Hiring the Best Person for the Job
A new study in the December issue of the American Sociological Review suggests that employers are often more focused on hiring someone they would like to hang out with than they are in hiring the most competent person for the job.
“Of course, employers are looking for people who have the baseline of skills to effectively do the job,” said study author Lauren A. Rivera, an assistant professor of management and organizations and sociology at Northwestern University. “But, beyond that, employers really want people who they will bond with, who they will feel good around, who will be their friend and maybe even their romantic partner. As a result, employers don’t necessarily hire the most skilled candidates.”
Although Dr. Rivera is quick to point out that the findings don’t mean unqualified candidates are being hired, the findings might give pause to those who are concerned about employement shortages and competitiveness.
Tags: Careers, employee attitudes
When Work-Life Balance Ceases to Exist
Most families take juggling home and career as a given. And over at the new Atlantic channel The Sexes, there’s another conversation going. Eleanor Barkhorn, the site’s editor writes people who don’t have kids want work-life balance too. Read the rest of this entry »
No Let Up in Employee Stress
Towers Watson the global human resources consulting firm is out with a new survey today. Its findings won’t surprise any employee who is experiencing stress on the job. It’s a trend that is being noticed by many employers as well and it is continuing unabated. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: employee attitudes, leadership, management
Salaries for New Grads Inch Higher; Workplace Flexibility Sought
In perhaps another encouraging sign in the job market the National Association of Colleges and Employers released data that showed salaries inched up for the graduates of the class of 2012.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: career choice, employee attitudes, National Association of Colleges and Employers, The New York Times, work-life balance
Hiring Vets
It’s been widely reported that Michelle Obama traveled to Florida this weeky to announce that more than 2000 businesses have participated in the Joining Forces Initiative and have hired or trained 125,000 veterans and militiary spouses in the last year. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: career transitions
An Office with No Boss
For anyone who has every considered the possiblity of a boss less office, there is an interesting explanation this week from Knowledge at Wharton. Knowledge at Wharton. Read the rest of this entry »
Having It All–A Generational Saga
With the death of screenwriter Nora Ephron at 71 and the appointment of Marissa Mayer the CEO of Yahoo at 37 the conversation about Having It All by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a 53 year old Princeton University professor and former State Department official took an interesting twist.
Eighteen years separated Ephron’s graduation from Wellesley College in 1962 from Slaughter’s graduation from Princeton University in 1980. Ephron headed first to the Kennedy White House and then to New York City to the Newsweek mailroom. (Newsweek didn’t hire women writers then. The Ivy League didn’t accept female student either.) While Slaughter headed to Oxford University after graduation for further study and then a degree at Harvard Law School, Mayer graduated with honors from Stanford University and then took an M.S. in Computer Science. She became the 20th employee at Google.
To what extent is each woman a product of her times? And is it possible the question of having “Having It All” is defined and interpreted anew each generation?
Tags: Anne-Marie Slaughter, career choice, female executives, gender parity, Google, Marissa Mayer, Nora Ephron, work-life balance
Peter Cappelli and Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs
Longtime readers of this blog will recognize Peter Cappelli. He was interviewed here in December 2010.. And now he’s back with a new book called Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs. Read the rest of this entry »
Motherhood and Inequality
Eduardo Porter at The New York Times makes a case this morning that of. Motherhood Still a Cause of Pay Inequality.
This follows another recent Times story about men being attracted to pink collar jobs by his colleagues Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: boys, career choice, compensation, employee attitudes, gender parity, men, The New York Times, women
The Era of the Independent Worker
Within the last few weeks new stories have been appearing about the temp workforce.
Jody Greenstone Miller and Matt Miller have a piece about the The Rise of the SuperTemp in the May issue of the Harvard Business Review. Ms. Greenstone Miller runs the Business Talent Group which places well-pedigreeed consultants in short term assignments. Matt Miller is best known as a commentator and writer.
In a recent Preoccupations in The New York Times Sunday Business section Alexandra Levit who identifies herself as a generational workplace consultant and author wrote about the new staying power of independent workers.
Certainly temporary work is not new. As the country emerged from the dot.com bust in 2004 I wrote a story in The New York Times entitled Your Next Boss Could Be a Temp. Then it was an emerging trend, now it is a universal one.
And, its a universal trend that has wide-ranging consequences for the independent workers and those who manage them. It will have implications for how managers are perceived, compensated and evaluated for promotions. In the coming weeks we’ll examine what those are and what they mean to companies, managers and the independent workers themselves.
