CareerCurve™

I read an article that blew my mind regarding writing recommendations for your past employees on LinkedIn.  Apparently there are people noticing a trend where these recommendations provide a platform for legal action down the road.    I never would have thought of this!  On the bright side, many bosses want to help their former employees find new positions and blasting a recommendation for their work is a great way to help them.  But as the search goes on, the employee may wonder why they were let go and others were not and they’ve got the written proof that their work was good.   The endorsement of their abilities by their supervisor makes them feel that they were wrongly terminated and then lawsuits arise.

In my mind, if the quality of work is there, being let go is a business decision.  Of course, not having been in this situation I can’t say for sure how I would feel, but I think I could move on without taking it personally.   I would imagine that I would appreciate a former boss’s willingness to help me land on my feet. 

I’m sure there are other factors involved too, such as trust in the organization that this was a necessary choice.  I mention the importance of this in my previous post and this reiterates that fact.  I also think how a company handles the process of letting someone go must be extremely important as well.  If you can leave a place with the trust that this is a business decision and in a way where you are treated fairly and feel valued as a person, that should take away the anger that would cause you to view a recommendation as a platform for a lawsuit.

I would love to know if HR Managers find this to be an increasing trend.  I think it is pretty sad if it is true.

I have been following a few conversations regarding trust in an organization – how to instill it, maintain it, and how important is it?  I am of the mindset that I can deal with anything, as long as I know what it is I’m dealing with.  I highly value someone being “straight” with me, even if it is something I don’t want to hear.  Actually, ESPECIALLY if it is something I don’t want to hear.  It has to be hard though, for the person who has to relay messages from higher ups, to create and build that trust within a company.  How can you be trustworthy when the message you are delivering is not necessarily your own?  Also, you may not have a say in how much information is distributed.  Your job may be to provide certain pieces of information while withholding others and that is not conducive to trust.

In order to get trust you have to give it, and while you may be privy to certain things that are going to affect your coworkers, you may be required to keep these details to yourself.  How is it possible to have both – do your job the way you are supposed to but still work with a team that trusts you and what you say?   As an employee, I think it is possibly the most important part of a fulfilling career.  In my opinion, an environment of honesty has a wonderful domino affect.  Believing in your boss allows you the opportunity to show the same to your employees.  This instills loyalty, hard work, and a strong work ethic.  This is all assuming I am not in the minority in appreciating the truth, whether good or bad. 

Is trust that important?  Are there genuine benefits to focusing on this in an organization or is our society too skeptical and cynical at this point for it to matter?

I saw the movie Up in the Air last night.  I had no idea what it was about but heard it was really good.  I was surprised to see that the main character worked for a career transition company.  I’m wondering if anyone has any comments on the perspectives given about this type of business in this movie.  I was kind of shocked by the idea of termination via the internet and can’t believe that the business side could overrule the humantiarian side.  Do you think this was an accurate potrayal of what it is like for the person who delivers the news?  I found the perspective from the affected employees to be believable but also thought it was interesting that there was almost zero interaction with the companies who hired  the transition firm to deliver the news.  Is it that common that the internal human resource department is completely removed from the process?  I would think their absence at notification would make things worse for everyone and the point of hiring someone to help is just that – to help, not to take over and do.  My interpretation has always been that the firm provides some training for the human resource people and works with the laid off employees to be positive while sitting with the human resource people to help deliver the news.   Also, the main character made a point of saying that after notification, they don’t follow up with the former employees.  If that were true, I can’t imagine it is realistic to expect someone getting laid off to leave with a positive attitude in a matter of minutes, no matter who is delivering the news.  I certainly hope this was an exaggerated, Hollywood point of view!

I am interested in hiring managers’ thoughts on functional resumes.  I always hated these!!   It just always felt more like bragging because the idea was to summarize skills in a more abstract way (and will I be believed?) rather than just stating facts, such as I produced x dollars in revenue for the company in the year 2000.  I like facts that cannot be argued.

Although I haven’t had a need to create a resume lately, in my operational role I see  a number of resumes.  I also look at them for recruiting and I am slowly but surely changing my tune.  Do hiring decision makers find these resumes more helpful when searching for new talent nowadays?  Is the fact that many new opportunities are a combination of prior roles affecting the way resumes are read?  If you were to advise a job seeker on what it is you look for, what would that be?

Based on the information in my previous post, it seems like this type of resume would be MUCH more effective in today’s job market.   Is this the type of resume that hiring managers find most helpful when searching for employees?  If so, has this always been true or are we witnessing a shift?

As I continue to read about “Jobless Recovery” I have been coming across another term, “Job Evolution”.  Based on what I am reading, this seems to be a bad thing initially and then becomes a good thing for both employers and employees.  My understanding of this is that in a nutshell, it refers to the ways jobs are different during a jobless recovery and how that difference creates jobs that have never existed before.  Yes, it means that certain jobs have disappeared and are not coming back, but the jobs that will be available are changing and there are some benefits to this.

Basically, there is a need by organizations to analyze resources and allocation of these resources.  As this analysis takes place, the focus on the organizations is to restructure internally to operate more efficiently – a need for the company, technology, and industry to become more efficient.  It seems to me that there is a trial and error aspect of  this by the company, which is making the process take longer.  This means the job opening are slower to arrive.  Although it is taking longer for a company to define their needs in these new positions, once they do, they are seeing benefits to combining different responsibilities into one job.  When they find the right person for the opening, they are seeing a more efficient allocation of resources, more efficient operations and a lower employee headcount – three things necessary for the company to thrive in the current economy. 

For job seekers, this can be a very good thing as well. One change that results from this is that the search criteria changes for employers looking to bring in new talent.  Now sourcing for new employees will not be constrained as much by industry background but more by experiences.  It seems like it will be more of a big picture assessment of a candidate based on the skills they have acquired rather than a search for someone who has done the exact same job in the exact same industry.  Employers will be unable to search for new hires that way because the jobs they are creating have  never existed before.  This opens up more opportunities to find a position, even though there are fewer jobs available.  It sounds contradictory, but my sense is that if a job seeker is open-minded and flexible about a new role, they will actually have the ability to apply for more jobs than they would have in the past.

The challenge, I would think, would be for the hiring managers to define what they are looking for.  Once they determine what skills the new hire will need, they have a larger pool to choose from and job seekers now have more opportunities to throw their hat in the ring.

Can anyone comment on their experience in defining these new roles?  Or has anyone looking for work noticed the ability to apply for positions that wouldn’t have been available to them in the past?  Is this actually a benefit all the way around?  In theory, it seems very positive to me (although I am the kind of person who does not like to be constrained by whatever I’ve done in the past) but I don’t know if this is all conjecture.

I have recently been reading about jobless recovery and the effects this will have on both corporations and job seekers.  To begin with, the term “jobless recovery” refers to a specific type of recovery after a recession.  This recovery is defined as an increase in gross national product without an increase in employment opportunities.   Or at least without a return to the level of unemployment that existed prior to the recession.  I could go on and on about the whys of this and they all make sense to me, but I am more interested in the individual impact, specifically to our clients and candidates.  In other words, it is what it is, (one of my favorite sayings) so what do each do now?

For a job seeker there are many things to focus on throughout the search, but most boil down to self-management.  This has become the prevailing theme in what determines a successful job search (defining career goals, strategizing, executing said strategy consistently and with discipline,  being flexible, continually and actively learning, etc.)   Sometimes you just need someone holding you accountable to successfully maintain these goals.   It is a different world out there now where there are simultaneously more candidates and fewer jobs (meaning positions that were eliminated and will remain eliminated).  As a result, job seeking is a process to be finessed and managed, not simply an outline of steps to be taken to get the next job.  

For corporations who are managing this same trend, what are the biggest challenges?  Is it the emotional state of the remaining employees after a high impact restructuring?  Is it finding the resources to adequately cover the responsibilities formerly handled by the displaced employees?   Is a culture of mistrust and fear created?  Does it depend on how it is handled?  I know from my job within CareerCurve that the clients (corporations) go through their own brand of turmoil when decisions like this need to be made, but it would be interesting to better understand what it is like for them after the changes occur. 

Is anyone aware of some good conversation taking place on this topic that I may have missed?  I think many times the focus is on the displaced employee alone, but the reality is that this ”jobless recovery” affects individuals and corporations alike.  And then our society as a whole.  The impact is huge and I look forward to your comments and resource recommendations.

My name is Jen Turi and I am writing CareerCurve’s blog.  I am the Manager of Social Media for this outplacement firm and am very passionate about what we do.  Please see the About CareerCurve and About the Author page to learn a little bit more about us and me personally.  My goal in writing this blog is to connect with all kinds of readers and initiate conversation that is thought-provoking, interesting, and insightful.  I want to both learn and share experiences in the world of career transition in the hope that this will provide a platform to help anyone going through a downsizing or reorganization, from any perspective.  The last couple of years have been very difficult in our economy on everyone – employees who have been laid off, employers who have had to do the laying off, retained employees who have had to adjust to less assistance and fewer co-workers, directors of organizations who have had to restructure to make do with much smaller budgets and resources –  the list goes on and on. 

I hope that by creating a forum to share individual experiences we can all learn and make transition easier and less painful, no matter who you are.  Being that CareerCurve provides these types of services, I also hope to gather information to continually improve quality for both our clients and our candidates.  The best way to know what really works is to ask and  I encourage  comments.   I also look forward to recommendations for more information on post topics, content suggestions and to reading your blogs.   If you want to comment offline, my email address is jturi@careercurve.com and you can learn more about the company at www.careercurve.com.  Thank you for reading and I look forward to getting to know you and learning from you!

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