Online professional sites can expand your job search

Posted on July 19, 2008
Filed Under Job Seeking

Online professional sites can expand your job search

Minutes after attending a seminar titled “Use Social Networking to Your Professional Advantage,” I opened my e-mail and found two new invitations to join LinkedIn.com networks.

One request came from a person I’d had professional contact with previously. I clicked “accept” and quickly went on to other things. I didn’t recognize the other name, so I closed the e-mail without response. And, thanks to Ellen Levy, I didn’t feel bad about the tacit rejection.

Levy, vice president of corporate development and strategy at LinkedIn.com, had just presented an overview of Internet social networking sites to several hundred people at the Central Exchange’s annual Women’s Lyceum, an educational and networking event.

Understanding that attendees came to the conference from many different backgrounds and levels of Web familiarity, Levy prefaced her user advice with a primer.

First, she explained, there was Web 1.0 the mostly one-directional flow of information over the Internet. Think of Web pages.

We’re now in the age of Web 2.0 an era of two-way communication that in the last three years has spawned a host of interactive social networking sites.

A show of hands indicated about half the people in the room used LinkedIn, a professional networking Web site.

Even if you’ve never been on a social networking site, you understand the concept: It’s a cyberspace handshake. It facilitates connections. It does what Rotary meetings, telephone calls, cocktail parties and e-mail have done for years.

Let’s say Joe wants a job at Hallmark Cards. Joe doesn’t know anybody in the human-resources department or in the target department where he wants to work. But Joe is good friends with Sally, who has a Hallmark Gold Crown store. Sally knows many people in Hallmark’s retail division. One of them, Bill, is the main liaison with Joan in the human-resources department. And Joan knows that Fred is exactly the right person for Joe to meet. Fred, meet Joe. Joe, here’s Fred.

I made up that scenario, but that’s the six-degrees-of-separation concept.

A professional networking site might help make the who-knows-whom connections that have always been an essential ingredient in job hunting, business development and sales prospecting.

(A user also can get a wealth of professional responses quickly when posting a question on the appropriate area of the site.)

A LinkedIn connection may not make sense if you accept an invitation to join one’s professional network if you don’t know the person or don’t have ties to one’s business skills or services.

“It should be a tool to leverage relationships you already have,” Levy emphasized.

A professional networking site can be a good way to put your business profile basically your resume and the services you can offer online, where they can be seen by millions of others.

But, as much as Levy championed the professional development possibilities of Web 2.0, she reminded attendees something that most knew well:

“Time is a scarce resource.” Use networking sites judiciously.

And, most of all, she said, don’t get sucked into making a contest out of how many “connections” you can list. It’s not a matter of quantity; it’s the quality of relationships that count.

Diane Stafford is the workplace and careers columnist at The Kansas City Star. Her blog, workspacekc.typepad.com, can be reached at stafford@kcstar.com.

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Keeping Older Workers on the Job

Posted on July 18, 2008
Filed Under Job Seeking

Keeping Older Workers on the Job

Companies that fear a shortage of qualified workers are trying to entice older workers to stay on the job longer. The Los Angeles-based defense and technology corporation Northrop Grumman is exploring innovative ways to keep baby boomers at their desks and get them to teach younger workers their vital skills. I recently spoke with Ian Ziskin, chief human resources and administrative officer for Northrop Grumman, about how he balances new hires with older worker retention. Excerpts:

How much of your workforce is planning to retire in the next decade? If you look at the demographics of the workforce for Northrop Grumman, which are pretty consistent with the demographics of the aerospace and defense industry in general, we have about 122,000 employees, approximately 50 percent of whom are going to be able to retire over the next five to 10 years.

Why do you want older workers to continue to work longer? This company is moving into a mode where we want to encourage more people to stay if it fits with their life plan. We’re in a situation where it’s beneficial for employees who wish to stay longer, and it’s beneficial to the company to make them want to stay, assuming they have the right skills. The number of people qualified to fill engineering and technical positions that require a good, strong background in engineering and mathematics is a shrinking population of people that many companies are competing for.

Are you having difficulty finding enough qualified workers to replace the employees who are retiring? We hire quite a few new people each year. We’ve had a lot of success hiring really good people, but it’s always a challenge. The number of people who are coming out of school with the required math and science skills that we need in order to do the kind of work we do is shrinking. One of the challenges that Northrop Grumman and the aerospace and defense industry have is we generally require security clearance, which by definition means that they have to be U.S. citizens.

It is better for the company to retain older workers or hire younger and cheaper people? Like any company, you always have to have the appropriate balance with those who are coming in brand new. The people who are at the later part of their career certainly have the more in-depth technology knowledge that we need to serve customers. We’re going to continue to hire new people into the company. We tend to hire somewhere between 14,000 and 15,000 new people every year, and that’s going to continue.

Are there any programs in place to facilitate the transfer of knowledge between older and younger workers? There’s an opportunity to retain some of those workers longer who might have an interest in doing so and transfer knowledge to others behind them. We’ve asked those near retirement to help coach and mentor others who are coming behind them. Those programswhile effective where they exist, there aren’t enough of them. Our plans over the next few years are to expand them.

What incentives to keep older workers are you likely to implement? What I think you will see going forward is making sure that the work assignment that we’re asking our more senior people to take on continues to be very challenging and also asking them to take on more mentoring and coaching knowledge transfer roles, which, in some cases, they can do directly in the jobs that they are in. There will be more flexible work practices with regard to scheduling. People might work from home occasionally, work a part-time schedule, or work a schedule that is a little bit more concise as they ease their way into retirement.

What types of retirement questions do employees most often ask HR about? First and foremost, the question they ask is, “Can I really afford to retire?” which is not a question that we [can] answer. What we do is provide them with the information they need about their anticipated pensions and payments and other information related to the retirement process or direct to them to a financial adviser to help them decide when they might be comfortable retiring. The other types of questions they come to us with have a lot more to do with the process of deciding what they are going to do with their time when they do retire, which is one of the things that leads me to believe we could put their talents and skills to good use.

What advice do you have for a baby boomer who wants to work longer? Make your aspirations to stay known if you are interested in continuing to work. Help companies like Northrop Grumman and others understand what is important to you in terms of challenging work and more flexible workplace preferences that would make you want to continue to work.

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Surviving the Diva Boss

Posted on July 18, 2008
Filed Under Job Seeking

Does your boss make the most exasperating requests? Or perhaps demands for things on the spot? Maybe even reschedules meetings around her manicure appointment during office hours? Does she come into the office every morning sporting a look that makes you wonder if she realizes she’s not waltzing down the red carpet at an LA premiere? Welcome to the world of the diva boss.

In ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, Anne Hathaway’s got a boss straight out of Hades but being the movie world, it’s all right for her. At least those to-die-for clothes are guaranteed to ease the pain away. However, for those of us in the real world, reality is sadly the opposite. Not only do you have to suffer your boss, but you also have to do it in mass produced high street fashion outfits.

Interviews with a few ladies turned up the following common absurdities diva bosses have been known to come up with:-

Scenario 1

She’s afraid of flying but she has to do it anyway, so she asks you to call the travel agency and find out exactly what make the airplane is, when it was commissioned, when it was last serviced and then she wants you to go online and find out if airplanes of that model are generally safe. “I wanted to staple the plane ticket to her head,” said Karen, an Executive Assistant. “Of course there was no way I could get that information and the agency more or less hung up on me around the time I started to ask about the last time the plane was serviced. The most annoying thing about it is she canceled the flight eventually.”

Scenario 2

She asks you to make her a cup of coffee, which is not part of your job description by the way. In the interest of future raises and promotions, you acquiesce. When the tea is ready, she informs you it’s the wrong temperature. “Tea is hot or cold as far as I’m concerned and someone saying tea is not the right temperature as if she expects you to stick a thermometer in it to get it just the way she wants is beyond the call of duty,” Sara, a Brand Assistant, had to say about her own boss.

Scenario 3

She schedules an impromptu meeting out of the blue without checking if your timetable is free. That’s not as bad as expecting you to be prepared for the meeting she never told you about until half an hour before when she knows quite well it will take you hours to get ready for the meeting. “She seems not to have much to do so she goes around scheduling meetings unexpectedly like a teacher giving an impromptu test just to make the students miserable.” This is the situation Betty has with her boss a lot of the time and is seriously considering quitting.

Scenario 4

She walks into the office and suddenly decides the sitting arrangements are no longer interesting and insists on rearranging the office, not tomorrow, the day after or in a week but right at that moment. Everyone has to put their work on hold and comply with her demand. “It was like Julius Caesar had walked into the arena and made a decree. We all literally had to stop what we were doing and move the entire office around. Doesn’t this woman have something urgent to do was the thought on everyone’s minds,” stated Carol, a Sales Executive.

Scenario 5

She goes off for a salon appointment during working hours and returns about a nanosecond before closing time and insists on getting a report she never told you she wanted. You have to stay behind to get it ready then she tells you an hour later you can give it to her the next morning after all. However, you’ve missed your ride home by then. “The first time she did it, I empathised. She’s repeated it twice since and both times I’ve wanted to stick her head in the microwave,” said Miriam, a Secretary.

Any of these scenarios sound familiar? Chances are you’ve encountered the diva boss at one time or the other in your career. And there’s a possibility you may still come across her before your career is over but never fear. If you keep the following pointers in mind while dealing with the diva boss, you might just come out on top and not have to quit your job after all.

1.Smile. A lot. Especially when she’s really working on that last nerve. It takes the stress off you and helps you picture things in a lighter perspective.

2. Keep in mind your boss is not going to change. You have to adapt yourself to the situation but in a way that doesn’t undermine you as a person.

3. Adopt a non-adversarial diplomatic approach to dealing with her. Think up creative ways to handle her demands in a calm and controlled manner.

4. Manage any negative emotions you might have towards your boss so you don’t end up counterattacking.

5. Your boss is your boss. Period. She signs your paycheques at the end of the month. If you keep this at the forefront of your mind it should go a long way in helping you deal with the diva attitude.

6. Gossip about her but with a neutral person outside the office who can help you examine the situation in a fair manner.

(c) Anna Fani 2007

Anna Fani is a Freelance & Creative Writer. She has been writing professionally for several years on a variety of subjects related to being single, dating and relationships, career and human interest. She also writes a substantial amount of fiction. Currently she is working on a fiction project based on actual events and is also compiling a blog inspired by the diary of a girl named Nimi Caxton (pseudonym). She is a member of the International Women’s Writing Guild and The Association of Freelance Writers.

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