Archive for April, 2009
Dear Readers,
How can you position yourself now and in the future?
Martha Fields, a Boston-based human resources expert, suggests thinking positively both about the present and what’s next. The present, as she sees it, is an opportune time to prepare for the economic recovery that will surely follow the current recession. “It’s a long-range issue, and an opportunity to reassess where your passion is and your goals,” says Fields, president and founder of Fields Associates, an international management consulting firm and a contributor to Roadmap to Success (Insight Publishing, 2008) with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard.
If you love your job, check out the projections for future growth in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, says Fields. If the projections are good, that’s great. If not, think about how the opportunities might shift over time. If you love working in the auto industry, for instance, consider shifting to a company that is developing products related to “green” cars, high speed rail or other forms of transportation.
If you hate your job, you can peruse the Occupational Outlook Handbook for professions that are expected to grow in hopes of finding something that catches your interest. If you don’t have the time, money or inclination for lots of retraining, check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ List of the 30 Fastest Growing Occupations. The list includes jobs that require only short- or medium-term on-the-job training, such as home health aides, pharmacy technicians, and dental assistants. The expected growth between 2006 and 2016 for these occupations are 48.7 percent, 32 percent, and 29.2 percent, respectively.
People who can afford some additional education can consider jobs that require an associate degree, such as veterinary technologists and technicians (41 percent projected growth) and physical therapist assistants (32.4 percent growth). High growth jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree include job in network systems and data communications (53.4 percent growth) and personal financial advisors (44.6 percent).
Affordable job training programs can be found at local community colleges and vocational technical schools. Many schools offer courses on nights and weekends and some even give credit for life experience.
Fields suggests investigating a link on same web page that introduces the Occupational Outlook Handbook called “Tomorrow’s Jobs.” It offers a concise look at which occupational areas are poised for growth and explains why. The report, which also covers the period through 2016, projects that, “More than 3 out of every 10 new jobs created in the U.S. economy will be in either the health care and social assistance or public and private educational services sectors.”
The employment implications of the U.S. government’s recent spending spree can be found at www.recovery.gov/, Field notes. This site gives details about how the $27 billion released through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be spent. “You can find out the type of jobs that might be in demand and where if you dig deeper into the website,” she says. “Another pocket of money,” she notes, is the funding designated for making medical records electronic.
The future holds promise, if you’ll strategize. Too many people spend more time deciding what they are going to wear to a hip party than “how can I position myself today” for tomorrow? Field complains. No wonder one of her favorite quotes is, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Do you have questions about your job or the best way to handle a workplace challenge? Leslie Whitaker would like to hear from you. E-mail Leslie@ctwfeatures.com and join the conversation at her Web site, www.lesliewhitaker.com.
Leslie, and Anuj Desai, associate professor of law at UW-Madison, and Erik Ugland, assistant professor in the College of Communication at Marquette University were invited to talk about Media Ethics on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Milwaukee station, WUWM.
Recorded on January 16, just before President Obama took office, they discuss his likely relationship with the press and the propsects for a National Shield Law.
This just in from CNN, on the heels of the “Working Class” column on the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. With more people considering government funded public service as a career booster, it may be on the verge of a new heyday:
(CNN) — When Autumn Preble was a teenager in the 1960s, she spent hours gazing at black-and-white LIFE magazine photographs that documented the journey of Peace Corps volunteers all over the world.
George Stouter, 67, is helping build mental health programs in Saint Kitts for his Peace Corps stint.
1 of 3Preble, of Whidbey Island, Washington, wanted to join, but after college came marriage and a child.
Now at 58, with her son off to college, she has begun her two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer working in the public health sector in Francistown, Botswana, where nearly one in four individuals are infected with HIV.
“I’m getting to experience what it’s like to live in another culture, and that has a lot of value to me,” Preble said from her simple two-bedroom bungalow in Botswana. Preble is known to natives in her community as Masego (Ma say ho), which means “many gifts.” “This is the kind of travel that I’m interested in.”
Forget the mapped-out cruises or packaged vacations to see the world. A growing number of Americans over 50 are dedicating time in their golden years to volunteering abroad. The decision is becoming more attractive with a sickly national economy sparking more layoffs and early retirement packages.
As expected and mentioned in the Working Class column of 4/07 that suggested that job hunters consider the possibility of joining public-funded service programs, President Obama today expanded the funding of AmeriCorps:
WASHINGTON – Calling on Americans to volunteer, President Barack Obama signed a $5.7 billion national service bill Tuesday that triples the size of the AmeriCorps service program over the next eight years and expands ways for students to earn money for college. “What this legislation does, then, is to help harness this patriotism and connect deeds to needs,” said Obama, a former community organizer in Chicago.
Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_national_service
Dear Readers,
Why should I fill her in on the project? She always contradicts everything I say.
Legal? We try to avoid them. You can’t work with those people.
How many times have you heard – or said – something similar about a fellow employee or another department? Sticking with a stand off is about the most unproductive stance one can take, yet it is among the most common responses to conflict.
Trying something new, then, can make you stand out. Sometimes for criticism. Many people consider President Obama’s attempts to build a bridge of bipartisanship across Republican and Democratic party lines either suspect or foolish. But even if you do not agree that forging new alliances is possible in politics, it’s worth trying at work.
Reaching out to “the other side” in hopes of finding “win-win” solutions is at the core of the executive training offered at the Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON). Even though there is no record of Obama taking negotiation courses while he was studying at Harvard, Susan Hackley, PON’s managing director, agrees that he is modeling many of the values her esteemed group teaches to the business community: adopting a problem-solving rather than adversarial stance, listening to learn, and seeking value beyond the obvious.
“I would say that this kind of approach is essential in this tough economy, as workers seek to keep their jobs while meeting their employers’ needs, and employers seek to stay relevant and competitive in a changing landscape,” says Hackley. “With so much uncertainty, it’s important to be able to negotiate effectively – getting you more of what you want at a time of diminishing resources, managing tensions among co-workers, balancing home-work demands, etc.”
Addressing tensions among co-workers is the goal of an assignment I give each semester to my business students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I ask them to spend some time with a colleague they typically try to avoid and then write up what they discover. More often than not, they report back that they’ve learned all sorts of new, unexpected information, most of which helps them appreciate the other person more, ultimately leading to better relations.
One student who works at Circuit City, for example, selected a co-worker he thought was lazy because he worked such a short schedule, and when he was there, pawned off customers to other salespeople. It turned out that this “lazy” guy worked two other jobs and avoided answering customers’ questions because he didn’t know much about the product line and didn’t want to mislead them. Armed with new insights, the student put down his hackles and vowed to educate his co-worker about the products. Everyone’s productivity and customer satisfaction suddenly had a new opportunity to improve.
If you don’t have the stomach for spending time with a colleague you normally avoid, you can simply ask a question or two when opportunity knocks. If you find that something a fellow employee does mystifies or annoys you, try in advance to craft an open-ended, non-judgmental question that gets at the heart of the matter. If a co-worker is always late, for instance, ask her about what her trip to and from the office is like. Then listen carefully, because most likely you’ll hear some things that are not entirely what you expect.
If you decide to experiment with this idea, please write and tell us how it works out.
Do you have questions about your job or the best way to handle a workplace challenge? Leslie Whitaker would like to hear from you. E-mail Leslie@ctwfeatures.com and join the conversation at her Web site, www.lesliewhitaker.com.
It’s wonderful to be surprised by what’s inside.
The crowd’s enthusiasm for a sometimes awkward singer’s soaring musical performance at “Britain’s Got Talent” proves that packaging can take a back seat to true passion and talent. Even the curmudgeonly judge, Simon, was clearly moved. Watch and enjoy:
Contrast her debut to the soul-less roll out of the Miss USA 2009 hopefuls…so similar, so unsurprising. Even though Miss USA was chosen last night, it’s a safe bet that (unlike those of Susan Boyle) their true talents are still hidden.
Once you kick off the high heels and let your hair down, what hidden talents do you have that you’ve yet to unveil?
Dear Leslie,
You watch people that you have worked alongside for the past 25 years clean out their desks, and you promise to stay in touch. But you don’t. It’s too scary to think about what they are going through.
Dear Readers,
That’s how a good friend in the media described her feelings about seeing her colleagues being laid off. She experienced sadness, guilt, and fear.
So many people are losing their jobs that much of the attention falls on them, and rightly so. But the mixed feelings of those who are left behind are often overlooked. Because more people are still working than have been laid off, these feelings are widely felt.
Survivor guilt is a set of contradictory feelings that can accompany any major loss. The feelings that accompany layoffs can be so strong, says organizational psychologist John Behr, that, “ a lot of people almost would prefer to be the ones to be let go.” For one thing, the reputation of both the decision makers who carry out the layoffs and the businesses themselves often suffer in the eyes of the remaining employees. “The organization is stigmatized,” says Behr. “People have mixed feelings about whether they want to be part of the organization anymore.”
One way for managers to combat the negative perceptions is to be transparent about their decision-making process. “Give as much disclosure as possible, to the survivors as well as the casualties,” Behr advises. “If the organization is worth its salt, there will be a higher-level conceptual need – to stay afloat, for example, or to keep as many people employed for as long as possible.”
If employees have no clue as to their managers’ thinking, the tendency is to distrust it. “We tend to give negative attributions to decisions we don’t understand,” says Behr.
If you’ve experienced it, what has survivor guilt felt like to you? Has your company addressed it? We’d like to hear from you.
Do you have questions about your job or the best way to handle a workplace challenge? Leslie Whitaker would like to hear from you. E-mail Leslie@ctwfeatures.com and join the conversation at her Web site, www.lesliewhitaker.com.
Dear Leslie,
I’ve just drafted a letter to my old boss. I feel like I’m still employed by her, and I know I’m not a very good writer. Would you read it before I send it, and tell me if it’s okay?
Dear Readers,
Do you hate to write? Do you wish you had a miniature Shakespeare living in your computer who could type out an eloquent sentence every time you need to communicate with a manager or important client?
If so, you have plenty of company. Writing is a key component of more and more jobs. Almost 70 percent of the corporations responding to a 2004 survey by the Conference Board said that at least two-thirds of their employees had writing responsibilities. Spurred by the growth of email, the numbers have probably risen since then. Writing is among the duties of the majority of salaried employees and a hefty portion of hourly employees as well.
When you don’t feel confident about your prose, the quickest fix is to ask someone more skilled to look it over. Contrary to what most people think, writing is not a solitary endeavor. It involves a writer and a reader. Getting someone you trust to serve as a proxy reader before you send your email, memo, or report out to the wider world isn’t cheating, it’s a necessity.
Do you have questions about your job or the best way to handle a workplace challenge? Leslie Whitaker would like to hear from you. E-mail Leslie@ctwfeatures.com and join the conversation at her Web site, www.lesliewhitaker.com.
Readers are reacting quickly to this week’s column about signing on for the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. Two criticism of the Peace Corps so far…
Letter No. 2: I read your recent article about the Peace Corps. Are you aware that if you are hurt they turn you over to the U.S. Dept. of Labor and that is it? Google and see all the people that you find that have been hurt and waiting for some kind of help.
Letter No. 1: Your recent pitch for Peace Corps and AmeriCorps leaves out some important details. Peace Corps volunteers must be prepared to focus on drinking and partying to be the primary focus of at least 50% of their fellow volunteers. Further, they must accept a two-year assignment that may not achieve any of the goals they set out with, but rather serve as a PR exercise for the United States.
The myth of Peace Corps is overblown. People should not join without a more realistic picture of it as a heavily bureaucratic summer camp for soul-searching college students.
Brian Maher
Zanzibar 2006-2007
One year ago tonight, I slept with rats in my mattress. It was the beginning of my Peace Corps service. And I spent it with rats. Not a picture for the brochures, but Peace Corps nonetheless. I curled up in a ball, held on tight, and vowed to somehow get through it.
Dear Readers,
If you are searching for employment, adventure, or both, two opportunities that you may have overlooked are joining the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps, government operated service organizations that recruit American citizens to work abroad and in poor areas of the U.S., respectively.
The Peace Corps has almost 8,000 volunteers serving in 76 countries, doing work such as raising awareness about HIV/AIDS in Africa and teaching basic computer literacy skills in the Ukraine. AmeriCorps, which has a much larger staff, has several options. The state and national programs place recruits in community organizations that focus on education, health, public safety, and the environment. AmeriCorps’ VISTA provides full-time staff to community organizations with the goal of reducing poverty. The NCCC program is a full-time opportunity for volunteers ages 18-24 who live on one of five residential campuses across the country.
The timing is right for pursuing a service-related career. AmeriCorp’s programs expect a big boost from the new federal budget. Their goal is to grow to 250,000 positions, up from 75,000, and to increase the education award earned after one year of service.
Service work in deprived communities is not for everyone. Joanna Carman, the Peace Corps Volunteer who wrote the above blog entry (http://joannacarman.blogspot.com/2008/04/mis-padres.html), works as a Community Economic Advisor in the Dominican Republic. She exhibits extraordinary guts and perseverance. Volunteers make a two-year commitment, receive a small living stipend, and receive $6,000 when they complete their service. Yet there is increasing competition for the slots, with applications up 16% over last year, says Laura Lartigue, Peace Corps spokeswoman.
The work is attractive partly because Peace Corps Volunteers collect an impressive list of marketable skills: sticking with a tough assignment in less-than-desirable conditions, developing an international perspective, and mastering a new language. Peace Corps Volunteers “are often seen as desirable [job] applicants,” says Lartigue.
AmeriCorps service can be ideal for trying out a career before pursuing further training. “Say you want to be a teacher, but you aren’t sure, you can try it out,” says Siobhan Dugan, AmeriCorps press officer. “It’s not a problem if you don’t like it,” because you haven’t already invested time and money in a graduate degree in education. Furthermore, because most AmeriCorps assignments are at small organizations, recruits learn how to perform a wide number of duties. “You’ll get a range of experience,” says Dugan.
Carman assesses the benefits of her work in a blog entry midway through her Peace Corps stint, and they are wide-ranging:
I am more cynical, physically stronger, enjoy living alone, extra obstinate, speak Spanish, have a higher inclination to self-deprecating humor, much braver, better vocabulary, less vain, uber-creative at increasing my productivity level, and realized that little kids share my level of maturity (they laugh at the word “poop” with me, “caca” in Spanish, I mean…how do you NOT laugh?)
Interested? Check out the Peace Corps and Americorps websites (www.peacecorps.gov) and (www.americorps.gov) and The Insider’s Guide to the Peace Corps by Dillon Banerjee (Ten Speed Press, 2009), for more information.
Do you have questions about your job or the best way to handle a workplace challenge? Leslie Whitaker would like to hear from you. E-mail Leslie@ctwfeatures.com and join the conversation at her Web site, www.lesliewhitaker.com.
