Sometimes I get really wild career questions...

...and my only reaction would be...

But who am I really to tell someone if it is the right or wrong path to take? Iam not God Almighty and not even a Madame Zingara of sorts. What I can say is what to do and what not to do if you want to get a certain job in a certain company - all based on my personal experiences, network and management books that I have had the misfortune to read up till now.

The only two functions of a Careers Office are

1. Technical: fine-tune your CV, put some corporate make up and pepper your vocabulary with ten-dollar words so much loved by the recruiters
2. Emotional: make the candidates believe that they are worth their dream job.

Which function is more important? Both, depending on the candidate. Prognistication is not one of them, so why do career counselors think themselves to be Cassandras and pretend to know what is best for this or that candidate? Beats me all the time.

Office Romance

From experience I can say that the possibility of having to deal with office romance can easily top the list of issues that a manager fears most, alongside with demotions, body odor and giving negative feedback. Sometimes the work affairs are secret, sometimes they are out in the open. The views on such behavior differ, but most of my friends with an Industrial Psychology degree coincide in believing that "a healthy dose of office romance is beneficial to the productivity of the work force. Excessive work affairs harm normal functioning of the organization".

If you have never observed romantic behavior in the office, probably you should look again, because the Vault research proves that it is a common practice in the majority of cases:

Where lies the line between "tolerate it" and "this must stop" I cannot really say since all will depend on a situation. Many companies have a clause in their internal rules that family members (including romantic partners" cannot be in the same line of subordination, but all that is paper stuff and real life is much more difficult to manage.

Here is the list of 10 things to remember when you deal with office romance, but the most important one (I think) is that you cannot prevent employees from hooking up:

1. Accept it
People meet romantic partners at work every day, and rather than rant or fume about it, a smart manager will accept that reality. Work is a wonderful place to meet a mate or a summer fling; after all, how better to observe a person and verify that he or she is not crazy, violent, or otherwise unsuitable than to watch him or her in action at work? You can’t stop people from being attracted to one another, so keep a level head and a sense of humor about the whole thing.
2. Talk about it
Managers ask for trouble when they establish a subtle or not-so-subtle cultural norm that tells employees not to discuss social or romantic topics in the office...

Continue reading at <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44109813/ns/business-small_business/> 

Tips for Making an Expatriation Decision

"Congratulations on landing this expat position!" you will hear from your boss and off they'll go and you will be left on your own ruminating over the imminent relocation. You start talking to your colleagues, friends, spend hours on expat forums and make up long lists of criteria based on which you are going to pass your judgment. Luckily, there are lots of resources, starting with general and all-encompassing, such as www.expatforum.com, and ranging to country specific, e.g. www.britishexpats.com, www.singaporeexpats.com, etc. or home country specific, e.g. www.britsabroad.com.

I am by no means an expert: I have only lived in four different countries so far, and there is a separate category of "chronic expats", whose way of life is changing countries every 3-4 years, taking their home, spouses, children and pets wherever they go. Still, I do have an insight into the expat life from both sides of the fence: as an expat myself and as an HR professional handling issues or expatriation, repatriation, painful expatriate separations and blood-sucking dealings with expat transfer desks and relocation agencies.

Here are, in my opinion, the most critical things that you need to keep in mind changing the country you live in:

• Taxes: will you fall into a double taxation situation? Which country is the tax rate higher? Will you company compensate the potential loss in your income caused by higher tax rates? Which country are you a tax resident in? Make sure that you clear out all these questions before you agree to anything in writing.

• Cost of Living: it's a no-brainer that living in Colorado-ville is less expensive that Oslo, Tokio or Moscow. Most companies will add a COLA (cost of living adjustment) payment into your new package, but to confirm for yourself you can use a variety of online resources, including http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living. 

• Housing: there are expat ghettoes in practically every country and most often than not your company will take care of your accommodation. However, if you wish to experience the local culture and avoid those protected sterilized look-alike expat residential complexes, you may wish to take the factor of availability of safe decent-quality housing on the local market into account.

• Traffic: read this exciting article about an IBM study on the most horrible traffic in the entire world and rejoice if you do not live in Mexico City, Shenzhen or Beijing: http://gizmodo.com/5838333/the-most-horrific-traffic-in-the-entire-world

• Health: living in areas where it is easier to get malaria, yellow fever or cholera is easier than catching a cold might deter you from moving there. However, there are boosters for virtually everything and if you take precautions you can successfully avoid the majority of dangerous local diseases. What plays a more important role is availability of superb medical facilities, especially if you have a condition or planning to have a baby while being on an international assignment. You can check out with the most renowned medical care providers about the situation with the medical facilities in the countries that you are considering moving to: Bupa and International-SOS.

• Climate: if you have asthma, maybe it's not a good idea where there are many allergens, and if you cannot live in humid climates, probably you should stay away from the Asia-Pacific region. -50° C temperatures in Siberia are not for faint-hearted. High altitudes, extreme heat, long rainy seasons - figure out if you will be comfortable living there.

• Schooling: if you have kids of school age, getting into a school with the native language of instruction for your child becomes a decisive factor. Check out the international schools in the city you are moving to and do spend some time calling the principals and the admission officers there to firm up the requirements and conditions in those academic institutions.

These seven points are by no means exhaustive, but I hope that they will help you make the right decision and avoid culture shock as much as possible.

When Pay Creeps In Into Career Choices

A couple of days ago I had dinner with an old university friend of mine, who is now facing a dilemma: keep her position of a personal assistant and the perks that come with it or take up a transfer to the position of an economist but with a salary cut.
 
My mind went working in two directions at the same time:

1. What sort of company is that where a secretary gains more than an economist, and
2. How does pay influence our career choices and how should we go about it?

 
Answering the first question: any company experiencing pay compression, skewed salary scales, unmatched jobs or severe nepotism/favoritism. Since I know my friend very well, the latter hypothesis is eliminated, but all the former ones are extremely likely to take place. Whether you are using a point based system in job evaluation or whole job matching approach, you will need to do a lot of convincing to make me believe that any sort of a personal assistant is "heavier" than an economist. Following the Hay method, we are operating with three dimensions: Accountability, Know-How and Problem Solving. While we can have arguments around Accountability in this case, I will die fighting trying to prove that Know-How and Problem Solving dimensions of an economist position should be higher. Another likely explanation of this situation is pay compression, "defined as pay differentials that are too small to be considered equitable", e.g. when supervisors get less than their subordinates, new hires receive loftier salaries than the current incumbents or there are so many salary grades that the wage differences between them are negligible. My friend is in a similar situation: she will lose her 20% supervisory allowance and a few other perks if she agrees to take up the economist's job, which will drag her total cash down.
 
The key term in the last sentence is "total cash", which does not equal "total compensation", and many people do not differentiate between the two, as a consequence making grave mistakes in making their career decisions. Total Cash is a part of Total Compensation, but there are other elements such as Work-Life, Career Development Opportunities, Benefits, Performance & Recognition, if we are using the World at Work terminology. Focusing on pay only may lead to suboptimal choices, and here I would refer you to an HBR article Six Dangerous Myths About Pay. Hence, we need to look beyond the dollar.
 
Frederick Herzberg back in the 20th century, inspired by Maslow's ideas,  came up with a Two-Factor Theory, a research on motivation and job satisfaction. He discovered that there were two types of factors that affected employees' motivation and productivity:

• Motivators (e.g., challenging work, recognition, responsibility) that give positive satisfaction, arising from intrinsic conditions of the job itself, such as recognition, achievement, or personal growth, and
• Hygiene factors (e.g. status, job security, salary, fringe benefits, work conditions) that do not give positive satisfaction, though dissatisfaction results from their absence. These are extrinsic to the work itself, and include aspects such as company policies, supervisory practices, or wages/salary.

 
As you see, pay is listed under the hygiene factors, i.e. the factors that primarily satisfy the survival needs in the Maslow's hierarchy. Therefore, if you are hardly making your ends meet, dying under the mortgage burden or have nothing left after having paid your alimony, your choice to go after the money in the short-term might be justified. However, should you be primarily concerned about your own development, learning new things, gaining more responsibility (and, as a result, getting prettier paychecks in the long run), you should definitely opt for career opportunities that will get you closer to the personal goal of self-actualization.
 
In not so sophisticated terms I gave her this advice, "Do not fear gaining less right now - by taking on a greater challenge, you will be much more equipped to compete on the labor market later, and never be motivated by money… it will come by itself should you invest enough time and effort into yourself".
 
P.S. There was some doubt whether the Russian Labor Legislation allows pay cuts. It does: http://www.podborkadrov.ru/forums/read.php?FID=80&TID=1525.
 
 
 

HR: Butchery or Deli?

To a hammer everything is a nail, and to a butcher everything is a piece of meat.

What associations do you have with butchers of butcheries? Personally, I like the idea of getting a fresh cut just the way I like it, but going to the place of smelling of crushed bones and blood is for the intrepid and valiant. You might get the same feeling from visiting a nurse drawing your blood with a long needle or your HR Department.

What associations do you have with deli shops? I like taking my time with browsing through the rows with quaint olive oils, decadent cheeses and delectable meat treats. Similar sensations can be caused by profoundly positive emotion such as a successful date, a leisurely yacht trip or visit to your HR Department.

Why do we see such discrepancy in how people view their HR services and people? Apart from the fact that every perception is purely individual, I would agree that there are two types of HR: the evil one and the good one. I have not heard about something in the middle. The evil HR are butchers: they care for numbers and less for real people, cling to processes and policy books until the very end and even fire people. The good HR are deli chefs: they design complex and exciting transformation projects, coach and train employees and communicate at every convenient occasion. As you understand, both are severe exaggerations and the truth is "somewhere out there".

The truth is that a solid HR professional must be good in all four aspects of the trade defined by the guru of business science Dave Ulrich, be it orientation at people or processes, looking far into the future or being immersed in daily routines:

Variability and constant change make it an imperative to be skilled in all four. At times, you need to consult and deeply understand the underlying problems your employees are going through, and at time you need to bang the policy book on the table, and - yes - when the company is between the rock and the deep sea, layoffs are inevitable: the trick is in seamless and natural switch from one "HR gear" to another and being more or less equally comfortable with each. Unfortunately, books and HR theory are little help in this case. Speaking from experience, it is only practice that makes perfect. No matter how many books I read or training courses I attend, it is only when I sit down with a close-to-retirement father of four to work out the details of his retrenchment that I really understand what our profession is about.

Finally, internal marketing plays a great role. Since perception is reality, it is not what you are, but what others say you are. Do not hesitate to invest in functional promotion and branding. I have seen some very successful functional marketing campaigns (IT, HR, Finance, Supply Chain, etc.), and I should say that the ROI of such projects is manifold.

HR is really about being a deli. "Butcheries" are faux-pas nowadays and cookie-cut solutions won't express anyone, particularly the Gen Y quickly flooding the workplace. "Delis" are places where added value is generated, where opportunities for diversification thrive, where excellence is the rule of the game. There are positive tendencies that HR is given more and more responsibility for business decisions and "a place at the table", but unfortunately not always do HR managers know what to do with that power and freedom to operate. The intent and implementation dilemma again.

Taking advice from bartenders

I am all for telling stories and leading others towards shared vision with tidbits of personal experience. However, this particular example somehow does not resonate in my mind. What do you think?

I ask my bosses for more work. I pitch ideas every day. I try hard, but I'm ignored. What's wrong?

Alex, Newark, NJ

Jimmy The Bartender® answers

My uncle had a little yapper dog. Always put its damn wet nose in my face. When it died, I was relieved. Their next dog greeted us when we first came in, and then shut up. I pet it all the time. See, let them come to you, my man. You're so busy making an impression that you neglect the work that actually does impress. Put your nose down, do your best, and you'll be noticed for what you produce, not what you say.