Archive for September, 2007

Archives for Employment

Gap Inc.’s disclosure that it lost a laptop containing the personal information of 800,000 job applicants leaves me wondering what on earth they were thinking.

• Why were these applicant records stored on a laptop rather than accessible over a virtual private network (VPN)? Is convenience more important than privacy?

• The data was lost by an unnamed third-party provider. What service were they performing with the laptop?

• The data was unencrypted, apparently against Gap policy. Why?

• Some percentage of the applicants reportedly provided social security numbers. If you were going to analyze the applicant data, why would you also need the social security numbers?

• Do they know who stole it or why? Was it a former employee of the third-party provider? An investigation is underway, but it’s unclear whether law enforcement is involved.

Archives for Workplace

Have you heard? Crackberry is now a word.

Webster’s Dictionary defines the noun as “a person who uses a Blackberry addictively or obsessively or the device when used this way.” Webster’s doesn’t just add words to the dictionary in a wanton manner.

A new study by Robert Half Management Resources finds that 69 percent of senior executives believe it’s okay to crack out on a BlackBerry during a meeting.

But be careful. The trick is to know when it is acceptable to check your BlackBerry.

Archives for Research

A BusinessWeek cover story The Best Places to Launch a Career proclaims that 2007 is the “year accountants became sexy.” Does that add up for you?

In a study promoting the best places for college grads to work, accounting firms nab the top three spots: Deloitte & Touche; PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young.  In a bit of an upset, nerds claim the next three spots: IBM, Google and Microsoft. (For a complete ranking of the top firms, click here.)

Before you faint from disbelief consider these fun facts:

• Bean counters are much in demand. Chalk it up to increased spending by corporations seeking to meet the conditions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other forms of government regulation. The Wall Street Journal cites anecdotal information that job postings for accounting majors have doubled since 2004 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• There’s an “epic talent shortage” of accountants
• Recruiters are getting a bit wiser (the Journal said ‘hipper’ but let’s call that a stretch) about recruiting for talent, using Facebook, Second Life, offering extended vacations and even holding contests to impress recruits
• The pay is decent. First year salaries among the 95 companies BusinessWeek surveyed average a healthy $60,000 - $65,000 a year.

Archives for Globalization

EDS, the wayward outsourcing giant, is stumbling to compete in the global economy.

Cost-cutting was the theme of Wednesday’s announcement to shareholders that the company is beefing up its workforce in low-labor-cost regions while offering “packages” to 12,000 U.S. employees. A company spokesman said, “In order to remain competitive, we must constantly rebalance our workforce on a global basis.”

Frankly, I don’t think they get it. EDS needs to do more than cut costs. It needs radical surgery to reboot its Ross Perot-spawned culture. Until the company adopts a truly global, multi-cultural, multi-national approach to services - starting with its leadership in Plano, Texas - this is a company that is destined to keep downsizing.

One visit to EDS’ headquarters - a monolith on the plains - says way too much about this top-down organization. Those who contend that America is unable to compete on a global playing field will use EDS as an exclamation point.

Archives for Social Media

I’d like to announce the launch of AfterRusty, a social networking site for my friends, fans, relatives, creditors and associates.

You may have heard about corporate alumni networks where ex-employees bitch about their old company. AfterRusty is for people who know me, wish they knew me, or thought they did.

For a limited time, I will waive the $50 annual fee, at least until my viral campaign escalates to Facebook proportions. So-called “alumni social networking” sounds hip and trendy, but by the time I die it will “tip” to an epidemic.

Archives for Employment

Though the Bush administration touts a low unemployment rate, these are subpar years for job creation in America. The August jobs report, the worst in four years, marked a rare net decrease in the number of employed workers.

For an economy that creates about 50,000 to 100,000 more jobs each month than it loses, the announcement that the net number of employed decreased by 4,000 jobs in August clearly riled investor - and worker - confidence too. Wall Street didn’t see this coming; which, as we know, only makes matters worse.

The Economist magazine this week finds the American economy guilty of all charges: “Whatever your opinion of the health of America’s economy was a couple of days ago, it should now be a lot gloomier.” Should it?

Archives for Globalization

Opponents of globalization contend that there is an economic race-to-the-bottom underway as first-world economies will be forced to cut their standard of living in order to compete with third-world economies. One prominent supporter of globalization counters that most of the support for this argument is anecdotal - there’s not much smoke and little substance to the charges.Neither wealthy nor poor countries have been seriously damaged as a result of globalization - that’s a key finding by Robert Flanagan, a Stanford economics professor and the author of Globalization and Labor Conditions: Working Conditions and Worker Rights in a Global Economy, (Oxford University Press, 2006). “I can’t find any evidence that supports the race-to-the-bottom view,” he says.