May 30, 2006

Job Jitters, Gas Grief Fuel Drop in May Consumer Confidence
Posted by at 12:08 PM

CNNMoney.com. reports today that U.S. consumer confidence fell in May with higher gasoline prices and concerns about the labor market being the main culprits behind the drop.The good news, though, is May's reading was above economists' expectations. Still, Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said:

"Apprehension about the short-term outlook for the economy, the labor market and consumers' earning potential has driven the Index down to levels not seen since the aftermath of the hurricanes last summer."

FYI: Hurricane season starts June 1.

Submitted by Bostonworks' Savvy Manager Mary Helen Gillespie. Email her at maryhelen@boston.com.

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May 25, 2006

Speaking of Convicted CEOs...
Posted by at 1:41 PM

Hope you get a chuckle out of Thursday's New York Post Page Six item that dished about Vogue Editor Anna Wintour at Tuesday's screening of "The Devil Wears Prada" - which as everyone knows is All About Anna. Anna did wear Prada, but avoided posing for a photo with actress Meryl Streep who plays an icy fashion magazine editor in the movie aka The Devil. One insider denied Wintour purposely avoided posing with Streep.:

"It was so chaotic, we couldn't set up the shot," said (the) source. In the chaos were Streep's castmates Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Bridget Hall. . . Martha Stewart, in the elevator afterward, said, 'Wow! Who ever had a boss like that?' Silence."

What's with these star-spangled celebrities? Does the Botox leak to their brains? Don't they know a JOKE when they hear one? Martha, honey, I'm howling now. Great line.

Submitted by Bostonworks.com Savvy Manager columnist Mary Helen Gillespie. Email comments to maryhelen@bostonworks.com.

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Enron's Lay, Skilling Guilty on All Counts
Posted by at 12:59 PM

Former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted Thursday
in federal court in Houston of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud in one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history.:

The former corporate titans are now felons facing years in prison after being convicted of running an elaborate fraud that gave the company a glamorous illusion of success.

Please do me a favor. Take out your company's Code of Ethics and just give it a quick read. And if something seems a little whacky, a little weird or a little different around the office these days, you don't have to blow a whistle. Just whisper something to a peer or manager whom you trust and see what the next steps might be.

Submitted by Bostonworks.com Savvy Manager column Mary Helen Gillespie. Email her at maryhelen@bostonworks.com.

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May 24, 2006

Recruiting stars
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 2:42 PM

From HR guide Susan Heathfield on sister site About.com (we are both owned by The New York Times Company) comes this article about the top ten ways to recruit talented individuals to your organization:

Looking for talent? The smartest employers, who hire the best people, develop a pre-qualified candidate pool before they need to fill a job. Or, as Harvey Mackay, well-known, irreverent, author and speaker, says about networking, Dig Your Well, Before You're Thirsty.

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Retaining Boston's talent
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 9:40 AM

Local NPR news station WBUR is running a great series this week called "Boston at the Crossroads" about the future of the Greater Boston economy and region.

The latest installment, from superb 'BUR reporter Fred Thys, is on attracting and retaining talent in the area - what exactly makes people decide to settle and stay in an area, and specifically in Boston?:

“The most important reason is that other skilled people are here,” says [Ed] Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard. “Increasingly, cities are located in places that consumers want to live rather than in places where producers want to produce. I think as we think about Boston at the crossroads, the important thing is making sure that you have houses that skilled people want to live in that are affordable, and to compete on the national field for cities, if you’re about attracting skilled workers, it means attracting people by being a consumer city, to make it a place where those skilled people want to live."

Carve out a block of time for this audio segment, which runs over 13 minutes. But it's well worth the listen, as is the entire series.

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May 23, 2006

More on America's Job Bank getting laid off
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:33 AM

Following on Maureen Crawford's post of May 16, here's more from Workforce Management magazine on the pending demise of the federal government's DOL-run massive job board, America's Job Bank:

. . .Shutting down America’s Job Bank will be a major blow to employers and job seekers, says Gerry Crispin, co-founder of job-site consulting firm CareerXroads. Crispin says the site has been a way to aggregate all the job postings of some 2,000 state employment offices around the country, giving smaller, local employers the ability to broadcast their jobs nationwide for free. And the AJB site is often used by lower-skilled people who turn to state employment offices. Those people may have to rely on a fragmented network of state job sites or private-sector job boards that will not have all the job listings that employers currently give to America’s Job Bank, Crispin says.
- - - - -
America’s Job Bank dates to 1995, and the free site currently lists more than 2.1 million jobs and more than 682,000 résumés. But it has been criticized as difficult to use. The Labor Department said in a notice that the cost of operating AJB has been as high as $27 million per year, but that "AJB has not been able to keep up with private-sector job boards or industry standards regarding up-to-date technology."

It appears for now that the other components in the suite of "electronic tools" maintained by the DOL as part of the meta-site CareerOneStop, including America's CareerInfoNet and America's Service Locator, will remain. Career InfoNet, in particular, provides the full wealth of DOL occupational data (eg, Occupational Outlook Handbook) and career development information, all in searchable text form, that should remain as a freely accessible public resource.

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Will ID theft impact hiring?
Posted by at 9:53 AM

News broke yesterday that data including social security numbers, names and birthdays of 26 million veterans was stolen. click here for CNN.com's report.

While the impact of the theft is not known, potential implications for the HR and recruiting communities are clear, and now is a good time to consider them. It may be prudent to consider how a wide-spread identity theft such as this one could impact your hiring practices.

• If SSID verification is part of your corporate background checking process, is your exception policy resilient enough to accommodate victims of identity theft? Do you have an exception policy?


• Are you currently using SSID as an identifier for employees who call into your benefits center? If that is the case, are you sure about your verification processes for changes of address and beneficiary?

Again, although it remains to be seen if the stolen information will be used for nefarious purposes, this incident affords us the opportunity to think proactively about identity theft and our current practices.

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May 17, 2006

High heeling it to the top
Posted by Diane Danielson at 4:00 PM

Karen Archembeau writes in Forbes.com about how to march your high heels to the top.

In a time of corporate scandals and bankruptcies, wars and terrorism, isn't it time for a change to the male model of success? Isn't it time women stopped trying to be more like men and started trying to be more like themselves? Isn't it time women brought their talents to the party? Isn't it time to redefine what it means to be successful? Women--and men--shouldn't have to give up their lives for their careers. It doesn't have to be one or the other; it can be both.

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May 16, 2006

America's Job Bank being sunsetted
Posted by at 11:21 AM

Did you know that America's Job Bank is being sunsetted by DOL's Employment and Training Administration?

The USDOL Employment and Training Administration (ETA) sponsored a telephone conference on Friday, March 17, regarding the Administration's plans to discontinue support for America's Job Bank (AJB) as of July 1, 2007.

According to ETA, the environment has changed since AJB was started over a decade ago as most states have developed or purchased their own Internet-based job banks and the private sector has caught up and produced numerous nationwide job bank sites. The two major factors ETA weighed when making their decision to discontinue support for AJB were: (1) changes in the job bank market and (2) the costs associated with running AJB.

Its last day of operation will be June 30, 2006. It will be interesting to see what impact this has on MA career center operations. For official Q&A click here

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New Globe 100: largest Mass. firms boosted hiring in '05
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:24 AM

The new Globe 100 ranking of top Massachusetts employers is out today. And, perhaps no surprise, the top firms boosted their hiring in 2005:

Nine of 10 of the largest worldwide firms based in Massachusetts increased hiring last year, according to The Globe 100's list of top employers.

Framingham-based TJX Cos. Inc. grew to 119,000 employees, up from 113,000 in 2004. Raytheon Co. added 500 jobs, increasing worldwide employment to 79,900. Staples Inc., with headquarters in Framingham, added 4,000 employees to increase to 68,533.

Check out the full rankings, listings, articles, and wealth of other information in this annual Globe special section.

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May 14, 2006

Worst business advice/best comeback
Posted by Diane Danielson at 1:45 PM

From Businessweek's profile of Patricia Woertz, new CEO of Archer Daniels:

One of Woertz's first bosses told her that having kids would ruin her career. "Get yourself fixed," he said, "and put it on your expense report." At her retirement party one of her kids said: "I'm glad you didn't listen to him."

Happy Mother's Day to Patricia and the rest of the working moms of the world!

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May 12, 2006

20 questions to ask when hiring web developers
Posted by Jason Butler at 8:29 AM

I interview and hire web developers and designers pretty regularly. Here's a good starting list of 20 good questions to ask when hiring web developers.

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May 11, 2006

Winning workplaces
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 10:32 AM

We've just received a heads-up from an organization that checked out our post on resume padding from late April.

The outfit is called Winning Workplaces, "a not-for-profit providing consulting, training and information to help small and midsize organizations create great workplaces." Although not local (they are out of suburban Chicago in Evanston, IL), you can get a sense of their expertise via their newsletter, Winning Workplace Ideas. We'll keep an eye on them for future blog posts, too.

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May 10, 2006

Rainbow economy: Increase in Hispanics will empower US workforce
Posted by at 11:19 AM

The Washington Post reports today that new census figures show that nearly half of the nation's children under 5 are racial or ethnic minorities, and the percentage is increasing mainly because the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly. This will reflect positively in future generations of the American workforce:

William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, predicted that the United States will have "a multicultural population that will probably be more tolerant, accommodating to other races and more able to succeed in a global economy."

As my Irish relations would say, there is a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow.

Posted by Bostonworks.com's Savvy Manager columinst Mary Helen Gillespie. Send comments to maryhelen@bostonworks.com.

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May 9, 2006

More about the Boomer Job Fair
Posted by Diane Danielson at 8:32 AM

For more on Monday's Boomer+ Job Fair:

Soha was among nearly 500 people who packed a conference room yesterday at the Radisson Hotel in Boston for a job fair for those 45 and older. Sponsored by Operation ABLE, the nonprofit job-training program for mature workers, the event drew 25 employers, including Lahey Clinic, Simmons College, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, John Hancock Financial Services, and MIT.

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May 8, 2006

It's Job Week at NECN
Posted by Diane Danielson at 9:50 PM

NECN (pronounced "Neckin" for those in the know; otherwise known as New England Cable News) kicks off Job Week with lots of informative segments including one for the 40+ job hunter and networking tips from yours truly (You'll have to watch the video about finding your "comfort zone" if you want to know more about the airplane test for networking).

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OFCCP compliance plans: 90 days is drawing nigh
Posted by at 5:56 PM

The 90 grace period on establishing an OFCCP compliance plan is drawing to a close, and if conversations with colleagues are any indication, many companies are no closer to a compliance plan than they were on Feb. 6. I was recently on DOL's Internet Applicant Recordkeeping Rule website and was pleased to note that the FAQs have been updated with some great and specific information.

Some of the FAQs posted include:

Can a company use a resume database 'bot?

Can the company use on-line application questions to screen for basic qualifications?

How should an in-person job fair applicant who fails to follow up with an on-line application be handled?

As a community, we need to start sharing best practices with each other around this new legislation. This is the time to work together to determine what industry standards are going to be. Any readers out there want to share elements of their company's compliance plan? Send an email to me and I will include recommendations in future posts.

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May 3, 2006

WOW: U.S. hiring boom highest since pre-9/11 economy
Posted by at 1:47 PM

According to the new issue of Business 2.0, the United States is undergoing the biggest hiring boom since the dotcom days. What is most interesting, however, is the power shift that may surprise hiring managers and their bosses:

"It's a dramatic reversal from the recent downturn. Since employment peaked at the height of the bubble economy at the end of 2000, bosses have held an unusually lopsided share of power. They've subjected employees to downsizing, productivity squeezing, outsourcing, and myriad lesser indignities.

For most workers lucky enough to escape the mass layoffs, there was little choice but to hunker down and take whatever the boss dished out. Even as the economy took off in 2003 and corporate profits -- and CEO paychecks -- ballooned, the job market languished. The "jobless" recovery was for many beleaguered workers the "joyless" recovery.

But something had to give, and now, it's increasingly workers giving notice. The Bureau of Labor Statistics's so-called quit rate, a measure of, as the name implies, people who have quit, has swelled by a third since 2003. There are now about 2.6 million people leaving their jobs each month, the same level as in the pre-9/11 economy."

Whoa!

--Posted by Bostonworks.com Savvy Manager columinst Mary Helen Gillespie aka maryhelen@bostonworks.com.

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May 2, 2006

Internship programs graduate to higher level
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 1:21 PM

OK, I'll admit I'm sensitized to the subject as I have a college sophomore daughter who's currently working on landing a summer internship.

But what's of particular interest in this article is how important summer internships have become for employers:

College internships. . .have become increasingly popular as a strategic method for recruiting students prior to their graduation. Managers favor internships for building pipelines of talent and like the opportunity to "audition" the students for a period of time prior to extending offers, according to Steve Pollock, president of Wet Feet, a recruitment solutions provider and research company based in San Francisco.

Read the entire piece from Workforce Management magazine.

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May 1, 2006

Local immigrant groups divided
Posted by Douglas Eisenhart at 11:24 AM

Seeing any impact from the planned immigrant work boycott today? Today's Globe notes that pro-immigrant groups are divided:

Organizers expect thousands of immigrants across the state to take part in marches, economic boycotts, and work stoppages today to draw attention to their contribution to society by joining a national ''Day Without Immigrants."

But the effort has divided immigrants and their supporters. Some worry that widespread absences from workplaces, restaurants, and hospitals will alienate the broader public at a sensitive time in the immigration debate.

Let us know your thoughts on our message board.

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