Monthly Archives: May 2009
Friday Funnies: God at Work
Posted in Humor
Tagged Far Side Comic, Funny Comic, Gary Larson, God, Humor, Work Humor
10 Rules for Hiring Unpaid Interns
Unpaid summer internships can benefit businesses and students, but only if all parties follow the rules.
Jay Zweig, partner and chairman of the employment group in the Phoenix office of global law firm Bryan Cave, is an expert on the Department of Labor’s rules governing unpaid internships.
Here are his tips on how businesses can avoid legal problems when engaging a student for such positions:
1. Training received by the intern must be for his or her benefit
2. Training must be general, not for the immediate advantage of the business, and it may even slow normal operations
3. Interns can’t be used to replace paid employees.
4. Interns must be closely supervised or mentored.
5. Interns can do real work as long as they are closely supervised, are learning and aren’t necessarily creating a final product.
6. Both the intern and the business must agree that the internship will be unpaid.
7. Both parties must agree that no job is promised at the end of the internship.
8. High schools, technical schools and colleges can partner with businesses to set up compliant unpaid internships in which the student receives course credit. This lends credibility to the internship’s benefit for the student.
9. Decide beforehand if the business has the time and personnel to closely supervise and mentor an unpaid intern.
10. When in doubt, businesses can avoid legal problems by paying interns at least minimum wage.
Written by: Bridget Mintz Testa
Posted in Workforce News
Tagged Hiring Interns, Intern, Jay Zweig, Job Searching, Unemployed, Unpaid Intern
Bright Prospects for Blue Collar Careers
The voices of reason (like our parents) have long proclaimed that a
college education is the only (or the best) key to future success. That
may no longer be true, suggests millionaire landscaper Joe Lamacchia,
author of BLUE COLLAR AND PROUD OF IT.
Academia does not suit every temperament, and many industries require
different skills than those that one can obtain in a lecture hall,
library, or lab. The good news for more hands-on learners and workers
is that more jobs are opening for those without a bachelor’s degree.
In the United States, more investment in repairing crumbling
infrastructures will create growing demand for skilled trade workers,
argues Lamacchia. Especially compelling will be the so-called “green-
collar” work in environmentally conscious industries such as hybrid car
manufacturing, green construction, organic farming, sustainable
fishing, and eco-friendly landscaping.
SOURCE: BLUE COLLAR AND PROUD OF IT by Joe Lamacchia (HCI, 2009)
Visual Map: U.S. Unemployment Rates by State April 2009
Click on picture to enlarge.
Memorial Day 2009
Manpower would like to salute all of the men and women of our Armed Forces. We thank you for remaining steadfast in your sacrifice and commitment to America’s freedom. You are true heroes to us all.
Beware of the Social Networking Charlatans (Guru’s)
Lately it seems I can’t go anywhere without running into a gaggle of social media consultants bloviating about the wonders of social network marketing. Sure, you’ve seen ‘em, too. Slick shake-and-bake “experts” promising to help you leverage the power of Twitter and Facebook to raise your profile and, inexplicably, boost your profits. But scratch the surface on most of these claims and they instantly crumble. Meanwhile, it seems the only people making any money in social media are the consultants themselves.
For anywhere between a few hundred and a few thousand bucks, you can hire a social media consultant to come to your office and put on a training seminar for your staff. They’ll spend an hour or two pontificating about the power of social media to raise awareness of your brand and the magical benefits of building closer relationships with your customers in 140 characters or less. They’ll probably even offer you a few “insider tips” based on their “deep expertise” in the field. The only problem? It’s a load of bull.
Unless you define success by the sort of loosey-goosey standards that might make your horoscope appear to actually predict the future, the real measure of any business undertaking is that it increases your profits. But in the vast majority of use cases, neither Twitter nor Facebook stands any significant chance of doing that for business users. And if you’re a small business that depends on, say, actually selling real products and services to actual paying customers, wistfully tweeting about your daily specials is almost certainly a waste of resources.
But time spent typing 140-character updates about your company is nowhere near as frivolous as time and money spent listening to a self-styled guru blather about how to do it.
Everyone’s an Expert
Combine a rapidly growing trend of social media adoption with an economy that has forced hundreds of thousands of workers to reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for consultant overload. Since nobody seems to know what the hell’s going on with Twitter anyway, nearly anyone can pass themselves off as an expert on the subject. So suddenly all those poseurs who might otherwise have bilked the hapless with offers of life coaching services or Feng Shui consulting have jumped on the social networking bandwagon. You can hardly swing a stick on the sidewalk nowadays without smacking one of these guys in the head.
In fact, shortly after I began typing this, I received a message from a fairly typical consultant offering to give me some expert insights in relation to another article I’d recently written. A quick look at this person’s Web site revealed a career in a totally unrelated field followed by a sudden turn to social media consulting on the basis of being an “avid” social networker. Among this supposed expert’s credentials: an admitted lack of technical savvy and a claim to be able to make businesses more productive through social networking.
Posted in Social Networking
Tagged Charlatan, Facebook, genius, Guru, Social Networking, Twitter
Outlook for Recent Grads Looking Up!
| grads, graduates Job Trends | grads jobs – graduates jobs |
With the Graduation season upon us I was curious to see what the outlook for new Graduates looked like, as I turned to Indeed.com to help me do this I have to admit I was really surprised by the results. Most of the articles that I have read, had led me to believe there would be little to no opportunity for graduating seniors. When doing a search within Indeed.com however I found over 224,670 opportunites within the U.S. and as you can see from the chart above, this is a growing segment. I believe that is welcome news and I am certainly glad to see the trend.
That is the good news.
The other side of the coin could be that the reason the trend is growing is that employers are wanting to replace more expensive laid-off workers with new hires that cost far less. While I do not really know the reality of that, I definitely know that is a thought among older candidates looking for work.
So what do you think?
Posted in Workforce Trends
Tagged College Seniors, Grad Jobs, Grads, Graduates Job, indeed.com, New Hires
How to Perfect an Elevator Pitch About Yourself
You’re in the elevator with the hiring manager of Dream-Job Corporation. As the door slides shut, you feel a combination of adrenaline and slight nausea: you’ve got 15 seconds, if that, to communicate your value as a potential employee in a compelling way — just 15 seconds to cram in a whole resume’s worth of work and accomplishments and late nights and successes. There’s so much you want to say, but your message has got to be crisp, tailored, to-the-point. Handle this one right, and you’ll be the newest member of the Dream-Job team. Flub it up, and you’re back to scanning listings on Monster.com. What are you supposed to say?
Here are the five key things to know and do in order to make your elevator pitch successful:
- Practice, practice, practice. Very few people have the oratorical power to make compelling 15-second speech about their entire professional lives on demand and under pressure. Practice your speech 100 times — literally. Know it, get comfortable with it, be able to tilt it effectively for a different audience. Practice your body language with it: how will you give the speech differently sitting down vs while walking down a hall? How will it be different over the phone vs in person?
- Focus on impact. Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes aired a segment set at a white-collar job fair. One of the interviewees, a laid-off Wall Street secretary, looked straight into the camera and said, with total conviction, “I can make any boss shine.” I wanted to hire her on the spot. Who doesn’t want to shine? Describing the impact you’ve had, and can continue to have, is much more compelling than talking about your number of years of experience.
- Ditch the cultural baggage. A lot of us have been taught — by parents, teachers, or team-oriented corporate environments — not to toot our own horns, and to use “we” instead of “I”. Elevator pitches are all about “I”. You’ve got to get comfortable with bragging about your own individual contributions (in a graceful way).
- Be slow and steady. Whether out of nervousness or a desire to cram in a lot of information, people giving elevator speeches tend to talk at breakneck pace — which is extremely off-putting to potential employers. Speak at a pace that shows your calm and confidence. You want them to think of you as thoughtful and deliberate — not as some manic babbler.
- See the whole world as an elevator. Too many people looking for jobs save their elevator speeches for job fairs and interviews. Remember the first rule of sales: ABC (Always Be Closing). Give your elevator speech to everyone — at family gatherings, in the waiting room of the dentist, at coffee hour at your church or temple. You never know where the next job is coming from.
How do you pitch yourself to prospective employers? What advice do you have for other people doing the same? What works — and what doesn’t?
Written by: Daisy Wademan Dowling
Posted in General Information
Tagged Elevator Pitch, Job Hunting, Monster.com, Selling Yourself
Job Report – April 2009
The April 2009 Jobs Report came out today and said that nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in April (-539,000 – it was negative 699,000 last month), and the unemployment rate rose from 8.5 to 8.9 percent. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have been lost. In April, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major private-sector industries. Overall, private sector employment fell by 611,000.
So is there any good news in any of these numbers? Yes there is. The chart below shows what is seemingly true, that we have hit bottom and are on our way back up. That said, the bottom we hit was so low that even improvements won’t look much like an improvement for awhile. Something else that cannot be ignored is that there will probably still continue to be some layoffs in certain sectors.
I do believe though that there will start to be some uptick’s in manufacturing as companies begin to have depleted inventories. When the recession started, manufacturing took the biggest hit the fastest which means they will be a good indicator to watch for real evidence of economic turnaround and consumer confidence. Manufacturing also drives our GDP so for our economy to truly start growing again we need to be back making and assembling products to sell (and then you need to go out and buy them).
I never thought it would feel good to see better negative numbers.
Click on picture to enlarge.
Posted in Workforce News
Tagged April Unemployment, GDP, Job Loss Report, Recession Employment, Unemployment
I Wordled My Blog
If you have never heard of Wordle you are missing the boat on one of the coolest sites the web has to offer. What Wordle does is take a tremendous amount of text from blogs, letters, twitter and just about anything else including the abilty to copy and paste text, and it turn it into word clouds based on the most used words. I Wordled my blog and now you can see the word cloud it created below - also make sure to check out the gallery.
Click picture to enlarge.
Posted in Interesting Internet
Tagged Cool Websites, Text Clouds, Word Clouds, Wordle
Crazy Business or Brilliant Start-up? #13
Posting a Twitter address is easy to do online, but until now there have been few offline opportunities for consumers and businesses to recruit new Twitter followers. Jumping at the entrepreneurial opportunity, StickyTwits (@stickytwits) designs stickers featuring Twitter addresses for easy distribution in the analogue world.
The idea for StickyTwits came from a signage designer and a marketing expert who wanted to stick their Twitter URLs on their cars, computers, office windows, etc. The Australian venture now sells customized stickers made from professional grade vinyl and durable ink, for AUD 14.95 per set. Each sticker pack contains 30 multicolored customized stickers—15 large (292×50 mm) and 15 small (145×25 mm)—which come in four seasonal color schemes: spring, summer, autumn and winter.
Obviously, StickyTwits is a niche business and depends on Twitter’s continued popularity. But it’s a fun example of entrepreneurs latching on to the latest buzz to launch a side business on the fly.
Oh, and if you want to follow Manpower you can: twitter.com/manpower
HT: Springwise
Posted in New Business Ideas
Tagged Franchise, New Business, Start-up, Stickytwits, Twitter, Twitter Stickers
Developing the Manager Within
Below is an article that I wrote for the Des Moines Business Record on Talent Management. Specifically on how to manage and help your up-and-comers.
Article:
There is one nice thing about working and living in America – OK, actually there are a few nice things. But one in particular is an individual’s ability to pursue his or her dream. With the right determination and skills, someone who starts in the mailroom could someday end up in the CEO’s office. Or someone who starts on the manufacturing floor a few years later ends up being the production manager running the floor.
There are tons of examples of how this plays out daily in America’s work force. The only requirements to participate are to have a dream, a solid work ethic and the right attitude. Although, with these scenarios there is a problem that might not be evident at first but eventually becomes more apparent.
The problem is twofold. First, companies believe that because someone is great at one thing, he or she will be great at another. For example, some companies believe that if someone is great at sales, he or she should be the sales manager. That is terrible thinking, because it assumes that the person would be a great manager of people. In the case of sales, if people are great at selling, let them sell and leave them where they are.
Posted in Nick Reddin
Tagged Business Record, Des Moines, Employee Engagement, Iowa, Manpower, Nick Reddin, Talent Management
Friday Funnies: Video – Generational Mis-Understandings
more about “Late Night with Conan O’Brien – Every…“, posted with vodpod
