598,000 Jobs Lost as Jobless Rate Hit 7.6% in January

Oh goody (H/T Sarah): click here

 

 

Worst Jobs for the Best Pay

BusinessWeek looks at the Worst Jobs for the Best Pay. Ever.

It harks me back to one summer, when I had trouble finding a summer internship, I got offered an intern position at a local branch of a well-known, national real estate firm. The pay was pretty good and the job was about a 10 minute drive from my parent's place. The experience seemed like a great way to learn more about real estate and maybe segue into that market. They had my sister as a part-time administrative assistant and they liked her. It seemed perfect.

It wasn't.

A little background: I had just graduated from my undergraduate studies from a top 35 University. I was in the middle of a 5 year BA/MA program getting a Masters in International Economics and Finance. I had interned for 3 summers at Deutsche Bank in Private Wealth Management. I was hungry to get my hands on something new and try it out.

Here were my tasks my first two days there: copy, staple, create binders, empty folders, fill folders, answer phones...and the best of all: fix stuff. This was a pretty successful operation in the heart of Scarsdale, NY at the top of the real estate bubble and they had the cheapest office equipment around. Everything broke. The worst of which was the copy machine, which my boss told me repeatedly was my fault because "everyone knows you shouldn't copy more than 25 pages at a time in a copier". I wanted to kill myself.

In the middle of my third day, I got a call from Jennifer at Astron Solutions. We had the best interview of my entire life (to date) and I was hoping to get an offer from Astron. It finally came. Jennifer asked me if I had already gotten a job. I told her I had, but that I'd quit by the afternoon and be in first thing on Monday.

And I've been working, in some capacity, with Astron ever since.

Despite good pay was the worst job I ever had, but it also led to the best job ;)

Check Astron Out in Inside HR/NY - February 2009 Issue

Some really cool things for Astron Solutions (especially Brendan Williams) inside the February issue:

(Click on photos to see better)

Friday!!!

TGIF

 

Here's two great articles to start your weekend:

 

1) The Wall Street Journal says to cut pay, not people (click here). I think this is where some companies are going. They tell employees either to take an unpaid week off or take a 5% cut to save people from being laid off. Many people are all too happy to have a job even at 5% less than no job at all. The problem here lies in getting everyone to buy in to this. Some people who work hard may be upset with taking a paycut when freeriders get to keep their job with just smaller salary. Also, paycuts do nothing for employee morale or streamlining productivity. But there's one reason why many companies should think about pay cuts over employee cuts: "While...job cuts resulted in modest short-term gains in company financial performance, they also resulted in larger long-term financial-performance losses because companies did not have the necessary talent to respond to economic recovery."

 

2) From Fabjob.com, MSN and Careerbuilder.com (who has a great ad for the Super Bowl up on my personal blog here) which has five ways to turn off employers. The best has to be #5 which is "Keep Communicating Until They Get a Restraining Order". I had an interview a few months back where the candidate kept on calling and e-mailing wondering when they would get hired. We were still in the middle of interviewing candidates, but we kept on hearing from this one person. All the while, they had out personal ads all over LinkedIn and other social networking websites. There's being persistent and going after a job...and then there's being a pest!

 

Problems for HR

This report says that Legal and Ethical violations are rising without resources to control the risk: click here

 

Yahoo! also reports that Americans receiving jobless benefits has hit an all-time record: click here

 

But help may be on the way with relief for jobless and states in health care plan embedded within the new stimulus package: click here

 

Starbucks is going to cut 6,700 jobs amid falling sales (and cut decaf coffee after noon)

 

How social networking helped one company grow its business: click here

 

Also, make sure to read Jennifer's articles from yesterday and today...well worth the read!

 

What I'm Hearing...More on Ledbetter

Sent out today by the SHRM Government Affairs department: "Employers should note that it will allow not only aggrieved employees but other 'affected' individuals, including spouses and children, to file a claim, even after the employee has died."

You can read the whole article here: http://messaging.shrm.org/ct/0daBMYp1SRxH/

Pay discrimination is, of course, wrong. This approach to remedying the situation, however, seems to merely open the door to a myriad of lawsuits, many probably without merit.

What I'm Hearing...Changes to Compensation Planning Are Coming Your Way

Yesterday, Congress approved the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. BLR has a clear synopsis of the law at http://compensation.blr.com/display.cfm/id/156373.

At the moment, I have many conflicting thoughts on the passage of this legislation, and will spare our readers my stream of consciousness! :-)

As a first step, have HR professionals already audited their compensation programs to make sure discrimination does not exist? If not, now is the time to investigate and take positive action.

With the passage of this Act, it appears that a tidal wave of new HR legislation will be coming from Washington. With legal costs typically averaging $100,00 or more per case, advance preparation and positive action now are essential to ensuring a "lawsuit free" organization.

Labor Bill Opposed By Who?

It ends up that bailout recipients (including AIG and Bank of America) were some of the biggest opponents of a key labor bill (click here)

I figured I'd just copy the main text below (audio available on the site):

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Trade Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.

Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.

"This is the demise of a civilization," said Marcus. "This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I'm watching this happen and I don't believe it."

Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued, to prevent America from turning "into France."

"If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out their goddamn jobs," Marcus declared.

Earlier he argued: "As a shareholder, if I knew the CEO of the company wasn't doing anything on [EFCA]... I would sue the son of a bitch... I'm so angry at some of these CEOs, I can't even believe the stupidity that is involved here."

Astronology - A Look Back at All That Happened in 2008

 

 

Astronology Volume IX Issue 24   January 27, 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. 10th Anniversary Last Thursday, January 22nd marked Astron Solutions 10th anniversary. We would like to thank everybody who visited all of us at the office to help us celebrate this wonderful occasion. And we just want to send out our sincerest thanks for making all of this possible! The continued support of Astron has been amazing, and we hope to be able to say this again in January of 2019 for the 20th Anniversary! Also, keep an eye out for special 10th Anniversary events all throughout 2009! Fact or Fiction? Fact or fiction: Men own the germiest places in the office. Fiction (We were surprised too.) Women's office spaces are three to four times germier than their male counterparts' office space. How is this possible? Well, women tend to have more stuff in general on and around their desk and workspace. More stuff translates to more potential places with germs. There were over 100 surfaces tested for germs. Here are a few examples of which gender has it worse:    - Telephone: Women had more germs than men    - Mouse: Again, women more germs than the men    - Desk (the actual desk surface): Men more germs than the women For the full article and a listing of the most common items in a workspace, click here. The Astron Road Show Trade show season is inching ever closer...grab your calendars and mark Astron's first Road Show events of 2009. Our first show of the New Year is in Houston, TX. National Director, Michael Maciekowich, will be presenting at the Houston Society of Healthcare Human Resources Administration held on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009. For more information, please click here. Astron's next show is held in Albany, NY as part of the Capital Regional Human Resource Association (CRHRA) on March 19th. Director of Client Services Paul Hart Miller will be there meeting and greeting. Then on April 28th through April 30th, Astron Solutions will be exhibiting AND presenting at the SHRM Staffing Management Conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada. There, National Director Jennifer C. Loftus will be giving a presentation and meeting with the attendees at our exhibit booth. As more details and shows become available, we will surely pass them along. We hope to see you there! A Look Back at All That Happened in 2008 2008 was a memorable year for human resource professionals. There were far more challenging events in 2008 than in many prior years. The events of 2008 have also altered numerous human resource strategies for years to come. Below is a summary of some of the key events we'll be discussing for years to come....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 2008, 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

Some Pictures From the Astron Party

 

The Hall of Fame Unemployment Line

Mixing a little baseball with Human Resources, this is a good article to read before heading into the weekend about a different type of "unemployment line": click here

 

 

Happy 10 Year Anniversary!

"Thank you for being an important part of our ASTRONomical growth in our first ten years." - Astron’s founders Michael Maciekowich and Jennifer C. Loftus

Congrats to Astron Solutions on it's 10th Anniversary! Let's hope there's many, many more to come. And check out our new logo on the right side of the screen. Pretty sweet!

Some links:

Microsoft resorted to their first layoffs, cutting 5,000 people--a sign of how bad the economy has gotten: click here

Gannett Newspaper employees are the latest to be asked to take a week of unpaid leave instead of facing layoffs...but when words like "scramble" and "uncertainty" are thrown around, it's never good news: click here

Lastly, Ask The Headhunter asks if you're pursuing the interview...or the job? click here

Off to celebrate with the rest of Astron. Congrats again! And after almost 20,000 people have visited the blog, thank you guys for making us so popular!

 

Job Cuts on Main Street

A very interesting piece by CNN Money on how small business is being hit by the economy: click here

 

And, saw on someone's Twitter this new site for finding jobs in sports (especially sports journalism): click here

 

Morale Of Those Left Behind

Many times, while layoffs are occurring, people forget about the morale of the people still there. The Washington Post wrote about it today. But many people have looked over this. The truth is that I've heard from some people recently laid off in the finance industry describe it as being a "relief". When companies go through layoffs, workers have to look over their shoulders every day, wondering if they will be next. If they aren't let go, they are asked to take the responsibilities of those who have lost their jobs. And many employees are scared to approach Human Resources or their employers to ask for changes to anything--lest their employment status be the chance that occurs. If you're an HR professional, you have an obligation to cut costs and sometimes lay off people, but you also have an obligation to the people who still remain to make sure that they are happy.

 

About.com has advice on downsizing with dignity.

 

Workforce.com has an article about how to boost morale after layoffs.

 

Good advice to take.

 

Follow Us On Facebook

We continue to move further and further into the social networking arena...

Become a fan of our blog on Facebook: click here

Wonderful....

From Bloomberg: 21,000 Jobs Worldwide Erased in Day as Recession Chokes Demand....wow

Happy Friday!

Three articles for you this Friday before a long weekend...

 

U.S. News & World Report has an article on some "insensitive" advice on 401(k) loans: click here

 

The New Haven Register (via iStockAnalyst) says 46% of Connecticut businesses predict layoffs: click here

 

And some advice from Scripps News about whether a college student should skip human resources during a summer job search: click here

 

Have a great weekend!

 

Making Staff Decisions in a Recession from the Wall Street Journal

Job losses and pay cuts are mounting as the U.S. economy struggles. Ravin Jesuthasan of Towers Perrin says that health care and energy look like the safest industries in these tough times.

Laid Off and Looking

Laid Off and Looking from the Wall Street Journal

In this video blog entry, Dawn Jordan talks about her job search and the importance of networking.

Oxford's Business History Program

Oxford Offers a Business History Lesson from the Wall Street Journal.

Oxford University's Chris McKenna says during times of economic crisis, look to the past for a broader perspective. He speaks with WSJ's Alina Dizik about a new history course at the university.