It is about who you know

I came across this article Why Some Companies Retrain Workers and Others Lay Them Off and I thought it would be a simple get mad skillz or get a pink slip article. It's actually, a make friends article.

Peter Cappelli, a professor at Wharton, studied why some employers retrain and others layoff (also called, churning, like a feeling induced by a roller coaster). What he discovered was it was not policies that saved an employee, but relationships: how many they had, how valuable and how much the employer valued the relationship.

What is social capital? It’s a tight network of relationships within a workplace...Because it is an asset that exists between individuals rather than within each individual, social capital may suggest why it could make sense to reinvest in and retain individuals even if their job-specific skills are obsolete: The relationships they maintain with others may create value that extends beyond their ability to perform their current job.

Cappelli is also pretty clear: stopping for a chat on the way to get a coffee is not social capital. Social capital is sharing what is in your head for the betterment of others, giving and getting in return. The less you give, the less you can have. This doesn't mean it is the most important measure--I can have low social capital but still have the power to fire everyone--but I shouldn't give away the most important pieces. And those people know more and share more.

If this argument is true, having fresh skills is important, working for an employer with high social capital very important (for more about corporations and social capital check out Linda McQuaig's All You Can Eat), but if you have noticeable connections to people in an environment that values those connections, you can weather the storm. So serving on a committee--one outside of the library so people can see you--instead of writing another book review, may be in your best interest.

This is also called networking, but I didn't want to scare you.

And finally, service providers will be affected by the layoffs because companies are "externalizing" the cost of retraining. This can include the library. If you have some skills that people need to learn--reading, writing, figuring, word processing--you can certainly find private employment.

Maybe it's you

We sometimes think we are surrounded by jerks and lunatics, but then we realize we should go look in the mirror because we get what we give.

Anyway, just to check and make sure you don't need to do some shallow, pop introspection in front of your mirror before you exfoliate, take the Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE) adapted from Bob Sutton's book, No Asshole Rule.

Now, though light and amusing--if you don't score higher than 10--it's not a real test. Just in case you didn't notice, asking questions with compound structures where only one part may be true is a way to cut down on questions, though not to get any results of substance.

Just score a one so you don't seem like a total stanley.

And just so you know: I love Capt. Kirk but when I saw the poster on JibberJobber, I just could not resist. More Star Trek inspirational goodness.

Tomorrow is a day off in the land where we do a lot of guarding and standing, so no posts tomorrow.

Great Office War

Wouldn't you work in this office--if you didn't have to clean up afterward? In the age of flash memory, practical use for a CD-ROM.



Spotted on Web Worker Daily.

Asking better questions in employment interviews

Cathy Fyock, the author of Truth about Hiring the Best, provides a summary podcast of some bad questions to ask in an interview and how to ask better questions that get relevant answers.

If you're looking for work or about to interview, I would suggest listening to this podcast to get an idea about how to answer a "bad" question with the better, more relevant answer. The best strategy is to try to answer, no dodging, and not to correct the employer, since you can sound pompous.

I don't take bad advice

Occasionally, The Brazen Careerist has a post with good advice, like how to identify someone who is giving you bad advice. You should apply this lens to all of the career advice that you receive: is occupationism influencing their advice? Am I clinging to erroneous career beliefs?

Occupationism (which, I believe, is the baby of Dr. John D. Krumboltz, as part of his career beliefs system) is like sexism or racism: you have a prejudice toward an occupation or profession because of a stereotypical or cultural image. For example, you may believe that all salespeople are deceptive, overly-hearty manipulators who just want to take your money. Especially those guys who sell SUVs.

Let's look at that: according to this myth, salespeople are not very nice people. I also used the term guys, meaning they are bad men (no women can be salespeople). Now imagine that someone suggested you become a salesperson or you are interviewing for a sales job with very little idea--beyond your own prejudices--about what salespeople are or do. You may engage in a little bit of self-sabotage because you believe you cannot be a salesperson, you're a nice person. That is, if you bother to apply for this job at all. So no job in sales for you.

This can work the other way, overly positive. Many people tie their career to their libido, or projected sexual output and blowback--all those short skirts in Boston Legal; wannabe doctors after an ER marathon; CSI is a gun paired with a microscope, so double the phallic object. However, to take one myth: men in uniform get chicks. People in uniform spend a great deal of time delivering customer service, sometimes with a firearm, with scrutiny and disrespect from the very people they serve. Not to mention the paperwork. It's tougher than it looks. And what happens if you don't dig chicks? I'm sure you can think of more careers with an over-estimation of reward and prestige. But that's occupationism: good and bad erroneous beliefs.

Occupationism is alive and well in libraries: there are lots of weird beliefs about librarians, and those have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere. There are also occupationism beliefs within our profession. While in library school, I remember feeling that if I was not an academic librarian, I hadn't made it. Anything else, unless it involved Lexis-Nexis or story time, was an alternative library career. I also have to struggle to keep occupationism out of my thoughts about library careers, mainly because I was so grumpy about the academic library rah-rahs. If a job is suitable for you, you should focus on it. Misguided or prejudiced thoughts--anti-office, anti-corporate, not prestigious enough--should not keep us from a day-to-day that would be very fulfilling.

Combating occupationism--especially the internal kind--comes with knowledge and discovery, like people changing their minds slightly about salesmen after reading the Pursuit of Happyness. You need to do what some librarians are very good at: research and explore. Allow no prejudice to lie unchallenged--especially your own.

Dress to code

I have great sympathy for the men who received hate messages and were asked to apologize about comments they made in a recent WSJ article about dress codes in the workplace--panty hose and skirt lengths, specifically. I think that if they were setting appropriate standards for their workplace, based on professional needs, and heck, it is their organization that is represented, I think they should have some say in what their employees wear to work--especially if they meet with clients. (original blog post about article)

That said, I can see why women would be perturbed about men still worrying about the temptation rays that come off of their bodies. First, it's a bit creepy. Second, I don't think fashion will curb the problem: for some people, knowing that their favorite gender to mack on is close by, they are just going to dream about a snack.

I also think that dress codes remain antiquated because people don't know what their workers do. For example, librarians climb around under desks, sprint with people to the stacks, they are occasionally asked to wipe up unmentionable goo, and sometimes sparkles, or they have to jump counters or haul heavy boxes. Not all of them, but I have had to do each of those things at least once a week while in the library proper. A skirt and heels won't do it--regardless of how many Jennifer Garner style CIA agents do it on TV, with a little kick boxing on the side.

So please, take a look at your dress code, not in terms of current fashion, because that is too volatile, but look at a dress code in terms of duties and what is safe or not. (Some scary pictures; the scariest one I ever saw was one my cousin showed me about an office worker who lost her finger when her wedding band was caught in a file drawer.)

Got tech? Want a career in crime?

The Read Write Web has an interesting post about why they hire college students and, how, for the same skills, college students are apparently being hired to work in organized crime. Since some of the librarians who are looking for work (or bothering to read a blog) are either 1) college students, or 2) techy, I thought there might be some interest in the article(s).

LibGig

As part of the new movement or dispersal of online networking, there is now a social networking site for librarians: LibGig. Currently available in beta, LibGig has clean lines, a bit of an antiquated logo, a blog front page and suggests that librarians could work and network here for library jobs. I think the success of this site depends not on how many users--though populous is good--but on how well people are tagged or the ease of the search: how quickly can I find jobs, find candidates or find intelligence using LibGig?

Presentation Masters

Inspired by How to Make a Presentation Like Al Gore.

The dreaded presentation, the dreaded hair puller and teeth gnasher for all library interviews. The easiest way to get ready is to, well, practice public speaking, but it also helps to watch the masters. Here are two of the presenters that I enjoy watching.

Steve Jobs is highly regarded for his presentation style, with just a dollop of Barnum. He is casually dressed, uses the whole of the stage and has very simple and eloquent slides (I hope we are moving in that direction) and people are mesmerized by him, usually because he can make people sigh with joy at the sight of a manila envelope. A sample, the WWDC keynote, is available for viewing.

You could decide to move to a more folksy, mellow evangelist style--without the ladders--and present like Al Gore. He has a very relaxed style, but I think his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, won people over, not only for his reputation, but also because of his down home, pass-the-salvation-preacher speaking style. Possibly the most kick-ass Power Point to win an Oscar.

Now both of these presenters have highly theatrical styles, as well as the leisure and incentive to rehearse, since they know every flinch will be discussed on YouTube (or viciously captioned Nico Nico Douga-style) and their styles may not appeal to you. There are endless samples of good speakers who engage their audiences and make tough ideas simple and/or engaging, such as Helen Fisher, Susan Blackmore, or Erin McKean. You should also notice that these speakers do not hide behind a pedestal podium (Holy Dr. Freud!) or a table--they have other props: Simple slides.

If you would like to use slides, I suggest moving to the format used by Jobs, since they are simple, plain and memorable. Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen--who has done some really cool presentations on Slideshare where he booktalks the practical uses he found in two business books, Brain Rules for Presenters and Career Advice--has excellent ideas on how to make great, clear slides in the jobs style. Or maybe Jobs borrowed from Reynolds?

You can improve your presentation style through practice, but also through good models.

Punctured

Ah, interview time: time to fluff out your hair, iron your underwear and carry your Tide stain stick concealed. But is it also the time to take out your piercings or cover your body art?

Because body art is usually voluntary, there are limited protections for possessors of body art.

• Cover Up the Body Art, from Job Dig
• Tattoos & Body Piercing: Avoiding Employment Discrimination Claims, appeared in New Hampshire Business Review, October 2004, By Andrea K. Johnstone and Laurel A. Van Buskirk
• A Piercing Question in the Workplace, from the OC Register. I like how they suggest that a low unemployment rate can mean more tolerance toward body modification, since I think that is a valid issue to consider.
  
• And check out some of the links about the US military policies in regards to body art/modification.
  

I don't know if anyone can definitively say that a voluntary body modification would be the straw that broke the library job offer. But there are a few ways you can deal with this issue:

• Check to see if there is a dress code policy for the organization that you are applying to. Piercings, as well as other art and modifications, may be listed in this policy.
  
• Search in your local newspaper for stories about body modification and the workplace, looking for local decisions or statements (some of these stories may not be local, but may still be useful).
  
• Check the websites for state or provincial guidelines in regards to dress codes and see if there are statements about body art or modifications (this could be important if you are relocating for work from a more tolerant to less body art tolerant clime).
  
• Prepare a copy of this research showing with omissions or insertions, just in case, whether you are interviewing for a position or have decided to come in and impress your colleagues with your pain tolerance on Monday morning.

IMHO: constantly talking about people's piercings and other assorted body art and referring to them with a winky-nudge-nudge about how discreet/discrete (in both senses) they are and how the possessors of such strange magic cannot be talked about as if they were, well, people, makes me nuts. Quit looking at shallow, surface differences and actually look at the person's abilities. I guess because the piercing is voluntary some people in charge of hiring--and library patrons, too--just don't want to be bothered with looking past the surface. However, this is one group that should be capable of looking past the cover, or at least be willing to read the blurb on the back.

Yes, I too have my moments: I really want to ask those guys with metal doughnuts in their lobes if walking into the wind makes them hear bells. But I hope that I wouldn't turn anyone down for a public service position--nor relegate them to a back room--if they had any piercings or body art. Though I might change my mind about a really ill-advised facial Nazi swastika. And if someone can tell me about the chiming, I really want to know.

Letterwhiz

I had the weirdest advertising experience today: I went with a colleague to grab a coffee and as we were walking away with our fix, we checked out the posters--hey, I need a new blender--and saw one advertising, Free Cigarettes. Below, in small letters, was a notice for a website called Letterwhiz and a disclaimer, no free cigarettes are offered, just letters. Bee-zarre, I thought.

Anyway, Letterwhiz is a letter template site that has business (moving locations), career (cover letters) and student (scholarship) letter templates. I'm not a big fan of these sites, since I think you should write your own letters, especially after graduate school. However, a cover letter makes us sweat more than a paper, since a paper gets a grade but a cover letter gets a salary and full dental. And sometimes we have never written a certain type of letter before, like a relocation letter, and we just need a glimpse of the form. A template site can help.

Glassdoor

From the makers of Expedia and Zillow, Glassdoor--now in beta--is a site that allows employees to post work place/environment reviews and salary information. The premise: “What would happen if someone left the unedited employee survey for the whole company on the printer and it got posted to the Web?” (From the About Us). Users give a rating up to five and list the pros and cons, as well as advice to the CEOs, about the company they work for.

I think these services can help special library/corporate library job seekers by giving them an idea about the type of workplace, either confirming or denying rumors. (But when it comes to the people posting the information, make sure you aren't posting from work.) These sites are also extremely effective for people looking to work in large corporations or Fortune 500 companies, but I haven't seen a lot of evidence that they help people looking to work for non-profits, privately-held companies, or for companies that have less than 100 employees--most libraries. Actually, their sorts are good--by industry, by approval rating, by job type--but an advanced option with company size and a mashup with LinkedIn or Indeed/SimplyHired might go a long way for users.

One of the Salon bloggers has provided a basic review, including some saucy dishing on Apple's salaries.

Update: WSJ posted an announcement of Glassdoor the following morning, stressing the similar experience of Zillow in collecting accurate data and information. I thought the quote at the bottom was a bit funny, we aren't a recruitment site. Just why do you think people will visit the site? To evaluate stock prices, ok, sure, but the vast majority of users will be coming to the site so they can prep for an interview or evaluate a job offer. Combining research on work environment with links to potential jobs is just one way to increase site traffic and overall stickiness, one of the tools of seduction when your site relies on ad revenue. No job ads for a fee, ok, but a mashup is called for.