast residents the skills they need to do the rebuilding. Give real preference to local residents in the hiring.

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September 26, 2005

The more things change, the more they stay the same (for women in corporate America, that is)
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:36 AM

Sunday's Bostonworks Out in the Field section reports on the slooooooooow progress women are making in many areas of corporate America.

Women in a variety of industries are moving more slowly up America's corporate ladder, lagging behind their male counterparts in joining corporate boards, obtaining venture capital funding, and being promoted, according to a recent report from the Committee of 200.

The ''2005 C200 Business Leadership Index'' noted there has been no increase in the pace of women's overall clout in the business world, ''which indicates that women's influence has been creeping forward slowly for at least the last four years and probably won't equal men's during this decade or the next.''

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September 21, 2005

An inside look at diversity recruitment
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:06 AM

What's it like to be the only Latino in a white-only workplace? How might you react in that situation?

Read the illuminating - and inspirational - story from today's Globe profiling Rosario Ubiera-Minaya and her work as internship program coordinator at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem:

The questions from co-workers started soon after Rosario Ubiera-Minaya began working as an internship coordinator two years ago in the Peabody Essex Museum's education department. ''Are you in security?," someone would inevitably ask the caramel-colored, 28-year-old Dominicana. ''Do you work in guest services?"
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Ubiera-Minaya believes that at the time, she was the only Latino holding a professional job at the museum. About 1 percent of the staff of 204 was Latino in 2002. By last year, the PEM's 282 employees had grown to 8 percent Hispanic, 2 percent African-American, and 6 percent Asian/Pacific Islander as the museum focused on diversifying its growing staff after moving into a larger, renovated space that opened in 2003.

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September 20, 2005

Opting out? But you haven't even opted in yet.
Posted by Diane Danielson at 11:36 AM

Yesterday's NYTimes ran a story about how college-aged women in elite schools like Harvard and Yale are planning to be stay-at-home moms.

Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.

Perhaps the best comment in the whole article came later, when a professor pointed out a possible reason for this:

Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale[:] "Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

"I really believed 25 years ago," Dr. Wexler added, "that this would be solved by now."

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September 16, 2005

Give new managers a jump start
Posted by Kim Provencher at 2:07 PM

With the pressure on more than ever today for new hires to get off to a fast start, you might want to take a look at what your company is currently doing to ensure this happens. Managers in particular not only have to tackle the business issues, they need to navigate the political landscape as well. Creating an orientation process that expedites their ramp up time will create a win-win for both your company and your new hire. Take a look at this month's article from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge for some helpful tips on how to make this happen.

New managers who are rapidly "onboarded" are poised to generate value for their organizations much more quickly than colleagues who follow a slower or more casual orientation path. Rapid onboarding has become particularly vital as workplace turnover rises.

But despite the increasing importance of a fast start, new managers face daunting obstacles in getting connected. For one thing, many senior executives assume that new managers have the social skills and understanding to tap the organizational network themselves, so they invest little time in introducing new managers around. But without some initial support and a framework for learning, many managers find it difficult to reach out to new colleagues themselves.

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September 14, 2005

Be careful with those inquiry letters
Posted by Jason Butler at 12:07 PM

This may out me as a geek (I knew who ESR was), but I had a great laugh at this story. A Microsoft recruiter sent a note to Eric Raymond, a man who has dedicated his career to destroying Microsoft.

If you had bothered to do five seconds of background checking, you might have discovered that I am the guy who responded to Craig Mundie’s “Who are you?” with “I’m your worst nightmare”, and that I’vein fact been something pretty close to your company’s worst nightmare since about 1997. You’ve maybe heard about this “open source” thing? You get one guess who wrote most of the theory and propaganda for it and talked IBM and Wall Street and the Fortune 500 into buying in. But don’t think I’m trying to destroy your company. Oh, no; I’d be just as determined to do in any other proprietary-software monopoly, and the community I helped found is well on its way to accomplishing that goal.

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September 12, 2005

The perils of cronyism, part 3
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 4:20 PM

The other shoe drops:

Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown said Monday he has resigned "in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president," three days after losing his onsite command of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

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September 9, 2005

The perils of cronyism, part 2
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 2:37 PM

And this just in:

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being relieved of his command of the Bush administration's Hurricane Katrina onsite relief efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Friday.

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The perils of cronyism
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:39 AM

There may well be a lesson for recruiters and hiring managers in the federal government's disastrously slow response to Hurricane Katrina's ravaging of the Gulf Coast. It's about hiring the most qualified person for the job rather than who you know or someone you owe a favor:

The Washington Post reported that five of the top eight FEMA officials had little experience in handling disasters and owed their jobs to their political ties to Bush.

As political operatives took the top jobs, professionals and experts in hurricanes and disasters left the agency, the newspaper said.

FEMA director Michael Brown, already under fire for his performance as the disaster unfolded, came under further pressure when Time magazine reported that his official biography released by the White House at the time of his nomination exaggerated his experience in disaster relief.

This appears to be a textbook case of cronyism as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary.

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September 6, 2005

Live to work, or work to live?
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:31 PM

It's the oft-heard question posed to show the difference between American and European audiences toward work: live to work, or work to live? I've worked with many Europeans, both here and abroad, and the question always comes up and always provokes heated discussion.

The WSJ's Career Journal decided to dig a little deeper on the issue and interviewed Dartmouh College prof and National Bureau of Economic Research consultant Bruce Sacerdote to put some stats behind this and see if there are any discernible trends:

We can't say for sure whether the American model will spread in Europe or the other way around or neither. The one change we have seen recently is France's rejection of the 35-hour workweek as being too restrictive. All the countries are experiencing long-run growth in productivity per hour worked, and there is no obvious reason why the Europeans cannot continue to use some of this productivity growth for reduced hours rather than increased income from work.

Read the entire piece.

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Make sure your employees understand the "open door" policy
Posted by Jason Butler at 8:13 AM

Here is an excellent blog posting about managers letting employees know that it's ok to interrupt you.

Even though most managers have an "open door policy", most people they manage either don't believe it or feel that they are "bothering" their managers with issues that they aren't really sure are important to those managers. And, I know that there are managers that don't make the time, and do feel bothered. I will admit that in the past I used to be a little more that way. But I quickly realized that I was being a very poor manager. I was forgetting my primary job - to help their people succeed. If their people succeed, everyone wins - customers, management, shareholders, owners, and employees. Once I knew that, I MADE THE TIME!

So many HR issues we see can be avoided with some early intervention.

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September 2, 2005

Katrina takes toll on Gulf coast jobs
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:16 AM

Law and order, food and water are the immediate needs in devastated New Orleans. But following on from Steph Daniel's entry in the Job Blog on the impact of Huricane Katrina on the economy, here's a piece from ABCNews.com about
the projected effect of the storm on the region's employment situation, where some anlaysts are predicting a jobless rate of Depression-era proportions:

Hundreds of thousands of people are finding themselves out of work and their livelihoods in limbo following the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.
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"New Orleans is an economic disaster. This tragedy is so unprecedented people could be out of work for three, six, nine months or longer," said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the economic forecasting project at Georgia State University.

By Dhawan's estimates close to 1 million people have been thrust out of work in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama because of Katrina.
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The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the area of New Orleans. . .was 4.9 percent in July, [Phil] Hopkins [managing director of U.S. regional services for Global Insight] said based on his calculations. The jobless rate there could easily climb to 25 percent, he estimated.

Those of us in the Boston area can be thankful for our paychecks, while thinking about ways this nation and every one of us can help heal the long-term hurt that is settling upon that city and region.

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