December 31, 2005

Pregnancy discrimination - that's one way to keep women barefoot and in the kitchen
Posted by Diane Danielson at 9:13 AM

Today's Washington Post looks at the increase of pregnancy bias claims:

"You have this volatile combination of Generation X and Y women feeling entitled to be in the workplace and live up to widely held ideals of motherhood," said Joan C. Williams, law professor and director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings. "And employers who simply appear not to know that it's gender discrimination to push them out."

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December 22, 2005

Modern-day witch hunts?
Posted by Diane Danielson at 12:19 PM

USA Today writes about the dismal performance of the few Fortune 500 female CEO's. The article cites issues like the declining numbers of women CEOs and the fact that three of the companies have turned around since being run by men.

Proponents for the advancement of women pooh-pooh drawing any conclusions. Betty Spence, president of the National Association For Female Executives, says it's no different than a stretch when the majority of baseball managers were fired within three years after being named American League Manager of the Year. "The only thing they had in common was that they're men," Spence says. "The only logical conclusion is that men don't make good baseball managers."

But even if the numbers are statistically meaningless, Spence acknowledges that another year or two like 2004 and 2005 could feed perceptions and biases, and impede women's progress to the top. "The level of scrutiny — or skirtiny — goes up," she says. (Last year's story: Female CEOs struggle in '04 | 2003 story: Year of the woman among the 'Fortune' 500?)

"It's very damaging to women," says Judy Rosener of the University of California-Irvine Graduate School of Management, adding that it is unfair to compare the performance of the seven women against the S&P 500. "You could pick out 30 men from that list who have the same story. Look at General Motors and Ford."

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Wage rage
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 6:53 AM

Mary Helen Gillespie hits upon a lighting rod topic with her latest column "A case of wage rage." She points to a recent book on the wage gap between genders in America that claims women make anywhere between $700,000 and $2 million less than men over the course of their careers. From the article:

"For every dollar earned by a working male, a working female will earn 77 cents. The gap: 23 cents. Doesn't even add up to two dimes and one nickel. Until you do the math, and realize that over the career of a working female, this adds up to thousands and thousands of dollars less than what her male equal in the workplace will earn."

However, that's only part of the story. Many readers who sounded off on the BostonWorks message board charged that such wage gap studies incorporate fuzzy math and warped statistics to make the difference seem larger than it really is. From one reader:

"What that oft-quoted study (77 cent) neglects to mention is that women typically enter the workforce later than men, work less hours over their lifetime than men, often remove themselves voluntarily from the workforce for extended periods (usually for family reasons)"

What do you think?

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December 21, 2005

Screening questions for programmers
Posted by Jason Butler at 11:57 AM

This is a useful list of (and explanation of) phone screen questions for interviewing programmers used at Amazon.com.

It's usually pretty obvious when the candidate should have been eliminated during the phone screens. Well, it's obvious in retrospect, anyway: during the interviews, we find some horrible flaw in the candidate which, had anyone thought to ask about it during the phone screen, would surely have disqualified the person.

Does anyone have other lists of useful phone screen questions? Drop me a note and I'll post them here.

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December 16, 2005

Employees should have a plan before they leap
Posted by Kim Provencher at 3:37 PM

Today when burnout is rife, more and more executives are quitting their jobs to take some time off. According to "I Quit!...for a While...More Execs Take Long Breaks in CareerJournal.com taking time off for personal reasons is becoming more acceptable. As the baby boomers age and begin to do more soul searching, this trend will most likely continue. Valuable employees are reaching the point in their careers where they simply want more. They want more flexibility, more control, more freedom and more meaning and depth in their daily lives. They want to contribute, make a difference and reap more than financial rewards. If employers don't want to lose these valuable employees and the knowledge they possess, they will need to provide them with tools and tactics for a successful transformation. They'll need a process to learn, adapt and create a new life plan for the future. If HR is smart they will help them with this plan while they are still employed so that the organization can capture their skills and knowledge and transfer them to the younger workers. They are going to leave anyway, why not come up with a plan where the organization wins too?

A generation ago, few people voluntarily quit a job midway through their careers to create some personal leisure time for themselves, no matter how unhappy they were. They made sure they had a new job to jump to before leaving a prior one. The belief was if you were out of work, even by choice, you would be deemed damaged goods by prospective employers.

Today, it's becoming more common, and more acceptable, for executives to take some time off. For one thing, executive careers are not as linear as they once were. Waves of corporate restructuring have created far more churn within work forces, and burnout is rife. All those factors are propelling more employees to jump off the treadmill for a few months or longer without knowing exactly where or how they'll land when they choose to jump back on.

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December 15, 2005

The new stay-at-home dad
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:32 PM

I confess, Adam @ Home, chronicling the daily life of a prototypical stay-at-home dad, is one of my favorite daily comic strips.

But as BostonWorks "Climb" columnist Penelope Trunk tells us, there is some even more serious attention being paid these days to stay-at-home dads:

Most men do not set out to be stay-at-home dads. They just want to have quality time with their kids. A survey by American Demographics revealed that 80 percent of male respondents ages 18 to 39 said a flexible job to accommodate kids takes a higher priority than doing challenging work or earning a high salary. The new stay-at-home version of dad is how they reach this goal.

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December 13, 2005

Can you share power?
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 5:05 PM

By now, everybody in New England knows that the Boston Red Sox filled the void left by Theo Epstein in naming Ben Cherington and Jed Hoyer as co-general managers of the team. Although the decision may give some Red Sox fans worried about who was controlling the team closure, it brings up another issue -- can you share power in a position this important?

Co-CEOs and Co-GMs are rare in the business world, and the last baseball organization to try the co-GM thing -- the Baltimore Orioles, with Mike Flanagan and Jim Beattie -- ended the experiment this year by firing Beattie and naming Flanagan executive vice president of baseball operations. Are the Sox setting themselves up for an inevitable power struggle by giving two people claim to the title of head of player management?

Actually, according to this Harvard Business School study, the head of a company should rarely, if ever, autocratically wield power, and instead rely on the well-reasoned decisions of intelligent subordinates. A more thorough breakdown from the report:

"...it is rarely a good idea to unilaterally overrule a thoughtful decision that has cleared several other organizational hurdles. Indeed, a key indicator the CEO subsequently used to judge the health of the company's management processes was how enthusiastically he could approve the decisions that came his way. The need to overrule something is a sure sign of a broader organizational failure."

So maybe newbies Cherington and Hoyer just need to sit back and watch the success roll in after all.

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December 12, 2005

The 'human' in human resources
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:52 PM

No one's immune to the vagaries of the job market, even those who always seem in the know: human resources folks.

This week's lead feature in BostonWorks takes a look at how HR professionals respond in times of their own career transitions:

Not surprisingly, human resource professionals often have a fairly sophisticated outlook on job seeking and maintaining momentum in their careers. But even for them, the pain and stress of change and the need to learn a few lessons along the way — including the value of networking — can still be daunting.

In fact, might a job transition, painful as it may be, actually make HR folks better at doing their jobs?

Rob Greenly, now of the Greenly Group in Newton, said he looks back on being out of work as "one of the best things that could have happened to me. In terms of being a better HR professional — it's like a doctor getting sick — you don't really appreciate the impact of the little things until you are on the other side of the table."

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Avoiding holiday taboos
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:38 AM

It's that time of year, the holidays, when everyone stands a chance of making a real fool of him or herself in the office, or worse, even tanking their careers.

Fortunately, we have BostonWorks Hire Authority Elaine Varelas to come to our aid with her latest column, on holiday taboos. Here's a sample tip:

Dress for Work - Office parties create so many opportunities for faux pas. That see-through micro-mini might look spectacular on the red carpet, but the cafeteria lighting just won't do it justice. A work holiday party is still a work event. Dress appropriately for it.

As an HR manager, says Varelas, it is your "job to reign in those with Holiday Syndrome and create an environment for all employees to enjoy the holidays at work." So you might want to check out this list.

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December 6, 2005

Catbert strikes again
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 12:00 PM

No, HR humor is not an oxymoron. Check out Catbert, Evil Director of HR, in today's Dilbert and see.

(Note: if you are accessing this after the blog entry date of 12/6, be sure to go to the correct date in the Dilbert archives.)

You can also catch up with your favorite cubicle dweller online each and every day via the BostonWorks home page. Look for the little guy in the lower right corner of the page.

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Top execs surveyed on 2006 hiring outlook
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:48 AM

From Boston.com TV partner New England Cable News (NECN), a new survey of executives from NFI Research in New Hampshire shows optimism about the hiring outlook for 2006. Check out this video clip of R.D. Sahl with NFI's Chuck Martin. (Playing time: 3:41) I think you'll like what you see and hear.

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December 4, 2005

Extreme sports the new golf?
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:46 PM

The New York Times writes about "Wheels and Deals in Silicon Alley" where high powered VC and tech types are testing their physical limits and getting a little business done.

But the sweat and strain are not just about fitness or blowing off steam, Mr. Komisar said. Cycling, he explained, plays the same role in his professional circle today as squash did when he started out in business as a lawyer in Boston in the early 1980's: as both a social outlet and a business opportunity for professionals to make contacts, get face time with the boss and even sign off on deals. Networking in a crash helmet, in other words.

"You'll see some of the most influential people in the valley out there on bikes on the weekends," Mr. Komisar said. "There's lots of playful competition, lots of joshing."

"Cycling," he added, "is the new golf."

And it's not just the boys who are participating.

Traditionally the country club golf course or the exclusive urban racquet club has functioned as a locus for the old boy networks that kept a firm's business humming. In the forward-looking Bay Area, however, a region that places a high premium on egalitarian, meritocratic principles, no shortage of women have made their mark in the extreme-sports culture.

Hey ladies, maybe it's time to leave the golf to the boys and take up something more girl-friendly. Maybe rock-climbing? Kayaking? Triathalons?

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