Nearly 1 in 2 Companies Now Screen Social Media

This news coming from Mashable:

This according to research firm Harris Interactive, who was commissioned by CareerBuilder.com and surveyed 2,667 HR professionals, finding that 45% of them use social networking sites to research job candidates, with an additional 11% planning to implement social media screening in the very near future.

According to the study, “thirty-five percent of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate.” The big lessons you can learn are quite obvious, but bear repeating. Provocative photos and info are a bad idea (53% of employers won’t hire you), shared content with booze and drugs is also highly dangerous (44% dismissed candidates for this reason), and bad-mouthing former employers is very risky behavior (35% reported this a the main reason they didn’t hire a candidate).

We also think it interesting that emoticons, those friendly smiley faces you see everywhere, are actually big no-nos in direct communication. 14% of surveyed employers disregard candidates for that single lapse in judgment alone.

Though this may seem as a big downer for those of us who are oversharers, the reality is that there’s still opportunity to use your social presence to land that job. The survey also found that, “eighteen percent of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them to hire the candidate.”

That’s not good news for most of us who use social networking a lot in our social lives. The key, though, is to make sure that if any content on your blog or Twitter or Facebook account makes you pause when you think whether a potential employer would be upset by it, it’s best to take it down (or, really, never put it up in the first place). There’s no reason to take a chance that some picture you took 5 years ago and posted to Facebook is going to come back to bite you in the butt.

From the Human Resources side, it is important to scan social media to see what your potential candidates are up to. You may see something that makes you feel very comfortable about hiring a potential candidate, but, more likely, you can find warning signs that maybe the person you are about to hire would not be a good fit for your company. If there are signs out there on the internet that a candidate may expose you to future lawsuits, it would almost be negligent not to have done the due dilligence beforehand. And would’t you like to know, the day after an interview, if the young man/woman you just interviewed posted something like this as their status message: “Had interveew yesterday. HR person aws lame! May take job for money but dont want it.”

Yeah…I think that would be worth finding out before you bring the person in.

Now That Was Quick...

On Monday afternoon, I did an orientation for a new employee who had started that morning. The employee started in a senior position, requiring at least a decade of experience. He spent all of Monday in training and setting up his computer and was set to start the actual work of the job yesterday.

 

This morning, he didn’t show up for work. His manager e-mailed him repeatedly, hoping to reach him on his Blackberry. Finally, worried that something was wrong, the manager called the new employee to see what happened.

 

The employee let the manager know, on that phone call, that he had quit. He said he left his Blackberry at his desk the night before and couldn’t continue to do the job because of the commute.

 

And that was it. One day on the job. Quit. No notice. No resignation. No showing up to let people know or calling to let them know. Just didn’t show up.

 

Amazing.

 

 

Astronology - Labor Day..Is It Just Another Holiday?

Astronology Volume X Issue 13   August 25, 2009 Dear Andrew, Astron Solutions provides high-quality, low-cost, innovative human resources consulting services to organizations like yours. Call us for advice, innovative program design, and user-friendly Web/PC based software.   Fact or Fiction?   Recycling one aluminum can equate to enough energy for a few hours of television.   Fact!!   According to Carl Zimrig's book, Cash for Your Trash, "Recycling one aluminum can saves enoughenergy to run a television for three hours."  What are your favorite shows to watch during those "found" 3 hours?   The Astron Road Show   Summer may be waning, but the Astron Road Show is still in high gear!  The Astron team will be making several stops in September.   First up is September 9th.  National Directors Michael Maciekowich and Jennifer Loftus will jointly present at the HR Alliance event in New York City.  The topic for the evening is "When the Money Runs Out: Retaining and Motivating Long Term Employees Without Increasing Pay."  The session will be a combination of trend discussion and interactive problem solving. Then, on September 11th, Jennifer travels to Norfolk, VA to present to the Norfolk Consortium on trends in public vs. private sector total compensation.  If you are in the area please let Jennifer know if you'd like to attend.  She'd be happy to have you as her guest!   Continuing the tour, on September 15th, Jennifer gives a joint presentation with Charlene Rossback of St. Francis Hospital (Roslyn, NY) entitled "It's More than Base Pay: Total Compensation Practices of Employers of Choice."  The presentation caps off a day of learning at the annual AHHRA Fall conference. More Road Show stops are on the way...we'll update you in the September 8th issue of Astronology!   Labor Day...Just Another Holiday? Every year, near the end of August, many prepare for the federal holiday of Labor Day on the first Monday of September. A lot of people consider Labor Day the close of summer. Many look forward to the last summer barbeque, time spent with family and friends, and also the Labor Day sales! Interestingly, the origins of the Labor Day holiday are not always discussed. In this edition of Astronology we will crack open the history books to discover the origins of the federal holiday of Labor Day....more   Have a Question? If you have a topic you would like addressed in Astronology, or some feedback on a past article, don't hesitate to tell us!  Simply reply to this e-mail.  See your question answered, or comments addressed, in an upcoming issue of Astronology. Looking for a top-notch presenter for your human resource organization's meeting?  Both Jennifer Loftus and Michael Maciekowich present highly-rated sessions on a variety of compensation and employee retention issues.  For more information, send an e-mail to info@astronsolutions.com.   The Fine Print We hold your e-mail address in trust.  Astron Solutions promises never to share or rent your personal information.  We also promise never to send you frivolous e-mails and will allow you to leave our list, at your option, at any time. To remove yourself from this list, please follow your personalized subscriber link at the bottom of your Astronology alert e-mail. Copyright 2009, Astron Solutions, LLC ISSN Number 1549-0467 Quick Links Client List Meet the Astron Team Contact Us   World of HR Blog Bringing you Human Resource news from around the globe...compliments of Astron Solutions. More

 

The Great Recession

1200 candidates for 100 jobs? Jeez. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The four-block line told the whole story of the Great Recession.

More than 1,200 people - in their finest job-interview outfits, clutching resumes and staring ahead stoically - waited for hours to get into a job fair in San Francisco. The number of jobs available? 100.

Not good

What A Candidate's E-mail Address Says About Them

 If you’ve dismissed a candidate because of your e-mail address, you’re not alone. From Let’s Talk Turkey (H/T Jay who found this on “Above The Law”):

When the Web first exploded, now known as Web 1.0, a candidate sent me a resume from the following email address:  spicegirlsrule@yahoo.com.  My reaction was to throw it in the virtual trash…The reality is, this was probably just a kid straight out of school who didn’t think that her email address would have any effect on her job hunt. She was wrong.

 

Fast forward to today.  I’m currently working on a resume for a writer/editor who is in her early 50’s.  One of the biggest challenges that she’s having is that she wants to do more dot-com work but is afraid her age is going to hurt her…One of the first things I noted when starting her rewrite process is that she has an AOL email address. Even though AOL took Tim Armstrong out of Google, it remains to be seen how this makes AOL relevant today. It’s a dinosaur…If you’ve still got an AOL email, frankly, you really need to change it…I’m not suggesting that changing your email is easy to stomach. In fact, my client is distinctly unhappy, even though she recognizes that I’ve got a point

 

Obviously, those are only parts of the article, but you get the point. It’s not easy, but you need to change your e-mail address to better reflect the personal “you”. If you’re not applying to a job in technology, an AOL e-mail address may not hurt you as much. But it couldn’t hurt to have one that looks a little more personal and/or professional. It also depends on the job you’re supposed to be performing. From Simple Justice:

 

Esquire's Rule #1033. If your lawyer's email address ends in hotmail.com, gmail.com or yahoo.com (or aol.com), find a new lawyer.

 

Is every profession going to be hurt by having gmail.com or the like at the end? No. Are there times when having a unique e-mail address can help? Sure. My last name is “Katz” and my e-mail address starts with “elgato”. Why? Because when I was in 9^th grade and in Spanish class, the teacher called me El Gato because of the likeness of my last name to “cats”. It isn’t for every job, but certain ones it allows me to have a personality and a great story for an interview.

 

But for more professional positions, I will sometimes switch to AndrewKatz@___.com. Why? For two reasons. It’s more professional and the HR professional is much more likely to remember my e-mail address when they’re corresponding with me. If I apply to finance jobs with AndrewKatz@moneybags.com I’ll seem very unique, but can HR really take me seriously for a finance job with that e-mail address?

 

I once got a resume that had the text “DMBfan” in it. I am also a fan of “DMB” (also known as Dave Matthews Band), but I knew that the person we would be hiring would have to act professionally in the setting and I didn’t know if their e-mail address was indicative of their nature. But I wanted to bring them in for an interview to see. When they performed well in the interview and we could talk about our DMB fandom together, I knew I had someone who was not only professional, but someone I would enjoy having around the workplace.

 

The key for candidates is to be smart about it and know who you are sending your e-mail address to. The key for Human Resources is to know that not all AOL or Gmail addresses are created equal.

Going A Little Far (East) To Find Employment

One of the biggest fears of not hiring an employee can sometimes be that they’ll walk down the street into your competitors’ shop. Well, according to one article in The New York Times, they may be traveling quite a bit further: to China. The article says that more graduates are finding that with a tough job market in cities like New York and Los Angeles that they might have more success in Shanghai and Beijing. And knowing Chinese is not a prerequisite:

 

Even those with limited or no knowledge of Chinese are heeding the call. They are lured by China’s surging economy, the lower cost of living and a chance to bypass some of the dues-paying that is common to first jobs in the United States.

 

Other NYT recent goodies:

 

-The Search has a plan on accentuating the positive after a layoff

 

-The Boss has a plan for flip flops at work

 

-From the Real Estate section, interns find a will and a way to get by during a summer…and that sometimes includes crashing on a floor.

 

-Lastly, from Fair Game, word that the quick buck just got quicker

 

Facebook At Work: Lost Productivity and Lost Jobs

Two recent article tying Human Resources and Facebook:

 

-The first is from WorldatWork and quotes a Nucleus Research report which says that Facebook use costs an average of 1.5% in lost productivity

 

My question for that article is: what would they be doing if they weren't on Facebook? Work or some other form of distraction? There usually is no business reason to be on Facebook, but the harms of a person on Facebook seems to be much less than them using the internet for other, more malicious uses. Sometimes a quick distraction is all an employee needs to be more productive for the rest of the day (I know that's the case with me). Is 1.5% loss in productivity (a hard thing to measure to begin with) really that bad? Just playing Devil's Advocate and throwing that out there...

 

-The other is from Mashable and has a great title: "FACEBOOK FIRED: 8% of US Companies Have Sacked Social Media Miscreants"

 

My question here is how many of these people are truly "miscreants" (as the picture from TheNextWeb above, used in the Mashable article, clearly shows) and how many people are just using Facebook? The statistic says that the number has doubled in the past year, but how many companies, attuned to their employees now using social networking/media at work, have recently installed policies or monitoring for their use? How many employees are simply doing what they did a year earlier but just getting caught for doing it this year? Again...just throwing that out there as food for thought

Astronology - Time Management Skills & Work

 

Astronology Volume X Issue 12   August 11, 2009 Dear Andrew, Astron Solutions provides high-quality, low-cost, innovative human resources consulting services to organizations like yours. Call us for advice, innovative program design, and user-friendly Web/PC based software. Fact or Fiction? The Nintendo iconic character of Mario was named after Nintendo's warehouse landlord.   Fact!! Mario originally appeared in the 1981 arcade version of Donkey Kong under the name of "Jumpman" when the game was being localized for Nintendo's American Audience. The employees of Nintendo decided to rename "Jumpman" after Mario Segale, the landlord of the Nintendo Warehouse. Apparently, Nintendo Founder and First President, Minoru Arakawa and Segale got into a heated debate over past due rent. When Arakawa finally convinced Segale that he would be paid, the employees decided to rename "Jumpman" to "Mario." The Astron Road Show   It may be summertime, but the finally warm weather doesn't slow down the Astron team!   Tomorrow, August 12th, National Director Mike Maciekowich will present at the Capital Associated Industries Compensation and Benefits Forum in Raleigh, NC. Mike will present "When the Money Runs Out...Retaining and Motivating Long Term Employees Without Increasing Pay." Please contact Mike for more information on his presentation. On Wednesday, August 19th, National Director Jennifer Loftus will present the results of the Central New York SHRM (CNYSHRM) 2009 Compensation and Benefits Survey in Syracuse, NY. This presentation is an exclusive benefit for survey participants. Please let us know if you would like more information on participating in 2010's survey!   We'll see you on the road! Time Management Skills & Work  Doesn't it sometimes feel as though there aren't enough hours in a day to complete all the things you would like to accomplish? No doubt, everyone at one time or another, whether at work, home, or school, has felt like this. However, does this problem exist due to procrastination or lack of time management skills?...more Have a Question? If you have a topic you would like addressed in Astronology, or some feedback on a past article, don't hesitate to tell us!  Simply reply to this e-mail.  See your question answered, or comments addressed, in an upcoming issue of Astronology. Looking for a top-notch presenter for your human resource organization's meeting?  Both Jennifer Loftus and Michael Maciekowich present highly-rated sessions on a variety of compensation and employee retention issues.  For more information, send an e-mail to info@astronsolutions.com. The Fine Print We hold your e-mail address in trust.  Astron Solutions promises never to share or rent your personal information.  We also promise never to send you frivolous e-mails and will allow you to leave our list, at your option, at any time. To remove yourself from this list, please follow your personalized subscriber link at the bottom of your Astronology alert e-mail. Copyright 2009, Astron Solutions, LLC ISSN Number 1549-0467 Quick Links Client List Meet the Astron Team Contact Us World of HR Blog Bringing you Human Resource news from around the globe...compliments of Astron Solutions. More

 

No New Jobs in Private Sector This Past Decade

The New York Times had an interesting article today, that says for the first time since the Great Depression, the American economy has added virtually no jobs in the private sector over a 10-year period.

The accompanying charts show the job performance from July 1999, when the economy was booming and companies were complaining about how hard it was to find workers, through July of this year, when the economy was mired in the deepest and longest recession since World War II. For the decade, there was a net gain of 121,000 private sector jobs, according to the survey of employers conducted each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In an economy with 109 million such jobs, that indicated an annual growth rate for the 10 years of 0.01 percent.

There were some areas of growth. But overall (especially considering population growth), it was a pretty dismal decade for private jobs in the United States.

How To Spot An Employee Who Is Looking Busy At Work Without Really Working

wikiHow has a pretty funny how-to manual on how to look busy at work without really working (H/T Wendy). I figured I'd summarize their steps with helpful hints to HR on how to prevent employees from utilizing these "techniques":

1. Know what your standards are - make sure to set high standards for your employees and make sure they're meeting them. As long as everything gets done, this should be fine.
2. Create the illusion of furious activity whenever possible - the advice says to never have a clean desk. Insist on a clean desk policy for both compliance and Human Resources reasons. Papers left out on the desk can be bad for many reasons.
3. Ask a lot of questions - this isn't actually a bad thing. They could be questions that others have or that creates provocative thinking.
4. Open several of the applications you normally use for work and have them visible for your computer's desktop - create inactivity logoffs for your applications. That way, employees will be forced to do something or get logged out. They'll be so annoyed by this, that working will be less work that pretending to work.
5. Be alert - switch up your game. If you're on a schedule of "checking up" employees will learn about that. It's like having a cop wait at the same intersection everyday: people will slow down just there. But if you switch around where the cop is, people will slow down everywhere.
6. Watch out for Big Brother - just be one step ahead. My company blocks certain sites but they also block "virtual desktops" or "proxies" so that you can't get around their monitoring/website blockage. You can also drill monitors into the desks to keep them always in view (this will also prevent them from somehow "disappearing").
7. Have lengthy personal conversations away from your work space - this isn't such a bad thing. Camaraderie amongst employees is a good thing. But try to limit the time they spend away from the desk. Walk by break rooms and conference rooms every once in a while to make sure no one is abusing the space
8. Visit friends in different departments, leaving your workspace very "busy" looking - This is easy: if Bob says to you, his manager, he's talking with Joe about something, follow up with Joe once in a blue moon. See how easily they stick to the same story
9. Drink lots of water - again, not a bad thing for employees to do. No way you can prevent them from constantly using the bathroom.
10. Make a decoy screen - this is tough to catch. But stop by and ask them to show you something on an application, and I'm sure that decoy screen will be revealed
11. Make personal phone calls away from your work space - as long as the person doesn't do this often, it's not a problem. But again, drop by conference rooms and break rooms once in a while to at least make it seem like you're paying attention to them.
12. Always, always carry a backup prop - You should have a good idea how long certain projects should take. If they take longer, ask what happened
13. Sending a package to yourself - if your employee wants to spend the money to do this, they're really desperate. I don't know how long it takes most people to open a FedEx...but this shouldn't really waste THAT much time

The only way to catch the slackers is to know the methods their using to slack. Time theft is a big deal, but there are little ways you can work around the "thief" and outsmart them!

Major League Baseball's Privacy Issue

For years, baseball has had a huge problem that no one wanted to deal with.

 

No, I'm not talking about steroids. I'm talking about identity and age falsification by Latin American prospects.

 

Well baseball decided to hit back by using genetic testing of young players and their parents as a way to determine correct ages and identities. As you can imagine, privacy advocates (and Human Resources professionals) had bells go off in their heads when they heard this. Via the New York Times:

Many experts in genetics consider such testing a violation of personal privacy. Federal legislation, signed into law last year and scheduled to take effect Nov. 21, prohibits companies based in the United States from asking an employee, a potential employee or a family member of an employee for a sample of their DNA.

Dozens of Latin American prospects in recent years have been caught purporting to be younger than they actually were as a way to make themselves more enticing to major league teams. Last week the Yankees voided the signing of an amateur from the Dominican Republic after a DNA test conducted by Major League Baseball’s department of investigations showed that the player had misrepresented his identity.

Some players have also had bone scans to be used in determining age range...

While determining age is the primary motivation for baseball’s testing, some experts and at least one scout raised the prospect that the DNA results could be used to try to predict players’ medical future.

Baseball’s use of DNA information alarmed experts in genetics and bioethics, who said this may be the first instance of such an arrangement since the federal bill, known as the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, was passed last year.

“DNA contains a host of information about risks for future diseases that prospective employers might be interested in discovering and considering,” said Kathy Hudson, the director of the Genetics and Public Policy Center and an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. “The point of GINA was to remove the temptation and prohibit employers from asking or receiving genetic information.”

Baseball has had a history of being legally exempt from certain laws such as antitrust regulation. This is another example of them overstepping their bounds quite a bit. And as Human Resources professionals, this should have set off some alarm bells in your heard, even before Congress passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.

Westwood College vs. Monster/CareerBuilder

Yesterday we talked about a college graduate who is suing her alma mater because she hasn't gotten a job after graduation. Well one college who is certainly setting themselves up to join them in the lawsuit is Westwood College. As AdFreak writes : "Westwood College thinks your career sucks". If the idea of the ads seem familiar, it should: Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com have been rolling out stuff like this for years. But this is the first time I've seen it from a provider of higher education.

But in this weak economy and even worse job market, I think this hits home with some people. Many people are going back to school to set themselves apart from the competition and Westwood College is trying to recruit those people. Think about it: if you go to Westwood College, you could be in class with the genius who thought of the arrow-pointed sign or a former road kill detective. Now isn't that worth the cost of education?

(Link: http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2009/08/westwood-college-thinks-your-career-sucks.html)

Can't Find A Job? Sue The School!

One news story certainly caught my eye this morning. A New York City graduate is suing her former school because she wasn't able to find a job after getting her bachelor's degree, according to NBC's New York affiliate.

[Trina] Thompson, a graduate of Monroe College, is suing her school for the $70,000 she spent on tuition because she hasn't found solid employment since receiving her bachelor's degree in April, according to a published report.

 

The business-oriented school in the Bronx didn't do enough to help her find a job, Thompson alleges, so she wants a refund. The college says it does plenty for grads.

 

The 27-year-old information-technology student accuses the school's Office of Career Advancement for not living up to its end of the deal and offering her the leads and employment advice it promised, according to The New York Post.

This is an interesting lawsuit. It reminds me of a lawsuit from 2006 where the person got a job, and then sued because they weren't hired earlier (New York Times recap here). The reason it reminded me of the same case is that, in the end, the case was lost, with the S.E.C. lawyer claiming that Aguirre was not hired in the first place because he was found to be arrogant and "displayed a sense of entitlement to the position".

 

I think that is the same feeling I get here. Just because you graduate with a bachelors degree, it does not entitle you to a position. The unemployment rate in this country (according to Google's Public Data) is 9.7% as of June. In New York, it was 8.6%. If every one of those people who earned a degree sued their higher education providers, there would be no more higher education providers in this country. Just because you have a degree, you are not guaranteed a job, especially in this economy. And hopefully potential candidates to your companies are realizing that more and more as this recession grows deeper.