Archive for May, 2007

Archives for MNC

Nine years ago popular wisdom held that the well-heeled maker of Mercedes-Benz would rescue down-on-its luck Chrysler. Today we pick over the remains of the transnational automotive colossus wondering whether this was a doomed marriage of economic haves and have nots - or the byproduct of multi-cultural management challenges?

While company officials hastened to downplay fears of further cuts into Chrysler’s 80,000 mostly unionized workforce, additional layoffs seem inevitable beyond the 13,000 announced in February.

Should we add globalization to the burgeoning list of possible career hazards? Consider this: Daimler-Chrysler management and investors may have overreached but as multinational stories go, it is the exception rather than the rule.

In a way, this failed marriage obscures the fact that many other American giants such as Pepsi, GE, General Motors, Citi and IBM have done an effective job of globalizing their corporate operations and recruiting talent around the globe.

Still, this was no merger of equals, contrary to the popular spin of the time. To what extent is the breakup and sale a byproduct of multi-cultural management challenges? I suspect that we will read a lot of stories about how German management never really ‘got’ Chrysler or connected to its American customers.

Another case in point is SAP AG, the German enterprise software giant, which according to a report in a recent Wall Street Journal ran into trouble attempting to tone down its Germanic culture while globalizing its identity. It’s not a stretch to compare Daimler and SAP, both large German employers with global operations, both recently seen stumbling in America.

Archives for Immigration

I could root for the immigration bill to become law just to see if Congress can get anything done. But that’s not a strong enough reason - especially when jobs are at stake. Amid the earliest start to a presidential campaign in anyone’s memory, bruising rhetoric on talk shows and in the (often wacky) blogosphere, comes word that employers are unhappy with the bill and a research study out of Canada that suggests immigration undercuts wages of unskilled workers in North America.

“The tendency for the supply of immigrant labor to the United States to be concentrated among low-skilled workers served to depress the wages of workers in the lowest skill groups,” reports a Canadian journal, citing a new Statistics Canada study. “Coupled with only a small dampening effect of immigration on the wages of highly-skilled workers, who saw their real weekly wages increase by 20% in the United States between 1980 and 2000, immigration served to magnify growth in US wage inequality between low-skilled and high-skilled workers over the same period.”

You mean a rising tide of salaries doesn’t lift all ships? An interesting finding, but it won’t change the debate. What’s happening now is pure, partisan hardball.

“It is less a bill than a big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity, with a touch of class malice, and it’s being pushed by a White House that is at once cynical and inept,” writes Peggy Noonan, the former Bush senior speech writer, who can turn a phrase better than she analyzes a bill.

Archives for Relocations

Is there a more compelling place to advance your career than China? Paradoxically, if you’re from China, the answer is yes, but for nearly everyone else China is one of the best places to cut your teeth.

India, Brazil and Eastern Europe are among the destinations that would also impress a global-minded recruiter or hiring manager. But China has unique advantages for “westerners” to consider such as the world’s fastest growing economy, and an acute shortage of experienced managers, especially those who can work with English-speaking customers.

“The war for talent in China is bigger than the dot-com days of 1999,” in the U.S., says Shanghai-based Frank Mulligan, an expatriate Irishman, blogger, and recruiter with Accetis International. The war, as Mulligan puts it, is driving up salaries and staff attrition. “The salary increases are nine to ten percent a year. But the real increases are much higher. The average turnover is in eighteen months. But if you change jobs the average increase [in pay] is thirty percent. ”

Those numbers tend to make job seekers listen closely. But of course that’s just the beginning of the story.

Archives for Research

Meet the latest crop of college graduates - demographics, economics and productivity are on their side. They have reason to be a bit cocky: With record numbers of Boomers edging toward retirement, corporations are realizing that it’s time to staff up amid looming talent shortages.

Employers plan to hire nearly 20 percent more new college graduates in 2006-07 than they did in 2005-06 according to a new study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Overall, nearly 60 percent of responding employers said they plan to hire more new college graduates in 2006-07 than they did in 2005-06.

Other key findings of NACE’s research:

• Marketing graduates are seeing the biggest rise in entry level pay this year, up 10.3 percent to $41,285
• The average offer to economics grads is $53,449, while the average for finance graduates is $47,877
• After seeing a decrease in 2005-2006, the 2006-2007 computer science grads are seeing a 2.5 percent uptick in their average offer to $52,177
• Social media is part of the DNA - 77 percent of students have a profile page on site such as MySpace or Facebook.

Ironically, the study found that the most effective job prospecting methods weren’t the most popular among students. Nearly 71 percent of the 12,000+ students responding to NACE’s study indicated that they had applied for a job by sending their resumes directly to an employer’s web site. The next most popular method, reported by 47 percent of students, was to mail a resume directly to the employer. Applying at a career center-sponsored job fair (44 percent) and posting a resume through the career center web site (34 percent) trailed in popularity.

Archives for Social Media

Groucho Marx once famously informed a group of his show business contemporaries that “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

That’s a sentiment a curmudgeon could love. But the simple truth is that, when you need it, a support group serves a useful purpose. Unemployed workers and job seekers have career clubs, Internet forums or social media sites that provide advice, mentoring and other forms of encouragement.

So why does layoffspace.com seem like a bit of a stretch to me? It’s a social media site primarily for the unemployed. That’s a novel concept, although arguably there are more underemployed workers than unemployed ones. At 4.5% unemployment, it’s a niche idea, certainly. But is it also a timely one?

No doubt, there’s something to be said about owning up to a negative experience. Losing a job can involve a grieving period. Unemployed workers may want to network with one another, but my hunch is that they would prefer to meet recruiters, hiring managers and people working in their chosen profession.

You have to put the past behind you, right?

By contrast, on Linked-in, home to millions of passive and active job seekers, recruiters can generally sniff out who is available even if it’s not always apparent to the rest of us. Job seekers can also choose to have job listings made available to them. (Speaking of which, here are some cool tips about maximizing your Linked-in profile, courtesy of recruiter Dave Mendoza.)

I leave you with some parting wisdom from the layoffspace.com blog: “We all have daydreams about what we’d do if we won the lottery, how we’d spend our days if we didn’t have to work for a living. But the reality is that most of us do have to work.” Yes, we do.

Archives for Immigration

Most of the immigration rhetoric in Washington D.C. concerns ways to stem the tide of undocumented workers. By contrast, the guest worker program receives much less press, affects fewer workers, but also has enormous economic consequences for the country.

Reforming the broken H-1B program is a priority for both parties. According to today’s Washington Post, “Republicans, with the White House’s backing, are proposing a three-year temporary-worker program that would allow 400,000 new workers to enter the country each year, provided they return to their home countries once their visas expire. A much smaller number, perhaps 20,000, would be able to apply for a work visa that could lead to legal permanent residency.”

Consensus is building for a significant policy shift under which for the first time an immigrant’s job skills will count more than their family ties in determining who is welcome.

A bipartisan committee that includes Bush officials, Democrats and Republicans met several times in recent months to hammer out a possible compromise with enough support to pass this year. According to CBS News, one idea that these strange bedfellows seem to agree upon is this: “A merit system similar to Canada’s under which immigrants would earn points toward citizenship. Points would be granted for things like work skills and language ability.”

It’s clear the politicians are collaborating in order to achieve a more defensible position come election time in 2008. The compromise ideas that have been discussed all seem to hinge upon “securing” the U.S.-Mexico border before moving forward with other promised reforms. But securing the border may prove to be next to impossible.

Is this just more political gamesmanship or will we see meaningful reform in this pre-election year? What would you like to see done, if anything, to help reform guest worker programs?

Archives for Employment

As demand for tech talent outstrips supply higher wages are sneaking up on corporate America. In Silicon Valley high-tech salaries have shot up as much as 15 percent in the past year.

Meanwhile, in the macro, flagging economy, unemployment is low, hiring is brisk and, for the first time, four million jobs are available on the web. Doesn’t it follow that salaries are bound to rise across the board? In theory, yes, but economists are bandying about words such as “puzzling” and “paradox” and little consensus exists about job market fundamentals.

Total online job ads were 4,365,000 in April, an increase of 610,600 or 16 percent from March, according to the Conference Board’s Help-Wanted OnLine Data report released this week. On a year over year basis, job listings have increased by 24 percent, the report added. Management, healthcare and, surprisingly, engineering jobs were the most common listings.

The numbers are open to different interpretations. “If there’s really a shortage of [skilled] workers we should see rapidly rising wages and you don’t find that in many places,” says Dean Baker, economist and co-founder, Center for Economic and Policy Research.

There’s a “strange paradox of low unemployment rate and little sign of wage growth,” agrees Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. “If you look at numbers of supply and demand it looks like the labor market is close to full employment. You expect to see rapidly rising wages. It’s a puzzle.”