The equally important corollary is: Will they be able to get along with you? The last thing an Employer wants is to hire someone who disrupts the work environment negatively and lowers the amount of production. Relatively speaking, it's not so bad if you are merely incompetent but fairly amiable - every business survives with a number of workers that fall into this category. While it sure isn't what a Hiring Manager is looking for first, sometimes they only need a body to fill a chair.

What kills Managers are new hires that are always on edge and itching for a fight with coworkers and supervisors. These Employees are not only time-consuming, but they are morale murderers as well.

Training a new hire the necessary skills to do the Job takes some time and effort, but generally is within the bounds of OJT (on the Job Training) that Employers expect to conduct. Modifying a new hire's disruptive behavior, however, is a much more difficult task. How we get along with our friends, coworkers, and people on the street is engrained behavior, and Employers are legitimately loath to embark on the Pavlovian task of changing how you treat your fellow Man.

Theoretically the screening process that you've survived to get to the Interview stage should calm the Hiring Manager's qualms about your rudimentary skill set. On a simple level, the Interview is conducted to find out if you can "talk the talk" that is outlined by your resume. While it is important to resolve lingering doubts about individual accomplishments and abilities, the larger issue is about your personality.

On a more complex level, the Interview is a psychological war. The Hiring Manager thinks she's got a round hole of a position - are you a square peg that will cause friction on all sides if she tries to slip you into their cozy work environment?

So when you earn an Interview with a target company, remember what they're really looking for when they talk to you. Look out for Questions like these:

• Describe some of the conflicts that arose out of your last Job.
• What frustrated you most about your last Job, & how did you overcome it?
• How would you resolve the following personality conflict at work?

These are designed to answer the one real Question that must be answered before you can get a Job offer, "Do you play well with others?"

-Mark Poppen

Winning With Mediocrity

July 29, 1999

Few Hiring Managers will admit it, but they don't really need to hire the 'top 10 percent' of Job applicants anymore. They're happy with simple competency from new hires as long as they show some willingness to improve over time while being able to get along with their co-workers.

Given their new mindset in these days of a tighter than usual labor market, there are several things you can do both to get your next Job and also to make a good first impression once you've accepted the Job offer. Of course, you should have already done some research on your particular field of interest, because labor markets are fluid and can range substantially from one Job Title to the next. Software Engineers may be highly sought after, while retail clothing Assistant Managers may be a dime a dozen.

Generally someone with even minimal experience doing the tasks the Job requires has an edge over someone who only knows the Job 'in theory'. Street smarts wins out over book smarts in the eyes of most Hiring Managers. Getting experience by interning or apprenticing is a common modus operandi for new entrants to an industry.

Repackaging your past experience and skill set so that you appear to have 'easily transferable skills' is a common means around the "No experience - No Job" dilemma that we've all faced before. For example, a hot Job at the moment is 'Internet Customer Service Rep'. Internet shoppers throw away two-thirds of the items that they originally put in their virtual shopping carts, primarily because they can't get sufficient information about the products. If you have telephone sales/marketing experience, these skills should be easily transferable to this new Job title.

Once you get a Job offer and start work, find out what skills are highly valued by your supervisor and learn them on your own time. Spend an extra ten hours a week mastering a skill that sets you apart from your colleagues, and within a few weeks your Boss will earmark you as a 'fast learner' destined for promotions. Those first impressions will allow you to coast along at work for a long, long time.

In the workplace you don't have to be smarter than everyone else, but it helps to appear smarter.

-Mark Poppen

Back To The Future

July 28, 1999

The Information Age is also the age of Projectization.

You are probably aware that the largest Employer in the US is now Manpower, a temporary staffing agency. And the majority of new Jobs being created are temp Jobs, as Employers turn to the many advantages of using temporary, throwaway workers.

By using temps Employers can avoid a basketful of pitfalls and costs that come with hiring full-time Employees - like health care costs, vacation time, sick leave, wrongful termination lawsuits, etc. Even hi-tech workers are suffering from the same loss of what were once considered standard benefits. From Silicon Valley to Seattle's Microsoft Forest workers are fighting to change their status from temporary worker to permanent Employee.

At Microsoft the temp workers (branded as a lower caste by their omnipresent orange badges) make up over twenty percent of the entire workforce, double the rate of temp workers in the US. If this is the future, then our role as temporary workers is beginning to look more and more permanent. The very nature of temporary work makes it difficult to organize and collectively bargain for better pay and benefits. Organizing takes time, and temporary workers are unlikely to invest their precious free time in something that won't be of any use to them in the near term at this particular Job.

Furthermore, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that a group of temporary workers can't negotiate a contract with an Employer unless all of the staffing firms that have employed and placed them agree to participate in the bargaining process. This puts temporary workers at a decided disadvantage in the workplace.

If our future as workers is as temporary workers, than we may be feel less like "independent contractors" or "free agents", and more like indentured servants. One hundred years ago, long-term and low paying apprenticeships were the norm to move up the company ladder.

Perhaps our future as workers is mirrored in our not too distant past.

-Mark Poppen

Telecommuting

July 27, 1999

Not a day goes by that one of my friends, coworkers, or stranger on the street doesn't ask me "How can I get a Job where I can work from home?"  This longing is driven by nasty commutes, hellish office conditions, unpleasant (and downright mean!) coworkers, and Supervisors that seem to relish cracking the company whip.

The best way to work from home is to be your own boss.  While Employers are offering more flextime and out of the office work opportunities, they are still reluctant to let Employees work entirely from their homes.  Their reasons are many-fold:

·         Lack of control over Employees

·         Fear that quantity & quality of work will decline

·         Employees might realize that their Supervisors are superfluous

·         Suspicion that Employees lack the discipline required to avoid home distractions

If you are thinking about making the case for telecommuting with your Employer, be sure to arm yourself with some relevant factoids explaining the advantages of working from home (or off-site).  Three of the top Telecommuting gurus are Gil Gordon, Robert Moskowitz, and June Langhoff.  Their sites offer useful tips for the budding telecommuter, from what kinds of things your current Employer might pay for to answers to "How do I concentrate on work when the TV is calling my name?"  Their advice is excellent for a step by step guide to arguing for, getting approval for, and setting up a telecommuting situation at work.

The Telecommuting Safety and Health Benefits Institute includes articles, surveys, and stories of successful telecommuters to buttress your arguments in favor of letting you stay at home eating potato chips while getting paid.  The International Telework Association & Council has a more pragmatic selection of stories and advice from telecommuters.

If you are in a position to work for yourself from your home, then check out websites that are devoted to the home office entrepreneur.  Home Business Magazine offers a mixed bag of advice on making your home office user friendly, though they include too many 'home office ideas' that appear to be culled from the classified section of the National Enquirer.  Business@Home has a series of articles that target the home entrepreneur and offer helpful hints for getting started.

And as you might expect, Smart Valley represents hi-tech workers in Silicon Valley that have managed to escape cubicle life for the 'easy path' of working within reach of your refrigerator.  Not all Jobs are appropriate for telecommuting, though a vast majority of workers you'll talk to will vehemently argue that their particular one is.

-Mark Poppen

Comparison Shopping

July 26, 1999

How much are you getting paid?

Depending on the status of the Job, workers will have different answers to this question. Entry level employees in low wage Jobs tend to respond with an hourly wage, e.g. I make $9/hr. Salaried workers think of their pay as an annual amount, or if they are living paycheck to paycheck, they might refer to how much they earn (take-home!) each week. So you might say, I'm making $30K/yr, or $600/wk, or after taxes are stolen, maybe $475 every week.

Higher up on the socioeconomic scale, Employees (& Independent Contractors, Consultants, and their ilk) don't have a ready answer to this kind of question. It is either considered impolite to talk about the fact that they are making three times what their friends earn, or they are unable to figure out what their compensation really amounts to at any given moment. They're not necessarily stupid, it's just that with health benefits, club memberships, company car, stock options, and assorted perqs, it's just sooooo hard to come up with a clean figure that reflects how much they're getting paid.

As a rule of thumb, divide your annual salary by two, and drop the thousands to calculate your hourly rate. $24,000/yr is about $12.00/hr, slightly over the average annual wage in the US. This is because Americans work almost 2000 hrs/yr, which is forty hrs/wk times fifty paid workweeks in the year. American workers, on average, put in 5% more work hours per year than Japanese workers, and roughly twenty percent more work hours per year than their European counterparts.

Before you take off for that cushy European Job that promises six to eight weeks vacation every year, consider that their unemployment rate has been hovering at nearly double the US rate for many years now - and Job security for Yanks is rarely a priority.

So when a recruiter offers you thirty thousand a year with no benefits, you can compare it to your present Job at $13.50/hr with medical, dental, and retirement plan and tell them to find you a better offer.

-Mark Poppen