Human Resource

Staffers from The New York Times have issued a new video speaking out about contract negotiations and their pension plans.

A memo about the video was sent to staffers. Here is the text, courtesy of Jim Romenesko:

Subject: your colleagues on Guild pension video, now up on YouTubeA few weeks ago, the Guild asked a number of the paper’s journalists to sit down and talk on video about the negotiations, the issues important to them, how they feel about working at the Times, and so on.

The first video is finally ready. It is about several issues, but particularly about pensions: why they are so valuable, and how much the Times is trying to take from us by demanding a pension freeze.

The original target audience is inside our own building –members who may have doubts about fighting to save the pension.

But it’s powerful enough – I think – to be shown to any audience.

Please have a look – it includes David Dunlap, Jim Dwyer, Clyde Haberman, John Schwartz, Nadia Taha, Joyce Wadler, George Vecsey, Willy Rashbaum, Claiborne Ray, Erik Piepenburg, Andrea Kannapell, Karen Grzelewski, Jennifer Mascia, Kevin Sack and myself. Others also spoke and I gather the plan is to use them in future videos

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Got bank? Most people don’t. And by that we mean the ability to negotiate their own salary or hourly/project rate.

A recent global study conducted by LinkedIn revealed that across the board, overall 34 percent of 2,000 professionals respondents indicated they feel confident about negotiating. Although 10 percent felt negotiations are “exciting” and another 10 percent were indifferent, the bulk were pretty anxious about asking for and therefore, ultimately getting paid what they’re worth.

Among the eight countries surveyed, Brazilians indicated they were the most frightened by negotiating. As for the Germans, they have the most positive outlook — 21 percent felt excited about negotiating and 43 percent felt confident.

India ranked as the most confident country with 47 percent of respondents indicating they feel confident. South Koreans felt the most indifferent. So, where do Americans fall on this list? In the most anxious category at 39 percent!

More than one out of five respondents indicated that negotiating is similar to – wait for it – a game of poker! Here’s why: Players are forced to make moves based on incomplete information. Apparently job seekers agreed with this sentiment when negotiating their own deal.

The study also broke down results by gender: 37 percent of men overall felt more confident about negotiating compared to 26 percent of women.

Selena Rezvani, author of the book PUSHBACK: How Smart Women Ask—And Stand Up—For What They Want, told LinkedIn, “While it’s true that there’s a flat-out fear of negotiating among a percentage of professionals, all of us can benefit from getting smarter about making requests at work.”

So, how can we get smarter and better? Prepare, prepare, prepare. “Whether that means consulting a salary calculator, conferring with a second-degree connection on LinkedIn to learn your counterpart’s style, or using a negotiating app on your phone for practice, careful preparation is a worthy investment of your time.”

 

If you had to rate whether or not a job was happy, what factors would you include?

Forbes highlighted a study conducted by CareerBliss that attempts to identify the 20 happiest jobs in America using ten factors that range from boss/co-worker relationships, resources, salary, and environment, to corporate culture, day-to-day tasks, and growth path. From February 2011 to January 202, CareerBliss analyzed more than 100,400 reviews from employees that rated these factors.

The happiest job in America? Software quality assurance engineer.

Jobs that made the top five are executive chef, property manager, bank teller, and warehouse manager. Others included in the top 10 are customer service reps, administrative assistants, and accountants, jobs that aren’t typically associated with happiness.  Interestingly enough, human resources manager is ranked number nine. No media-specific jobs made the list. The study excluded executive-level positions.

“Many of the happiest jobs have some component with working with people,” CareerBliss’ chief executive, Heidi Golledge told Forbes. “Folks who work with others tend to rate their happiness higher on our site.”

Golledge added, “We have also noticed that happiness definitely does not align with pay, and once someone’s basic needs are met, the additional money on the job is a nice perk but is not what drives employee happiness.”

See the entire list.

Imagine this. You’re on an interview. It’s going well. Then the interviewer turns to her computer to search for your Facebook profile. When she finds that it’s private, she asks you to provide your Facebook login information.

Sound invasive?

That’s what Justin Bassett, a New York-based statistician thought, reports The Boston Globe. While Bassett withdrew his application because he didn’t care to be employed with a company that inquired about such personal information, the article points out that not everyone has the luxury to do so. Many need employment and may have to provide their Facebook login information to obtain it.

Are you thinking the same thing, is this legal? According to The Boston Globe, there is legislation on the table in Illinois and Maryland that would deem it illegal for public agencies to ask for social network access. Apparently, this practice is much more common among law enforcement positions. As an alternative, some agencies ask for potential employees to login into social networks during the interview.

Either way, it’s sticky territory for companies and employees.

Mediabistro.com held its annual holiday HR breakfast Tuesday morning in New York. The festive gathering rounds out another successful year for our ever-growing job board. Recruiting experts shared their tips while Resto dished out Eggs Benedict and bottomless pastry baskets.

HR pros from almost 50 media companies including BET, Disney and UrbanDaddy squeezed in a couple extra hours of mingling and networking before heading back to the office. Some even got their own mini Elevator Pitch moment rubbing elbows with WebMediaBrands CEO Alan Meckler.

Small and midsize companies pay more than $1500 more per hire than large businesses, the Wall Street Journal reports today.

While it’s not super surprising that large businesses pay less per hire (after all, they hire so many more people!), we were a little surprised by the actual numbers: $1,949 per hire for a large company, versus $3,632 at medium firms and $3,665 at small firms.

The data comes from a new survey by HR advisory firm Bersin & Associates. The survey also noted that this recruitment cost is three times as much as the company spends on training those employees once hired.

We have posted before about bonuses for new hires at startups, which are just totally crazy, since these web 2.0, app, whatever you kids call it these days gewgaw companies are competing for very scarce talent.

Here’s a new one that has just gone off the rails (we say). Can’t there be one, just one media startup that has a hiring bonus this cool?

According to CNET, Scopely will give to any new hire (or any referrer of a new hire) the following: a year’s supply of Dos Equis, an oil painting of yourself, a tuxedo, Cuban cigars, beard grooming oil, a cologne called “Sex Panther,” and $11,000, wrapped in bacon.

The team has already made one hire through this ridiculous incentive program, an engineer named Mike Thomas. Another 899 have applied but been rejected. Congratulations, Mike.

The really crazy thing? Scopely is in “stealth mode,” raising money to do….nobody knows. All anyone outside the company knows is that it is “preparing to disrupt a segment of the social web that is ripe for innovation.”

Update 11/17/11: The Scopely folks sent us two enormous photos of what bacon-wrapped cash really looks like. We really, really want that bacon to be a clever plastic reproduction, but fairly sure that that’s actual greasy money.
Here’s one such photo. You can click it to get a huge (desktop wallpaper-sized?) version.

You might not think about entering the check-printing industry when you’re looking for a new job. That might be why Deluxe Corp, one of the largest check printers in the U.S., is turning to unconventional ways of attracting talent.

This is, if it’s not obvious, a recruitment video not for Deluxe Corp but for a specific position at one branch of Deluxe Corp.

The company also has a talent community, is on Twitter (and sounds like a human!), Facebook, LinkedIn and so on.

Lest you think that video job posts are silly (and we do think that this suffers from a number of the same problems video resumes do—to wit, poor lighting, poor sound, and this speaker just isn’t that engaging), TalentHQ says that in the final quarter of 2010, Deluxe got half of its hires from its online talent community.

TalentHQ freely admits that posting jobs via YouTube might not work for everyone. But it seems to be working for Deluxe.

We hadn’t been posting these for a while, but today we bring back our semiregular listing of webinars for HR pros. Once again you can learn without leaving your desk. Many of these are free and good for HR recertification credits, though check with the individual webinar sponsor before assuming.

It’s often the worst day of the year. You go into a small office or cubicle, sit down with an HR representative or editor, and justify your existence all in the hopes for a raise.

The job review: what an awful process. But could it be a thing of the past? According to one UCLA Business professor, they should be. Samuel Culbert, the author of Get Rid of the Performance Review!, says the practice of pretending to examine your year’s worth to the company has little point in business anymore, and thinks they should be scratched.

“They’re [the employee] is going to talk about all their successes – it becomes total baloney,” said Culbert to NPR in a recent interview. “The boss already has heard [from] his boss what they want to pay the guy, or the woman. So they come up with a review that’s all backwards.”

And that’s not all. Culbert calls the reviews an HR power play. “In part it’s because HR professionals exploit the performance review to provide them a power base they don’t deserve,” said Culbert and co-author Lawrence Rout in their new book.

Preach on, prof! Get rid of the uncomfortable pleading and just let me know what to do differently. It’s really not that hard, HR.