The Inside Job
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Fewer Can Count on Holiday Jobs
Continue reading… 1 CommentJust as more Americans will likely be looking for extra work to boost their incomes, fewer workers will be able to depend on seasonal jobs for extra income this year.
A survey of 1,000 hiring managers found that the average manager expects to hire 3.7 seasonal employees, a full third fewer than they hired last holiday season.
The SnagAJob.com survey found that more than half of managers won't be hiring any seasonal help—a figure that's increased 8 percent this year. Those managers still planning to hire seasonal help will be hiring about 9 employees each—20 percent fewer than last year.
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Cancer Patients Not Required to Share at Interviews
Continue reading… 19 CommentsImagine that you lose your job. You begin mailing résumés, networking and touching base with friends, and you finally net an interview. As you sit down with the hiring manager—dressed in your finest, ready with answers to the toughest questions—there is one question that looms largest in your mind: Should you share the fact that you are fighting cancer?
One reader asks JT & Dale Talk Jobs how and when she should tell that she has recurring ovarian cancer. Here's a key section from their response:
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Gwen Ifill: Bearer of Brevity and Levity
Continue reading… 43 CommentsGwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor of Washington Week on PBS and senior correspondent for The NewsHourWith Jim Lehrer, also on PBS, answered readers' questions online Thursday at WashingtonPost.com as she prepares for this week's first vice presidential debate.
A couple of her responses give great insight into Ifill's strengths as a reporter and moderator. She's confident, funny, and she doesn't mince words. (Note: Today happens to be her birthday.) Excerpts:
Motor Mouth: Have you interviewed Biden before? How in the world has he survived as a national politician for three decades without censoring his mouth? He seems to spurt out whatever he's thinking at the moment without filtering it in any manner. Has there ever been a politician like this on the national stage?
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Hank Paulson: Kneeling Before Pelosi
Continue reading… 1 CommentOh, how the mighty have fallen: Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson reportedly kneeled before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last night in a bid to keep her party on board with the bailout package—while the GOP chafes and grimaces—so it can get through Congress and onto the president's desk before the credit markets seize up.
Actually, the Wall Street Journal's report said that it was really "a moment of levity in a rough day," rather than a display of humility.
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Executive Compensation: Is This the Countervailing Force?
Continue reading… 0 CommentsExecutive compensation is a major bailout issue for many politicians and taxpayers. If we're forking over $700 billion to fix their mistakes, their ability to profit from future gains must be limited.
Earlier this year, I asked Ed Lawler, a professor at University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and an expert on salary issues, about why outrage over executive pay didn't seem to be changing anything.
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Obama and McCain on Jobs
Continue reading… 2 CommentsWhere do the candidates stand on issues related to work and career? Dawn Rosenberg McKay, the career planning guide at About.com, offers a highly useful rundown here.
For instance, on the issue of higher education:
McCain
- Wants to consolidate financial aid programs in order to simplify the application process
Obama
- In 2007, along with Senator Edward Kennedy, co-sponsored a bill that would increase the Pell Grant from $4,050 to $5,100 per year
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E-Mail Lies: Studies Show More Honesty in Handwriting
Continue reading… 0 CommentsA recent pair of studies seem to indicate that people are more likely to lie in an E-mail than with pen and paper. The studies are published in a new paper, "Being Honest Online: The Finer Points of Lying in Online Ultimatum Bargaining," coauthored by researchers from DePaul, Rutgers and Lehigh universities.
In the first study, 48 M.B.A. students were given $89 and asked to divide it between themselves and another—fictional—party. The fictional party would be required to accept the offer and knew only that the sum would be between $5 and $100.
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Report: Layoffs Unlikely at Many Major Companies
Continue reading… 3 CommentsSome good news: After years of leaning, layoffs, downsizing, and right-sizing, many of the country's largest companies have cut enough.
Workforce Management reports:
Based on a survey of industry sector analysts at UBS, more than half of large companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index are not likely to reduce staff.
Companies in the energy, materials, nuclear utilities, engineering and construction sectors are even understaffed—and have aging workforces to boot. Thus, those businesses may need to hire people, UBS strategists including Thomas Doerflinger and David Bianco wrote Wednesday, September 24.
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Rachel Maddow: MSNBC's Smart Hire
Continue reading… 91 CommentsThe ratings for MSNBC's newest news show host are wildly impressive. Last week, her second on the air, Rachel Maddow pulled ahead of Larry King and even bested Keith Olbermann's Countdown a couple of nights. Maddow, an Air America radio host and MSNBC contributor, was given her own show after the politics-heavy channel dropped Dan Abrams's legal show Verdict.
Here are a few things Maddow's doing that are good examples for anyone starting a new job:
Avoiding office gossip. She told the San Francisco Chronicle that she doesn't follow "media issues," when asked about the channel's move to cut Olbermann and Chris Matthews from straight election coverage.
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How to Face Your Layoff Fears
Continue reading… 0 CommentsLayoffs are enormously painful for the workers who lose their jobs, and they can be terrifying to those who stay behind. Many in the financial services industry are reportedly turning to local churches for help handling their stress. Employees often feel as if they're walking through the halls "with a bull's-eye on their back, expecting to be laid off," as one woman described workers at Nortel Networks in Ottawa, Canada, in a Canwest News Service story.
It's remarkable, however, to discover how many people rebound and find better work after losing the job they have. That may be little comfort in a market swollen with job seekers—but for people who are willing to pick up and move to a new town, switch industries, or try a whole new career, a layoff can indeed present an opportunity.
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Why Google Might Be Killing Your Job Search
Continue reading… 6 CommentsWhen columnist Anita Bruzzese solicited advice on managing an online reputation, the responses flowed in. So Bruzzese shared some of the extras on her 45 Things blog. This one was, I think, especially insightful, and useful not only for job hunters but also for the happily employed:
"I had a client, Josh Deming (not his real name) who had a reputation as a hard-nosed manager. After losing his position after an acquisition, he found himself in a job search for the first time in a number of years. Because he was highly respected, he thought the search would go quickly. On several occasions, he would get to the final stages prior to hiring with a company showing great enthusiasm, only to suddenly be dropped from consideration.
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Employed Should Freshen Up Résumés
Continue reading… 0 CommentsMost of us don't think too much about our résumé until we lose our jobs, and then, of course, we obsessively tweak them—often for each application—and seek advice from family, friends, and professionals on the language, length, and format.
For a change in tradition, I'd encourage everyone who's employed to take some time out this week and freshen up your résumé. It's a good activity for a couple of reasons—it forces you to define your work and catalogue your accomplishments, and it may give you a bit more confidence about a possible future job search.
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Why Alltop.com Should Be Part of Your Job
Continue reading… 0 CommentsI started using Alltop.com shortly after it launched, and I've used it daily ever since. Given that I'm not a habitual person, it's really quite an achievement. The site is often, and helpfully, described as an online magazine rack. It's really like a table of contents for the Web, albeit a selective and well-edited slice of the Web, particularly the blogosphere. The site's revamped look, unveiled today, streamlines the main page—which had grown in size to accommodate the site's expanding catalog of subjects—and is fresh, bold, and even more accessible.
Why am I writing about this? (Well, first I should mention that this blog is listed—among many blogs—at careers.alltop.com.) But I'm largely interested in how Alltop can improve people's jobs.
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McCain's Campaign Manager Was for It Before He Was Against It
Continue reading… 11 CommentsA note on the work that you're doing now: It will be remembered. Unless you're in politics, that is.
Why is it that résumé matters so much in the private sector and memories are so short in the public sector?
As John McCain said in remarks today:
The financial crisis we're living through today started with the corruption and manipulation of our home mortgage system. At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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Where Wall Street's Unemployed Can Turn
Continue reading… 2 CommentsGenerally, when you lose your job, you can rely on friends to help you through. But what if all your friends lost their jobs, too?
Such is the case for many on Wall Street, whether part of Merrill Lynch's "thundering herd" or Lehman Brothers' brothers.
If you're among them, here are some supports to rely on in your job search:
Alumni career services: Business schools have been making significant efforts to help alums, reports the Wall Street Journal. Even career services departments at undergraduate schools may offer some assistance. Also—don't forget your alumni network.
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Job Search 101
Continue reading… 0 CommentsIf you're out of work, you have lots of questions about the right way to do things. Look no further.
Here are key pieces of wisdom, from the Outside Voices experts who blog at USNews.com:
The Search
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10 Great Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Job
Continue reading… 16 CommentsThese are hard times, but here are 10 basic steps you can take today, tomorrow, or this week to juice up your job (culled from many experts I've interviewed for various stories).
1. Make some friends. "Life is hard and then you die." My mother has been saying this to me since I can remember (she pulls no punches). Well, work is also hard. But you have to do it if you want to pay your mortgage and your cable bill and avoid scavenging for Christmas presents. That being the case, why not just make some friends where you do it? Try making a joke. Ask someone about their weekend. If you say something stupid, at least you'll get some notice, which is better than being "the guy who works down the hall beside the copier."
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Fiorina's Non-Gaffe: Could McCain or Palin Do Your Job?
Continue reading… 47 CommentsYesterday, Carly Fiorina told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that Sarah Palin could not run a major corporation, but nor could John McCain or Barack Obama, for that matter. Running a business is different than running a country, Fiorina said.
Today: A minor uproar.
Fiorina pulls, or is pulled, away from public appearances.
Republican presidential candidate and former executive Mitt Romney goes on MSNBC this morning to defend McCain and Palin, insisting that he would indeed be glad to hire these two to run his company.
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Audio: Sarah Palin and Working Mothers
Continue reading… 5 CommentsOver the weekend, I spoke with Washington news station WTOP about Sarah Palin's hotly debated work-life balance and whether it's a useful or relevant discussion for the rest of the country's working mothers. You can listen to the segment here. It's also available on
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Did Metrolink Spokeswoman Do Her Job?
Continue reading… 8 CommentsDenise Tyrrell, spokeswoman for the Southern California transit agency Metrolink, resigned after federal and Metrolink officials criticized the statement she made the day after an agency commuter train collided with a freight train in Chatworth, Calif.
Tyrrell said that the Metrolink engineer had "made the error" and had not obeyed the traffic signals. Officials have since said that the statement was premature.
