October 27, 2008
Job Action Day November 3, 2008
Posted by Maureen Crawford Hentz at 3:43 PM
Quintcareers (a website I also write for) has declared November 3, 2008 Job Action Day.
To rally those who have lost their jobs or are facing possible job loss in the current devastated economic climate, Quintessential Careers has created Job Action Day, to be implemented on Monday, Nov. 3. Job Action Day 2008 aims to empower workers and job-seekers to take proactive steps to shore up their job and career outlook, said Quintessential Careers Founder and Publisher Dr. Randall S. Hansen.
"For job-seekers," Hansen said, "Job Action Day is a chance to take a break from the daily grind of job-hunting to take a look at the bigger picture of their careers and job-search strategies. It's a day to strategize plans for developing new job and career options and devising new and better ways to track down job leads and position themselves for employment opportunities."
For workers facing possible job loss, Job Action Day is a time "to not only examine their current job and employer, but also evaluate both the stability of that job and employer as well as their personal fulfillment with their jobs," Hansen said. "It's a day to take stock of their careers and develop a plan for their next career steps."
Hansen said he deliberately set Job Action Day 2008 for the eve of the U.S. presidential election to encourage voters to think about job creation and the avoidance of further job losses as they cast their votes. Beyond the election, Hansen said, "workers and job-seekers must hold the next president's feet to the fire." Echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton's battle cry at a recent rally in Orlando, FL, the concept of "Jobs, Baby, Jobs" must be a top priority for the new leader, Hansen said.
Quintessential Careers will mark Job Action Day 2008 with service-oriented articles and blog entries to provide workers and job-seekers with information, ideas, and concrete steps that they can take to secure their futures -- both in the short-term and the long-term.
I think this is a great idea, not just to reengerize candidates, but to look at our own jobs and our own companies. I'm lucky---I love my job and my company, but it's helpful to take a minute or two and examine my current situation. Periodically I look in my closet and throw out an old sweater that doesn't look as good as it used to. Shouldn't we all spend a bit of time examining our careers and our companies to ensure that they still fit well, but with room to grow?
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September 15, 2008
Just when you thought there was nothing new about career fairs
Posted by Maureen Crawford Hentz at 1:35 PM
Innovation! Fun! Creative idea! When was the last time you though this about a career fair? Not me, and I'm actually a big fan of career fairs. I like chatting with people, finding out about them and talking about my company. In my former life as Director of Career Services at Wentworth, I thought I was innovative with an I Just Got Lucky St. Patrick’s Day Career Fair.
Well, just when I thought I'd see or heard of everything DeVry---yes, DeVry---- shocks me so much I had to immediately blog and let you all know. They are hosting a Sadie Hawkins Day Career Fair! Now for those of you who don't know about Sadie, click here for a refresher.
On October 15, DeVry is having students and alums set up tables and present themselves to recruiters! This is great. Students will have to sell themselves and recruiters will have to go around to all the tables and find talent. I love the idea of sometimes jaded recruiters having to go up to tables and initiate the conversations instead of sitting on little chairs checking their text messages and waiting for students to come to them.
Even though this event is in Philadelphia, I may go just to see and support the first true innovation of career fairs in 200 years!
The fair is by invitation only, but I bet recruiters can call and wheedle an invitation. Info is on the site.
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September 5, 2008
Millennials...Doers (and here comes the proof)
Posted by Maureen Crawford Hentz at 3:00 PM
If you're a reader of this blog, you know that I am fascinated with millennials and here is another great example why: Alex Steed's research project on millennial activism. A self-described Writer, Doer & Collective Action Enthusiast, he is conducting a national tour to meet millennials across the country and report back on activism of all kinds. His purpose is to answer the question why and how do millennials engage.
His website, http://www.alexsteed.com/millennial.html is worth keeping an eye on, as his reports will give live, in the field anecdotes about how millennials are different and why this difference is so valuable.
As recruiters and HR professionals, it's vital that we learn as much about millennials as we can, and I'm confident that reading Alex's blog will provide great insight into all that's happening out there in this age cohort.
His national tour kicks off in Maine in October. Good luck Alex!
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August 6, 2008
Fantasy for an August day: HR in the South Pole
Posted by Maureen Crawford Hentz at 2:34 PM
Ever have one of those bad days where you really think about chucking your company and packing it in? I saw a job today that really tickled my fancy: HR person at the South Pole. Listed on SHRM, the position is for Raytheon Polar Services and is a real true job.
Sitting here in August, I imagine running HR from a nice cold igloo. Ah! Nirvana. Then I remember that it's always cold there. At least here I can put on a sweater or go outside to warm up from our Antarctic air conditioning.
Then I think how nice it would be to just work with a small group of people, who are probably all sincere scientists with no complaints at all. But then I remember that I work with a nice group of sincere scientists who have limited complaints and who all go home, far away from the office, at 5pm. I imagine in Antarctica, they just snowshoe off to the next igloo and I see them at dinner, and then at breakfast, and then at the office.
Still, it's a good job for somebody and I think Boston.com readers should go for it. After all, we have been through enough frozen winters. Go to rayjobs.com and look for req number TSC110693. After you get hired, we'll want reports from your igloo.
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July 22, 2008
NYTimes admits that women don't just opt out for children
Posted by Diane Danielson at 10:08 AM
The NYTimes ran an article today, "Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy". Despite the misleading title (women are usually affected worse than men in poor economies), the article discusses a new study that shows that women are leaving the workforce in a poor economy due to the same reasons the men do: jobs are eliminated; can't afford to do same job for half the wage; or can't find equivalent work.
The women, in sum, are for the first time withdrawing from work with the same uniformity as men in their prime working years. Ninety-six percent of the men held jobs in 1953, their peak year. That is down to 86.4 percent today. But while men are rarely thought of as dropping out to run the household, that is often the assumption when women pull out.
“A woman gets laid off and she stays home for six months with her kids,” Ms. Boushey said. “She doesn’t admit that she is staying home because she could not get another acceptable job.”
The biggest retreat has been in manufacturing, where more than one million women have disappeared from payrolls since 2001. Like men, many have not returned to jobs in other sectors.
Wage stagnation often discourages them from pursuing new jobs, says Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “While pay was rising solidly in the 1990s, you had women continuing to move into the work force,” Mr. Katz said.
Pay is no longer rising smartly for women in the key 25-to-54 age group. Just the opposite, the median pay — the point where half make more and half less — has fallen in recent years, to $14.84 an hour in 2007 from $15.04 in 2004, adjusted for inflation, according to the Economic Policy Institute. (The similar wage for men today is two dollars more.)
Not since the 1970s has that happened to women for so long a stretch — and because this is a new experience for them, “women may be even more reluctant than men to accept declining wages,” said Nancy Folbre, an economist at the University of Massachusetts.
Click here for full story.
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July 15, 2008
Best Diversity Candidates! Best Jobs Site!
Posted by Maureen Crawford Hentz at 11:08 AM
My phone's been ringing off the hook since 2002 with sales people trying to explain to me why their job site is the best, the biggest, the most worth the money. When I was a young, naive recruiter, hope always flickered in me that perhaps this site was the great one.
I've smartened up in the past few years, and started letting data affirmatively drive my decisions. I no longer try a site and then calculte ROI, unless the sales people are willing to give me a test job for free.
When sales people call and give me their pitch, I ask about their Alexa rankings. Strike one if they can't give me actual traffic data that supports their 'we're the best' claim. Strike two if their 'we are better than xyzsite' isn't supported by data. And woe to the sales person who calls me who doesn't know what Alexa is!
I've been evangelizing about Alexa.com for a while now, and all of my workshops to recruiters and job seekers feature at least a mention of the site and how it can best be used when adverstising or looking for jobs. I'm always worried about pinning all my data on one source (no matter how much I love it). A recent Ann Smarty blogpost on Searchenginejournal.com gives us a few other options when evaluating website traffic, including a new Google feature.
Each of these tools can help recruiters decide where to spend valuable dollars. Is it possible to miss the next hot site by waiting for site data? Absolutely. But if the site is really going to be hot, take a tip from Ben and Jerry's and give free samples. I'm all about try before you buy.
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June 10, 2008
Fraternities and Sororities --Know what to look for?
Posted by Maureen Crawford Hentz at 4:22 PM
In a career long ago and far away, I was a live-in fraternity house advisor. I went on to be a Greek Advisor on a large campus in Boston and one in Arizona. Having spent a lot of time among the Greek population (and being Greek myself), of course I came across occasional bad behavior, baffling rituals and strange group think, but more often than not, I found some of the best possible student leaders.
Think about this: when graduating from college with fraternity or sorority leadership experience, students may already have the skills they would have acquired working at your company in the first year. Too often, students who spent 40 hours a week for a year running a chapter or organizing an event list their experience under 'activities', so you may have to dig a little to find the experience. I spent lots of workshop hours talking to greek leaders about the importance of taking their leadership seriously and presenting it on their resume in a way that accurately showcases their skill development. It's actually still one of my favorite topics.
For example, on larger campuses, chapter treasurers may have been handling and managing significant amounts of money in multiple accounts: house accounts, philanthropy accounts, operating accounts. On resumes, look for treasurers of larger philanthropies. For example, Rutgers University's Dance Marathon took in over $300K. Looking for a financial analyst? Look for an accounting or finance major who has been active in a fraternity and sorority.
Need people for your management development program? Look at fraternity and sorority presidents and vice presidents. Hey, if you can run a 100+ person organization, and have responsibility for discipline, morale, scholarship and entertainment, you can do anything. Ever try mediating between two co-workers? Piece of cake if by the age of 21, you've already mediated over multiple in-house disagreements and possibly cross-chapter conflicts as well.
Want someone assertive for your sales team? How about the philanthropy chair who not only had to hustle up cash and in-kind donations, but who also had to convince the chapter members to volunteer and represent the school well. Need chutzpah? No need to prove your ability to fearlessly go where others won't if you have routinely motivated others to rise and shine early every Saturday in the fall for a walk-bike-swim-rock a thon.
On many campuses, students are running the major events, and governing themselves. While fraternity and sorority advisors work hard, their work is not (solely) about preventing Animal House 08. Rather, these are on-campus educational administrators who are teaching OUR next generation of employees how to lead, manage conflict, motivate, follow rules, make rules and manage change.
Remember, too, that recruiting through fraternities and sororities is a great way to actualize your commitment to diversity. Don't know what NPHC or NALFO is? You should. I do and I use it to recruit.
Yes, there are still keg parties and occasional bad behavior, but I'd wager the Chess Club gets in trouble from time to time as well. Don't let your stereotypes---either good or bad--- prevent you from really examining the resume of a fraternity and sorority leader. X-ray a fraternity or sorority resume and differentiate between 'attended charity events' and 'organized 500 person rally'. You'll be happy you did.
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May 14, 2008
Get a Google Internship and Fame Follows....
Posted by Maureen Crawford Hentz at 3:59 PM
Google, the category-killer-always-ranked-a-best-employer company is running a contest for the best doodle (art) for their logo and special days. One of the links from the contest page is about The Original Doodler, Dennis Hwang.
From the interview:
"How did you get such a cool job that meshes computers and art?
I had an internship with Google in college. I was given the task of helping with maintenance of the website and I soon became an assistant webmaster. Before I joined Google, the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were already thinking about holiday logos...and when I joined, they knew I was studying art and suggested I should give it a shot. I've been doing it since then...
What a great story of how an internship, some talent and a can-do attitude can change your life.
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May 5, 2008
Millennials, Work Life Balance and Technology
Posted by Maureen Crawford Hentz at 12:30 AM
One of the great things that came up at BU's Recruiting Roundtable is work-life balance. One of the points I made is in the difference between millennials and other generations in terms of work-life balance. For Xers and boomers, work-life balance is a 'sane' ratio of time spent at work versus not at work. Millennials, on the other hand, perceive work-life balance very differently--often by how much of their lives they can live at work.
To wit, this interesting information reported on the searchcio.com:
According to the survey, for example, 75% of millennials access Web-based personal email at work, compared with 54% of other workers; 66% regularly access Facebook or MySpace, compared with 13% of other workers; and 51 % of millennials access personal finance applications, compared with 27% of other workers.
The article then goes on to talk about how to cope with this:
How should the IT establishment respond? Not by yelling and telling, said Samir Kapuria, managing director, Symantec Advisory Consulting Services.
"This is a large volume of people who use these personal technologies," Kapuria said. "Businesses need to ask themselves, 'How do I harness the capabilities of this tech-savvy group while also making sure of eliminating the risks associated with the use of this technology?'" Kapuria said there needs to be a council of people who understand the mind-set of the millennials and can measure the business's risk level through this lens, then identify the hard and soft skills required to remediate the risk.
To read the whole article click here.
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May 2, 2008
Party like it's 1964
Posted by Diane Danielson at 1:00 PM
Ellen Goodman does a great job of capturing the pathetic treatment of Lilly Ledbetter and the rest of our gender when it comes to wage equality in today's Boston Globe:
The idea that the wage gap might be because of, um, sex discrimination seems soooo 20th century. In fact, the Supreme Court implied that Lilly Ledbetter's lower paycheck was her own fault because she didn't start investigating her employer for sex discrimination as soon as she started her job.
As for the conductor of the Straight Talk Express? McCain said he was all in favor of equal pay for equal work, but that women don't need lawsuits, they need "education and training." So let's begin with a couple of basics.
Lesson One: An unequal paycheck is a thief that keeps on taking. Even in retirement, Ledbetter is still, in her own words, "a second-class worker" with a pension and Social Security check that carry Goodyear's bite marks.
Lesson Two: In 2008, the Republicans are partying - "political partying" - like it's 1964.
Click here to read the full story.
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