February 27, 2006

Employees as recruiters
Posted by at 11:05 AM

I love Gretchen Ledgard's blog for Microsoft. Seeing her at NACE last year is in fact the reason I got excited about blogging. One day all companies will have such an extensive blogosphere presence.

I try to check in every few days and see what she is talking about. Last Thursday's topic was advice to Microsoft employees about how to recruit new talent. It's a strategy that we should all use: telling other employees exactly how to be helpful viral marketers of our products: job opportunities.

My advice for employees who want to network to find great candidates. That’s right. You don’t have to (and shouldn’t!) wait for recruiting to build those connections for you. As an employee, you may have many more opportunities to be on the front lines with your target candidates than your recruiters do, so you should leverage those occasions to reach out to great talent... We are all recruiters … whether we write a blog, attend a conference, or ride an airplane. That’s lesson #1.

There's more where that came from. The blog goes on to give some details on exactly how employees should prepare to reach out and then reach out. Great stuff!

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February 24, 2006

Wal-Mart to expand health coverage
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:34 AM

For a long time now folks have been beating up on Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer and the country's largest private employer, for not providing adequate healthcare coverage to its employees.

Now, finally, the company is taking steps to remedy the situation:

Labor groups, US lawmakers, and advocacy organizations including Wal-Mart Watch have criticized the company's pay and benefits, saying the offering is so poor that many Wal-Mart workers are on public assistance programs including Medicaid. According to a Wal-Mart memo, 5 percent of the company's workers are on Medicaid and 19 percent are uninsured. The company had more than $300 billion in revenue last year.

Wal-Mart, the country's largest private employer with 1.3 million workers, said it will expand the availability of the lowest cost ''Value Plan" health benefit to at least half of all associates. The option costs $11 per month for individuals and 30 cents more per day for children, the company said yesterday.

At the same time, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott pointed to the need for systemic changes in the way healthcare benefits are provided to individuals:

''The soaring cost of healthcare in America cannot be sustained over the long term by any business that offers health benefits to its employees," Scott said in the statement. ''We have to solve the healthcare challenges facing America. We have to do it together. And we have to start now."

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February 21, 2006

No flaming in recruiting
Posted by at 3:58 PM

My husband Mark is an attorney and suggested I blog about an article that has been making the rounds in the legal community. He believes it's a direct refute of my assertion that we should use technology more when recruiting millennials. The article is about an email back and forth between an employer (a lawyer) and an applicant (also a lawyer).

Korman was miffed that Abdala notified him by e-mail this month that, after tentatively agreeing to work at his law firm, she changed her mind. Her reason: ''The pay you are offering would neither fulfill me nor support the lifestyle I am living."

It goes on for a few rounds. I didn't quite believe it to be true, until I read here on Boston.com that it had been verified.

While I do advocate that we as recruiters use technology to communicate better with the millennial generation this, as author Sacha Pfeiffer writes, is a cautionary tale about how not to conduct business in the recruiting world. As tempted as we may be to chastise candidates who disappoint us, it is neither our role, nor an appropriate use of technology. In recruiting, technology should only be used for good news. Anything else requires voice to voice communication.

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February 17, 2006

Wal-Mart's chief talks tough
Posted by Jason Butler at 5:01 AM

Private websites do not always remain private; one disgruntled worker can release its contents to the media, as Wal-Mart's chief executive H. Scott Lee found out when his postings on an internal website were made public.

In a confidential, internal Web site for Wal-Mart's managers, the company's chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., seemed to have a rare, unscripted moment when one manager asked him why "the largest company on the planet cannot offer some type of medical retirement benefits?"

Mr. Scott first argues that the cost of such benefits would leave Wal-Mart at a competitive disadvantage but then, clearly annoyed, he suggests that the store manager is disloyal and should consider quitting.

This goes to show that all your company's officers need to stay on message in any electronic medium, even ones thought private.

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February 14, 2006

OFCCPaperwork
Posted by at 11:01 AM

Despite all the talk about OFCCP and its new reporting requirements, it is difficult to find people commenting on its positives. I was pleased to see this Gerry Crispin post on Simon Meth's SittingXlegged blog.

The regs are going to change the level of discipline required to recruit- Planned, consistent and focused tactics with protocols clearly established for accountability are essential. The record keeping problems are a byproduct and technology partners will necessarily produce behind the scene[sic] tools to eliminate any conscious recording.

As a busy recruiter, I'm worried about the transition to OFCCP compliance. As a glass half full optimist, however, I believe that that new requirements will benefit the underemployed talent pool in our country.

With that in mind, the paperwork doesn't seem ....well, I was going to say all that bad, but it IS daunting.

To reframe, instead, I'll call it shuffling papers for social justice.

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Joel on reviewing internship applications
Posted by Jason Butler at 6:27 AM

Joel Spolsky run a software company in New York, and each year he puts out a call for internship applications. Here, he reviews his methods for plowing through the hundreds of applications.

During the first stage of evaluating resumes, we go through looking for six objective things (I won't tell you what they are) that we think are good predictors of success. Each candidate gets a letter code indicating which of these six things they have, for example, ADF or BCF or ABCDEF. Again, these are all just things that you can tell objectively from a cover letter and resume, so there's not too much controversy at this stage.

The system is designed to be flexible, so we don't just rule people out because they didn't go to the right school or get the right grades. When we find a candidate who is officially missing something, but who looks like a great candidate for some other reason, we add some + signs... someone who doesn't have E or F but who has a really good excuse and looks "smart/gets things done" might get ABCD++.

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February 13, 2006

Why am I here and what am I doing?
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:14 AM

According to a recent Right Management survey, those are the questions on the minds of two out of three American workers, and the result - a disengaged workforce - is not good:

About two-thirds of employees do not know or understand their employer's business strategy and are not engaged in their jobs, according to a survey by Right Management Consultants, the world's largest career transition and organizational consulting firm.
- - - - -
The biggest reason why most employees are disengaged is the failure of their employers to communicate their business strategies to all, according to the survey. 28% of surveyed organizations limit such communication to only their leadership teams. 24% have not yet communicated this to all employees, and 15% are uncertain of the best way to do this.

Read the full piece from the Right website.

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February 9, 2006

Rethinking signing bonuses
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:10 AM

With the continuing shift from a buyer's to a seller's job market, the signing bonus has reappeared as a recruiting tool. But maybe, says Workforce Management magazine, firms should think twice about how they use this tool:

Sixty-five percent of employers are offering signing bonuses for IT positions, according to a Mercer Human Resource Consulting survey of 1,350 employers. Almost half are using signing bonuses for sales and marketing and accounting and finance positions. Thirty-six percent of employers are offering them for engineering jobs.

"The use of signing bonuses ebbs and flows with market demand," says Rick Beal, senior consultant at Watson Wyatt Worldwide in San Francisco. But he advises workforce management executives to carefully consider the purpose of the program, which positions will be included and which tools will be used to ensure that the new hires stay on the job. Otherwise, signing bonuses may simply push up labor costs without any return.

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February 8, 2006

Job insecurity
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 3:40 PM

You may be on top, but you're not always in charge, especially if you manage to routinely anger a large portion of your workforce.

Just ask Harvard President Larry Summers who, today's Globe reports, is once again contending with angry faculty calling for his dismissal:

Yesterday's meeting was the latest in a series of clashes between the president and faculty, which last March cast the first faculty vote of no confidence in a Harvard president since at least the Civil War. The pending departure of the arts and sciences dean, William C. Kirby, prompted the most recent uproar. Professors say Summers pushed out the dean, and the tone of yesterday's meeting showed that Summers's efforts to improve his relationship with faculty members have failed.

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February 7, 2006

Sexual harassment in the workplace
Posted by Jason Tuohey at 11:43 AM

Aside from spawning a kicking guitar solo by Frank Zappa, the theme of sexual harassment in the workplace has provided no good to society. However, as an article in this week's BostonWorks notes, it's a troublesome issue for companies to deal with as well. The article goes as far as suggesting that women should be prepared to fend off harassers themselves, because they can't rely on an organization to effectively resolve such disputes. From the article:

"Most harassment isn't severe enough to hold up in court, and the law isn't strong enough to protect you from most types of retaliation. So unless your safety is at risk, you're usually best off handling the harasser yourself rather than reporting him to human resources."

Given that 80 percent of workers in certain sectors report being harassed, companies should strive to instill a "no tolerance" policy towards harassment, and ensure employees that complaints will be dealt with swiftly. Nobody wants to feel isolated and under attack at their job.

For further discussion, hit up the message board.

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Work life issue not just for working mothers
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:26 AM

Cali Yost of Work+Life Fit, Inc. has a new blog and talks about how work+life is not just a working mother issue.

Reading these [BlackBerry potential shut-down] articles I couldn’t help wondering how many other people (including the subjects themselves) even noticed the work+life “fit” dimension of these stories. Why? Because most people still believe that managing work and life is primarily an issue limited to working mothers, and certainly not one that applies to senior male executives. This is a holdover from a time when working mothers in many ways led the charge for greater flexibility out of sheer necessity. But, the personal stories in the Blackberry articles prove that this challenge of managing work and the rest of life, especially in today’s 24/7 world, is experienced across levels and demographic groups. In other words, our choices may be different, our challenges may be unique, but the conversation about how to manage work life transitions, both big and small, is the same.

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Move over Working Mother; BusinessWeek is getting in on the action
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:04 AM

BusinessWeek just launched their new "Working Parents" blog. From Toddi Gutner's musing on the need for a Working Father magazine.

It reminds me of chat I had with Gloria Steinem a few years ago when I asked her how she felt about the state of women in the workplace. I was surprised at the time by her answer. She said that until professional men feel comfortable to express their need for a work/life balance, as women have begun to do, then they are unable to contribute more at home even if they might want to. Time for a working dad's magazine?

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February 6, 2006

Do you know where your TTY is? Two tools for recruiting in the deaf and hard of hearing communities
Posted by at 11:36 AM

One of the things I love most about being my company's diversity recruiter is the opportunity I have to connect with communities off all kinds. I like learning about new cultures and expanding my communication skills. When I was working at Northeastern University I had my first experiences with the deaf and hard of hearing communities and learned how to use a TTY. TTY etiquette is fairly straightforward, and a simple Google search will turn up the basics.

If you have a TTY, know where it is and how to use it, you are able to connect with candidates who are deaf and hard of hearing. If your company doesn't have one, however, how can you recruit from this great talent pool?

All states are required to provide relay services to residents. In Massachusetts we have MassRelay. Through this service, you can talk to someone who uses a TTY and a TTY user can talk to you. This service is free of charge and will greatly expand your ability to interact with candidates from the deaf and hoh communities.

MA Relay is very easy to use and has a website that can tell you all you need to know.

TTY or relay---learning these will expand your recruiting options! More later on where I find some of my best deaf and hard of hearing candidates...

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February 2, 2006

We can be replaced with a very small shell script
Posted by Jason Butler at 1:47 PM

Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny tells of the useful ways Yahoo's web-based goals/review system helps him write his self-review.

"Jeremy is often unclear when defining roles and responsibilities with his team, and as a result team members have been confused about what is expected. Jeremy should regularly meet with his employees to discuss their responsibilities and resolve any misunderstandings."

You know, someone needs to collect all of these and make a board game for office workers. That'd be fun. I could play with the "writing assitant" all day but wouldn't want to "get caught up in low-priority tasks", as the tool said to me a few moments ago.

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The sweet spot of delegation
Posted by Jason Butler at 6:38 AM

The Slacker Manager writes about the art of delegating effectively, a skill I'm still trying to master.

Delegation has a sweet spot and it lies somewhere between the tightfisted grip of the control freak who can’t give anything away, and the lackadaisical absentee manager who won’t accept responsibility. Somewhere in there is a place where a manager can offer a chance for expanded responsibilities, with a safety net. It’s the place where an employee can broaden their experience and know that failure is an option. As a manager, that’s what I aim for.

I find I have trouble delegating some of the technical work, especially if it's to be implemented in a language I don't know well or on a system on which I'm not root. In a charming remnant from my dotcom days, I don't trust any system I can't go in and personally fix over the weekend if I must. I suppose I should really get over that...

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