Preparing for the Inevitable: Employee Pay Discussions

I can’t keep up anymore.
One day the economy is up, the next day it is down. One month job losses are steady, the next they’re higher than expected.
We hear the economy has turned the corner, only to be warned that it might be a temporary thing. For the past 18 months, it has been a wild roller coaster ride, and I think most everyone would agree that the ride isn’t over yet.
For human resources departments, it’s been trying times as they work to balance organizational and business pressures with the needs of a stressed and fragile workforce. I think the next few months are going to push HR folks even more, as an increasing number of their employees express discontent over their pay.

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Cashless Job Promotions

A dirty little secret about the current economic downturn is that it provides companies with an opportunity to make changes that otherwise would have been difficult.
Promoting employees without giving them a salary increase is one example.
Can’t do that, you say? Employees would never stand for it?
“That’s not the way we handle things around here?”
The fact of the matter is, for the majority of companies competing in today’s challenging environment, a number of rewards are offered to full-time, regular members of the workforce, including eligibility for both a regular bonus and an equity grant.

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Turn a Temp Job into a Permanent One

My friend and colleague Anita Bruzzese wrote a great piece for her Gannett News Service column and her blog, 45 Things. She was kind enough to feature my thoughts on turning a temp job into a permanent one, as well as terrific advice from Martha Finney, president of Engagement Journeys. Here’s what Anita had to say:
“Employers, still nervous about the health of the economy, have kept their permanent staff numbers lean, but have boosted their number of temporary workers. So, the question is: if you’re a temporary employee, how to you get an employer to hire you on a permanent basis when companies seem in no rush to do so?

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Top Employer Nurse Next Door Shows Us How Living Your Values Translates to Business Success

The following post by Erica Pinsky was also featured in the Respectful Workplace newsletter. ca

In November 2008, my book Road to Respect: Path to Profit was in the final design stages. I had chosen five Employers of Choice to illustrate the main theme of the book – that a strategically built values-based culture with respect as a core value was simply a business imperative for success in today’s marketplace.
It never occurred to me, as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, to start looking for my heart’s desire, in this case those Employers of Choice, in my own backyard. However, when I heard about the 2008 B(ritish)C(Columbia) Business Best Companies survey, I thought I would attend the awards banquet to learn how local companies compared to those I had chosen to feature in Road to Respect. Not surprisingly, much of what I heard that evening from the winning companies reflected what I know to be true – treat your employees with respect, let them know they are valued, support them to be successful and they will produce the superior business results you are after.

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Get Your Foot in Any Door With Wedge Power

I imagine the first step to any successful sales campaign is getting the attention of prospective clients. Marketing representative for Principal Financial Group and author of Prospect & Flourish, Keith Luscher, gives sales representatives a small taste of the highly successful sales techniques he shares in his Webinars. Watch the video below to learn more.

P.S. These techniques could be adapted for job searching, too.

Work Colleges Offer Students Another Way to Reduce Their College Debts

For most college students, the decision to work while going to school is optional, a way to earn extra money and/or gain work experience. Such is not the case for students who attend work colleges. In fact, students are required to work, regardless of their curriculum or financial aid status; they can’t earn their bachelor’s degrees otherwise. Some colleges and universities encourage their students to participate in internships or co-operative education programs, but they aren’t mandatory for a degree. And work college students’ jobs aren’t necessarily related to their majors, as are internships and co-ops. Continue reading …
Article by, CollegeRecruiter and courtesy of Associated Content, Inc.

Are You Competitive Enough?

Something about that question just makes me sigh, and I wonder if you can relate. It’s not that I don’t want to excel, I do. It’s not that I don’t want to work hard, or put in the work-life equivalent of long, hard grueling training. I actually love to sweat.
It’s the elbowing other people out of the way part that I can’t stand.
But maybe that’s not what being competitive is really about. Maybe I’m confusing being competitive with cheating, which wouldn’t be so bad if it were just my problem, but I think it’s pretty widespread.
Let’s consider the concept of a competitive athlete, which is pretty straightforward if you forget about steroids and things like that for the moment.

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Registering on Career Sites – Are There Benefits?

“If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock.” – Arthur Goldberg
What does Columbus day teach us? Well for one, you don’t need to be the first one to get somewhere to to have a day named after you and, he wasn’t actually looking for America when he found it. So what does this have to do with job search? Actually, quite a lot. You may be looking for a specific job, but you need to be open minded since the job you want may not be the one you get. And, you don’t necessarily need to be the first one on the job scene to actually get the job. One strategy in your job search is to leverage technology to do some of the work for you. In this case I’m talking about registering on company career sites. The advantage is that your resume and application continues to work for you even when you are not looking on the site. The automated job agents will send emails when a job matches your criteria (leaving time for you to be looking at other sites). Additionally, the HR department will look at resumes submitted before going to recruiters or search sites. The downside is that you will need to de-register from these sites once you find a job so that you don’t continue to get emails (but I’m sure that’s a problem you can deal with). Lists:
Large Job Banks & Recruiting Sites – This list, provided by The Riley Guide, lists an amazing number of job banks, recruiters and other links that will get you one step closer to finding your job. Sites are listed alphabetically and there is a brief description
Top 100 job board niches – 2008 – Don’t worry that this list is from 2008, it is still valid and provides a list that you can use to tap into some sites you may not know about.
The Quintessential Directory of Company Career Centers — Pharmaceutical Companies- A very long title and a very long list. This resource, provided (once again) by Quintcareers, provides a very long list of companies (each of which has a list that you can tap into).
Company Career Sites:
Thompson Reuters – This site allows you to add a profile, including a resume upload feature. You can add specific job searches which will send an email to you when there is a match. The site also covers company background, provides career resources and has a section dedicated to students.
Zurich Financial Services – Zurich’s site is segregated by experienced professionals and recent grads. They offer information on campus recruiting, company background and “top tips”. They have a job search engine, but it is not available until you are interested in applying for a job that you can fill out a profile.
Bank of America – BoA’s site offers job search, campus recruiting, staffing events as well as background on the company. Similar to Zurich, when you apply for a job you can add your profile to their website. I recommend doing this for all company career sites as it will increase the chance that your name will come up if a job matches your skill set.
D.E. Shaw – The career section covers recruiting, culture, employee profiles, job opportunities and applying online. Clicking on “applying online” will allow you to enter your profile and submit your resume.
Accenture – Accenture, which is best known for consulting, also has technology and outsourcing divisions. You can search for jobs, find out where you fit in the company, visit them on Facebook (yes, they are on Facebook) and look at “life at Accenture”. They have a section for students and recent Grads as well as an “experienced hire” section. Once you are registered, you can save jobs you would like to review and see jobs where you’ve submitted an application. There is also an option to review jobs which match your profile.
Alston & Bird – This company is listed on Quintcareers.com’s “Best Companies to work for” as well as Fortune’s “Best Companies to work for”, they are a law firm with locations in several different cities. Their career page is divided by sections: Lawyers, Law Students, Foreign Internships, Paralegals and professional staff. You can search for jobs and add a profile.
Edward Jones – Headquartered in St. Louis MO, Edward Jones is a brokerage firm and is also on both of the lists mentioned above. The main section tabs are: Financial Advisor Opportunities, Branch Support Opportunities and Headquarters Opportunities. There is also a tab for students. There is an “apply now” link at the bottom of the page which allows you to explore opportunities across the tabs mentioned above. Once you click on one of these sections, you can add your profile and apply for jobs.
Verizon Communications – Their career site includes the following categories: Verizon Headquarters (NY), Verizon Business, Verizon Telecom, Verizon Wireless and VSO (which appears to provide all of the infrastructure support to the organization). You can watch a video on the company, go to the student site, or click through to the Career Opportunities section and do a search.
Good luck in your search.
Article by Career Alley
Courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates seeking entry-level jobs and other career opportunities, and posted on I-CareerSearch.

Paying for College

A Guide for Parents and Students
College tuitions increase every year, regardless of the state of the economy. In Pittsburgh, there was even talk about a tuition tax, proposed by Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, to help the city raise $16 million for its 2010 budget. According to the Pitt News, the tax was removed from consideration when the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and health insurance provider, Highmark, stepped forward and offered to increase their charitable donations to the city in exchange for elimination of the proposed one percent tuition tax; Ravenstahl agreed.
Even without the extra strain of a tuition tax, like the one proposed in Pittsburgh, paying for college is difficult. Knowing how much money to save and how to save it are questions on the minds of many parents and potential college students. An article in the December 2009/January 2010 issue of Reader’s Digest, The Best Way to Pay for College, by Lisa Goff, offered a lot of helpful hints. Financial advisors like Suzy Orman and Jean Chatzky recommend that parents start saving for college right after their children are born. Some of the ways that parents can start saving for their children’s college educations are:

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How Do You Convince Employers to Hire You?

With unemployment at its highest rate in decades, there are now six candidates for every opening. As a result, it has become more difficult just to get potential employers to give you or your resume a second look, because the volume of applicants for each opening simply overwhelms a company’s recruiting staff and the technology that supports them.
We’ve talked before about the importance of a well-written resume and how it must be tweaked each time based on a particular job‘s duties and skill / knowledge requirements.
We’ve also discussed at great length the topic of interview preparation. Role-playing, refining your answers, and a robust understanding of what a company does (and how you might fit in) are absolutely essential.

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