BNET1

• The Find: Of all the times it’s a good idea to be likable, interviews probably top the list, so here are ten ways you can spoil your first impression.
• The Source: A guest post by Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon, authors of I Hate People!, on blog Punk Rock HR.

The Takeaway: Littman and Hershon have received a lot of great buzz for their new book (including here on BNET1), which outlines how to deal with problem people at work without sapping your own energy. Now they’re applying their knowledge of annoying office workers to aid job hunters by outlining ten simple ways to make sure an interviewer hates you – avoid. (more…)

• The Find: One blog is offering a reminder to hiring managers from the better angels of recruiting: you must call every candidate who hasn’t gotten the gig, even if picking up the phone is a miserable job.
• The Source: The recruiting blog Fistful of Talent.

The Takeaway: Getting a call to say you haven’t got a job certainly sucks, but for that matter, so does making that call, and picking up the phone to say “sorry, but you haven’t succeeded” is even more painful in the current job market. Great candidates are being turned away and many job seekers are emotionally frayed after an extended and frustrating search. But as Fistful of Talent insists, that’s no excuse to bow out of you responsibilities as a hiring manager. (more…)

Older managers in their 40s and 50s may be hardest hit by the recession, but that doesn’t mean they’re simply caving in to the pressure of one of the toughest job markets in years. In fact, if the flood of comments that came in from last week’s post on older managers and the slump is to be believed, they’re coming up with innovative solutions and supporting each other all the way. (more…)

• The Find: Each economic crisis is different and experts argue that the current slump may be particularly brutal on managers in their 40s and 50s.
• The Source: An in-depth article from Knowledge@Wharton.

The Takeaway: As Tolstoy famously observed, “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and perhaps the same can be said of happy and less than happy economic times. Each recession is unique and has distinct causes and victims. For the latest downturn Knowledge@Wharton has identified one particularly hard-hit group: managers in their 40s and 50s. (more…)

• The Find: You don’t have to be “a jump-on-the-desk-and-shout-at-the-troops type of person” to be an excellent leader, argues one long-time manager.
• The Source: John Hollon writing on The Business of Management blog.
  

The Takeaway: When Wendy Kopp, the founder and CEO of Teach for America, recently told the New York Times that when she goes out to find new teachers, what she’s looking for is “not necessarily charisma,” the comment caught Hollon’s eye. Why? (more…)

• The Find: Being out of work doesn’t have to mean a yawning gap in your resume; one blog is offering ten ways to demonstrate your worth and keep your skills sharp while you’re out of work.
• The Source: A recent post on blog Business Pundit.

The Takeaway: Gaps on a resume can be off putting to hiring managers, with recent research revealing that in as little as six months, unemployment starts to carry a serious stigma with prospective employers. But if you’ve been out of work for four or five months and are rapidly approaching the point where the unaccounted for time starts to hurt your chances of getting hired, you shouldn’t panic. As Business Pundit points out there are things you can do to keep your skills sharp and your resume current. Here are ten: (more…)

• The Find: European companies that drastically cut their workforces in the face of the recession may face a “demographic double whammy” and struggle to find the talent they need when the recession ends, a recent report concludes
• The Source: A report entitled Creating People Advantage: How to Tackle the Major HR Challenges During the Crisis and Beyond by The Boston Consulting Group and the European Association of People Management.

The Takeaway: With many companies drowning in red ink, cutting jobs may seem unavoidable, but just as unavoidable are the twin European realities of falling birth rates and the rising number of retirements. As they say, demographics is destiny, and this reality was driven home for the researchers when they asked more than 3,000 European executives about their talent management and pulled together more than 20 case studies outlining examples of HR best practice. What conclusions did they draw from all that data? (more…)

• The Find: Academics suggest that when it comes to reforming executive compensation to curb short term thinking, a creative approach using escrow accounts may be the answer.
• The Source: A paper by Wharton professor of finance Alex Edmans and colleagues from NYU and UCLA Berkeley reported on Management Issues.

The Takeaway: With compensation schemes that provided incentives for short term risk taking out of favor after the financial meltdown, politicians are promising a public enraged by executive excess that something will be done. Still, firms need to attract top flight talent and reward success, so how do they limit pay without limiting their ability to do these things? Plans to cap pay have drawn skepticism from experts, but what’s the alternative? Edmans and his fellow academics have a suggestion: (more…)

• The Find: Two new sets of data indicate that the gloom hanging over hiring may slowly be lifting: both employee confidence and on-line job listings are up.
• The Source: The Spherion Employee Confidence Index and The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series (HWOL)™.

The Takeaway: Sure the US unemployment rate is at nearly 10 percent (a threshold that, as we once noted, can be used as an indicator that a recession has turned into a depression), but when looked at in light of other employment data, the numbers actually offer some small glimmers of hope. As the NY Times reports, the decrease this month was far less than expected, but there are other reasons to suggest it’s time for managers to focus less on preventing employee anxiety from getting out of control, and instead look at ways to prepare for a coming upswing in the economy. (more…)

• The Find: Of all the quirky advice on hiring out there, successful business blogger Penelope Trunk may have some of the oddest: don’t hire women who smile too much.
• The Source: Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog.

The Source: Some people advocate panel interviews, others warn against the excessive use of referrals, but recently Trunk weighed in with perhaps the least expected piece of hiring advice in the business blogosphere: (more…)