San Diego Jobing Community Blogs

 

 

It's been a rough year, employers are under pressure to lower costs to accommodate an unknown future, and layoffs are rampant.

This isn’t a newsflash, but what may be getting lost is the ripple effect from the individual to the family outward that will have a long lasting effect on our society.  We just stepped backward.

Companies may have no choice but to lay off hundreds, but the way it is done now is so wholesale, so casual that is like if it is Tuesday, ABC Co. is laying off 300 employees again.   I do believe that companies want to do the best for their departing employees, but sometimes the “bigger picture” thinking of saving the company diminishes individual contributions.  Someone who lived and breathed the company is left to feel discarded and useless; hurriedly ushered out the door.  When companies treat people as numbers on a spreadsheet, we just stepped backward.  Competition requires innovation, and companies need to identify and develop talent to reach their potential.

From an employee perspective, the first layoff can be devastating and a continuous cycle of layoffs erodes competence and progression, depleting motivation.  We end up losing the best of us and instead build a society of little expectations and mediocrity.  We just stepped backward. 

Instead, I’d like to propose a new way of doing business.  Really it is not new, just not done very often.

Companies…Include your employees.  They are vested in the success of your company, and often have innovative ideas how to make money or improve processes.  Develop your employees.  Learn the talents and aspirations and give them opportunities to grow.  It builds loyalty, trust and creativity.  In times of financial difficulty, include them in the problem solving.  I heard about a hospital that told all the employees of the financial situation and they came up with solutions that saved everyone’s job.  Everyone sacrificed for the shared goal.  It works, and if it can work in a hospital it can work in any company.

Let’s get back on track.  If I can assist your organization with employee development, management coaching, training, conflict resolution or outplacement services, please contact me at Suearth@yahoo.com

 

Sue Arth is founder of Sea of Change, a consulting service serving both organizations and individuals in transition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The average job search is taking 2.5 weeks per 10K of income (i.e. 100K salary = 25 week search). These numbers are anywhere from 2 - 3 times longer than just a few years ago. All too often, a day feels like a week and a week can feel like a month; particularly for those who haven't;t had to really look for a job in years. Approaching your job search differently these days not only includes how you find jobs, but how you manage what can be a long search. Here are some tips to help pace yourself and get better results in the process:

Work in Blocks: There are a lot of moving parts to the job search: developing leads, contacting prospective employers, following up, networking;and, of course, interviewing! They all require a different focus and mindset. Instead of constantly reacting to events, plan to work your day in blocks. Create a short list of critical events that are cause for interruption (call from a potential employer, networking call, etc.). Otherwise, focus on the tasks at hand. Lump responding to emails into a block too; this is the biggest culprit distractions out there!

Change of Scenery: No need to be chained to your desk for all these activities. Can you do your research in a coffee shop? Do you find you are more creative in writing cover letters sitting outside (enjoy this summer weather while you can)? A change of scenery can be great for your outlook and will help keep you out of a rut in your job search! Give it a try.

Take Time to Recharge: As you shift between your blocks of work, use a physical event to do so. A short walk around the block, the act of changing locations (like we just talked about), or even something as simple as getting a glass of water. This event (small or large) signals your brain to shift activities and focus. Something that seems insignificant and takes only a few minutes can end up saving you time and making you more productive.

It’s common to be feeling guilt during your job search – did I do enough today? Should I spend a few more hours digging deeper? But, just like training for a marathon (or any athletic event for that matter), you can over-train. This leaves you tired, unprepared and ineffective for your race: the interview. By using these tips and figuring out what works best for you individually, you can be better prepared to shine and excel when you get the call for your big event!

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Kevin Kermes publishes the ‘Build the Career Your Deserve’ e-zine with over 21,000+ subscribers. If you are ready to empower yourself with the vital tools and information necessary to find the job you want and build the successful career you deserve, visit him now www.kevinkermes.com

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Kevin is the Founder of Build the Career You Deserve, a company devoted to empowering professionals with the vital tools and information necessary to find the job they want and build the successful career they deserve. Sign up for his free e-zine – Build the Career You Deserve – for insider tips on how to do just that!

Compliance with new federal parity laws may increase America's corporate insurance costs by as much as 40% over 2009 claims expenditures. The Federal Mental Health Parity (MHP) and Addiction Equity Act of 2008--which was included in the Recovery Act--attempts to place mental health benefits on equal footing with medical benefits. While the specific rules of the law have not been written, treatment limits, co-pays, number of visits, and other financial requirements for all medical and surgical health plans are expected to be on par with mental health benefits.

"Preparation for Federal Mental Health Parity Regulations is the key to cost control," says Dr. Ann Clark, CEO of ACI Specialty Benefits. &"Since an additional 118 million people will now have access to mental health benefits, parity is expected to increase mental health utilization by employees and family members as much as over 40% from the previous year."

But even with all these cost increase predictions, most corporations are sitting around waiting for advice from their benefits consultants and brokers, or if they've asked for advice, they haven't received any solid information.

So what do companies plan to do to prepare for parity?
-- 40 % plan to increase EAP utilization and promotion
-- 35% plan to increase the promotion and use of wellness programs.

These are just a couple of the many interesting parity stats reported by Partnership for Workplace Mental Health - check out the full report here: "Employer Survey Results: Mental Health Parity Law"

ACI Specialty Benefits is a leading global provider of Employee Assistance Programs, Wellness, Concierge and Work/Life services. ACI consistently ranks in the nation's Top Ten EAPs by Business Insurance and was recently named a Benefits Superstar by Benefits Compensation Solutions Magazine. Founded in 1983, ACI has grown to international prominence, serving five million subscribers worldwide with a network of over 40,000 providers. ACI remains a privately-owned specialty benefits corporation headquartered in San Diego. For more information, visit www.acispecialtybenefits.com.

The Network of Indian Professionals (NetIP) is a professional, non-profit organization dedicated to the overall achievement and advancement of South Asian professionals. The primary focus of the organization is to foster a bond among South Asian professionals to unite and support each other locally, as well as to give back and contribute positively to the communities in which we live and work.

Join us this year at:

The 18th Annual NetIP Conference
Held in the Dynamic and Vibrant City of Toronto
Friday, Sept 4th to Sunday, Sept 6th 2009

• Engaging Panels and Workshops (covering finance, healthcare, entrepreneurship, culture, media arts)
• Film Screenings & Community Outreach Events
• Chic & Elegant Parties
• Captivating Entertainment (including a Bollywood-themed gala affair)

Create Memories of a lifetime and gain an opportunity to forge lasting friendships, as you mingle with elite South Asian professionals, network with industry leaders and meet top notch speakers!

For more information, visit www.NetIPConference.org.  

In the past six months or so, we’ve all learned new acronyms and new definitions for words we thought we already knew.  We’ve heard countless news reports about TARP or the troubled asset relief program for banks and other financial institutions.  And, of course, there’s been much made of the stimulus program and its focus on “shovel ready” projects that will help to reinvigorate the economy. 

Eventually, I suppose, all of this investment will trickle down and have a beneficial impact on those of us responsible for talent acquisition.  Patience, however, is not a virtue in the c-suite of most organizations today.  They’re under too much pressure to accept our relying yet another acronym: HOTAIRE or Hold On, The Advertised Improvements Roll-out Eventually.  They want—indeed, they expect—results right now. 

How can you respond?  I think the best approach is a combination TARP and stimulus strategy for recruiters.  It should focus on some of our most troubled assets and fix them with “shovel ready” solutions.  Here are my suggestions. 

The Troubled Asset: the Career area on most corporate Web-sites. 

Most Career areas have the look and feel of a store.  They provide a transactional experience—hey, we’re a buyer of labor, you’re a seller of labor, so let’s do a deal—that appeals only to active job seekers.  It leaves the passive prospect cold.  And, of course, it’s the passive prospect we most want to attract and recruit. 

What “shovel ready” project will enable you to fix that problem?  Launch a blog on your site.  There are only two things that will attract and hold the interest of passive prospects: credible information on what it’s like to work in your organization and interaction with their peers.  So, design your blogging program not as a something your recruiters do, but rather as a way for the best and brightest in your organization to recount their experiences on-the-job.  Think of it as a platform for your “A” level performers to strut their stuff to their peers.  It will transform the look and feel of your Career area from a store to a farm, a place that nurtures relationships with exactly the kind of talent you want to recruit. 

Blogging done well takes time and effort, so how can you get your already busy “A” level coworkers to sign up?

First, limit each person’s participation to a three month assignment.  Make their involvement a short term project not a penance.

Second, position a person’s selection to blog as career-enhancing inside your organization.  Make sure it has a positive impact on their performance appraisals and salary review.

Third, select three new bloggers—representing different career fields and work experiences –every three months.  Give your bloggers some company and some competition.

Then, stand back and watch your all stars battle it out, both to be selected as a blogger and to be the best blogger on the Web. 

The Troubled Asset: the resume database in most corporate applicant tracking systems. 

Employers invest hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars building up a resume database and then do very little with it.  Their recruiters may conduct a perfunctory check of the archived resumes when sourcing for a new opening, but typically that’s about it.  They see the database as a static stack of electronic files, rather than as a platform for building relationships with the people behind the files.  Yet, those people are prospects who don’t have to be sourced and have already expressed an interest in the organization.  In effect, they are a ready-made way to cut both the cost and time to fill vacancies. 

What “shovel ready” project would enable you to realize those savings?  Start communicating with the people behind the resumes.  Launch a campaign of regular email messages that push out information about your organization and pull in updates to their careers.  The communications should be no less frequent than quarterly, but no more frequent than monthly.  The goal is both to pre-qualify individuals for your future openings (by keeping their record current) and to pre-sell them on your organization as an employer (by sharing information about its work and successes). 

People are all but overwhelmed by email these days so how can you get them to accept, let alone ready your messages?

First, make the program opt-in.  Respect their right to say they don’t want to participate.

Second, make sure the content of your messages is interesting.  Avoid marketing or even recruiting collateral and instead, send them brief vignettes of the on-the-job experiences of your top performers—the people who would be their colleagues if they worked for your organization.

Third, get the mechanics right.  Ask them to add the email address of your messages to their white list so they won’t be caught up in their spam filter and use a common subject line so they learn to recognize your messages when they arrive.

Then, get ready for a significant response.  The simple act of signaling your continued interest in applicants is so rare among employers, you are likely to get a lot of takers. 

Hiring activity is way down at the moment, so now is the time to invest in improvements that will upgrade your performance once recruiting picks back up.  While there are many ways to make such an investment, I think you get the best return by focusing on your most troubled assets and on solutions that are “shovel ready.”  Do that, and you greatly diminish the possibility that you will need a career-damaging bailout down the road. 

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com 

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System. 

We’ve all heard of the alpha male and female.  The dictionary defines them as the dominant person in a group, the one everybody emulates and follows.  The term was originally coined to describe behavior in wolf and dog packs, but for most of the 20 th Century, it also accurately depicted the way we interacted in our careers.  One person was on top, and the rest of us brought up the rear. 

While wolves and dogs are stuck with this leader-follower relationship, however, we humans have an option.  We can pull ourselves out of the back of the pack—out of the pack altogether, in fact—and assume a new role.  I call it the “alpha career athlete.”  It recognizes our innate ability to act as individuals and to set our own unique course in the world of work. 

More often than not, the alpha career athlete still finds their employment in an organization.  Most aren’t free agents or independent contractors.  They work in teams, on projects and for departments and they report to a boss.  Their on-the-job experience is similar to that of every other person in the workplace.  What changes is their view of who they are working for and why. 

An alpha career athlete works on themselves for themselves.  They are interested in learning just how good they can be in their profession, craft or trade.  They accept a job because it challenges them to be better than they have been, and they devote all of their talent to passing the test.  Moreover, that same commitment to self improvement also enhances the value of their contribution to their employer.  In effect, they protect their employment and preserve their paycheck by persevering in their determination to excel. 

In Search of (Personal) Excellence 

In 1982, Tom Peters wrote a business classic called In Search of Excellence.  The book’s popularity was largely based on the author’s research into how companies achieved superior performance.  It outlined a number of practices that other organizations could implement in order to achieve their own version of excellence. 

What many readers missed, however, was the underlying premise of the book: success was best achieved through a commitment to excellence.  If you wanted your company to prosper, it wasn’t enough to be good or even very good and certainly not mediocre or just enough to get by.  The one sure pathway to prosperity was excellence. 

What was true for organizations in the 20 th Century is true for individuals in the 21 st Century.  Success is not achieved by being loyal to one’s employer or by knowing how things get done inside an organization.  It is not assured with years of experience or even with a knowledge of the current state-of-the-art.  What produces sustained career advancement in today’s world of work is a commitment to personal excellence. 

It is what drives the alpha career athlete.  He or she is “in search of excellence.”  They are on a quest to become the champion inside them.  This is not some quixotic adventure, but rather an entirely rational determination to express and experience the talent with which they (and all of us) were created.   Alpha career athletes believe that, just as every company can achieve superior performance, so too can they.  And they’re resolved to do so. 

Companies, however, have Peters’ guidelines with which to work; alpha career athletes need something else.  They need a set of practices that will engage, refine and unleash the excellence within them.  What follows are what I think those practices must be:

I. Pump Up Your Cardiovascular System.  The heart of your career is your occupational expertise.  Re-imagine yourself as a work-in-progress so that you are always adding depth and tone to your knowledge and skill set. 

II. Strengthen Your Circulatory System.  The wider and deeper your network of contacts, the more visible you and your capabilities will be in the workplace.  Make nurturing professional relationships a part of your business day. 

III. Develop All of Your Muscle Groups.  The greater your versatility in contributing your expertise at work, the broader the array of situations and assignments in which you can be employed.  Develop ancillary skills that will give you more ways to apply your core expertise in the workplace. 

IV. Increase Your Flexibility & Range of Motion.  Moving from industry-to-industry, from one daily schedule to another or even from one location to another is never easy, but your willingness to adapt will help to keep your career moving forward. 

V. Work With Winners.  Working with successful organizations and coworkers enables you to grow on-the-job, develop useful connections that will last a career and establish yourself as a winner in the world of work. 

VI. Stretch Your Soul.  A healthy career not only serves you, it serves others, as well.  A personal commitment to doing some of your best work as good works for your community, your country and/or your planet is the most invigorating form of work/life balance. 

VII. Pace Yourself.  A fulfilling and rewarding career depends upon your getting the rest and replenishment you need in order to do your best work every day you’re on-the-job.  Discipline yourself and your boss to set aside time to recharge your passion and capacity for work. 

All of us have the inherent capacity to be an alpha career athlete because all of us have an inherent talent that wants to be—deserves to be—discovered.  Humans are the only beings, however, who can willfully choose to ignore their gift.  And happily, they are also the only beings who can choose to recognize it.  So, become the alpha career athlete you were meant to be; put yourself in search of (personal) excellence. 

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com 

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System. 

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

Looking down the road a little things don't appear to be heading in the right direction too quickly- - -SO WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?

You can start by coming down to the RECESSION HELP EXPO this Sunday at the Holiday Inn On The Bay, 1355 North Harbor Drive. Don't worry-- its FREE. 8:30am to 6:30pm

Meet Recruiters and Job Help Providers

Attend the Jobing.com Advanced Job Search Boot camp at 9:30am

See Keynote Strategy, Motivation, and Change Speakers Brian Tracy, Lanny Goodman and others for free!

Attend any of 32 free recession help workshops

Get a Free Individualized Career Consult

Meet with some Mortgage Help Folks and Get Free Legal Aid

Join us in Honoring Jobing.com's Rosanna Indie and 4 other San Diegans at 1:00pm with the presentation of the Recession Fighter Awards

Hear Live Music from the ATM Band throughout the day

Learn about saving on all your utility, car insurance and phone bills

Find out about new business opportunities, network businesses, franchises, and how to start a business

Low Cost health insurance and other alternatives---

Connect with all sorts of assistance agencies

I could go on but you get the idea- www.recessionhelpexpo.com

OK WE NEED SOME VOLUNTEERS! This event is getting larger and reaching out to all of San Diego to provide recession help is bound to turn out lots of attendees and we will need help. Volunteers show up early and work hard all day-- but get to be part of helping us create something. Be there at 6:00am I'll buy the beer at the end of the day. contact@heretohelp.us

For those of you who have small businesses and are trying to get something going might want to be an exhibitor or network with the strong business help emphasis of this event. Put yourself in an environment where something good can happen to you.

Give us a call 760-815-4527

Oh yes- and if this whole dire attitude about the recession is getting you down- come on down to the Embarcadero on Sunday, bring your family, (kids get on all of the SD Maritime Museum exhibits for free-Star of India etc.) bring a picnic lunch and come for the whole day of workshops, help and entertainment. We are going to have fun.