Archive: May, 2009

I’ve covered the topic of words to avoid in your resume and cover letter before. Here’s an update.

Awesome, amazing, phenomenal, cool, spectacular, etc. I would personally like to see the word amazing purged from the vernacular altogether; sometimes it seems like that’s the only adjective people know. All of these words, besides making you sound like a teenage girl, are subjective, meaning that they are your interpretation of an IT project or skill. Unless the interviewer can see that for himself or herself, it’s not really going to mean much to him or her anyway.

Liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, monotheistic, polytheistic, atheist, agnostic, etc. I’m not telling you to deny your views or leanings, but the resume is not the place to state them. When people are vetting resumes, they’re not above throwing out those that represent people with beliefs that are different from theirs.

Healthy, chronically ill, diabetic, habitually pregnant, or any mention of a physical condition at all. This kind of information is illegal for prospective employers to ask about, so why volunteer it?

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When you’re looking to relocate, you have to check out several factors of the cities you’re considering. One publication ranked the top 25 U.S. cities in terms of cost of living and average commute time.

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When it comes to value, not every U.S. city is created equally. Before you take the plunge of relocating, you should check out the cost of living and average commute time of the place you’re considering.

Anna Hennings, Tania Khadder, Alice Handley, and Adam Starr of womenco.com have ranked 25 cities in terms of overall value. Here are the top 25:

1. Austin, TX
2. San Antonio, TX
3. Salt Lake City, UT
4. Oklahoma City, OK
5. Raleigh-Cary Metropolitan Area, NC
6. Seattle, WA
7. Rochester, NY
8. Portland, OR
9. Denver, CO
10. Honolulu, HI
11. Nashville, TN
12. Virginia Beach, VA
13. Kansas City, MO
14. Pittsburgh, PA
15. Charlotte, NC
16. Boston, MA
17. Buffalo, NY
18. Columbus, OH
19. Indianapolis, IN
20. St. Louis, MO
21. Hartford, CT
22. Louisville, KY
23. Cincinnati, OH
24. Philadelphia, PA
25. San Diego, CA

Read about the specific criteria the cities were judged on — growth rates, average salaries, and cost of living.

The last time I wrote about sending thank you notes to interviewers after an interview, I thought I was going to have to enter the witness relocation program to escape the angry reader feedback. The responses ranged from “What’s an interview thank you note?” to thank you notes being described as “Hollywood(ish)! America/Canada is full of itself but their society in general is shallow with excessive platitudes and acknowledgements.”

Someone in the UK strongly advised against sending one, saying that you would be perceived as “smarmy.”

So it is with great trepidation that I use this space again to address the matter. This time I’m actually just pointing to a free download containing three letter templates that you can download and customize for your needs.

No thank you expected. Get it? No thank you expected?!

Job boards that charge for job postings might be becoming a thing of the past if Twitter has anything to say about it. Read how one company is using Twitter as a way to recruit people for jobs.

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According to Nielsen NetView, in February 2009, Twitter had nearly 7.1 million users, with a growth rate of 1,382 percent from the year before. Some companies are finding this growth rate a great opportunity to recruit people for jobs.

In a recent issue of Workforce Management, two representatives from digital advertising agency Organic said they have made Twitter the anchor of their job posting strategy. Here are some of the benefits, according to Organic:

“Once we have an opening that might be a fit for a Twitter friend, rather than making a cold call to a stranger, we can make a “warm tweet.” We can talk to someone with whom we’ve already interacted, who already understands a bit about Organic based on tweets that cover Organic’s culture, work and news items. It’s less like a blind date and more like a first date with someone you’ve already met.

Another benefit: There are no time or space constraints to tweeting with a candidate. We don’t have to interrupt potential candidates during their busy workdays; they can engage with us when it’s convenient for them. And candidates who aren’t ready to make a move can easily retweet, or forward, our opening to peers who may also be a fit.”

Also, it’s free, unlike many traditional job boards.

If you decide to take the plunge and make Twitter part of your staff recruitment plan, here are six tips the Workforce article offers for using it to top advantage:

1. Create a branded company Twitter profile. Assign a key person — or automate tweets — to post jobs as they become available. This person should also be responsible for following professionals that could be potential candidates.
2. Don’t be a Twitter wallflower. Engage in conversation with the people you are following — and your followers — whether you have job openings for them or not. Then, when you need to speak with someone about an opportunity, you’ve already established rapport.
3. Create a protocol for your job tweets. Consider searchability by using hash marks (#) around key words. Include a trackable URL to your job posting so you can monitor the number of click-throughs a job posting receives.
4. Help your search by using a third-party tool such as TweetBeep, which alerts you to tweets relevant to your search.
5. Encourage your staff to retweet job openings by providing an incentive such as a referral bonus for candidates sourced through tweeting.
6. Don’t be a one-track tweeter. Be varied and creative in your approach. To keep it real and not boring or spamlike, tweet on a variety of topics including industry-related items of interest, some personal tweets and, of course, your job postings.

Do you plan on foregoing your vacation this year out of fear or being overwhelmed with work? If so, you’re not alone, according to a new survey from CareerBuilder.

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Nearly three in ten IT workers say they haven’t gone on or aren’t planning on taking a vacation in 2009; 16 percent indicate it is because they just can’t afford it; 11 percent are either afraid of losing their jobs or they feel quilty about being away from the office.

That’s the data from CareerBuilder’s annual vacation survey. And of those who are actually taking a vacation, there seems to be some confusion as to what the word actually means:

Seven in ten IT employers say they expect employees to check in with the office while they are away, with 50 percent indicating it’ll be necessary only if they are working on a big project or there’s a big issue going on with the company. More than half (54 percent) of IT workers say that during their vacations they plan to contact the office once or more, regardless of what they are working on.

I completely understand the fear of taking a vacation. It’s a scary economy with so many unknowns that it’s hard to relax away from the office. And with fewer people tasked with doing more, it’s also a huge hill to climb just to get to a point where you can take a few days off.

Eric Presley, Chief Technology Officer at CareerBuilder, makes the following suggestions for ensuring your vacation really is a vacation:

• Start Preparing the Office Today - The minute you start thinking about booking a vacation, talk to your supervisor and see if the dates you want to be away are a good time for both of you.
• Leave a Plan Behind - A few weeks before you leave, start recording important information, key contacts, and any deadlines that will come up while you are gone and give it to a coworker who can fill in for you while you are gone.
• Stick to a Schedule - While it’s best to leave the office at the office, if you must do work, set limits and boundaries for yourself and your co-workers. Don’t let activities on vacation be interrupted by work.
• Set a Good Example - If you are the boss, take a vacation and limit your contact with the office. Workers will feel much better getting away and enjoying themselves if they see the boss doing the same.

And I offer one of my own: Try not to get sunscreen on your laptop.

These days the pressure is on for companies to go global. But leaders in American companies should be aware that they are opening themselves up to increased exposure to liability for personnel actions stemming from their overseas operations.

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For companies considering globalization, there is a new variable to factor into the financial plan. According to Workforce Management writer Jordan W Cowman, U.S. companies are facing increased exposure to liability in the United States for actions stemming from their overseas operations.

A few recent cases mentioned in the article How Your Overseas Operations May Expose You to Liability in the U.S.:

Mendoza vs. Contico International–A U.S. corporation had a subsidiary in Mexico. Two payroll workers, who were employed by the Mexican subsidiary, were ambushed and murdered while transporting the company’s cash payroll. The parents of the payroll workers filed suit in Texas against the U.S. corporation, alleging that the U.S. corporation was negligent in allowing the employees to carry such large sums of cash without armed security along a lonely stretch of Mexican highway. Although the murders took place in Mexico, the lawsuit was filed in Texas. In 1994, a Texas district court judge ruled that Texas law applied because decisions about payroll came from the U.S. company’s headquarters. The U.S. corporation agreed to settle the case for an undisclosed amount, which has been estimated at approximately US$1.5 million.

Aguirre v. American United Global–In Aguirre, a Mexican subsidiary wholly-owned by a Los Angeles-based corporation, was participating in “blatant and disgusting sexual harassment” against the Mexican employees. A company executive allegedly demanded that female employees perform a bikini show for him to videotape at a company picnic. The female plaintiff employees (all Mexican residents) originally filed the action in Mexico, but the officers of the U.S. corporation apparently refused to show up for trial in Mexico. Alternatively, the plaintiffs refiled the action in Los Angeles Superior Court and alleged violations under both American and Mexican law. After the corporation’s motion for summary judgment was defeated, the case settled for an undisclosed amount and the corporation reportedly closed down its Mexican operations.

Reasons for this trend? Many foreign jurisdictions lawsuits have damage caps for injuries and wrongful death; U.S. juries have “virtually unbridled discretion” in awarding such damages.

Also, U.S. companies are known for having “deep pockets.” If you’re working for a small subsidiary of a large U.S. corporation, you’re going to sue where the money is.

The Workforce article offers a couple of tips for managers looking to avoid these kinds of issues:

• Ensure that decisions regarding non-U.S. operations are made from within the non-U.S. operation, not in the United States.
• Monitor practices of the non-U.S. operation that could result in liability (e.g., improve its employees’ working conditions, improve worker safety, increase awareness of safety precautions, and impose more stringent safety and health policies).

We’ve all experienced the soul-deadening boring meeting. In fact, unless someone is dedicated to making it otherwise, the boring meeting is a corporate staple. Be the first one on your block to end the meeting pain, by following these tips.

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There’s a scene in the movie Airplane, where Ted Striker is boring passenger after passenger with the story of why he became afraid to pilot airplanes and why he developed a drinking problem. One by one, his seatmates escape their misery of boredom — one by dousing herself with gasoline and then lighting a match.

Admittedly, that scene is over-the-top, but I think of it in every long, boring meeting I attend. No matter how gung ho you are to start with, some meetings can leave you desperate with boredom. The problem lies not with the point of the meeting but with the meandering sidebars. Here are some suggestions for keeping meeting pain at bay:

• Circulate an agenda in advance of the meeting
• E-mail copies of helpful reports and documents before the meeting. You don’t want to waste meeting time waiting for participants to read through handouts. If you send documents beforehand, you can use meeting time to answer any questions about them. If you have to distribute a document during the meeting, keep it to one side of a sheet of paper.
• Consider getting status reports on sub-projects through e-mail before the meeting. Send the minutes from the previous week and ask for status updates from those who were tasked with a responsibility. This helps you reserve the actual meeting time for more complex issues that require discussion. Putting updates in writing might also help the participants stay on track with their parts of projects.
• Be on the lookout for digressions. The meeting leader should be hyper-alert for instances of the conversation drifting away. We’ve all been there. You start out talking about the data in a spreadsheet, somehow veer off into Excel’s pitfalls, and end up talking about Microsoft’s marketing strategy. For the one managing the meeting, it can sometimes be like herding cats, but the effort is worth it.

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In a recent leadership survey conducted by Duke University’s School of Business, it was found that there is a direct correlation between competent leadership and a company’s bottom line. Why is this news?

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You know how you’ll hear about some million dollar research study that heeds a result that comes as no surprise at all? Like, “The Center for Obvious Results just completed its double-blind four-year study of 567 skiing accident victims and concluded that broken legs can be painful.” You just wonder how the people involved were able to get grant money to confirm.

I had one of those moments yesterday from an e-mail I received. To be fair, this one wasn’t an extensive study — more of a survey — but my overall reaction was still “Well, duh!” The groundreaking conclusion of the study? There is a relationship between organizations’ financial performance and assessed senior leadership skills.

OK, let me back up a bit to be fair. In the fall of 2008, the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business conducted The Duke Executive Leadership Survey. Two hundred and five executives were surveyed on a number of leadership issues. The study identified these skills as being most important in leaders:

• Promoting an ethical environment
• Acting with authenticity
• Accurately interpreting the competitive environment
• Developing trust

So far, so good. I mean, I’m glad that “being able to effectively exterminate any obstacles that stand in your way” did not make the top five. But the study also concludes that those skills associated with inspirational and ethical leadership were most strongly associated with organizational performance.

I realize that the world is littered with companies that are wildly successful because they exercise Montgomery Burns business practices. And I know that a couple of the most successful companies in the world also happen to treat their employees like mongrels in a low-rent puppy mill.

But wouldn’t strong, ethical leaderhip almost always produce a happier and more productive workforce? This also came from the study: Researchers have found that followers who see their leaders as more competent and trustworthy also evaluate those leaders as being more inspirational.

I would hope so! Have you ever heard an employee complain that he really isn’t inspired by a bunch of competence and trust? And this: The research also established that there is “a connection between inspirational leader behaviors and follower performance.” Isn’t that the definition of inspiration?

I worry about the people for whom this information will be news. My worst fear is that some business leader out there will see it and think, hey, I should try this whole trustworthy schtick and see if it makes us more money.

The issue with studies/surveys like this is that they, by design, oversimplify complicated issues. If you are a trustworty and competent leader, good results will follow naturally. That fact should not have to be verified by a study.

Will the poor economy push to the forefront technologies that promise money savings, like cloud computing and virtualization? Some government agencies in Washington are already looking in that direction.

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The economy is forcing everyone, including government agencies, to cut back. One major way for government to cut back on expenses lies with changing the way it manages its data, according to Kim Hart of The Washington Post.

Nearly half of the government’s information technology budget — about $33 billion — is spent in the Washington region, according to Input, a Reston market-research firm that tracks federal contracts. Senior analyst Deniece Peterson expects IT spending to increase 3 to 4 percent over the next five years.

Contractors that sell technology services are shifting their business strategies to embrace the latest buzzword in government IT: cloud computing (and its distant cousins, Open Source and virtualization).

For example, for years the information technology firm Apptis has been helping government agencies integrate huge software and hardware systems. This involves the government shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to Apptis to buy new equipment as needed, set it up, and provide engineers to maintain it.

But Apptis has made a change in its game plan. Instead of going the old route of selling hundreds of servers and expensive software licences, the company is now working to help government agencies house their data on outside services and to consolidate their equipment. Apptis engineers are looking at new job roles.

Whether this trend will continue to grow is not clear. For government agencies, security is a huge concern with cloud computing since data would have to be stored on servers that are out of the government’s control. But Hart says,

Nonetheless, many government IT firms around the Beltway are setting up their own data centers to sell computing capacity to their customers. Others are partnering with companies that already have massive data storage facilities.

Skeptics say that cloud computing is nothing new; merely the same old client-server computing IT pros have been dealing with for years. But the current bad economic times may be the impetus to get it shifted to the spotlight.

Some management mistakes are so common that you can actually compile them into a list. If you’re a manager struggling to find out why your team is dysfunctional, take a look at the behaviors in this list and see if any look familiar.

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Some management mistakes are so common that you can actually compile them into a list. If you’re a manager struggling to find out why your team is dysfunctional, take a look at the behaviors in this list and see if any look familiar.

1. Not communicating with the team. I know, I know, you’ve seen the advice for communicating so often you want to smack someone. I want to smack myself for saying it so often. But you know what? Unless you’re on the front line heading into a military battle, you have to take time to communicate with your team members. You don’t have to pass on every shred of information you’ve gotten from upper management on a new initiative, but you have to give them enough information to know why they’re being asked to do what they’re being asked to do. The more information your team members have, the more ownership they’ll feel in the process, and the better they’ll perform.
2. Continually focusing on the negative. Thinking in negative terms is a common result from working in a reactive environment, which IT tends to be. In that environment, IT spends most of its time keeping the negative to a minimum with goals such as decreasing network downtime or putting out fires. A good leader has to make an effort to recognize the positive. (How about mentioning increased uptime?) Recognize your people for the forward progress they make and not just for their efforts to keep things from getting worse.
3. Changing policy due to one person. The term “team” makes some managers think they have to treat everyone the same way. This is true in many cases, but if one person has a performance issue, don’t take across-the-board measures to correct it just because you’re afraid of confronting that one team member. If one team member is failing to complete some duties in a timely manner, don’t introduce a policy forcing the whole team to submit weekly progress reports. Deal only with the one with the issues.
4. Not understanding the needs and concerns of your team. Some IT leaders find it virtually impossible to tell their bosses that something can’t be done. The team’s bandwidth or overall state of mind takes a backseat to real or imagined glory of being the guy who “gets things done.” Good managers don’t over-promise on their team’s behalf.
5. Never admitting you’re wrong or never taking responsibility. There’s risk involved in being a manager of a team. And that risk is, if your team fails at something, you should and will be the one held accountable. It doesn’t matter if one team member screwed something up; your job was to manage the overall process of all the team members, and you didn’t do it. So suck it up and own up to that. On a related note, if one of your actions caused a kink in a project, admit it. It’s ironic but not owning up to a problem damages your credibility with your team more than simply saying, “I was wrong.”

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