Going after that MBA might be worthwhile…
And I really hate to make blanket statements like that because all of the MBA guys and gals I know are swell and they work great together. That doesn’t mean though that I haven’t talked to a lot of dweebs coming fresh out of MBA’s not knowing anything about working at the executive level. At some point, I almost want to question if they actually knew the whole point of getting an MBA was to move up or move out?
A MBA is a great concept and if these changes are adopted widely, it could do a lot to bolster confidence. The best part about a MBA is that it compresses time in a high pressure, deadline sensitive world. If you come out of that program having worked with 10-15 different teams, those are a lot of different personalities you’ve been forced to cope with. And from the hiring side, that’s pretty exciting. I feel confident hiring from a program that teaches these skills than the alternative.
Ultimately, this problem points back to poor undergraduate work which could point back to poor high school work and so on. What some educators have called “slippage” in the curriculum: not being able to teach kids the same things they used to because it isn’t getting covered earlier. Is the MBA or Masters going to become the bachelor degree of today? It already is in some Engineering and Scientific fields.
And well, that is a different post altogether.
Not Surprisingly, More Businesses Outsourcing HR
A recent article about small businesses outsourcing HR functions should come of no surprise to those in the HR field. With the legal complications involved in hiring, maintaining and ultimately terminanting employees taking its toll on small business operators, it is making much more sense to throw it to a PEO and let them take care of it.
These days, it is nearly insane for a small business to try to manage all of their own financials. They likely go the outsource route to outside accountants who take their scraped together financial documents, tell them what to do to maximize their deductions, and file their taxes for them. Now, HR is starting to go that way. Recruiting has been an indicator of that but now PEO’s are starting to go that way. The issue for HR departments everywhere?
This is frightening
The TV show “The Office” has a website where you can submit your HR nightmares.
I’ve spent the entire night reading through this and watching”The Office.” I can’t believe some of the examples they’ve given. Some of them are awful.
Oh, how painful!
Non-Compete Agreements are Bogus
If there is one document in the hiring process I hate to hear about, it is the non-compete agreement. If there is any single document that can kill a new person’s first day excitement, it is the non-compete agreement. If there is any single document that can rock the foundation of a loyal employee’s trust in a company…well.
Now, I am not questioning the legality of non-compete agreements (there has been quite a bit of legislation and court rulings that muzzle those agreements in many states) but under many circumstances, they simply aren’t necessary or are overly restrictive.
Now the idea behind a non-compete is pretty harmless: making sure your competitors don’t take trade secrets through taking top executives and other principle people of an organization. What it has become is a tool of intimidation with overly broad definitions of competitors (or none at all), blanket use throughout all levels of an organization and long timeframes.
When are non-compete agreements ok? Under the following conditions: Read more
Increasing Benefits Costs to At-Risk Employees
A recent trend in benefits is to pass some of the increasing costs of medical insurance to at risk employees. One of the easiest assailed groups are smokers. Not only are they easily identified but they are not faultless in their affliction (like some cases of obesity or cancer with genetic predispositions). The second reason is that smoking is verifiably expensive. A recent study cited the figure of 6-8% of total medical costs in the US is attributable to smoking and nearly one in five deaths can also be traced back to that cause. While 6-8% may sound like chump change, health care costs in the US comprise of 16% of our GDP. Or nearly two trillion dollars.
While workplace bans on smoking while at work isn’t uncommon in the new century, stricter methods have been put into place. In 2005, there was a well publicized case about an employer banning smoking outright as a condition of employment. And it is becoming more of a common practice to charge smokers more for health care coverage than their non-smoking colleagues.
This trend has outraged some rights groups while gaining applause from health groups and insurance companies. On one side, it is unfair to dictate what your employees do outside of work. Not only that, but there are greater risk factors where employers will not penalize an employee. For example, alcoholism may go untreated for years and may do damage far beyond that of moderate to light cigarette usage. On the other hand, employers want to find ways to decrease costs and maintain profitability. Discrimination on the basis of smoking is not against the law so employers are free to do as they please in this arena. And this sort of discrimination isn’t uncommon anymore. As an example, companies routinely give health care discounts to employees who participate in their wellness programs and discriminate against those who don’t participate.
Where do you come down on the issue? There are obviously very polar positions on the issue but there is definitely some middle ground. I’d like to hear your take on it before I post my next post in which I will go into my views in great detail.
The keys to your job search are at JobCentral.
Book Review: Office Superman
You’ll have to bear with me here for a few weeks. Not only is college basketball in full swing but I have been going through each of the eight books I have on my bedside as partially read and finally finishing them. Some of them are not related to business but I will try to write reviews for each one that makes sense for this blog.
So this book I read recently is called Office Superman: Make Yourself Indispensable in the Workplace.
So this book definitely has some good points to it. In fact, all of the points he makes throughout are really good in and of themselves. Especially for all of those people who are looking at moving up or being superstars in their industry.
The only problem is that this book is so full of Superman analogies, it drove me insane. Maybe if I were more into comic books, I would be a little more entertained by the whole premise of comparing Superman to being a great worker over and over again. I think this book goes overboard on the whole thing to the point of distraction.
Which I think is unfortunate since, as I said, it has a lot of great points buried beneath Superman analogies.
Recruiting is marketing. Try jobcasting.
How to Break into the HR field?
Many people who read this blog show an interest into breaking into the HR field. While I may question their sanity for this, I only know this is a popular topic because I get e-mails about it all of the time from all types of people. I realize that I keep repeating myself over and over again. So now I am going to put this out as kind of a catch all for those questions so this may be edited from its original version.
First of all, it is not very difficult to break into the HR field. I did it, and I don’t think I am that smart. That being said, it can appear to be very difficult to break into it from the outside because it is very difficult to do it from the outside. Most people want experience if they are hiring from the outside and don’t want a fresh face from college to get them into legal trouble because they mess up application. So here are the ways to get in with no experience:
- Work from the inside. College education: not required, additional educated needed though. Depending on your company’s size and culture, you may be able to break into HR from the inside. Good companies love internal HR hires because they understand the culture already. You will probably be required to get an HR certificate (PHR is a nice one that is recognized pretty well). Again, depending on your company, you might get this paid for (at least partially). The bad? Not a sure thing and totally cultural dependent. May mean you get crappy pay for a while.
- Start as a recruiter. College education: likely to be required. At many large companies, the easiest way to break into the HR department is through the internal recruiting team. Recruiting is relatively easy to understand and companies seem to be comfortable hiring directly for these positions plus they typically pay really well. The bad? Likely long hours, traveling, tons of time on the phone and … well, some of the stuff I complain about recruiting in this blog. Of course, I don’t think that stuff is that bad so.
- Start at an outsourcing firm. College education: likely to be required. HR outsourcing is big business these days and as such, outsourcers may be more willing to train entry level people because of increased demand and repetitiveness of tasks. Everything from payroll processing, to third-party recruiting, to full on HR department outsourcing is covered here. The bad? Third-party recruiting can be good money if you have the skills but almost everything else is going to pay you…well, entry level wages.
- Start at a smaller business. College education: probably. With the economy still doing relatively well, starting at a smaller business can be a good start to getting in with experience at other firms. Smaller businesses usually go after people with strong entrepreneurial drive who are willing to learn quickly and do a lot of other things inside the business. Targeting businesses between 25-50 employees (depending on industry) can be key to this. The bad? You might get pushed into doing payroll or other things at a smaller business and you may not be able to have an appropriate mentor like you would at a larger company.
These are the four places I would start if I had to do it again. Me personally? I did a combination of 2 & 4.
Your HR Guy is MIA but He Makes Up For it
Even your HR guy gets a little pressure put to him at work that he needs to take care of quickly. That has been the past two weeks in a nutshell. So while I am trying to catch up on blogging and blogs and all those things, I just had to share this amazing site.
I don’t know about anyone else but I am a big fan of The Office (both the British and American versions). If you have ever watched it, it is noteworthy for its cringe factor among HR professionals. Besides the obvious reason why, this blog goes episode by episode estimating the potential litigation costs for the employer.
Fascinating for numerous reasons but definitely something I’ll make part of my regular routine on Friday.
Put the damn salary range down!
Whenever I see other people advertising on job boards and the like, one thing that bugs me is when people don’t put down the pay range and benefits. Note that my annoyance level goes up with the maturity and specificity of the position.
For instance, one employer put down that they wanted a person with 15 years of Human Resources experience, a SPHR, a Bachelors (but preferably an MBA) and seven years of management experience. What did they put for the salary range? Depends on experience. Uh, dudes, you know what their experience is going to be.
Pay is such a taboo topic and I like confronting it head-on. You’ve got to though and that’s why I think job seekers should also be very honest about salary if the prospective employer is being honest. I know what I want to make and what I am unwilling to work for so I would say “optimally I would like to make this much per year but I will absolutely not take any offer below this much.”
The poor argument I always hear is that we don’t want to disqualify candidates who might overlook the position based on salary range. I say that if the perfect person walked in today and you aren’t going to pay him or her more than 60k plus 10k in bonuses, we might as well advertise that as our upper limit. Because if someone comes in with a minimum of 80k and 20k of bonus, it is just going to be a big waste of time trying to reconcile those two numbers.
Google indexing fun…
No, really.
So I was talking to Joel Cheesman a month or two ago about the fact that Google hadn’t indexed my website. Since it had been six months since I started this thing, I thought it was a bit weird. So did he and we pretty much left the conversation baffled. MSN and Yahoo already had me on their radar. I don’t really care all that much about Google juice but I was just annoyed at that prospect.
The Cheez did give me a piece of advice though: “try to run some AdWords on Google.” I didn’t feel like doing it out of principle. Google should be giving me props anyway. Why should I give them any money?
Last Sunday (the 3rd), I finally relented. I looked to see if my site was indexed and it still wasn’t. I opened up an AdWords account and put in some keywords that made some sense. I directed all of the ads to this page.
Well, here comes Tuesday the 5th and I check it and guess what: I am indexed.
Coincidence? I think not. I submitted my site to Google in May and September. There is no logical explanation for this except that Google figured out I was a legitimate site only after I ran an ad with them.
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About
Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...
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