Dear Human Resources Manager: Hi! I’m writing to apply for a position on your board of directors. While I have only modest knowledge of polymer-based hollow-rod extrusion, stenciling and vapor recovery — and no actual office experience per se — I am eager to be well-paid for little or no work.
In Silicon Valley these days, precious few jobs are available for high-tech workers. In the past two years, hundreds of companies have folded and tens of thousands of employees have been laid off. Many of the job hunters who came here in the late 1990s for the dot-com rush are gone.
Can mere economics explain the meteoric rise of CEO pay since the 1980s? If we liberate our minds from that warped construct known as “perfectly competitive markets,” then the answer is yes. As we’ll soon see, economics can even explain the effect of such disparate influences as government intervention and charisma. Taking nothing for granted,
It seemed as though every Monday morning in my 20-year career as a lawyer I sat at a desk and dreamed of just not being there anymore. “If only I could retire,” I sighed. Then with a felicitous combination of savings, luck and daring, I did it at age 46 on Jan. 1, 2000. A
“Dad, I’ll pay you a dollar if you baby-sit me for an hour.” Coming from his five-year-old daughter, this offer got the attention of a middle-aged oil-company executive. “All the money in her piggy bank for an hour of my time,” he says. “I realized I’d let my life get pretty far out of whack.”
Job satisfaction has been on the decline since 1995 and has hit an all-time low, according to a survey by the Conference Board. The increased pace of business, greater demands for results and less time for recreation are among the factors bothering employees, the Conference Board found. “As technology transforms the workplace — accelerating the
Americans value modesty. This is a fact. Whether you’re a Rockefeller, Rothschild or Kennedy, the expectation is that modesty will prevail, and you’ll present yourself as a humble person, never flaunting your fame and fortune. And whether or not it behooves us to be humble in any given situation, we nonetheless comply. In fact, in
In 1998 I found myself, for the first time in my career, a “free agent,” meaning that I was not a “regular” employee anywhere; in fact, I was untethered to any organization and loosened upon the world. Fortunately, my spouse works, so I wasn’t desperate to accept just anything. I had his health insurance and
Jolene Tornabeni, 50, started out as a nurse 25 years ago. Two grown children later, she is the chief operating officer of Inova Health System, a health-care provider with facilities in Northern Virginia. She attributes her rise in the ranks to being a mother. “People always ask me if children didn’t stop me in my
Some people believe that the New York Stock Exchange’s Richard Grasso and the New York Times’s Howell Raines were forced out because they didn’t bother to update how they conduct themselves in these troubled times. Could it be that professional arrogance, denial and self-aggrandizement are bad for business? If you read the business news, you
As any stay-at-home mom can tell you, quitting work and staying home to raise a baby is a far cry from retirement. If you’re planning on it — or have already done it — you’ll find that this 24/7 on-call position provides many intangible benefits, but, unfortunately, no income.
I first saw the power of delegating when my mom published her housecleaning plan on our refrigerator. Each family member had to clean a room by a given date. Except for my mom. She cleaned the house without lifting a sponge.
Last fall, Richard Grasso, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, was forced to resign following disclosure that he had accepted a $187.5 million compensation package. The chairman didn’t set his own salary, however. The board of directors set it. What was their rationale for approving a package of that magnitude? Was he being
In the current job market, many senior-level candidates are learning that great backgrounds, terrific interviewing ability and stellar references don’t guarantee success. So how can you break through the iron curtain that screens most job candidates from managers who can hire you? Instead of trying to circumvent the human-resources department, you must accommodate it in
As a captain in the Indiana Army National Guard, I’ve been on active duty since Jan. 2, 2003, and serving in Southwest Asia in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom since Feb. 12, 2003. I’ll be returning to my job as a manager for a chemical company this month. It’s been a long year, but in
Just as it’s been the principal benchmark that financial markets have used to evaluate the economic recovery for the past three years, job creation has become the central economic focus of the U.S. presidential campaign. Benjamin Disraeli’s statement on the three types of lies is appropriate because the way in which the employment statistics are
Confusion about how recruiters operate has put many a career at a disadvantage. Executives in transition can’t afford to let faulty assumptions foul up their prospects. Knowing how the search industry operates will make you a better, more successful candidate. To help you get the facts straight, here’s a guide to working with recruiters based
It isn’t uncommon for employers to receive more than 500 applications for a single job. Many companies have databases containing more than 1 million resumes. To manage these huge volumes, companies increasingly are using online staffing-assessment tools to screen and select candidates. These questionnaires and tests allow companies to sort through hundreds of applications rapidly
It’s no secret that many performance-management systems aren’t working. This goes from the top to the bottom of organizations, from boards who adjust executives’ performance goals so they can receive pay that appears to have no relationship to company results, to levels lower down, where large numbers of employees are indifferent or unmotivated by the
We enlisted a team of volunteers to “mystery shop” the job pages of some of America’s largest corporations. What have they learned? That applying for a job online isn’t always as easy as it looks, and the results are often less than satisfying. Based on their experience, we offer an online job hunter’s bill of rights:
