Keep up to date on articles and news and subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Job-seekers beware

Employers search online profiles for indiscretion. Online social networking allows self-expression, the free exchange of ideas, political speech and other activities we newspaper types encourage.

But many of the young adults who post on MySpace and the like aren’t going to work for us. The companies today’s youths would one day like to join - the Boeings and Targets of the world- review candidates’ online profiles in search of unsound character, poor judgment and immorality.

And plenty of young adults, who presumably could sell the heck out of pharmaceuticals or design cutting-edge airplane software, aren’t getting jobs thanks to their less-than-puritan online personalities, according to the Sunday Business section.

Hiring directors are understandably looking for workers who will not embarrass the company in front of clients or the public. So before college students post videos of drunken nights in T.J. on Youtube, details about their awful ex on MySpace or their distaste for their bosses on Friendster, they may want to remember that those who sign paychecks have Internet access and nosy HR departments to screen candidates.

The degrees to which employers go to retrace online tracks vary. Some keep Internet searches simple by plugging candidates’ names into Yahoo! and Google. Others hire private detectives.
Read the rest of this entry »

Careers In Human Resources

Human Resources is a career that involves inviting the most competent personnel and pairing them with the employment for which they are best suited.

Human Resource specialists work as intermediaries between top management and employees. Their work ranges from handling employee benefits questions and recruiting, interviewing, and hiring new staff to aiding in strategic planning at top executive levels. They form major contributors as policy makers, and subsequently aid the financial success of their companies.

The Human Resource workers serve to increase the morale and output of their firm, limit job turnover, and aid the organization in order to boost the performance and enhance the business results. They thus aid their organizations to use employee skills to the advantage of the firm. They give training and evolve openings to enrich and refine the skills and augment employee’s contentment with their tasks and working environment. Dealing with persons on a large scale is an important part of the job.

In a relatively small association, all aspects of Human Resources work come under the purview of a Human Resources generalist. An expansive range of information data is hence a must. Relative to the employer’s requirements, the work agenda of a Human Resources generalist may be diverse. In a large organization, the Human Resources program and policies are generally developed and handled by the top Human Resources executive. A director or manager of Human Resources carries out these policies.

Many departments may be directed by the director of Human Resources. These departments in turn are led by experienced managers who have specialized in at least one Human Resources activity, such as employment, training and development, compensation or employee relations.

The hiring of employees is managed by employment and placement managers. Various workers are directed by them including equal employment opportunity specialists and recruitment specialists. They in turn hire and position workers.
Read the rest of this entry »

Think about career, not just your job

Question: I received my MBA and landed a great job.

Now, I am completing my first year with my company and things are going great. How should I plan my career so it continues to advance like I want it to?

Answer: You’re doing the right thing by thinking about your career future now. Too many people concentrate only on doing their jobs well, instead of also thinking about how to do their careers well.

Here are some tips:

• Work quality. Be focused on doing the absolutely best job that you can do. Be creative, resourceful and determined to be the best at what you do.

• Find a mentor. Identify someone in the organization who understands your ambition and can teach you new skills and guide you through the political landscape of the company. He or she should be able give you the advice and counsel you need for years to come.

• Learn, learn, learn. Always stay at the top of your game. Take every opportunity to learn new technologies, management styles, and computer hardware and software.

• Network. Build strong associations with people in and out of your work specialty. Join professional associations and become a leader. Try to get speaking engagements and submit papers.

• Find a headhunter. You will receive calls from recruiters every now and again. You can’t spend all of your time listening to their “unique and wonderful” new jobs, but you should select one or two you feel comfortable with. Make sure they are well-connected and understand your skills and career goals. Help them and they will help you.

• Have a success file. Keep one in your top drawer that documents your achievements and success stories. When you need to prepare a new resume or interview for a big new job, you will be happy you saved proof of your triumphs.

Blue-collar needn’t mean low-paying

Dear Joyce: I have three sons, two of whom are still in high school and say they’re not at all interested in going to college and pursuing a professional career. But they’re very interested in money and, in fact, work part-time jobs. You always recommend working with school counselors, but they haven’t been very helpful to my sons. What are your comments? — W.F.P.

Who says money doesn’t make the world of work go around? Despite surveys claiming that money is far down on the list of must-haves when comparing jobs, I contend that most people want decent pay as a given.

If blue-collar work is where two of your sons see themselves, they may be on to something. Blue-collar pay can be very good at the top. For instance, long-haul truck drivers who wheel on down the roads for days or weeks at a clip can earn more than $100,000 annually. So can installers and repairers who go into business for themselves.

A recent Forbes magazine article uses Department of Labor data to calculate average nationwide blue-collar earnings based on a 40-hour week, 52 weeks per year. Specific areas of the nation pay more, others less. Overtime can add heft to earnings.

Forbes identifies “The Ten Best-Paying Blue-Collar Jobs” in the article. They are: public transportation attendants, $62,088; longshore equipment operators, $58,198; brickmasons and stonemasons, $57,200; power plant operators, $56,472; locomotive operating occupations, $56,347; aircraft engine mechanics, $55,494; electrical power installers and repairers, $55,390; mining occupations, $54,704; oil well drillers, $53,227; and telephone line installers/repairers, $52,478.

You can read the entire article on forbes.com; search by the title of the article. And you can read the details of each occupation — as in mining is dangerous work, and some aircraft mechanic work has been shipped overseas — on the Department of Labor’s Web site for the Occupational Outlook Handbook: www.bls.gov/oco.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ten Ways to get Your Resume to the Top of the Pile

Any advantage that you can get to help get your resume to the top of the pile is worth looking at. I have some employment agency contacts that I asked about what people can do to put them to the front of the line when the jobs are being handed out. I’ve put together their replies. These tips apply to whether your going for a permanent or contract position.

1. As in every business, personal relationships are crucial. If you have any agents with whom you have a good relationship, keep in touch with them, especially if you have done a good job for them in the past

2. Send your resume out to as many agencies as possible. It does no harm, and they take most notice of you when your resume first arrives. Often it is sent around to all the sales people at the company. Send out a certain amount each week, e.g. ten, to keep you in the mind’s eye of at least some agents

3. Make sure that your resume is presentable and easily readable. Make sure that your best skills are right at the front. Don’t clutter up your resume with old skills and ones that you don’t have much experience in ­ unless they’re very marketable

4. Keep calling agencies even though it is soul-destroying. Keep yourself in the front of their minds. The right job might have just come in and you’ll be at the front of the line. Out of sight, out of mind. If you haven’t been in touch for a while, they’ll probably assume that you’re off the market for whatever reason. Have a list of agencies that you call every two weeks, calling a selection of them every day

5. Always, always, always adapt your resume for each job that you are applying for rather than just sending out your standard resume. It’s not the job of the agent or the employer to find the skills that they are looking for. It’s up to you to bring it to their attention. They may have dozens of resumes in front of them (or even hundreds) and they aren’t going to give your resume more than thirty seconds in the first crawl through to cut the possible candidates down to a more manageable number

6. Be friendly and alert when an agent calls out of the blue rather than surly and suspicious. He may be one of those reference spammers, but he also may be the genuine article and could be put off by your response

7. Send scanned references along with the resume when applying off any of the job boards with managers contact names blanked out so that agents don’t mine them for leads. It always looks good and impresses agencies to no end. If you send them and others don’t, then you’ve gained a little competitive advantage on them ­ and that’s crucial in the current climate

8. Follow up the resume with a friendly, positive call. Agents are human, too, and react positively to a friendly approach.

9. One contractor that I’ve heard of actually told the consultants at one agency that he would pay whichever recruitment consultant got him a job a personal bonus of $3,000. According to the guy who owned the agency, this put the contractor right to the front of the line.

10. When you do get an interview, do some research on the company so that when you’re asked the inevitable “Do you know anything about us” you don’t end up saying “I think I’ve heard of you”.

Preparation, hard work and a friendly demeanor are crucial to getting your resume to the top of the hiring manager’s pile. Try these ten tips today and see what will come of your job or contract search.

The Right Keywords Can Get Your Resume Noticed Among the Harshest Competition

It’s often been said that saying the right words at the right time is the key to success in the business world. If you have a line in your presentation that really captures attention…or if you say something particularly clever in a job interview…you may be able to achieve a career high you never dreamed possible.

It’s also no secret that a resume needs to be worded quite carefully if it is to accomplish the job applicant’s hoped-for results. While you’re drafting the wording for your career highlights, job duties, and other essential information for your resume, you should give some serious attention to keywords.

How the High-Tech Revolution Changed Resume Reading

There was a time when employers took a stack of resumes that had been handed to them by their secretaries and proceeded to read through them, carefully laying aside those resumes that featured applicants that appeared to be suitable to the companies’ needs. Of course, this was a painstaking, time-intensive process, and a manager who was bored or tired might inadvertently misclassify a resume in the process of getting through the stack.

However, with the advent of sophisticated technology, the resume-reading process has changed dramatically. A number of human resource executives note that such changes were inevitable, given the large volume of resumes that are routinely delivered to a manager’s inbox. If hundreds of resumes are submitted for a given job, a corporate headhunter must find some way to scale that paper mountain in order to find the right candidate. As a result, an increasing number of employers are digitizing the resumes that pour into their offices. The documents can then be placed into keyword-searchable databases in order to isolate those resumes that contain “the magic words.”

Getting Noticed

One resume-writing expert now estimates that more than 80 percent of all resumes are searched for job-related keywords. Given the fact that both Fortune 500 companies and smaller firms are now routinely engaging in keyword searches, it only makes sense to make your resume as keyword-attractive as possible.

You will need to craft your resume so that it contains the keywords that a manager is searching for with regard to a particular position. While job titles often serve as keywords, you cannot change the titles you’ve held, so you should consider focusing instead on job skills. If you’re applying for an IT job, for instance, you’ll want to list specific technological skills in your resume. You’ll also want to be sure to include the names of software and hardware that you’ve worked with (This is probably true, even if you are not applying for a job that does not require a BA in computer science).
Read the rest of this entry »

Are you stuck in middle management hell?

A generation of workers can’t get ahead - because aging boomers above them won’t budge. Here’s how to break through the gray ceiling. Jon Ciampi had always thought of himself as a rising star. A portfolio analyst for Wells Fargo in San Francisco, he had a solid job at a big company, pulled down an enviable salary, and scored top marks on his performance reviews.

Sure, he was stuck doing some grunt work, and, yeah, working till after midnight wasn’t unusual. But he was only 29! He was doing everything his bosses asked him to! How long could it be before he’d be running the place?

Then he started doing the math. The head of his division was 50, easily a decade or more away from retirement. The six managers who reported to the division head were all in their mid-40s and had settled into their jobs for the long haul.

Below them was Ciampi’s boss: an ambitious thirtysomething MBA who, even by Ciampi’s standards, put in incredible hours. But even though he and his boss were killing themselves, neither seemed to be on a promotion track. There was simply nowhere to promote them to.

Then came the final straw: Wells Fargo (Charts) installed another fifty-something at his boss’s level, who, Ciampi says, didn’t know a thing about the business. “It really ticked me off,” he says. “I realized I’m not going to move up until the people above me do.”

How long would it be before Ciampi’s star actually rose? “It looked like it was going to be never,” he says.

He was far from alone. At Bank of America (Charts), Ryan Bristol, 30, was spinning his wheels. Though his boss praised his work for the company’s private-banking group, it drove Bristol nuts that every move he made still had to be signed off on by an army of superiors.

“The people above me were all ages 45 to 65 and weren’t about to leave. It was clear to me I wouldn’t get promoted no matter how good I was.”

On Madison Avenue, Brett Voris was similarly demoralized. As an account manager at TBWA\Chiat\Day, he and the other thirty-something’s were coming up with the best ideas, and they were the ones fielding late-night client emergencies. Yet they had zero authority to make decisions on their own.

“In advertising - and I saw this at more than one agency - youthfulness is valued because it’s seen as with-it and relevant, but it’s a paradox,” he says. “The senior managers in their 40s and 50s are paranoid about keeping their own jobs, so they do everything they can to keep you down.”

The same goes for the media business. One 36-year-old finance manager at a broadcasting company got her last promotion four years ago. “Since then, I’ve just been stuck, and so has everyone else my age,” she says. The next level up is vice president, and the six current VPs aren’t retiring. “I’m under so much pressure here, but the rewards just aren’t coming,” she says. “I have to get out.”

Twenty-, thirty-, and even forty-something managers are in trouble. Fifteen-hour days have become the norm. Un tethering oneself from one’s BlackBerry is, in many fields, considered high treason.

And weekends? Those are for catching up on e-mail, right?
Stymied

All this might not be so terrible if that big promotion - the one that catapults an up-and-comer out of middle-management hell and into the senior ranks - were around the corner.

But increasingly, younger workers are finding that no matter how many hours they put in or how much their bosses rave about their work, they’re just plain stuck. An entire generation is bumping against something no amount of youthful vigor can match. Call it the Gray Ceiling.

The Gray Ceiling is purely a function of mathematics. Jon Ciampi, for example, was born in 1973, when the birthrate hit a quarter-century low. Just ahead of him and his peers is the anomaly known as the baby boom, the 77 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964.

Just behind him are the boomers’ children, known as Gen Y, who form a second bulge. And sandwiched in between is the baby bust, or Generation X. Known variously as the laziest generation and the most entrepreneurial, they are unambiguously the smallest generation since the Great Depression.

Though that worked to the benefit of Gen Xers when it came to slots in elite schools - and will once again work to their benefit when the boomers finally leave the workforce - right now it’s holding them back.

For starters, the workplace makeup has changed dramatically from just a decade ago. In 1996 there were 64 million U.S. workers between the ages of 30 and 39 and only 43 million ages 40 to 59. Now the situation has reversed. As of June 2006 there were only 40 million ages 30 to 39 and 69 million workers 40 to 59, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nobody is suggesting that all boomers have it easy.

For one thing, as Fortune reported last year in “50 and Fired,” those tossed out the door in the latest recession are having a tough time getting back in. That problem and the Gray Ceiling - a term that has been associated with age discrimination in the past but is taking on a new meaning - share a common cause: In today’s leaner companies, executive jobs are fewer, and boomers who have hung on to them are in no hurry to let go.
Read the rest of this entry »

5 resume requisites

Looking to land that perfect job? Give your vita clarity and impact with these crucial hints

When a manager is looking to hire a brilliant employee who stands out from the rest, she skims through resumes searching for ones that are vague, have misspellings and are unorganized.

Why? So she can toss them and move on to the ones that count.
“Companies definitely try to streamline the resumes they get,” says Gary Daugenti, president of JustSTAFF, an executive search firm in Los Altos, Calif. “They actually put them in order.”

Experts say just 10 percent of all resumes get a second viewing. Recruiters actually are looking for reasons to reject you — not hire you. Give them even one tiny excuse to dump you, like a bloated salary requirement, and they will.
So how can you ensure that after all the tossing that your resume lands on the top of the pile on the desk — and not in the trashcan?
Here’s how to craft a resume that will make you the first person the manager calls for an interview:

Personalize the resume for every single job
Too many candidates create one resume and blanket it to dozens of companies.

They overlook the specific requirements that each employer has requested. For example, if an ad seeks someone who knows Microsoft Excel and you have that skill, list it under your qualifications. Don’t assume that because you are an accountant and all accountants know Excel that the person doing the hiring will assume you know Excel.

If the posting requires travel and you are willing to do that, put it on the resume. Be explicit so that the resume will catch the eye of the manager.

Send an extra copy to a high-level exec.
This is especially important when you’re asked to send resumes to the human resources department.

“If you only send it to HR, they are in control of your destiny,” says Daugenti. Go to the company Web site and find out who is in charge of the department where you would be working. If it’s a finance position, get the name of the chief financial officer. If it’s a sales job, find the name of the vice president of sales. At small companies, send a copy to the CEO.

Imagine the advantage you will have if the CEO passes your resume on to HR. You are almost guaranteed a call.
Read the rest of this entry »

Common Misconceptions About Career Management

You get your clothes cleaned when they’re dirty. You pay your bills each month. You see your doctor once or twice a year. You send cards to family-members at each birthday.

So, why is it that most people (maybe even you!) don’t integrate career management into their regular routine?

Most individuals have a reactive - not a “proactive” - approach to their careers. Thinking that you only need to “fix your career when it’s broken” (i.e., when you’re laid off, downsized or just plain miserable) is a very unfortunate misconception that will seriously limit your career success!

Here are 10 other common misconceptions about career management:

1. The most qualified candidate gets the job offer. WRONG! Many times candidates with lesser qualifications get job offers simply because they’ve prepared and presented themselves in a more compelling way. In other words, they’re better self-marketers! Being “qualified” is not enough. You must CONVINCE the employer that you’re the best candidate for the job.

2. As long as I have a job, I don’t have to work on my career. WRONG! Even if you’re employed today, you never know what may happen tomorrow! To avoid a career disaster, you should incorporate “Perpetual Career Management” into your professional life. Vital tasks like keeping your Accomplishment Stories up to date, or networking regularly with professionals in your industry, should be incorporated into your regular routine.

3. My professional education stopped when I graduated from school. WRONG! You should always look for ways to advance your professional knowledge. Attending seminars, reading trade journals, pursuing certifications, etc. - these activities should be a part of your ongoing professional development process. It’s imperative that every professional remain current in his or her field.

4. Employers always offer the most generous compensation they can afford. WRONG! Employers expect that you’ve done salary research, and they anticipate dynamic negotiations. In fact, they’ll often be disappointed and question your candidacy if you DON’T negotiate. Employers usually state a low salary offer merely as a “trial balloon,” to see how you’ll react - and there’s almost always room to improve on the initial compensation offer.
Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t get caught in your own Web

Companies, large and small, visit networking sites as part of low-cost background checks. Resumes provide employers with job candidates’ experience in black and white.

These days, smaller companies want to know about the gray area.

They also want to save money.

In the past several years, employers have emphasized background checks on the cheap, sometimes learning about candidates via the Internet and its social networking sites such as MySpace. These Web searches allow employers to learn what resumes don’t tell them: job candidates’ personalities or what they do on the weekend.

MySpace users post personal information in photos and blogs that detail their sexual exploits, drunken weekends with friends or tame family vacations.

One expert says the popularity of online background checks such as MySpace has increased momentum in the past two months as the networking site has captured national headlines and gained popularity through word of mouth.

“Soon that will become commonplace,” said Carl Greenberg, vice president of selection and retention at Florida-based Spherion Corp., a staffing firm. “I think this is going to become very hot very quickly.”

Spherion works with about 8,000 clients, including 85 percent of the Fortune 100 companies.

According to a 2005 Spherion survey of human resources departments in the United States, the number of companies doing background checks on some or all employees increased to 79 percent, up from 51 percent in 2000.

The survey also revealed drug tests were down 4 percentage points, to 50 percent, and credit checks dropped to 33 percent, from 55 percent in the same period.
Read the rest of this entry »