Archive for April, 2009

Archives for Research

Firstborns feel family pressure to excel and science backs it up: birth order is an important driver of career choices. What is less well understood is the role of birth order and intelligence – at least in my family.

Birth order might sound a bit farfetched for a science or careers topic, like astrology, biorhythms or a fad pizza diet, but it’s not. A Norwegian Armed Forces Medical Services study published in Science shows that firstborns of either sex are, on average, 2.3 IQ points smarter than their younger sibs.

Those several IQ points make an enormous difference when it comes to getting into college and ultimately advancing in life, contends Dr. Frank Sulloway, author of Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives. Sulloway, who commented on the study in the New York Times and in this month’s Science (fees, registration required), says, “There’s some evidence to suggest that first and later-borns go into different kinds of careers and have associated different motivations.”

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Archives for Job Boards

There’s something job boards aren’t telling you.

Have you ever thought that if you figured out the search techniques, you would be able to find your dream job?

You click on the advanced-search function, fill in the blanks and hit return. But the matches still aren’t what you’re looking for. Despite improved functionality on many leading job sites, advanced-search functions are overwhelmingly under-used.

In fact, only about five percent of job seekers use advanced search functions, says Jonathan Duarte, founder of online job board GO Jobs.

Duarte attributes the low usage of advanced-search functions to several factors, namely that they involve too many steps and that many job seekers are not trained in Boolean searching, the use of “and” and “or.”

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Archives for Mentors

If you’re not in your company’s mentoring program, you’re stagnating. Or, if you’re in a senior position, then you should establish a succession plan or talent retention program that involves mentoring someone worthy of your time.

Take that bromide, plus two Advil, and let us know how it goes. Despite a slow and imperceptible payback, few question whether mentoring programs benefit employers, managers and their protégés. Yet, these programs are easier to mandate than do successfully.

Mentoring is relatively frictionless when you and your mentor can meet for lunch, coffee or a beer. But in a global enterprise, the mentoring program is most likely a virtual one, with mentors and mentees located in distant cities, different cultures, and remote time zones, too.

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Archives for Branding You

In this post-Enron era of mandated transparency, corporate annual reports offer greater insights to a broader range of stakeholders, not just investors.

Though annual reports suffer from an excess of glossy prose and disclosures, savvy corporations realize that it’s not just financial analysts and investors reading between the lines. Increasingly, job candidates are mining annual reports to better equip themselves for interviews and to gauge the corporate culture.

“The strongest candidates are the ones that dig into annual reports,” says Lori Blackman, president of DNL Global, a Dallas-based recruiting firm. “The job candidates’ objective should be to help grow the company.”

Here are some questions job seekers should keep in mind when reading an annual statement:

• Is the company profitable? Which lines of business turn a profit and which underdeliver?
• What are the company’s biggest business or market-driven challenges?
• Does the company focus solely on executive compensation or does it tout an equity distribution plan for rank and file workers, too?
• Does the company discuss its commitment to talent management?
• Does the company express a preference for home-grown rather than acquired talent?
• Does the company have a commitment to global diversity? Is this commitment reflected in their choices of directors and executives?
• Does the company have a viable global growth strategy?
• Is the company committed to building greener, more energy efficient operations?
• Does the company support volunteerism and creative philanthropy?

Profitability. The good news is you don’t have to be an MBA or financial analyst to make sense of the numbers. There are a wide range of articles on the web and various books available about how to read financial statements and annual reports.

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Archives for Career Advice

When was the last time you learned something useful from someone a couple of decades younger than you? Overcoming age bias is all in a day’s work for Peter Sheahan, a consultant and author of a book about Generation Y.

Sheahan, a 28-year-old expert on workforce trends and generational change, says that he has consulted for Google, Apple, Coca Cola, Harley Davidson and News Corp. among others.

His latest tome is called Flip – How to Turn Everything You Know On Its Head – and Succeed Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings. The over-the-top title is typical of non-fiction books these days. Unlike Sheahan, I’m not trying to exceed my wildest imaginings – I’m angling for meeting my goals.

At first blush, Sheahan, an Australian, reminds me more than a little bit of Timothy Ferriss (Four Hour Work Week), except that he seems more interested in branding others than himself. Writing about Generation Y led him to consult about workforce trends for corporate clients, even sitting on boards in his early 20s.

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