Women fell significantly behind in one key area: vision.

Source: IINSTEAD Knowledge
Author: Herminia Ibarra



The good news is that in a study of executives, women did better than men on several measures. The bad news is that women fell significantly behind in one key area: vision.



Research by INSEAD professor Herminia Ibarra and PhD candidate Otilia Obodaru shows that women leaders are not perceived to be as strong as men when it comes to articulating a vision of the future and translating that vision into a strategic direction for the organisation.


Ibarra and Obodaru studied the 360 degree reviews of more than 2,800 women. In all, they looked at 22,244 evaluations on a leadership assessment developed by INSEAD's Global Leadership Center. They were surprised to find that women did as well or better than men in most categories. The exception was vision and that exception could be one reason why fewer women rise to the top jobs.



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OMG -- My Boss Wants to Be 'Friends' With Me on Facebook

By Jared Sandberg, from The Wall Street Journal Online

Paul Dyer was always able to hold off his boss's invitations to party by employing that arms-length response: "We'll have to do that sometime," he'd say.

But when his boss, in his 30s, invited Mr. Dyer, 24 years old, to be friends on the social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook, dodging wasn't so easy. On the one hand, accepting a person's request to be friends online grants them access to the kind of intimacy never meant for office consumption, such as recent photos of keggers and jibes from friends. ("Still wearing that lampshade?")

But declining a "friend" request from a colleague or a boss is a slight. So, Mr. Dyer accepted the invitation, then removed any inappropriate or incriminating photos of himself -- "I'd rather speak vaguely about them," he says -- and accepted the boss's invitation.

Mr. Dyer, it turns out, wasn't the one who had to be embarrassed. His boss had photos of himself attempting to imbibe two drinks at once, ostensibly, Mr. Dyer ventures, to send the message: "I'm a crazy, young party guy." The boss also wore a denim suit ("I'd never seen anything like it," Mr. Dyer says) and posed in a photo flashing a hip-hop backhand peace sign.

It was painful to watch. "I hurt for him," says Mr. Dyer.

Like email and "buddy lists" before them, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace provide a definition of the word "friend" so expansive that it includes perfect strangers. Yet, strangers are the easy part. It can be a lot creepier to interact intimately with someone you sort of know than someone you don't know at all.

"Nothing changes when a stranger invites you to be a friend," says Nina Singh, a market-research consultant. But when one of her clients "friended" her, she saw a semierotic photo of him topless, posed and softly lit. "When you see your client's pubic bone, something has changed."

Victor Sanchez, 54, a senior development director, was once invited to join a site and was surprised to see a photograph of a younger colleague's seahorse tattoo. "Sometimes it's good to learn things about a colleague much later -- or never at all," he says.

These networking sites assist existing social relationships, letting people easily plan events, share pictures and keep up-to-date with far-flung friends. Once they penetrate the office, however, such sites can create awkward moments, particularly with colleagues who commit the social felony of attempted hipness. Dare I say, "Whatup, homey?"

When it comes to the boss, there is a real dilemma. You're caught between a career-limiting rejection of virtual friendship or a career-limiting access to photos of yourself glassy-eyed at a party. "All these social relationships -- apples and oranges -- are getting crammed into one category of friends," says Tom Boellstorff, associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, who is writing a book on the virtual community Second Life.

Jared Sandberg explains why social-networking sites are not for interacting with coworkers.
After one senior marketing coordinator at a law firm was invited by one of the lawyers to be his friend, she felt compelled to accept the invitation, even though she had no intention of socializing with him outside the office. He remarked once after an office meeting that he noticed she had a boyfriend, as listed on her online profile.

"It was strange," she says. "I was like, 'Why are you on Facebook?' "

Once "friended" by a colleague, people feel compelled to employ privacy features -- which itself can be a snub -- or to sanitize their online profiles -- which is akin to hiding something under the bed. The same marketing coordinator removed college pictures of herself doing a keg stand -- a handstand on top of a beer keg for a direct mouth-to-tap connection.

Prospective employers also seem to have no compunction conducting searches on job applicants before they call them in for interviews. "We'll Google them and I know that we've done MySpace searches," says attorney Caroline Kert of prospective hires.

She's mostly looking for slams against a former employer or exposed proprietary information. She says she'd never hold against applicants something like, say, a photo of them wearing a fur bikini. Good thing. Ms. Kert, a regular at the Burning Man Festival, has pictures of herself sporting just that on MySpace.

J.D. Lloyd, a law student working at a firm, isn't taking any chances. At 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds, he removed a photo of himself in a Florida Marlins baseball jersey that was a mere "youth large." "It was tight," he says. "There may or may not have been midriff in some of those pictures."

It used to be that employees were told to keep their personal lives out of work. Now, some bosses beg for it. Data analyst Valerie Jewett, 23, accepted a boss as a friend even though she likes to keep her personal and professional lives separate.

He's a nice guy, she says, but his late-30s ungrooviness was evident when he wrote a message to her on the "wall" on her homepage. The message made her roll her eyes. "What a ko-wink-i-dink to find y'all on here! Yeehaw!!"

You ever wondered what animal you are?

Hogan Development Survey - The Scales...pdf

Top 5 Lies That Marketing Tells Sales

author: Geoffrey James

There are a lot of very talented people in marketing. However, the sad truth is that many of them are still trying to market like it’s still the 1980s. They spend big money while adding little value. Whenever I run across such groups or individuals (and plenty of them leave comments on this blog) I find that they tend to promulgate five dysfunctional lies. To be fair, the marketers who espouse these lies happen to believe they’re true. But they’re lies nonetheless.

• LIE #1: Branding is vital to your success. Marketing execs take everything that happens in a company (product design, development, call center, sales, manufacturing) couple it up with the stuff that marketing does (advertising, marcom, etc.) and call it “branding.” Then, because all those things are important, they convince the boss that “branding” is important and therefore marketing should get a bigger budget to oversee all the “branding” activities.
• LIE #2: We can train you to sell. Selling is like sex; if you’ve never done it, you have no idea how to do it well. Many marketing professionals have never sold so much as a glass of lemonade, so they have no idea what customers want and how they think. The training that marketing provides is almost always product features and functions, which is of very limited usefulness, because customers, frankly, don’t give a rat’s rear end about features and functions.
• LIE #3: Our market research is scientific. There are exceptions, but from what I’ve seen, a lot of what passes for market research inside most firms is simply Marketing figuring out a way to get somebody else to produce the smoke they want to breath. In any case, a great deal of B2B “market research” qualitative and anecdotal (e.g. focus groups) that lacks both validity and value.
• LIE #4: We can handle the media. In the 15 years I’ve been a freelance writer for major national publications, I have run across about 4 marketing managers who were capable of working well with the media. All you have to do is look at the trash that passes for press releases in most firms. And what’s really pitiful is when the PR managers think that THEY should be the source. Clueless.
• LIE #5: We are giving you good leads. CSO Insights recently conducted surveys of more than 2000 sales and marketing professionals. Get this: 85% of company marketers felt they were doing a good job generating quality sales leads. By contrast only 50% of the sales professionals in those same organization were satisfied with marketing’s efforts. The result of the disparity is fewer closed deals and less revenue. Ouch!

Anti-social behavior in girls predicts adolescent depression seven years later

by Joel Schwarz, University of Washington

Past behavior is generally considered to be a good predictor of future behavior, but new research indicates that may not be the case in the development of depression, particularly among adolescent girls.

University of Washington social scientists tracked first- and second-graders for seven years and found that anti-social behavior among girls and anxiety among both sexes predicted depression in early adolescence. Surprisingly, early signs of depression were not predictive of adolescent depression.

"Anti-social behavior has typically been viewed as a big problem among boys, so it tends to be ignored among girls. Boys with early anti-social behavior typically go on to show more anti-social behavior while girls may turn inward with symptoms, morphing into other mental health problems such as depression eating disorders, anxiety and suicidal behavior during adolescence ," said James Mazza, a UW professor of educational psychology and lead author of the new study. He is currently serving as the past president of the American Association of Suicidology.

"When all the risk factors were analyzed, anti-social behavior and anxiety were the most predictive of later depression. It just may be that they are more prevalent in the early elementary school years than depression." He noted that depression and anxiety share a number of symptoms.

Mazza said that early adolescence is when the first episode of depression typically occurs and that's when it has been noted that gender difference occur, with more girls than boys experiencing depressive symptoms. Children can be assessed at 6 and 7 years of age, but depression is not often recognized or diagnosed until the middle school years.

Children in this study were drawn from a larger project looking at the risks for health and behavior problems. That project was conducted by the university's Social Development Research Group, with which Mazza is affiliated. More than 800 children participated in the depression study. Eighty-one percent were white and 54 percent were boys.

Data were collected annually from the children and their parents and teachers when the children were in the first or second grade. The children filled out surveys that measured their levels of depression, anxiety and anti-social behavior, as well as other measures that were not investigated in this study. Parents and teachers filled out questionnaires about the children's anti-social behavior and social competency, which measured such things as the youngsters' abilities to understand other people's feeling, to make new friends and resolve conflicts. Teachers also rated each child's academic performance. In addition, parents filled out questionnaires concerning family and marital conflict, family stress and parental depression.

"One finding from this study that is a mind-grabber is that young children can identify themselves as being anxious and depressed," said Mazza. "When they had scores that were elevated we were a bit surprised because we thought they would say, 'My life is fun and I play a lot.' But they are able to understand and report feeling depressed or anxious, and tell us so. This suggests giving health surveys in early elementary school is a good idea and we should talk to kids in the first and second grades because they can give us valuable information."

The research was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and published in the online edition of The Journal of Early Adolescence. Co-authors of the study are Robert Abbott, Charles Fleming, Tracy Harachi, Jisuk Park, Kevin Haggerty and Richard Catalano of the UW's Social Development Research Group, and Rebecca Cortes, a research scientist in the UW psychology department.

Stop Googling and Start Networking

By Lou Adler

A piece of data worthy of note: some old friends just told us that their daughter - a very talented Gen Xer - has just joined a professional business network weeks after landing a new job. The only thing unusual about this was that she told her parents she was using this network to plant the seeds for her next job.

Some other data worthy of note: I just Googled for resumes using this search string "(inurl:resume OR resume) -your* -job*" and got 80 million hits, mostly resumes. I then added the term "GPA" into the same string, since only strong people put their GPAs on their resumes, and got 495 thousand resumes. Adding the term "eagle" (for Eagle Scout) brought this number down to 11.3 thousand. When I substituted "Tau Beta Pi" (the big engineering honorary society) for GPA and dropped the bird, I got 20,000 hits. When I narrowed this down to Zip codes using the range term "94000...95000" and added (computer or software) I got 730 resumes of Tau Beta Pi software engineers who live in Silicon Valley. (Here's the final search string if you want to try it yourself - (inurl:resume OR resume) -your* -job* "tau beta pi" 94000..95000 (computer OR software).)

Now if you're smart, you won't call all 730 of these talented people. Instead you'll call about 20 of them who seem to be well networked and recruit them. Then you'll get each one to give you three names of other great people they know who are open to explore better opportunities with your firm. These referrals will all call you back, since you're going to leave the name of the person who referred them to you. Networking like this is the secret of recruiting. Of course, the secret to the secret is getting the first group to return your call and give you three names each. Here are some ideas on how to pull off this part of the puzzle:

1. Become worth knowing. You must be a subject matter expert not a BSer. This means you must understand the real challenges and opportunities for the jobs you're representing. As part of this you must know your market, the competition, your hiring managers and the compensation structure for these jobs. When you call a Tau Beta Pi member, or any top person for that matter, they'll blow you away if you don't sound credible and knowledgeable. No one will give you the name of someone they know unless you're completely credible and someone worth knowing.

2. Get the person to return your call. You'll get 80-90% of your calls returned if you can mention the person who referred you vs. 15-25% using typical techniques. That's why getting referrals is the key to recruiting passive candidates, not Googling for resumes.

3. Recruit first, network second. Assume you're recruiting the person you're calling for a specific and important position. Then, when the person says they'd like to talk with you about the opportunity, make sure they give you their information before you tell them anything about the job. (If you don't know how to do this, you need to attend Recruiter Boot Camp Online or come to my next LIVE: Performance-based Hiring Tour 2007 in Los Angeles on August 15th.) People will only give you names of other people if you know how to ask insightful and probing questions.

4. Only recruit and network with top people. Using recognition terms in your search strings, like described above, separates the best from the 80 million resumes online. Your hiring manager clients only want to hire top people, and only top people know other top people they're willing to refer. So don't waste your time networking people who don't know other good people.

Getting names today is easy. Try the search strings above modified for your specific needs for proof. Just about anybody of importance can now be found using this technique, ZoomInfo or LinkedIn. The key to recruiting these people, though, is great networking and phone skills. It all starts by really understanding the career opportunities involved in the jobs you're trying to fill. That's why you must prepare performance profiles if you want to recruit passive candidates and you must become a great networker. That's the only way you'll be able to connect with top people who are planting seeds for their next position.

Will Your Candidates Still Respect You in the Morning?

by Allison Boyce



Improving the treatment of candidates


If you have read a newspaper, business journal, or online media outlet lately, you know we are in or on the brink of a serious candidate shortage.
The Beige Book, published by the 11th District of the Federal Reserve, said in December 2006 that, "worker shortages were reported by service, manufacturing, finance, and energy firms. A lack of labor is a capacity constraint for some firms and, in some areas, companies have resorted to using billboards in an attempt to attract workers. While the shortage extends to many types of skilled and semi-skilled workers, of particular note in this survey were reports of difficulty finding engineers, electricians, high-tech technicians, certified mechanics, and accountants."

Recruiters need to inform hiring managers and make sure that they own this fact. While I certainly don't want to return to the Y2K "hire anyone with a pulse mentality," I am convinced that some managers haven't gotten the memo on the shortage.

Here are some clues that they are stuck in 2002:
Waiting two weeks to respond to resumes.
Missing interview days/refusing to schedule interviews.
Missing telephone screens.
Taking three to four weeks to extend an offer.
Allowing one person's opinion to override six other decisions to hire.
Articles have repeatedly instructed us on how to train managers to get with the program and fix these bad behaviors. But have you considered how the candidate feels about this treatment?

Let's consider the poor candidate's experience with these behaviors. Imagine how you would feel submitting a resume and your salary history and getting blown off, lied to, ignored, or treated poorly. Recruiters must admit that this behavior is disrespectful and is ultimately planting widespread seeds of fear and loathing of your company.

It is a humbling and humiliating experience to go on vault.com or to get an email with feedback describing the interview process as "horrendous." Perhaps managers have the best intentions and are completely overbooked.

I have tips on dealing with busy hiring managers. Recruiters, once they have earned the respect of the manager, have ways of dealing with even the most sought-after, globe-trotting general manager if they are remotely on board with the plan.
Our job is to get managers to see candidates as people instead of resumes. When the candidate moves from just a "body to put in a chair" to a real, live person, they are treated respectfully. Once they are treated well, it isn't a huge step for that same candidate to become a fount of competitive intelligence, sales lead generator, employee referral machine, and the one who most wants to work with you in the future.

I believe that when you do what you say, you build trust; with trust comes respect; with respect comes helpfulness and bonhomie and traction and good will. What follows disrespect? At the least, disgust. Perhaps eventually even a libel suit.
When a hiring manager treats candidates respectfully, they are very likely to receive respect from them in return. As Kant has said, it is important to treat everyone "never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end."
Perhaps the manager believes that when they are polite, cordial, and respectful, they are telegraphing that "it is easy to get a job here," or "I want to hire you," or "we are buddies," or "I am powerful because I can treat you badly." Those attributes are overrated and a sure indicator of a poor manager.

I have heard all kinds of arguments about putting a candidate off balance or a team interrogating them to test them under pressure or trying to get them to be flustered as a means to an end. Why? When I have gone through ill-begotten interviews myself, I walked away thinking I would never work for those companies and I won't purchase their products. They are boneheads.

Cold, hard facts: we have fewer people to choose from, the population is more closely linked than ever before and is using social networking tools, online associations, and openly rating the interview/candidate experience at sites like vault.com. So while the traditionalist generation may think it is acceptable to be a jerk to a Gen Y candidate by being haughty, dismissive, or downright rude, the Gen Y person will have the last laugh. And the process will be the laughingstock of the employment market.

Here's what to do to get the manager to change her ways:

Write a Statement of Work. Collaborate with the hiring manager on what the process is going to be. Pull out a calendar and mark the milestones and interviews down on it. Set up times to review resumes once per week. Don't let them slack. Escalate it if they do, or if you are an agency, fire the client.

Manage the candidate's experience through expectations. Walk the candidate through the company's process. Prepare them for delays if they are unavoidable.
Prepare the hiring manager before the interview on what the expectations are on the candidate's part. Explain to them how crucial it is that the candidate walks away wanting the job and how to elicit that response during the interview, rather than delivering a canned sermon on why XYZ Company is the Best Place Ever. Give them questions instead of speeches. Teach them how to build rapport and still ask tough questions.

Explain to the manager that it is very likely that even if you don't like this particular person, if you treat them badly they could poison the well from his alma mater, his current employer, or in his city. That means that he may have to actually be polite to them even if he thinks that they are worthless.
Follow up with all candidates. Regardless of the outcome, let candidates know their status. You should even do this with the people who were a stretch or were low performers. This is the honorable and respectful thing to do.

Consider implementing a grading system on the candidate experience. Ask the candidate for a grade and some feedback. Show the manager the feedback from Vault. Ask the manager if he thinks he can afford to not look at the experience. (He can't.)
While you may be able to get by with this behavior at a top prestige firm like a McKinsey, even the McKinseys/Bains/Boston Consulting Groups of the world will eventually lose some candidates to a company with a winning formula.

Additionally, companies that embrace this philosophy may even get business (people and projects) in the process. I don't know of any company worldwide that can afford to look at candidates as disposable, cheaper by the dozen, or worthy of downright rudeness. That is a seed that should not be sown and will reap a bitter "reward."

Как да възстановите самочувствието след съкращения

by CC Holland

Вчера ми звънна стар приятел. Звучеше посърнал, имаше си и причина - компанията му е съкратила 75% от работната сила.

Точно той се е измъкнал от отронващата се скала, макар че сега той се разпорежда с половината IT отдел. Било доста потискащо да наблюдаваш колегите си как се изнасят.

Това ме подсеща - наскоро писах как да направеш подобни промени по елегантен начин, но как да възстановиш продуктивността след това...?


Hayes Group International предлага 5 стъпки, които могат да се направят за да може корабът да продължи да плава:

1. Планирай: Обмисли как намаляавнето на персонала ще бъде откомуникирано и как можеш да бъдеш от полза на оставащите. Работи по преразпределените задачи, като глесаш да си готов преди крайния срок. За тази цел си поставяш малко по строк краен срок от реалния.

2. Комуникирай: Обясни - първо на себе си - как компанията планира да се възстанови от удара, кой каква роля ще играе и какви промени със сигурност ще трябва да се направят.

3. Изслушвай емпатично: Повечето "оцелели" се предполага че ще започнат да се държат унило и виновно. Добрият мениджър трябва да може да успокоява екипа си и да предотвратява деморализация. Когато членовете на екипа споделят - слушай повече, по-малко говори. Отложи отговори и отсъждания докато не си сигурен, че си чул всичко. Естествено, важен е езикът на тялото - контакт с очи, кимай, покажи че не само чуваш, но и слушаш.

4. Поддържай доверие: Много "оцелели" ще се почувстват най-малкото раочаровани, някои предадени дори. За да поддържаш доверие, следвай тези 3 елемента: демонстрирай загриженост, подхождай коструктивно към проблемите и постигай видими резултати.

5. Развивай уменията на "оцелелите": С преразпределени отговорности, някои работещи имат нужда от обучения. Бъди готов за това и планирай обучения. Говори повече с членовете на екипа за да разбереш дали те наистина се нуждаят от това.

10 Things Candidates Hate; 10 Things They Love

by Allison Boyce




 

In an earlier article, I made a case for cultivating a more civil attitude during the interview process as actually a means of growing a long-term referral base and to stem negative reverberation from bad candidate experiences.
In this article, I want to highlight some of the actions that drive candidates crazy so we can try to avoid them at all costs.

The Top-10 Things Candidates Hate

10. Having no clue whom they are meeting with for an interview, how long they will interview for, and arriving somewhere on time in order to wait alone in a lobby, room, or restaurant (and feeling very conspicuous when they don't need a job!) while looking at their watch (every five seconds) for the late interviewer.

9. Taking a personal day off on one, two, or three occasions to interview at XYZ Company, only to fall into the Black Hole of No Feedback and never to be spoken to again. Add that their wife continues to harp on the fact that they missed Johnny's recital by taking personal days to go interview for a new job when "You have a perfectly acceptable one right now." This is when your picture goes up on the dart board in their rec room.

8. Learning after the fact that someone on the interview team thought that their resume showed too many positions when they actually worked for the same company for 10 years, but it changed names 10 times. This is the reality of never being able to address an objection, real or not, that comes up during the process that can be addressed.

7. Navigating a ridiculous, invasive online application that does not save after each field, crashes unexpectedly, is hard to complete thoroughly, and yet is viewed as a negative if it is incomplete.

6. Walking in to an interview with a person more junior than themselves to discover that said Bozo is reading the resume for the first time and is asking impossibly inane questions such as, "So, why do you need a job with our company?" when they were headhunted.

5. Feeling like they really are the right person for the job but somehow can't get an interview. Whether that is because of a poor resume, undeveloped communications skills, or not connecting at the right level.

4. Going through a more thorough interview process than a candidate for the Supreme Court. I am ashamed to admit this, but I have actually facilitated interviews that have lasted longer than one year (fortunately NOT at Deloitte.)

3. Enduring a background check that is conducted by hourly workers on a different continent who raise red flags on your background because your university verified your degree as a B.S. in Sociology and Anthropology instead of a B.S. in Women's Studies (which is no longer offered). Did I mention that the candidate has already resigned, given their start date, and had their goodbye party? Yes, no kidding.

2. Enduring a formal interview process, complete with a one-hour phone screen with HR, a call with a junior team member asking basic questions, and then getting the green light to attend a cattle call. All of this when the candidate has only agreed to being "open to talking" and is NOT looking for a job. In fact, they really only signed up to have a beer with a career-level counterpart on the inside.

1. The number-one pet peeve of all candidates is talking to misinformed, condescending, and unoriginal HR generalists or entry-level recruiters who answer all questions with, "Because that's the way we do it here and we cannot do it differently." Or who answer every question with "I don't know."
This is not only a reflection of the corporate cultures of both big and small companies, but is made worse by third-party recruiters who send one qualified person to 12 companies and tend to generalize about them all.
We are all guilty of a few spineless process moments that cause our candidates pain
and suffering. So what do they like? What wins every time with a candidate?




The Top-10 Things Candidates Love


10. Talking to someone who is knowledgeable about their background, their company, what their potential career path may be, and who can have an unbiased conversation about options that exist.

9. Entering an interview process that is transparent.

8. Getting a courtesy telephone call to the effect of, "What we have is no for now, not forever. We value your time and are sorry about the outcome."

7. Having someone help them go through the online application process or be on hand and be knowledgeable about the system.

6. Getting a list of information that is needed to complete the online application such as W2s, phone numbers, references, and yes, even documentation to present in lieu of a real, live company that has since closed (Enron).

5. Having an honest conversation about objections to their history and being allowed to counter.

4. Getting help on resigning and also being granted some flexibility on start dates if they have real plans to travel, have surgeries, or a need to keep a schedule of their former employer.

3. Being asked for feedback on the questions asked during the interview process or what they felt were high and low points of the interaction. Also, having the chance to weigh in on the overall candidate experience.

2. Having flexibility in the process and a chance for their questions to be answered versus being interrogated without any real dialogue about their concerns.

1. Being treated with respect at every level regardless of whether they are the right candidate.


I'm willing to hear arguments that being service-oriented in this process is going to reduce the quality of the process, the applicant pool, and the hiring manager's ability to be selective. That's a cop-out. It's harder to do this in a high-volume, low-level environment.

But your role can be automated when you refuse to be the human buffer between the process and your candidate. If the worst outcome you get is that every candidate that you interact with wants you to represent them as their Agent for Life, that is not a bad thing.

In the future, it is the person with the candidate connections who will win, not the person who created the horrendous process. I bet that organizations unwilling to change or analyze the process will not win the next generational wave of top talent.