First Comment

Back in February I wrote a blog post about the vicious cycle of unemployment where the unemployed find it harder and harder to get hired which just keeps them further away from being employed. Many states (like New Jersey) have gotten ahead of the federal government and has banned discrimination against the unemployed, but as a bill is going to be introduced before Congress banning this type of discrimination on a country-wide level, TIME Magazine took another look at what happens when companies refuse to hire the unemployed (H/T Wendy):

Refusing to hire people on the basis of race, religion, age or disability — among other categories — is illegal. But companies that turn away jobless people as a group are generally not breaking the law — at least for now.


Job seekers have long known, of course, that it's easier to land a job when you are still working. There are no hard data on discrimination against the unemployed. But there have been reports from across the country of companies' making clear in job listings that they are not interested in people who are out of work. Employment experts say other companies have policies of hiring only people with jobs — but do not publicly acknowledge their bias.

TIME did a lot of work in this issue profiling the out of work in America including profiles of some of those who are unemployed. Check it out and know that your refusal to hire someone who is unemployed could end up being illegal in the very near future.

"Interim" is defined as "a temporary or provisional arrangement; stopgap; makeshift". But in the working world, interim titles sometimes carry a lot more weight and a lot more questions. Can this person handle this job? Does this person want this job? Will we find someone else from the outside who can do this job better? Is this person a viable candidate for this job? The problem (and, as I said in the title "danger") with the "interim" tag is that sometimes it can give an employee the wrong idea.

An employee should know from the very beginning whether a role is "interim" with the idea that it is really only temporary or "interim" as in "we're seeing how you perform and then maybe giving you the role". Those are two very different things that sometimes gets blurred. The last thing you want is someone to come into the role and think they are going back to their old role, or, much worse, think they are auditioning for a new role only to find out that they really were just a "stopgap". This happens all the time in Major League Baseball with interim managers and sometimes those people do not want be relegated back to other duties once someone else is hired to take their place--unless they know it is really only temporary.

If the role is meant to be a temporary stopgap, then let the employee know. Tell them this is their chance to shine and show what they can do in a more visible and senior role. Tell them that this is an opportunity to show that next time this job comes up (or something similar), that they can handle it. And tell them this will also show to everyone what a team player they are that they stepped in to the role. Just don't tell them they have a chance at getting the role permanently if they don't because that will lead to very angry, bitter employees once the truth eventually comes out.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that job openings increased in October to the highest level since before the 2008 financial crisis. "But," cautions the article, "the increase in job openings in October didn't translate into increased hiring. Companies hired 4.20 million people during the month, down slightly from September's 4.21 million. That could be a sign that companies are struggling to find workers with the necessary skills to fill the positions they have open."

Also from The Journal, a question whether the tax freeze for the wealthy will create jobs (answer: probably not). This will certainly be an issue debated for the next two years until they have to talk about this issue once again.

Lastly, USA Today talks about Baby Boomers who are going back to work after they turn 65, mostly because of the increased age at which you can file for Social Security. But about 25% of these workers are unable to physically work at that age anyway, says the article, which, ironically, means that they will have to file for disability which would increase the imbalances of Social Security. With 25% of Boomers equaling about the population of New York State, this is not a small issue.

Being played out in the New York media is a very public contract dispute between an employee and an employer. This isn't strange--especially not for sports--where the New York Jets' Darrelle Revis (who already had a contract, mind you) had a long contract dispute before it was finally settled in equally public fashion. But there have been few contract negotiations quite like this one--a legend who embodies an organization fighting on the back pages with a legendary organization that demands professionalism and results from its employees. In the end, the Yankees need Jeter and Jeter needs the Yankees...but in the meantime, they're left to squabble it out to sports writers.

HardballTalk

But that doesn't mean that similar things don't go on in your own company. How many employees do you currently manage who are unhappy with their salaries but their loss would sting your company more than the financial outlay? How many employers have employees that they can probably do without but have meant so much to an organization that added financial incentive to stay around (and maybe as a reward for past results) may be appropriate? How many times does this situation become contentious and lead to a standstill between the perceived value of the employee and the offering value of the company?

The problem is that it doesn't look good from either side, but the employer has to figure a way to solve it before the problem spreads to other employees. Can you imagine if all the Yankees free agents were involved in this much of a public spectacle over the contract negotiations? If the Yankees were actually playing right now (and corporate America rarely has an off-season like baseball does) imagine the distraction this would cause--is the proposed cost savings worth it? The lesson here is not to pay employees just because they become disgruntled or to reward bad behavior, but sometimes a little extra pay (or other types of incentives) goes a long way to making sure a dispute does not get out of hand. As many people would find it weird to see Derek Jeter in anything other than Pinstripes, so you should find it weird to imagine your best employees working for one of your competitors.

Since it is a week before Thanksgiving, many would think that hiring for 2010 would be, for the most part, done. And with an economy bouncing up and down, many companies would seem to be wise to halt hiring for the time being. But judging by the amount of new job postings floating around the interwebs, it would seem that the opposite may be the case. More and more companies are listing for positions and looking to hire "immediately". So where is the disconnect here?

Well it seems that while many companies are posting for jobs, and some are even interviewing candidates, very few are actually hiring. Some companies are just using this as a "feeling out" period, trying to figure out what type of candidate pool they have to choose from and about how much it would cost them if they wanted to actually hire the candidates. Other companies want to get candidates in the door so they can have their names and their interviews taken care of so when the 2011 budget dollars get released, they can go ahead and spend.

But there is yet another class of companies that just seem to be interviewing for the sake of interviewing. I have spoken to more than one person who said their company has instituted a hiring freeze, but still continue to list jobs online and even bring in people to interview knowing full well they can't hire them.

One of the questions hiring managers, human resources, and even the candidate being interviewed need to ask is: when is this job for? Is it really immediate hire or is the budget there for sometime in 2011--or is this just a fishing expedition? An understanding between all parties in this process will make for a much more effective and trustworthy hiring process.

Last week we talked about Steven Slater here at the Welcome to the World of HR blog, but obviously he's not the only disgruntled worker out there. Let's take a look at a few other articles:

First we have the other "famous quitter" of this past week, "Jenny" who quit her job via job erase board "leaked" to The Chive. The whole thing ended up being a farce, but Jenny became as big of a cult hero as Slater for a few hours. What does it show when Slater and "Jenny" become "working class heroes"? People are frustrated at their current jobs.

With that in mind, Slate tells us that employers should be glad that candidates won't take their crummy, low-wage jobs, even in a bad economy: "Hiring is a negotiation between employers and employees over the terms at which they'll agree to come to work—wages, benefits, working conditions, length of commute, relocation requirements. Maybe some of these employers just aren't offering terms that are good enough."

TLNT follows by telling us that even people who have jobs aren't ready to settle for those crummy, low-wage jobs and that 40% of workers are going to be ready to find a new job this fall.

Lastly, we have a Wall Street Journal Careers Q&A where someone asks about quitting a job...before they've even started.

The lesson of all this: make sure that your current co-workers and you candidates are, well, "gruntled"

Way back in November of 2007 I wrote a post on the Astron Solutions blog titled "You're Fired...Wait...You're Hired" after Circuit City decided to rehire some of the employees they had fired. It continues to be one of our most-visited posts and even though Circuit City is no longer around, the themes in that post (and Michael Scott's words) continue to resonate, especially with the recent "resignation" of Shirley Sherrod.

I posted a little while back from HR hero's The Oswald Letter about terminating in haste can lead to regret at leisure. Last Thursday, Fistful of Talent (H/T Jennifer) looked at the process of welcoming back rehires (AKA "The Sacred Boomerang Ceremony"). The author describes the ceremony:

At Kahler Slater, not only do they accept employees back (the good ones of course) but they believe that having a strong employee come back is reason to celebrate. John Horky, the HR Guy, creates for each one of these employees a boomerang and presents it to them during a staff meeting with their very own “Sacred Boomerang Ceremony”.

Imagine, a celebration where the entire company is gathered to welcome an employee back into the fold. They present the boomerang, tell everyone what the employee has been doing since he/she left, and celebrate them coming back to the company. 

This isn't a process without problems, however. In finance, where there have been recent signs of hiring according to the Wall Street Journal (H/T Wendy), many firms are taking a strict stance against rehiring former employees. While one (or multiple) co-workers may vouch for them, there may have been reasons that the employee was let go during the layoffs. There may still be some bad blood there and rehiring can have negative effects on moral. In some instances, lesser employees may be hired because of a feeling of familiarity with the company they were let go by.

The lesson here is that while done right, rehiring can be a great idea, many other factors need to be taken into account--and it should never be done in haste.

We've all been rejected. Whether it be in high school on the person we had a crush on, when we were applying to college, when we've interviewed for jobs, or even when some of us have been let go from that a job that we've all been told, at one point or another: "no". But there's many different ways to say no and doing it in the right way in both the hiring and firing process, a company can help candidates and former employees as well as helping their own self-image. Let's take a look at the three types of candidates and how is a bad and a good way to say N-O.

External Job Candidate

These are the easiest people to say no to out of the three groups we'll talk about, but there are still proper ways to go about this. I know one former classmate who was told they had a prestigious position at an investment bank coming out of business school only to have that invitation revoked once the company hit some skids. How did this person find out they weren't going to be employed at this large bank? The news. Seriously. Instead of calling/e-mailing/writing the candidates to let them know their signed offers were not going to be honored, they instead let the news organizations reporting the story know and the classmate found out by reading about the company online. That's rough--and wrong.

The best way to go about it was done a few years back for me. I applied for a job that was I pretty sure I was under-qualified for--but I really liked the company, job, pay, and thought it would be worth it to apply. After speaking with the Human Resources representative for a few minutes on the phone the day I applied, she told me they were sifting through applications and she would get back to me. She did get back to me--later that evening and told me that they were not going any further with my application. Instead of just not calling me back (which is happened to many people I know plenty of times recently), she called me on her drive home to discuss why they were going elsewhere. She talked me through the strong points in my resume and where they felt I may not fit for the job. She also told me they would keep my resume on file and I shouldn't hesitate to reapply in the future. I was shocked by this phone call and certainly appreciated it. "No" didn't sound like "no" that time.

Internal Job Candidate

Probably the most difficult person to say no to out of the group. At least when you're laying off someone you're ushering them out the door and outside job candidates you don't know from Adam usually--but internal job candidates who don't get the job are still going to be walking around those same floors every day. The worst way to do it is to do it impersonally and/or string that person along. Most internal job applications require a candidate to tell his or her boss and/or human resources representative. Then they need to interview at the same company they already work (which usually is accompanied by a good deal of inter-company gossip). To say the least, these people are sticking their necks out and putting their jobs on the line. Many bosses probably are not so happy with a candidate saying they're looking for another job in the company and if they don't get hired by the new hiring manager, fear of retribution from the original manager can be strong.

So it's not a surprise that I shook my head at one story I heard recently of how an internal job candidate was strung along for a month and half only to not got the job. Worse yet, instead of the hiring manager or human resources representative letting the candidate know they weren't going to get the job, they received a call from the home offices from someone they never spoke to before who was in charge of breaking the bad news to them. Not only does this person have to run into the people who didn't want to hire them every day, but they also had to deal with the fact that none of them would have the common courtesy to tell the candidate themselves.

Instead, internal candidates should be met with an open and honest process. Companies should clamor to keep good employees and if an employee is looking for a new position internally, it's a good bet they're looking externally as well. Even if the candidate is ultimately not hired, he or she needs to be given every form of support possible to make sure that they don't become angry, resentful or disenfranchised with the company. Sometimes this can be done in the form of offering the candidate more training to improve their skills or some sort of financial incentive to thank them for trying to stay but keeping them satisfied all at the same time.


Letting Go Of An Employee

In this economy, almost every company has at least had to think about cutting back on employees. The recession has hit every industry hard and difficult personnel decisions have had to be made all across the United States and the globe. But there is a right way and a wrong way about doing things. One prestigious investment bank--which has been in the news a lot recently for other unethical practices--certainly did this the wrong way. Instead of letting employees know that there would be some layoffs coming, they leaked it out to a few internal members and let them spread around the rumor. Hysteria set in for a day but no one was let go. The next day, when people tried to swipe their key cards to come into the building, some of the employees had key cards that didn't work. It wasn't a glitch--those employees had their key cards shut off because they had been laid off. How embarrassing must it have been for those people to stand in the lobby of this large building as their still-employed co-workers are passing by? How confusing must this have been for many of them. When these people went to security to find out why their badges weren't working, they were each handed an envelope with severance information and a number to call if they had questions. That's just awful.

I also heard of other companies doing right by their employees. There were stories of small business owners who knew they had to shut down operations and instead found creative ways to stay open--sometimes even getting the employees to sacrifice some benefits so that everyone could keep their jobs. There were stories of CEOs who instead of taking a fat paycheck for reducing payroll, took that fat paycheck and put it back into employees salaries so that no one would be let go. But when employees have had to be let go, there were right ways to do this too. Some companies offered long severance packages, vested previously unvested retirement investments, provided job search support or future job training, and some even kept the door open for rehiring. While sometimes there's very little way to avoid it, you want people to leave your company with the least sour taste in their mouth as possible.

So what way do you use to say no to employees? What are best practices that you've established? What about any horror stories you may know of? Let us know in the comments below

We start out on this Wednesday with an interesting post from Fistful of Talent which talks about the sad state we've gotten to in job offers when verbal agreements aren't enough. While the author of the post first laments that candidates demand offers in writing but after more research, turns the table on those doing the hiring:

But, maybe, more importantly... why have so many job seekers been jerked around when it comes to employment offers that they have to be so overly cautious? I mean for those of you making offers out there, what the heck are you guys doing?

I agree with Jessica. If you're going to offer a job to someone verbally, make sure that it exists and there's money in the budget to pay for it. It makes things much more difficult for everyone else when candidates can't trust hiring companies at their words.

Next, from Yahoo! News via Reuters the question was put out to America if you should Facebook friend your boss and America said no (H/T Wendy*)."A survey released on Thursday found that 56 percent of Americans say it is irresponsible to be friends with a boss and 62 percent say it is wrong to be friends with an employee." The interesting part of the study is that more and more, people are feeling comfortable saying that while accessing social media/networking at work is OK, doing things like updating statuses uploading pictures, tweeting, or watching online videos are becoming less acceptable to people. Hopefully studies like this will allow more companies to allow access to social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter--and have confidence that the employees will act responsibly.

*Side Note: Wendy happens to be my boss...and she sent this to me--do you think she's hinting at something?

It's a mega link week here at Astron's World of HR blog.

First, from The Journal of Commerce, an interesting article about the hiring freeze starting thaw (H/T Wendy). The article does point, out, however that the road to recovery is just beginning and overall the U.S. job market is pretty flat (with unemployment hovering at 9%-10%). (Picture also from this article).

Next, The Wall Street Journal came out with the numbers yesterday that Wall Street bonuses were up 17% to $20.3 billion in 2009. Now, while it's not surprising that bonuses are up after last year's bonus-busting recession and the tight regulation on Wall Street bonuses, it is still disconcerting to much of Main Street that their tax dollars went to Wall Street for this. The interactive graph that accompanies the article is a good view to show how crazy the bonuses have gotten on Wall Street. You have to figure that many of these bonuses were "making up" for last year. But while most of America is dealing with unemployment, hearing that the average bonus was $124,850 and the average compensation was $340,000 has to be upsetting to many.

Tomorrow we'll get more into the job losses that we talked about as well as looking at which states tax you the most.

This headline ran across the USA Today website today: Redskins say they 'over-complied' with Rooney Rule; Roger Goodell confirms it. What is the "Rooney Rule" and how can you "over-comply" with it? And why are we writing about this on a Human Resources blog? Let's explore.

First, let's define the "Rooney Rule". From Suite101.com:

The Rooney Rule is named after Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney and was established in 2003. With an eye towards balancing minority candidates with other hires, the rule mandates that all coaching searches interview at least one minority candidate. As of 2009, there are almost four times as many African American head coaches in the NFL than there were prior to the rule.

Seems pretty straightforward on the surface. In 2003 there was a lack of minority head coaches in the NFL and the league decided to institute a rule that every team must interview at least one minority candidate for head coach. Since then, the amount of African American head coaches in the NFL has grown, and the Rooney Rule, as ESPN.com wrote in 2007, was credited with opening the doors.

In June, the NFL extended the Rooney Rule to include openings for "general manager jobs and equivalent front-office positions" according to the Washington Post who explains this isn't always the case: "[The Rooney Rule] will not apply to a case in which a team's top front-office job is held or filled by the franchise's owner or a member of his or her family, or in a case in which a team has an existing contractual obligation to promote a member of its front-office staff."

So that's how we got to our headline today. Pro Football Talk Daily taped a segment that said they were concerned the Rooney Rule could not have been followed because the resignation and hiring of personnel chief Vinny Cerrato and hiring of Bruce Allen as the Redskins General Manager occurred within an hour. Now here's where the rule gets tricky. The Redskins say they have complied with the rule and cannot divulge the minority candidate(s) interviewed because it would not be fair to them. And the Commissioner Office has backed them up. So they will not face a fine for this infraction as other franchises have.

Some criticize the rule like the National League Policy Center calling it "Pro Football's Affirmative Action Deception". But many laud the rule like Brian W. Collins for the NYU Law Review and some are trying to extend the rule even further, especially to the college football ranks where minority head coaching hovers around 6%, as Michael J. Nichols writes in the Virginia Sports & Entertainment Law Journal. Many of these leagues are worried they may face lawsuits if they do not do more to consider hiring minority coaches but they are getting push back about implementation from many levels.

Do you think that this is a good way to go about promoting minority hiring? Do you think a "good-faith interview" is enough or do you think that too many token candidates get passed over because of that? And how could this apply to other venues besides sports?

The recession has taken its hits on the job market and we've covered a lot of it on the blog. But no one (at least in the Mainstream Media) seems to write more currently about it than the Wall Street Journal's Careers section. Here are a few recent articles:

I happen to catch a glimpse of the WSJ while in a meeting in a co-worker's office the other day and one of the titles on the front page was "Life on Severance: Comfort, Then Crisis" (picture on right from article). I think it was a very interesting article, but I wonder if the severance package that was described in the opening paragraph was one that was supposed to get people's emotions stirred up. There are people who are a few years out of college, stuck with tons of student loans, and making $35,000 a year who maybe got a month of severance. Then there is the $200,000-a-year CEO who they describe in the article who got a year's worth of pay as severance and has $100,000 in savings. I don't think many people are crying for that guy.

But the point of the article is an interesting one: there is a growing severance economy of unemployed Americans who use severance pay and savings to keep up their lifestyles. The 405 Club asks if severance pay is the new welfare? I don't think that's the case, but for many, it's providing that slowly eroding bridge until the next job offer. How much severance does you company give? Do you think it's enough or would you, if you made the decisions give more? It's an interesting dilemma for companies who then have to worry about keeping happy those who are left behind.

Two more good articles:

• From today's WSJ, word that workers returning from layoffs have struggled to recoup the earnings power as wage erosion threatens to slow the economy's recovery.
• Lastly, this article is supposedly from tomorrow's WSJ (I told you we're ahead of the curve), and says that women now hold half of all U.S. jobs because of the large hits in layoffs to male-dominated industries. This has upended roles about which spouse stays at home finding more women heading back into the workforce to support the family as a single-earner. Very interesting indeed.
  

I was reading an interview from National Review yesterday about how the Israeli military has helped their economy grow by leaps and bounds over many much bigger countries, especially in the technology sector. As the interviewed author, Dan Senor, states:

Israel represents the highest concentration of innovationand entrepreneurship in the world today: the most start-ups per capita; the highest percentage of GDP invested in civilian R&D; more companies on NASDAQ than all of Europe, Korea, Japan, India, and China combined; and the biggest destination for global venture capital per capita. Israel raises 2.5 times as much global venture capital as the U.S., 30 times more than Europe, 80 times more than India, and 350 times more than China.

So why Israel? Why would a country so small and so often under attack be seen as a positive place to do business for people throughout the world? And why would Israel having a military matter? Senor explains:

The military is where many Israelis learn to lead and manage people, improvise, become mission-oriented, work in teams, and contribute to their country. They tend to come out of their years of service (three for men, two for women) more mature and directed than their peers in other countries. They learn “the value of five minutes,” as one general told us. They even learn something more uniquely Israeli: to speak up — regardless of ranks and hierarchy — if they think things can be done better.

And how does the United States treat military "experience"?

U.S. military career adviser Al Chase told us that a number of the vets he’s worked with have walked a business interviewer through all their leadership experiences from the battlefield, including case studies in high-stakes decisionmaking and management of large numbers of people and equipment in a war zone, and at the end of it the interviewer has said something along the lines of, “That’s very interesting, but have you ever had a real job?”

This is one place the United States may be missing out. The United States is now employing an entire workforce in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. Those people are getting experiences beyond the type of stress anyone would see in a workplace. They are being asked to work together in teams and/or given leadership positions. Yet when they come back from the war we need to see actual work experience? True the lack certain of the technical competencies needed for certain jobs, but more often than not, I fear that we ignore the example set by Israel and dismiss our military veterans on the job force when they could be one of our greatest assets.

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.

-The South Florida Business Journal starts us up with a Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) survey which says that hiring is slowly improving and the Central Valley Business Times has some more information on that

-CNNMoney says that after layoffs, layoff survivors are now stuck with more responsibilities and more stress but aren't getting any more money.

-Lastly, after we just quoted a few surveys from employees...word from the Associated Press (AP) that companies are turning away from employee surveys

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution starts us off with an article about whether you should dress business casual for an interview: click here

A Human Resource Management Solutions article following up on a HR World article for our next entry on five quick hiring tips: click here

The Houston Business Daily has next for us a Human Resources Guide to employment issues resulting from Hurricane Ike: click here

The Gazette of Colorado Springs says that everyone, especially the employer, benefits by handling layoffs fairly and honestly: click here

Lastly, the Orlando Business Journal cites a study that says that most workers are puzzled about their benefits: click here

It'll be interesting to see the fallout in the job market from the current financial crisis, but some effects are already seen...

The first article is from the New Jersey Law Journal and probably won't work for most of you...but the important part is just to read the title and then find a way to get your hands on the article: Pru Appeals in Suit Charging it Paid Off Plaintiffs' Lawyers: click here

Next, an interesting lesson from Yahoo! News via the AP on what can happen with mergers/takeovers and job layoffs as HP surprises Wall Street in this article: click here

(H/T to Wendy for those)

The Wall Street Journal (with a nice, new look) continues with an article sure to cause a little head scratching to most of America...the Executive job market is still healthy: click here and a video here

Next from the Journal is a very interesting article about trying to get Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's employees to stay as the mortgage giants go through some difficult times: click here

Going quickly to the Boston Globe's, Boston.com Monster.com HiringHub HR Center HR Blog, word that this isn't your father's job fairs--something new is in the air: click here

Lastly, in an article form the Journal, we learn that GMAT scores are being canceled...a lesson to employers that sometimes test scores aren't really all that reliable: click here

We've also added a great new feed from the WSJ on our right: click here

Seriously...and you thought the weather was bad in New York...: click here

Courtesy of the Boston Globe's Monster.com Hiring Hub HR Center HR Blog...