Archive for the 'Biggest Employers' Category

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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.

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If you want to work in – or build – a multiculturally savvy organization, it’s a good idea to look closely at HSBC bank.

The bank, which operates in 82 countries, expects its “high-potential” people to work in at least several diverse cultural environments, according to the authors of a June Harvard Business Review article called “Make Your Company a Talent Factory.”  

A Talent Factory implements “rigorous talent processes that support strategic and cultural objectives.” The good news for global careerists is that these objectives won’t simply mirror your career goals they might pave the way for you. For instance at HSBC, a Brazilian manager is currently on loan to China and an Armenian citizen is in India, the article states.

The “World’s Local Bank,” as HSBC would like us to know it, has established company-wide processes for assessing and recruiting tomorrow’s leaders. The authors, Douglas Ready and Jay Conger, say HSBC has a system of talent pools to “track and manage the careers of high potential’s in their firm.”

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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 21^st Century. The topic was explored last summer in a fascinating Fast Company article called Rise of the Aerotropolis. 

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.

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Until recently, Gap Inc. was on my short list of leading socially responsible corporations in this country. This is a company that has trailblazed new paths in how it treats employees, the community and the environment.

How many companies produce reports that ask What Is A Company’s Role in Society? How many companies have an SVP of social responsibility? Well, the Gap needs this executive now more than ever.

Although the Gap’s credentials as a progressive employer are unassailable, the company has consistently failed to enforce its own policies with regard to managing its outsourced manufacturing suppliers around the globe. On Sunday the UK’s Observer broke the story about underage workers toiling in a New Delhi sweatshop run by one of the Gap’s outsourced manufacturers – a subcontractor. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time this has happened.

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The Gap’s track record of hiring and failing to properly manage some of the world’s lowest cost clothing manufacturers continues to shame them.

On Sunday the UK’s Observer broke the story that in a New Delhi, India sweatshop factory run by an outsourced manufacturing firm, children as young as 10 were working up to 16 hours a day for no pay. One 10-year-old boy told reporters he was sold to the sweatshop company by his parents.

The Gap said that the “allegations are deeply upsetting.” Until recently, the Gap was well-regarded as a paragon of social responsibility, yet its mismanagement of global suppliers is a long-term problem that has damaged the firm’s reputation.

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Most of us don’t like being put on the spot in a job interview. But if you’re applying for work at Google, Amazon or other dot-com leaders be prepared to tackle some unusual questions. Like, why aren’t manhole covers square?

I’ll let you ponder that universal mystery while I move on to my next item. Wait, you seem a bit puzzled. Maybe you’re thinking the real mystery is why Google uses that type of question to screen candidates?

And Google recruiters are thinking: if they wonder why then they’re too linear thinking for us.

The nearly-departed Business 2.0 offers an amusing quiz to test how much you know about working at Google. The number of gourmet cafés there is a stumper.

Archives for Biggest Employers

The escalating cost of hiring world-class talent is taking its toll on Google – and it could impact high-tech job seekers elsewhere too. At last week’s earnings announcement Google management indicated a new willingness to reconsider its hiring approach.

Known for lavish spending on recruiting top talent, Google may reconsider its torrid pace of hires and aggressive bonus structures to reward strong contributors. In Google’s second quarter, just ended, the company hired 1,548 employees, boosting its total number of employees to 13,786.

The search engine leader apparently has solidified its recruitment operations. “We finally have a staffing division that can deliver at a rate that we need,” said Sergey Brin, a co-founder, at the company’s recent earnings conference, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

At stake is much more than three meals a day and laundry services among other perks for employees. If going out and recruiting world-class talent becomes too expensive for Google, then it will be forced to slow its hiring cycles to more manageable levels.

A change in Google’s hiring strategy could have a ripple effect in Silicon Valley and beyond.

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