1943 Tips for Hiring Women

You have probably encountered this list on the web, or through other blogs that you read.  This is a section of a 1943 pamphlet prepared by a mass transportation trade magazine that outlined "how to use [women] to the best hiring advantage.  The seminar question is... if you put aside the "little lady" tone and the sweeping generalizations you ought to expect from 1940s public discourse, how do you react to the tips themselves?  A "husky" girl might take it in her stride, but that's "feminine psychology" for you. Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees: (1943) There’s no longer any question...

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The Wicked Recruiter: Are they just not into you anymore?

Tina Duccini, The Wicked Recruiter In a follow-up to last week's post, we asked the Wicked Recruiter to reveal more behind-the-scenes insight into Recruiter behavior. Dear Wicked Recruiter,  What does it mean if a recruiter has started talking about making an offer and seems enthusiastic, but then stops contacting you or returning your calls altogether? Are they "just not into you" anymore? Answer: It means you have an underperforming recruiter. They likely ran into an awkward corporate situation and simply don't know how to talk about it. The general awkward situations are: 1. req frozen due to public company quarterly shenanigans 2....

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Tips from the trenches: Make your coworkers look good

Miss Minchin, Dean of Students In school, group projects were the worst. One person always did all the work, one person always dominated the planning, or everyone did their own thing and it never came together as a cohesive project. The same dynamics can come into play in the world of work whether you are working on a cross-functional team, or simply depending on other groups to help you meet your deliverables. It can be tempting to sit back and let the slackers in the group expose themselves as unprepared or non-collaborative, while you seemingly “shine” in comparison, but in reality this will have the opposite effect. Your manager wants to...

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Setting up Your Home Office

Instructor, Betsy Boesel Sagges, Independent Public Relations and Communications Professional Home offices have come a long way since Bill Gates tinkered with wires and metal boxes in his parents’ garage. “Working from home” used to be a description often accompanied by a wink, since it rarely meant actually WORKING, beyond making a couple calls then running off to do errands or catch the kids’ chorus performance without having to log a day-off.  But that was also when most people worked at some place, before email and cell phone technology advanced to enable us to stay tethered to our desks wherever our desks might be. My entree to...

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Ask A Manager: Asking for a raise

Dick Whitman, Manager in Residence Dear Manager, What was the most compelling request for a raise you have heard? I think the most compelling request came from a guy who was brought into my company in an acquisition. His prior role in the smaller company was relatively contained and specific. Shortly after my company came onto the scene, a few key players from his very small group left abruptly and unexpectedly. We were left in a very bad spot in that we had so few people left who knew anything about this operation that was so new to us. This guy – let’s call him “Bob” -- saw an opportunity to help the company while helping himself, and...

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Unpaid Furlough is Not a Good Management Tool

Guest Lecturer, Eloise, Fundraising Director Nothing creates an us-versus-them dynamic and blows employee morale quite like implementing unpaid furlough, especially when it’s done twice in six months.  What begins in a meeting room as a compromise to save money and jobs can worsen your employees' situation if not planned with real-life outcomes in mind.  Read more in Eloise's story below. For the past two years I have worked as a fundraising director for a nonprofit arts organization in fiscal crisis.  In mid-April of 2009, senior management announced that due to impending financial disaster, they were forced to cut 10% of...

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Disappearing Acts (book review)

Resident MBA candidate Diane Chambers files a review of Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work, by Joyce K. Fletcher, Co-director of Working Connections Project, Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, Stone Center, Wellesley College.  A suggestion for those of you who enjoy the academic read, the swift pace of 21st century business history, and bringing sociology to the workplace.  Regular readers may also notice a recent theme regarding confusion between collaboration and exploitation. This book, published in early 2001, is based on a structured observation study of female engineers in a high tech firm in the eastern U.S. The author uncovered four relational practices that the women in the study engaged in: 1. Preserving the Project, taking responsibility...

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The Wicked Recruiter: Waiting for the offer... and waiting, and waiting

Tina Duccini, the Wicked Recruiter Dear Wicked Recruiter: What does it mean when you have completed all interviews with a company, the recruiter has told you that an offer is in the works, but it's been three weeks and still no offer? Do you keep following up or just wait? Or do you just move on? Generally, there is no good excuse for a recruiter not contacting you or letting you know what is going on with an offer if one is in the works. Sometimes this is a difficult situation- such as: a. the req just got frozen due to budget shenanigans, hiring freeze, impending termination/resignation of the hiring manager, or upcoming layoff that...

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Finding the Cold Contact

Instructor, Caroline Bender We have been learning these past few months about informational contacts -- call them interviews if you like. Call them mixers. Call them Blind Dates, as I do. They are similar to all of these. Their primary goal is to expand your library of contacts, and to get you some exposure.  In a 10% Unemployment market, you are not trawling for jobs; you are simply charming your way into rooms in order to be thought of when there are jobs.  If you are currently seeking informational contacts and your library has dried up, let us suggest a few new places for you to look without spending any cash and...

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What Color is Your Bucket?

Guest Blogger, Jay Hargis, Career Doctor and Blogger (HR Cleanup) I do a lot of work with people who are out of work -- most of them involuntarily. I am always fascinated by the different ways people handle unemployment and I find that often, it has to do with severance. But sometimes, it has to do with attitude. Let me explain. I think that job seekers fall into three different buckets. For the sake of this post, we'll call the three buckets Red, Yellow, and Green. Red Bucket job seekers are panicked. They are convinced that they won't be able to find a job as good as their old job. They lament "the old days and the old gang." They have...

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Ask a Manager: What should we focus on for the new year?

Guest Lecturer, Dick Whitman, Manager in Residence  What goals would you recommend our readers focus on at work for the new year? (e.g.what general skills should most people take more time to develop? What could women in particular do better at?) You might have noticed that a lot of my answers to these questions have taken on a theme of “it’s not about you / it’s about the business.” Perhaps this is because a lot of the questions I’ve been getting have been about some sort of negotiation that is taking place in the workplace, where I maintain that you can be so much more effective in sticking to the facts. I saw one of your (wise,...

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Female Power - Highlights from The Economist

Last week's Economist cover story, "Female Power," contained some statistics we thought you might find interesting.  We encouarge you to review the complete article in its online version, or in the North America print version, Jan 2-8, 2010. 49.9% of American workers are female In 2009, the US workforce included 80% of college educated women; 46% of women with a high school diploma. In 1963, 62% of college educated women were counted in the US workforce, and 47% of female high school graduates. 11% of senior management positions are held by women >13% of corporate board seats are held by women 2% of Fortune 500 companies are...

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45 Things You do That Drive Your Boss Crazy (book review)

Recently, we referenced columnist Anita Bruzzese and her book 45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy (and How to Avoid Them).  As you consider the change(s) you are prepared to embrace in 2010, you may be ready to take a look within.  This is a practical place to start. Bruzzese lists the most glaring employee errors, categorizing them according to 4 simple statements: 1) Bosses don't promote employees who make them feel uncomfortable 2) Bosses get rid of employees with too many bad habits 3) Bosses don't give great projects to those who can't play nice and get along with others 4) Bosses don't give leadership roles to those...

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How To: Improve your performance review experience

Miss Minchin, Dean of Students Here at the Finishing School, we hold a few truths to be self-evident: 1. Your performance review will be largely based on events from the 2 weeks preceding the review (rather than the prior year) 2. Your manager will rely very heavily on the self review you provide to complete her assessment of you 3. Performance reviews are often treated as a necessary evil, and few managers can deliver them well Track your achievements: Given these facts, it behooves you to keep solid records of your achievements throughout the year. Set a resolution this year to keep a log of all your accomplishments (large and small)...

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A Turning Point in a Working Mom's Career

We asked Joyce Maroney from Workforce Institute, to tell us about time when she realized she needed to make a change in how she saw or defined herself or her way of life. How did she prepare herself mentally/emotionally to make such a change, and how does she see that change now as she reflects on it? Between 1983 and 2006, I worked for five different companies. Each time I left an organization, I did so because I had been recruited by a former manager. The upside of “managing” my career this way was the familiarity of working for people I knew, as well as the flattery inherent in being pursued by people I admired. I never left a job without...

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Ask a Manager: Are we at a disadvantage if we never played a team sport?

Guest Lecturer, Dick Whitman, Manager in Residence Dear Manager, Do team sports make good workers? If you never played a team sport are you at a disadvantage in the workplace? I love this question because it really made me think. The theory here is that playing on a team teaches a person to perform well on a team at work. I used to work with a manager who firmly believed this notion to be true. I never felt as strongly about this, so we tended to disagree. My contention at the time was that it was more valuable to have people who had held a job in some form growing up, so that they would have learned responsibility and hard work from an...

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