First Comment

We're back for some more links and we're starting with the New York Times which is reporting that there are big obstacles for the anonymous tips of misdeeds: "A study published in The Journal of Management Studies has found that corporate audit committee members attributed lower credibility and allocated fewer resources for investigations when reports of malfeasance were received through anonymous tips, compared with nonanonymous reports. The study also found that the audit committee members were more concerned with protecting themselves than shareholders if they faced considerable damage to their reputations as a result of a tip, a clear violation of their fiduciary duties."

Now we head to onwallstreet which talks about the retirement "Catch-22": too young to retire and too old to get hired. Age discrimination is hard to prove but is pretty prevalent in this economy.

Lastly, for everyone looking for a job right now, they probably agree with this FINS article which says that job hunting is often one step forward...and two steps back.

As I looked through the New York Times yesterday I realized that while we had just turned the calendar on a New Year, we're still dealing with the same issues in jobs, healthcare, and the economy.

Andrew Cuomo was sworn in as the new governor of New York and is already set to deal with budgetary and job issues left for him by his predecessors. Yesterday Cuomo said he will seek a one-year salary freeze for state workers and today he followed that up by saying that he would take a 5% cut on his own salary and will cut many of his senior aides salaries the same amount.

Downstate in Manhattan comes news that there are new rules for restaurant tips that have come into effect: “'Never before were there any regulations regarding tips in New York State,' except for a mysterious paragraph in a 1968 law that barred employers from appropriating tips, said Jean Lindholm, a supervising labor standards investigator at the State Department of Labor. An inconsistent mixture of Labor Department opinions and lawsuit judgments has governed industry practice through the years, she said, adding, 'It was time, long overdue, to clarify the rules.'”

Lastly, for those people who can find new jobs, most of them have had to switch careers and with a career switch has come a lower pay according to a new report from Rutgers' Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. The article starts out with "even the lucky ones are not so lucky" which is the sad truth in the matter. Some of the same issues remain for 2011...

By now, everyone I know has read the New York Times Magazine article titled "What Is It About 20-Somethings". It's been debated, discussed, and reviewed in many places. But as a 20-something in the job force, I wanted to discuss it a bit here on the blog...because I feel that me and my fellow 20-somethings are getting a bad rap.

We're in the LeBron James-decision, 140-character-Twitter, look-at-me-on-YouTube generation. And yes, I know plenty of people fall into there--babies who were born with a trust fund and parents who can't say no turn into adults of my generation who have never really held a job before and don't know how to have someone else bossing them around. Some people I know thinks the world revolves around them and have facts to back that up: their parents tell them they're that important every day with their words, actions, and wallets.

But there are still plenty of people like me who was forced to get a job if we wanted money, who are trying to make something of ourselves, who may have had undergraduate saved for by family, but certainly chipped in and definitely paid their way through graduate school. We worked hard in school and work hard at work and we have ambition and goals. And while we may not know exactly what we want in our future professional and romantic lives (and some of those issues in our romantic lives have to do with our parents generation who made America the divorcing nation and made our generation question marriage from so many angles), I doubt any of our parents really did either--and we definitely see many of those who did want to have the flexibility they think we have.

It's also not our fault we were thrown into this economy during our first occupational experience. We didn't ask for a recession and nothing we did caused the decision. We didn't take out risky loans and we weren't old enough to make the decisions at the financial institutions that made them possible and then rolled them up into collateralized obligations. We want to succeed but we are getting killed in the job market by people who are much more experienced. That we lack that experience because of our age is certainly not our fault.

So while I know people in Human Resources are reading that New York Times Magazine article and wondering why they should hire a snot-nosed, good-for-nothing, 20-something-year-old, I want to point out that we all don't think our poop doesn't stink. Hey, some of us do, but most of us have great ideas and we have ambition and we want to go places. Some may think we're stuck in some phase called "emerging adulthood", but we'll be the best damn workers you can find.

On Tuesday the New York Times posted a column about a new generation of Americans who are finding the "American Dream" elusive in the current economic environment. The article is still the most e-mailed piece on the New York Times website, and rightfully so. As the article talks about "an age group — the so-called millennials, 18 to 29 — whose unemployment rate of nearly 14 percent approaches the levels of that group in the Great Depression." The rest of the article is equally bleak for the millennials:

For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated, have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work, as Scott Nicholson is, 23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s. 

The college-educated among these young adults are better off. But nearly 17 percent are either unemployed or not seeking work, a record level (although some are in graduate school). The unemployment rate for college-educated young adults, 5.5 percent, is nearly double what it was on the eve of the Great Recession, in 2007, and the highest level — by almost two percentage points — since the bureau started to keep records in 1994 for those with at least four years of college.

Yet surveys show that the majority of the nation’s millennials remain confident, as Scott Nicholson is, that they will have satisfactory careers. They have a lot going for them.

“They are better educated than previous generations and they were raised by baby boomers who lavished a lot of attention on their children,” said Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center’s director. That helps to explain their persistent optimism, even as they struggle to succeed.

That type of optimism is why companies should be looking at millennials as potential candidates as they start hiring again. It's not that older employees are bitter and are not worth hiring, but they may seem like better choices because of their experience. But the optimism and education that comes with millennials is worth considering as well. I am somewhat biased being a millennial myself, and seeing what my peers are going through who are unemployed, but I think that companies need to make sure to give them their equal shot at the American Dream.

A few links for your humpday:

The New York Times provides a toolkit for women seeking a raise and an opportunity to move up within their company.

The New York Times also provides a toolkit for making yourself indispensable regardless of your gender in this Career Couch Q&A

The Associated Press via Yahoo! News says that more employees are jumping ship as a sign the economy is improving (H/T Wendy)

And, lastly, from EW, who says you can't be promoted in The Office?

On this Good Friday, we bring you some good links that are not so good if you're unemployed:

It's frustrating when you go through a few interviews and don't get a job offer. But one person went through 52 interviews at Goldman Sachs and got only one job offer according to Here Is The City (H/T Wendy). Wow

How many people are taking jobs right now they are overqualified for? But it doesn't mean they aren't really happy to be employed according to the New York Times (H/T Sarah and picture from the NYT article)

There is one time when "any work" is worse than "no work": unemployment benefits and the Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! explains (H/T Wendy)

And Tom Delay, you have egg on your face after saying that people are unemployed because they want to be. Details of that non-PC and non-true statement from Huffington Post via Yahoo! (H/T Wendy)

A few older articles to get out of the way today, but that doesn't make them unrelevant!

From a mid-February New York Times report, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued seven job placement operators for deception. The victims were innocent people just looking for a job and part of an expanding array of fraudulent job placement and work-at-home schemes. This is sad news for the job market where cruel people are taking advantage of the desperation of people to get hired.

From earlier this week a Yahoo! News and AP report says that states may ban credit check on job applicants (H/T Wendy). As we said above, it's hard enough to get a job in this economy, but now job applicants are facing another hurdle in the form of bad credit histories. From the article:

Sixty percent of employers recently surveyed by the Society for Human Resources Management said they run credit checks on at least some job applicants, compared with 42 percent in a somewhat similar survey in 2006.

Employers say such checks give them valuable information about an applicant's honesty and sense of responsibility. But lawmakers in at least 16 states from South Carolina to Oregon have proposed outlawing most credit checks, saying the practice traps people in debt because their past financial problems prevent them from finding work.

And lastly, from the New York Times "Corner Office" is a C.E.O. that says that one of the things she looks for in a job candidate is how they treated the receptionist when they came in for the interview: "I’ll want to know if someone comes in and if they weren’t polite, if they didn’t say, “Hello,” or ask them how they were. It’s really important to me." Good advice!

The Lede from The New York Times had this as a title: "Depressed Woman Appears Happy on Facebook, Trouble Ensues."  When you read through the story (first reported from CBC News), it's another lesson to employees to watch what you post on sites like Facebook:

A 29-year-old Canadian woman who says she’s too depressed to do her job claims that her employer’s insurance company stopped paying her disability benefits because she posted some photographs of herself on Facebook in which she appeared to be happy.

Nathalie Blanchard, who has been on sick leave from an IBM office in Quebec since “she was diagnosed with major depression” 18 months ago, called her employer’s insurance company, Manulife, to ask why she had stopped receiving her monthly check. Ms. Blanchard says that an insurance agent informed her that photographs she had posted on her Facebook account — showing her apparently enjoying a Chippendales show, her birthday party and a beach vacation — proved that she was not depressed

Now I can't see how this can stand (but then again I don't know the Canadian court system that well). I'm not sure an insurance agent is qualified to tell if a woman is depressed or not based on photos she posted on Facebook. And if she was enjoying Chippendales, her birthday and a beach vacation, isn't she a normal human being. Let's just say things got worse for Blanchard after this...

[Her lawyer, Tom Lavin] told The Gazette, a Montreal newspaper, that his client’s mortgage insurance was cut off because someone alerted her financial institution to the supposedly damning Facebook photos. “That forced her to sell her house because she can’t afford to pay her mortgage,” Mr. Lavin told The Gazette, “her credit has gone down the tubes and her reputation has been damaged. She’s not having a good time.”

If she wasn't depressed before...Ouch.

We all know the job market isn't good. Despite any numbers to the contrary, we are pretty sure we'll see 10% unemployment very soon and all of us know at least one person who is currently out of a job. I know of almost 20 people who have been laid off. It's not pretty out there.

The Wall Street Journal says that it will be years before lost jobs return. And some may never return. 7.2 million jobs have just disappeared since December 2007 and there will be many Americans left standing on the sidelines once their unemployment runs out. Sad times.

The New York Times tells the story of a pair of identical twins who are living in New York City, 17 months out of college and are looking for a job--any job at all. There story isn't unlike others that I've heard from peers who are only a few years out of college; the jobs just aren't there.

Lastly, also from The Wall Street Journal, an article about law-firm hires whose first task is finding an interim job. I know some people who have been fortunate enough to receive an offer from a law firm only to have that offer deferred. Banks have also been doing this, much to the chagrin of recent college (and graduate school) graduates. With the tough hiring environment, a deferred job is better for some than no job at all.

Great post from The New York Times Freakonomics Blog (and a true, but funny ending as well):
One of the jobs on the list as Steven Levitt points out? Human resources recruiter! So there may be money in your job, yet.

Other great Freakonomics posts for HR to read:

• Italian workers who were able to trade overtime
• A look at what has happened to wages in the past 3,000 years.
• Levitt tries to determine the economic value of popularity
• If you give your employees a raise, will they start watching TV in the bathroom?
• Levitt reviews Michael Lewis' NFL book Blind Side and salaries in the NFL
  

Enjoy!

Sorry for the absence, but I have a bunch of New York Times articles for you on this Tuesday night:

-First, the Times talks about the bankers golden parachutes creating a windfall for bankers and resentment from the rest of America

-Next, the Times asks when the economy will turn around and hiring will begin again

-Lastly, the NYT on women breaking through the glass ceiling of the Supreme Court, moving from Anita Hill to Sonia Sotomayor

We start off on this Monday with an article from the New York Times talks about getting healthy with a little help from the boss:

Once upon a time, corporations offered generous health benefits as a way to woo employees into their ranks. Now, most companies have turned from amorous suitors into stern parents — shifting more costs, and more responsibilities, to their employees.

According to a January survey by the benefits consulting firm Hewitt Associates, nearly two-thirds of large employers planned to transfer more costs to employees. At the same time, one-third planned to put greater emphasis on wellness plans — programs that encourage employees to adopt healthier lifestyles. (So long, Big Macs).

Congress is climbing onto the wellness bandwagon, too. Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is a leader of the Congressional health reform movement, recently proposed giving tax incentives to companies that offer comprehensive wellness programs to their employees.

The focus on healthier lifestyles makes sense. Unhealthy employees use significantly more medical services than healthy ones and cost employers more money.

My company offers certain things to promote wellness: we have a health check every year and if we are found to be healthy or healthier from the past year, our premiums remain the same as the year before. This is a test that leans HEAVILY against smokers; if you have nicotine in your system, you are automatically not healthy.

We also have a small gym reimbursement and they offer counseling for stress, nutrition and fitness. It's not as much as certain companies, but it is a good effort to keep employees healthy and in the office.

Also:
-EHS Today talks about a successful wellness program with employees dropping 924 pounds

-Human Resources Executive Online talks about ensuring buy-in for HR initiatives...one of which could be company wellness programs

It's certainly a buzzword according to the New York Times (click here) and, well, the Washington Post has been using it since 2005 (click here)...but what does it mean?

The Washington Times has some answers here (click here), but the Orlando Business Journal just reported that fewer than 1 in 10 Americans actually plan staycations (click here)

It's one way of offsetting the high gas prices, and the Arizona Republic has some other ways that employers can help in that process: click here

And, lastly, Thomson Reuters came out with some job data today which says that the job market is softening like the polar ice caps (they left out the part about the polar ice caps, however): click here

:)

This New York Times baseball blog title was so good, we decided to use it as our own ;)

If you haven't read the Astronology or our post on facial hair in the workplace, you should: click here

We made a reference to the Yankees, and this article from the Times is a great little history of facial hair in baseball. The Yankees have had a policy under principal owner George Steinbrenner that has prohibited long hair of facial hair (besides a cleanly shaved mustache on the upper lip). Some other teams have also taken variations on it. If you incorporate a facial hair policy and meet resistance, you can tell your employee that you're just being like the Yankees!