Despite the inexorable rise of e-business, logistics - particularly shipping - remains one of the world’s fastest growing fields. UPS, the global leader in ground shipping, is boosting the size of its Louisville, Kentucky hub from 20,000 workers to more than 25,000 in 2010.
Labor and urban planning experts contend that transportation hubs such as the one UPS is investing US$1 billion to upgrade in Kentucky are critical to the rise of jobs - and community planning - in the 21st Century. The topic was explored last summer in a fascinating Fast Company article called Rise of the Aerotropolis.Â
The article makes the case that in the future some employers will assemble teams of workers at or near giant airports. These highly mobile workers will come together for short-term projects before migrating to other global hubs according to the ebb and flow of talent supply and demand.
When I get a warm and fuzzy feeling about a bank it’s usually because I’m watching a tearjerker TV commercial. Some bank has rebuilt a blighted neighborhood or loaned a struggling mom the dough to build a bakery.
Until recently, I never saw a commercial that made me want to work for a bank. Between the mortgage crisis, the falling dollar, bank consolidations, and layoffs, the financial services field seems just as appealing to me as military service.
Upon learning that Bank of America had acquired Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, for the bargain basement price of $4 billion most people would have called their stock broker or sussed out the situation on Yahoo! Finance. Not me, I checked out B-of-A’s careers site.
So why is this banking giant tugging at our heartstrings? Here’s something you might not have considered in view of its layoffs: the giant bank is talent constrained.
Recruiting creative professionals is a bit of a rough and tumble affair. The industry leaders scale up by establishing teams in dozens of countries, moving themselves closer to their customers while tapping local talent supplies.
Yet, when it comes to recruiting “creatives,” that is, problem-solvers and innovative thinkers, size alone is not enough of a draw. The companies that gather the most global talent are applying creativity to the recruitment process itself.
IÂ sat through an illuminating presentation at the Human Capital Institute Summit by the head of recruiting for industry leader Electronic Arts, a video game software company that has chalked up $2.85 billion in revenue while its expanding its operations to 22 countries.
“Innovation is the penultimate skill we need at EA - more than any other thing,” says Jeff Hunter, EA’s head of recruiting. Hunter, who is a terrific blogger both on his own and for Simply Hired, concedes that EA’s stature sometimes undermines its appeal to global talent. “It turns out that creatives don’t want to work for the 800 pound gorilla - they want to work for a smaller company and have more say,” adds Hunter.
Have you ever wandered into an office staffed by 55 employees who are mostly 24-years-old and in their first job out of college? It might be kind of fun, right?
And in this particular office above Union Square in New York City, they throw the occasional staff party billed as the “Thursday Night Hang.” The workers in this firm called Connected Ventures run three pretty cool companies: a site called CollegeHumor.com; a t-shirt company called Busted Tees; and a video community site that predates YouTube called Vimeo.com.
One evening at a company party, they recorded the following video, for fun, on a single take. It wasn’t intended to be a recruitment video; it just turned out that way. Note, it takes about 40 seconds or more to get grooving and some of the words in a song you will hear are mature. Don’t worry, nothing else about the video is mature, it’s all in fun.
Fortune’s annual 100 Best Companies to Work For list is out and the top 10 contain a few surprises, some might even say head scratchers. But then again what a boring list it would be if you could guess all of them without looking. Â
This year about 400 companies competed to make the list. What’s particularly useful about it are the different ways to sort through the data on the CNNMoney.com website, including by location, pay, job growth and benefits, to name a few.
Although one might argue that 400 companies really only scratches the surface of corporate America, one of the things that substantiates this list are employee interviews. Fortune’s research partner, San Francisco-based Great Place to Work Institute, compiled 100,000 employee interviews among these entries.
I’ll bet you can’t guess the highest paying employer on Fortune’s list - or possibly any of the top 10 aside from Goldman Sachs. But it’s interesting to note that the average annual pay of employees at Bingham McCutchen an elite Boston law firm is $211,017. Pity the associates who start out at a paltry $160,000 a year.
A political pundit is a thankless job - when you’re right it was obvious and when you’re wrong everyone points a fickle finger at you.
But unlike a weatherman, who studies meteorology, science and maybe broadcasting communications, political pundits take divergent paths to become gurus. Some wags are old pols; some are TV talking heads with varying degrees of “insider” knowledge. To the untrained eye, it appears the chief qualification is writing off candidates the way a carpenter turns a screw.
The pundits who wrote off the presidential campaigns of Senators McCain and Clinton before New Hampshire were having an especially bad day-after-the-primary.
“When the pundits declared us finished, I told them, ‘I’m going to New Hampshire, where the voters don’t let you make their decision for them,’” McCain told his supporters after upsetting the pundits.
The hype about social networks is a bit stifling at times. The social pressure to join them is even worse. Old friends, relatives or contacts who are yet to join Facebook or LinkedIn suffer the slings and arrows of social networking mavens who tell them they’re missing out on something cool.
Beyond the sheer joy of throwing sheep at friends or catching a buzz from virtual cocktails, we wonder how social networks help you personally or professionally. Are they an enormous time sink or a breakthrough in how you manage relationships?
To find out, the editors of Found|READ in conjunction with My Global Career invite you to participate in the groundbreaking State of Social Networking 2008 - a free, fast and confidential study about how people use social networks. Your completed survey enters you into a drawing for an Apple iPhone or equivalent prize from an Apple store. To complete the survey, please go to http://s-kf7uz-25818.sgizmo.com/
We look forward to sharing the results of the study with you and hearing your thoughts about what social networking is getting right - or wrong.
Check out our first list of useful blogs, career tools and social media sites for job seekers and global careerists. With your suggestions, we will add many more resources.
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