Just when you thought the situation for job seekers couldn’t get any worse, a new wrinkle appears. It seems that BeautifulPeople.com, an online dating service, has decided to expand their services and offer what it thinks employers are clamoring for.

Beautiful employees. Not necessarily skilled or talented, just beautiful. Now I’m not saying that beautiful people can’t be or aren’t talented or skilled. Just look at that handsome mug at the top of my blog page! But seriously, since when did looks become a valid selection criteria? Here’s a link to an article about this new phenomenon:
http://www.hrhero.com/hl/articles/2013/06/14/pretty-or-plain-what-matters-when-employers-evaluate-jobseekers/?utm_source=HRHero&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=HeroLine

It seems that there is an unspoken, anecdotal belief that companies hire on looks and prefer to hire people who are deemed beautiful by today’s standards. Now there may even be some truth to this but to come right out and say that you are providing businesses with a service by making it easier for them to hire so-called beautiful people to help their bottom line? Let’s not even get into the potential ADA implications, but can a company seriously defend their hiring practices by saying they hired the person they thought was hotter?

I hope you are as angered by this practice as I am. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen. It’s been happening since the first manager chased a secretary around a desk. But we don’t have to condone it. Personally, if I found that a company was using the BeautifulPeople jobs portal as their sole sourcing and recruiting pool, I’d think about taking my business elsewhere.

Comments? Responses? Pitchforks and burning torches? Let’s hear ’em!
Only the best,
Ron

Economists project that we need approximately 165,000 jobs created every month to keep the unemployment rate stable. In May there were more than 165K jobs created, but the rate went up. Some months there are less and the rate goes down.

But as one friend put it, “If I’m out of a job,
the unemployment rate is 100%.”

And that’s the real unemployment rate.

There’s a saying that if you’re out of a job it’s a recession, but if I’m out of a job it’s a depression. The bottom line is that unemployment is personal.

The May unemployment numbers came out on Friday. 175,000 jobs were created, slightly better than projected. The unemployment rate crept up from 7.5% to 7.6%.

We need a steady 225K jobs a month for six months to a year to start to make a dent. But even if hiring was steadily 50,000+ over what we need to maintain the rate, that would reduce the number of unemployed people by less than a million. It’s almost like the rate doesn’t mean anything anymore.

There are still almost 12 million people out there who are under or unemployed. Not 12 million unemployed — 12 million individuals who don’t have a job and want one. It doesn’t help to brand people with a label because lately it seems that “unemployed” quickly translates to “unemployable.”

Companies from Apple to Zappos have come up with creative strategies to find people and get them back to work. Einstein allegedly said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” We need to identify not just best practices, but next practices. The next big idea to get hiring going. Companies must realize that they can no longer improve their bottom line by simply cutting headcount. The key to sustainable success is getting the right people in the right jobs. Then we’ll be on our way.

Only the best
Ron

Did you find HR or did HR find you?

It’s an interesting field we’re in and this is a question I like to ask HR people. How the heck did we wind up here in the first place? I like to say that I found HR. I was managing a department for a non-profit organization and considering the salary I felt like a non-profit myself. So I did an analysis of every aspect of my job (not even realizing that this was a very HR-like activity) and found that all the parts of the job I liked fell under an umbrella called human resources. Before I started this process I don’t think I even knew there was such a field. But I did my own recruiting and training for the department, handled whatever issues arose among the team, restructured responsibilities according to people’s abilities, and did the occasional termination. I was an HR person before I even knew it. So I went back to school to complete the transition and twenty-five years later, here I am.

I’ve met a lot of other people who seemed to have fallen, meandered, or been pushed into HR because of what was going on in their organization. There was the accountant who was as good with people as she was with numbers so when the HR Manager at her firm left they told her she was now running that department along with her own. I know a couple of office managers who, as their organizations grew, morphed into HR positions simply because they knew everyone and had processed everyone’s paperwork. Admin assistants have managed this same trick, often via benefits because they’re the ones who helped everyone fill out the forms.

The path to HR is not cut and dried. It’s certainly evolved from the days when all Personnel had to do was make sure that everyone got paid on time and there was plenty of cold beer and watermelon at the company picnic. Our profession has gotten more specialized yet it sometimes seems that there are as many ways to become an HR professional as there are HR professionals. More and more people study human resources in college or graduate school and certification is both a path and a goal. And yet at conferences I still meet a lot of people who say, “I never planned to be in HR.”

So how did you wind up in HR? Please share your story below because there’s a lot we can learn from each other’s journey.

Only the best,
Ron

Apparently some people do. Okay, lots of people do. But some people are of the opinion that they shouldn’t have to stand in line and have found a way around it. Apparently there is a tour service that will allow you to hire a person with a disability to be your “guide” at Disney. A person with a disability is given speedy if not immediate access to the attractions and will not be required to stand on lines that as we all know can stretch for hours for the most popular rides. And each person with a disability can bring in up to six additional guests with them.

Access to this service, offered by Dream Tours, has been shared person to person amongst those able to afford over $1,000 a day for a guide. When someone contacted Dream Tours to hire a “Tour Concierge” they were asked who referred them. “This is how the 1% does Disney,” is what one rich mom was heard to say. You can read more about the story here:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/disney_world_srich_kid_outrage_zTBA0xrvZRkIVc1zItXGDP?utm_source=SFnewyorkpost&utm_medium=SFnewyorkpost

So what’s all this got to do with human resources? Well, besides the fact that it is wrong and unethical on so many levels, it’s also a sad commentary on the plight of people with disabilities and the fact that it is still tremendously difficult for a qualified candidate with a disability to get a job. People who are able to navigate Disney for eight hours are only being employed to take advantage of their disability. Think about the skills this person must have. Customer service and role-playing skills to get along with and be able to “integrate” into a family for a day. Discretion so as to not give away the deceit. A good memory to store all the knowledge about the various parks. Stamina. Friendliness. A willingness to listen to “It’s a Small World” countless times. And yet at it’s worst, when I think about this scenario, someone being asked to provide a service to a client simply because of who they are or what they have to offer, it borders on prostitution.

It’s a sad commentary that someone thought up this idea. It disgusts me that people with means are willing to use their financial resources to do this. But most of all, I am saddened and disturbed by the fact that employment opportunities for qualified people with disabilities are still so slim that this is all some people think they are good for.

Please pardon my rant, thanks for listening, I welcome your comments.
Only the best,
Ron

Okay, let me start off by saying that I’m not saying he’s wrong. Or that I’m smarter than Ken Blanchard. I was reading what he says about the Four Pillars of Trust (being Able,  Believable, Connected and Dependable) and it got me thinking that he’d overlooked one thing, and that’s the interplay of the four.

These are clearly four keys to establishing trust, or credibility, with your workforce, your clients, your family. But these are not static and depending on what’s going on in your workplace or home you will find that you may need to emphasize one over the other. Please notice that I said emphasize, which means that you never eliminate any one of the four. Ignoring any one of these for even as little as a day or an hour could have a much longer-term impact on your trustworthiness.

So I’m going to add an EF to Ken’s ABCD. Effective Flexibility. This doesn’t mean you stretch your believability, or make excuses for your dependability. It means having the awareness to recognize which of the four pillars will do the most to effectively strengthen your credibility. If you need to step in and do the job yourself, being Able will garner the most trust. If it’s a matter of knowing who to contact to get the job done, then it’s your Connectedness. If it’s a matter of keeping your word and delivering the way you said you would, your Dependability leads the way. A lot of this clearly depends on your goal at the moment, and the needs of the people with whom you’re working. Being Effectively Flexible will help you maximize your trustworthiness as you develop Ken’s Four Pillars.

If you’d like to read Ken’s piece on trust that appeared in Chief Learning Officer magazine, here’s the link: http://clomedia.com/articles/view/the-four-pillars-of-trust

I saw a piece that started, “Negative Feedback hurts.”

I’ve always been of the opinion that there is no such thing as “negative feedback.” The speaker may be telling me something I don’t care to hear or disagree with but the fact that the person is telling me these things is a gift. If it’s my manager, she’s doing her job and while nobody likes hearing where they may have fallen short or need to improve, I need to consider this as Constructive Feedback and say, “Thank you” and determine how to use this gift.

If I decide that the feedback is “negative”, it’s too easy for me to ignore. If someone is being malicious, okay, that’s slander or gossip, not feedback. Feedback is meant to improve or at least contribute to the improvement.

When someone offers you feedback, will you be willing and ready to accept the gift? I hope so, because they’re doing you a favor. As Ben Franklin said, “Love your enemies for they shall tell you all your faults.”

Only the best,
Ron

Well, not exactly. A recent study at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that men raised in a single parent household led by their mother were at a particular disadvantage in terms of education and employment. Studies have shown that these men were less likely to have attended and completed college, therefore putting them at a distinct disadvantage in a job market that increasingly demands that employees have at least a bachelor’s degree and often more.

The impact of less education and therefore lower level jobs becomes a vicious and repeating cycle. There is substantial disagreement on whether  the reduced fortunes of men raised in single parent households is causal or casual, but additional study on the impact is underway. The declining prospects for men in the workplace, the past several years are often referred to as a “man-cession,” is one of the most puzzling and disturbing recent trends.

Here’s a link to the full article as it appeared in the NY Times:
Study of Men’s Falling Income Cites Single Parents
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/economy/as-men-lose-economic-ground-clues-in-the-family.html?emc=eta1

Here’s a question that came my way about recent grads’ first days on a first job.

“What are some common mistakes that you see young professionals make when they are new on the job? Any tips on how they can navigate this crucial time period more easily?”

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen is assuming that any system on which you rely will work the way it’s supposed to. Check and double check everything before you submit it. Your new organization’s system was programmed by people, and people make mistakes. Just because the data came from the organization’s system doesn’t mean it’s correct, or more importantly, what the person requesting the information wants. Be clear when given an assignment.

A second mistake is leaving things to the last second. Things go wrong, system availability gets limited, you get called into a meeting, or the work simply takes longer than you expected. Pulling an “all-nighter” is likely no longer an option. Deadlines at work are very important and missing them is a way to get a blemish on your reputation that will be very hard to erase. Give yourself a deadline two days ahead of the project deadline. In addition, if completing your work is dependent on someone else doing their work first, keep in close contact with that person to ensure that they will get you what you need in time for you to do your part of the project.

Finally, remember Ben Franklin’s advice. “We are given two ears and one mouth and should endeavor to use them in proportion.” No one ever “listened” their way out of a job but many have talked their way out.

What did you learn in your first days on the job? If you have any good “lessons learned” please share them in the comments for all to see.

Only the best,
Ron

Here’s a great infographic from the wonderful Eva Rykrsmith. A quick overview of how to run more effective meetings. These ideas apply whether the meetings are F2F or virtual.  http://quickbase.intuit.com/blog/2013/03/20/tips-for-running-effective-meetings/

Have a look and feel free to share these at your office.

Only the best,
Ron

There was an article in the NY Times about companies reluctance to hire even as business and the economy are on the upswing. http://nyti.ms/15y35Jv

My Tweet at the time was, “Employers waste time and lose good candidates while hunting purple squirrels.”

Managers, and often their HR/recruiting professionals, are too often afraid to hire someone either because they’re afraid of making a hiring mistake (and they get so few chances to hire someone these days they think they can’t afford to), they’re not confident that the upswing in the economy will continue, or their hiring skills have atrophied to the point that they no longer know how to make a hiring decision.

You cannot run a business, manage, or hire from a position of fear. Not making a decision is making a decision. And too often the wrong one.