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Yesterday, I received a “Major Issues, Major Impact Questionnaire” from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), an organization breaking barriers for women and girls.  Answering the questionnaire is important since “AAUW research and education programs are used by federal, state, and local agencies and academics to address gender and gender gap issues positively.”

AAUW was the resource that the U.S. Congress used to pass the Lilly Ledbetter bill, the first bill signed by President Barack Obama.  According to an article “Obama Signs Equal-Pay Legislation” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg in The New York Times on January 29, 2009, “the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (is) a law named for an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men.”

The author goes on to write that “After a Supreme Court ruling against her, Congress approved the legislation that expands workers’ rights to sue in this kind of case, relaxing the statute of limitations.”  President Obama stated that, “It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness.”

Stolberg wrote that the president “was signing the bill not only in honor of Ms. Ledbetter — who stood behind him, shaking her head and clasping her hands in seeming disbelief — but in honor of his own grandmother, ‘who worked in a bank all her life, and even after she hit that glass ceiling, kept getting up again’ and for his daughters, ‘because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams.’

That was in 2009 and not much progress has been made on the gender pay gap since then.  The AAUW warned that, “Women have only gained 13 CENTS toward pay equity with men in the last 30 years.  At this rate, it will take another 60 years before we achieve pay equity.”

Women working full time earn 77 cents, on average, for every dollar earned by men.  AAUW also stated that, “just one year out of college, women working full time already earn less than male colleagues, even in the same field, and that the pay gap widens as time goes by.”

Here are examples of the impact of paycheck inequity:  if he makes $10,000, she makes $7,700.  If he makes $30,000, she makes $23,100.  If he makes $50,000, she makes $38,500.  If he makes $70,000, she makes $53,900.  If he makes $100,000, she makes $77,000.

AAUW and other organizations are doing their best to help women earn an equal paycheck.  Enacting bills from the U.S. Congress on equity is not all that can be done, however.  It takes women, especially young women, to do their research before accepting a salary offer.  Often, it is the first salary you get that determines how much you will be making as you climb the corporate ladder.  So be prepared to state that you want to receive a salary equal to the one that a male would — a small but important step to end the gender pay gap.

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Thinking of going to graduate school in New York City?  Below is a press release entitled “U.S. News & World Report Ranks Baruch College Among ‘2013 Best Graduate Schools’” issued by the school that may help you decide where you will attend.

NEW YORK, NY-March 13, 2012 –  Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business was rated a top MBA program with the most financial value at graduation according to a survey in U.S. News & World Report. Of the 437 business schools surveyed in 2011, the Zicklin School of Business’s MBA program is ranked #2 as the best place for students to earn the most in their first year after graduation relative to their debt load.

This is the second year the Zicklin School ranked in the Top 5 for this category. Class of 2011 MBA graduates at the Top 10 “MBA Schools with the Most Financial Value at Graduation” earn the highest annual salaries in their first jobs relative to the amount they owe in student debt. Among the ten schools, graduates earn, on average, four times as much in their first-year salaries than what they owe in loans. Graduates of the Zicklin School of Business have a 5.5 to 1 salary-to-debt ratio.

Baruch’s School of Public Affairs is ranked #46, up 11 spots from the 2008 ranking of #57. In addition, the SPA received high marks in the specialty area of Nonprofit Management debuting on the ranking at #21.

Each year, U.S. News and World Report ranks professional school programs in business, education, engineering, law, and medicine. These rankings are based on two types of data: expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research, and students. The data come from surveys of administrators at more than 1,200 programs and nearly 15,000 academics and professionals, conducted during the fall of 2011 and early 2012.”

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Did you read it?  “Senators Question Employer Requests for Facebook Passwords” by The Associated Press was published in The New York Times on Sunday, March 25, 2012. 

Why you should read this article now is that, “The Associated Press reported last week that some private and public agencies around the country were asking job seekers for their social media credentials. The practice has alarmed privacy advocates, but its legality remained murky.”

However, Facebook has put out a warning to employers that they “might be vulnerable to claims of discrimination if it did not hire that person.”

Senators Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have taken up the cause to ask “Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to investigate whether employers asking for Facebook passwords during job interviews are violating federal law.”  Thankfully, the senators are serious about the actions by potential employers and have requested investigations by the Justice Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The author of the article continues to state that, “Specifically, the senators want to know if the practice violates the Stored Communications Act or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Those two acts, respectively, prohibit intentional access to electronic information without authorization and intentional access to a computer without authorization to obtain information.”

After reading the article, send it on to friends and colleagues – and take a copy with you when you go for an interview, just in case.  You will read in the article that “Personal information such as gender, race, religion and age are often displayed on a Facebook profile — all details that are protected by federal employment law.”  If somehow someone at work does get access to your account, what will they think about the photographs of you at a party, the ‘bully’ type remarks you wrote about a friend, or other activities you wouldn’t want your parents to see let alone an employer or interviewer.

During the college classes I teach, I caution students to be conservative in their decisions to post revealing and very personal photographs on Facebook or other social media sites.  Posting negative comments about a workplace has caused many people to be fired, including police officers.

Going on an interview can be a very stressful experience.  Be prepared with the answer when an interviewer or employer asks you, “To complete our talk, please give me your password to Facebook.”  You can answer directly and also at the same time, bring out the article to inform the person across from you that you will not reveal your password.

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Out of 20,000 new hires, the failure rate was 46% according to Mark Murphy, founder and CEO of Leadership IQ.  His research on this topic revealed that the reason the failure rate was so high was because 89% of the new hires demonstrated a lack of coachability, poor emotional intelligence, mixed motivation (to do or to be paid?), and temperament.  In only 11% of new hires was a lack a technical skills a failure factor.

“Hiring for Attitude” was one in the series of Thought Leader Teleforums offered by Marshall Goldsmith and Patricia Wheeler at Leading News.  Guest speaker Murphy talked about what he learned writing his most recent book, Hiring for Attitude:  A Revolutionary Approach to Recruiting and Selecting People with Both Tremendous Skills and Superb Attitude (McGraw Hill, 2011).  He summarized his book by saying, “Hire for attitude, train for aptitude” because “companies want attitudes that perfectly match their unique culture.”

Hiring for attitude is applicable at all levels within an organization.  For instance, CEOs fail so often because they misread the organization’s culture, Murphy said.  In my previous post “The Price of Ignoring Workplace Culture”, I write about why Jack Griffin, Chairman and CEO of Time Inc., was forced out after less than six months of starting at the company.  The basic reason for his departure was because he didn’t closely read the organization’s culture but instead moved forward with his own agenda without consulting with his staff.

“Who do you want by your side?” is one of the questions an interviewer can ask employees at their company use to discover the attitude needed by a job candidate.  By soliciting input from the staff, it is possible to create a checklist of the needed attitudes because the interviewer is looking for the psychological characteristics of what the company needs on their team.  For instance, Murphy shared the example of ‘brown shorts.’  Southwest Airlines brought in pilots for interviews.  One of the first things the interviewers did was ask the pilots if they would change from their suits and instead put on brown shorts.  Not all the candidates were willing to change their attire.  And guess what?  It was those who did put on the brown shorts who continued to be interviewed.  The others were eliminated because they didn’t have a sense of humor, one of the required attributes of a pilot at the airline.

Murphy’s “Five Part Interview” was an eye-opener.  Here’s what the interviewer will ask the candidate.  1)  Think about your job before your current one, name a key person there, and spell out the person’s name.  2)  Tell me about that person; describe them.  3)  How could you have improved your working relationship with that person?  4)  What would that person say were your strengths?  5)  What would that person say about your weaknesses (like not being open to coaching?).  The purpose of this is to generate self-awareness in the candidate and personal reflections on whether he is a good fit for the new company culture.

Researching the corporate culture of the workplace to see if you will be a good fit is the key to having the right —and authentic attitude—when you apply.  Don’t try on brown shorts if that is not something you want to do at an interview.  Be yourself and you will find the culture that is a good fit for your career.

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Yesterday the topic of LinkedIn worked its way into a conversation I had with one of my relatives.  He said that he didn’t know anyone who got a job through LinkedIn.  The social media site would not still be in existence, I believe, if not one of the 135 million profiles in the website did not generate a job.   Besides, I knew of people who had gotten jobs through the site and who had hired people from the site.

Surprisingly, though, LinkedIn is not the main source for finding a job.  Jobvite, a Burlingame, California, recruiting website, commissioned a national survey Social Job Seekers Getting Ahead to find out where people throughout the country were finding their jobs.  The results in an article More get Jobs on Facebook than LinkedIn, Twitter written by Chromwell Schubarth (Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, November 16, 2011) showed that “more than 22 million Americans used social networks to find their most recent job opportunity—up 7.7 million from a survey done last year.”

In addition, “When asked which social network they used in their job search, 78 percent (18.4 million said they got a job by using Facebook, while 40 percent (10.2 million) cited LinkedIn and 42 percent (8 million) cited Twitter.”  Interesting!

Connections

Today I received an e-mail from LinkedIn stating that 42 of my 165 connections changed jobs in 2011—or at least started something new.  The message included images of the people in my network so that all I had to do once I signed-in to LinkedIn was to click on the image to find out what was new with my contacts.

Around this same time, I was reading “The Real Way to Build a Network,” a book excerpt in the February 6, 2012 issue of Fortune, and learned that the ‘Magic Number’ of connections is 150 because it is “the maximum number of people with whom most humans can have active relationships” according to Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist.  “Businesses and military groups tend to organize in groups that size as well.”  So what do I do?  Stop connecting with people?  Eliminate some connections since they are no longer active? 

Reading the excerpt from the book The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career by authors Reid Hoffman, a partner at Greylock and founder and executive chairman at LinkedIn, and Ben Casnocha, an award-winning entrepreneur and author, helped to clarify how to network with more than 150 connections.

Three Degrees of Networking

Although it is Silicon Valley and techie oriented, I found many interesting and thoughtful ways on how to network more effectively reading the book excerpt.  For instance, there are transactional networkers who want relationships with those who can do something for them.  And there are what the authors call relationship builders, people who first try to help others.

The writers state that “Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on at least two abilities.”  Those abilities are seeing the world from another person’s perspective and “being able to think about how you can collaborate with and help the other person rather than thinking about what you can get.” 

The most important people in a network are between five to 10 close allies—which are different than relationships.  Specifically, “An ally is someone you consult regularly for advice,….you proactively share and collaborate on opportunities together,….you talk up an ally,.…you defend him and stand up for his reputation,….and he does the same for you.”

Instead of six degrees of separation, Hoffman and Casnocha suggest that, “When it comes to meeting people who can help you professionally, three degrees of separation is what matters.  That’s how trust is preserved.”  And the best way to network is working with the people you already know.  There is a lot of common sense here such as “Anytime you want to meet a new person in your extended network, you should ask for an introduction.” 

The article on “The Real Way to Build a Network” is definitely worth reading.  Just be certain to include “Reid’s Rules,” an assessment of how you, too, can create a wide and (selectively) deep network.

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“LockerDome:  The Facebook of Team Sports” is making strides to become the go-to site for athletes, club or high school sports programs and a growing number of recruiters.  The company started with offering to “launch a sleek, customizable website” in 60 seconds for a club or high school sports program, one that could become a sports network where athletes could “create profiles, upload media, and gain national exposure.”

“LockerDome’s now ready for the big leagues. Or so it hopes,” writes Lydia Dishman in “Passion Play: LockerDome Wants To Win By Building A Better Facebook For Athletes” that appeared online on January 5, 2012 at Fast Company.  “The bet we made is that people are more passionate about sports than anything else,” said Gabe Lozano, Co-Founder/CEO of LockerDome.

Dishman writes that, “With revamped back-end architecture and a growing network of members, youth programs, and professional athletes’ pages, LockerDome’s attracted a $750,000 round of angel investing led by Jim McKelvey, a cofounder of Square, and Brian Matthews of Capital Innovators.”  She goes on to quote Lozano, “‘There’s the one company that you can [invest in] and sell for $100 million and then there’s the one company that will bring in ‘Monopoly money’ in the billions.’ Matthews had a hunch that LockerDome could be the latter.”

My hope is also for Gabe and his team to develop the best site possible.  He is not just a good tech guy, he’s a good leader, one who knows how to build and sustain a business while helping others succeed as well.  He’s someone who loves sports and is earnest in his commitment to the athletes who play them.

On Christmas Eve, I received an invitation to be one of Gabe’s sports connections on LockerDome’s ‘Facebook.’  That was a surprise but I accepted although the only sport I play is Pilates!

On January 20, Gabe included me on the following e-mail message about an athlete who was recently recruited to join the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team:

I wanted to pass along a cool video that St. Louis Cardinal, Erik Komatsu, posted today on LockerDome following his hitting session with Mark McGwire: http://erikkomatsu.lockerdome.com/media/56572

This is awesome content and exactly how we envision LockerDome being used.  Whether you’re a 10 year-old hitting your first home run or a MLB hopeful hitting with a legend, your sports content goes on LD.

Komatsu is also a talented rapper.  I exchanged private messages with him on LD and he wants to write an LD theme song!  You can listen to some of his music here: http://erikkomatsu.lockerdome.com

Cheers,
Gabe

All the best, Gabe!  Hope LockerDome makes it to the big leagues soon!

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Today while reflecting on strong women who have persevered under dire circumstances, I remembered a woman who was the keynote speaker at the Women in Business: Pearls of Wisdom 2010 Conference at Baruch College—but I forgot her name.  Searching my blog for my post on the event—I was the moderator for the panel discussion—I found the name I wanted:  Diane Garnick. 

“About” on her Facebook page describes Garnick as the “Princess of Perseverance,” a good description based on her difficult past that included having her first child at age 15 and then finishing grades 9-12 at high school in two years.  She found work in a bank but could not be promoted because she did not have a degree.  Leaving the bank, she started college at Suffolk Community College, then went on to earn her a degree from Hofstra University then an M.B.A. at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.  Her work at Wall Street companies such as Merrill Lynch & Co. earned respect for her intelligence and ability to manage the business.

When looking for more information on Garnick, I found “Diane Garnick Seeks Lift for Wall Street Women With New Firm,” an article written by Jeff Kearns and Margaret Collins published in Bloomberg Businessweek on January, 20, 2012.  I was very impressed by learning that the tenacious investment strategist had opened an asset management firm, a firm that Garnick hopes will help to balance the much needed gender makeup of Wall Street jobs.

The authors state that Garnick opened Clear Alternatives LLC with three other women and hopes to grow the company to 12 by the end of 2012—the same time she set a goal to have raised at least $500 million in assets under management.

“One of the biggest challenges is for women to find an organization that’s willing to accept them back after they leave the work force to raise children without taking a cut in compensation and responsibility….Our objective is to solve that problem,” Garnick, the active mother of two children, told the authors in a phone interview.

Garnick and Clear Alternatives will serve as a catalyst to hire and inspire women graduates from the best business schools to earn their way up the ladder to senior management roles in financial services.  My hopes are with her!

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“Lookin’ for Hires in All the New Places,” an article by E.B. Boyd in the November 2011 sample issue of Fast Company caught my attention when I was flipping through the pages.  The article describes how instead of seeking and hiring college graduates or Ph.D.s, the option is to hire techies who have been self-taught.

“Silicon Valley companies have notoriously strict hiring standards for engineers.  They want grads from the country’s top computer-science programs like Stanford’s and MIT’s or people with sparkling resumes and deep experience,” writes Boyd.  However, start-up and small technology companies are also interviewing and hiring individuals who have not graduated from college (maybe not even high school).  Instead, these candidates for a position are found to be qualified because they have spent time teaching themselves how to code.

The article contained an interesting insight from Roy Bahat, the President of IGN Entertainment who is very open to hiring the self-taught employee.  Bahat asks:  is software a science or should it be seen as a craft or an art—implying that someone would use their natural talents and experiential learning.  Not everyone is a craftsman or an artist.  But those who are given the chance to learn on their own in order to meet the requirements of coding at a technology company are being taken seriously in part because interviewers realize that they are passionate and committed to doing work on a par with colleagues who have initials after their names.

As an educator, I don’t think that everyone needs to or should attend college.  There is evidence that you don’t really need to go to college to be successful in your field.  For example, in a sidebar in Boyd’s article there are a dozen images of very successful people who have dropped out of college or high school and gone on to stellar careers.  Some of the people profiled include Steve Jobs who dropped out of Reed College when he was 18 in 1972, Bill Gates who dropped out of Harvard University when he was 19 in 1975, and Lady Gaga who dropped out of New York University when she was 19 in 2005.  Walt Disney didn’t make it to college; he dropped out of high school when he was 16 in 1918.

As I mentioned in my previous post “The Learning Organization,” I was a guest speaker for second year graduate students at Columbia University’s School of Social Work on Wednesday.  It was a wonderful experience for me and the feedback I’ve gotten from students and the instructor tell me that sharing my consulting experience and tips on organizational development was well received.

When the instructor and I were getting ready to go out into the cold air, she thanked me again and I said, “You know, I have never taken a management class.”  The irony is just that I’m a trusted adviser and coach, I teach in the Management Department at the Zicklin School of Business.

When I was a temporary secretary at Lazard Frères & Co. in the early 1990s, I went to an open house at the Stern School of Business at New York University to see if an M.B.A. was for me.  After attending and learning the cost for a part-time program, I decided that working at Lazard was the business school I could afford.  After I left, assignments and consulting work at other businesses including Merrill Lynch & Co. and Allianz Dresdner Asset Management, non-profits, etc. taught me more than a classroom could have done.

Don’t overlook opportunities to succeed as a technology engineer even if you don’t have a college degree.  There are companies out there looking for your self-taught skills.

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The start of 2012 brought good news from three friends I’ll call John, Joan, and Janice.  John secured a full-time job with benefits at a major corporation.  Joan is now doing office work at a small business.  And Janice is starting a position as a consultant to an online store.

Networking is one of the over twenty items on my Career Development Checklist.  When teaching my career classes, I stress the need to set up informational interviews, attend meetings of professional organizations, go to events in your chosen field, and utilize social media.  There are various ways to approach networking—and avoiding getting out and refreshing relationships with former colleagues or reaching out to form new relationships is not an option.  As I know from personal experience and that of my colleagues, people stand ready to help those who are looking for work.

Below are three examples of how networking can pay off if you have perseverance, take advantage of an opportunity, and risk a new adventure.

His perseverance led John to earn a full-time job at a major corporation.  John has many skills and one of them is the ability to speak in front of an audience.  One day he found himself speaking for a corporate audience that included the CEO—who was impressed at John’s presentation.  John didn’t get a job right after that, but for the next months he kept in touch with the right people and came up with a job.  Although the position was not at the level he had previously, it is one that has potential.

An opportunity created itself when Joan was with a group of her long-time friends in a restaurant.  Joan had been looking for a full-time job in her field for almost a year.  However, recently when she was with a few friends, she said that she was looking for work.  A friend responded with an offer for her to do office work for his small business that was just a short-distance from where she lived.  It wasn’t her dream job but it was a job that could sustain her until there was an opening in her career field.

There is a risk for Janice to take a consulting job for an online seller of products while working full-time for a job that is not in her field but is one with very good benefits.  The anticipation of being her own boss is attractive to Janice; she’s been interested in small businesses for a long time and has been a user of the product so she knows it is very good.  However, selling online is a risk since it is not a job with a guarantee.  It takes ongoing marketing and sales activities to attract and keep buyers.  The reward for Janice, however, is to get experience as an entrepreneur so that she can decide which form of work is the best for her:  office or self-employed.

As you have read, networking is a worthwhile activity that can yield positive results no matter the process or the result.  Reaching out to let people know what you do, how you do it, and what you seek is a good way to start 2012!

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“Writing to Be Heard” was posted on July 16, 2007, the first time I used my blog.  After writing hundreds of posts since then—especially this year—I decided to share my favorite posts of 2011 with you.

The posts below all have a story behind them, a reason to share the information, and a desire to help you on your career journey.  The posts could have been written to address an issue that came up during a coaching or consulting meeting, a topic that was discussed in a management class I teach at the Zicklin School of Business, an opportunity to expand horizons, etc.  The focus of each one is categorized by one or more of the tiles above the post which include Career, Coaching, College, Culture, Economy, Health, Leadership, Life Business, Management, Technology.

Below is a month-by-month list of posts that I hope you will find relevant, inspiring, and even fun.

January 17:  Are You Afraid of Feedback?  The topic emerged from two different threads.  The first was to offer guidance to decision-makers who were working with a very resistant executive.  The second was the loan of an academic colleague’s DVD on feedback.

February 21:  The Price of Ignoring Corporate Culture  As I told my students in an “Organizational Behavior” class, teaching corporate culture is my favorite unit to teach.  It is because of the environment executives create and how it impacts employee’s behavior.  In this particular case, the executive did not take into account his behavior in an established culture.

March 10:  Women’s Month 2011: Shake the World  To acknowledge the progress women make in a range of fields, I wrote about their accomplishments including that of Justine Siegal who had fulfilled her dream of throwing batting practice for the Cleveland Indians in spring training.

April 4:  Lasting Impressions  I am impressed by the number of people who even when we have not seen or spoken with one another for months or years, still remember me and the work I do.  The need to make a good first—and subsequent—impact on everyone you come in touch with is an important part of career development.

May 27:  Shakespeare in a Management Classroom  In April 2010, I attended a workshop on teaching Shakespeare in the workplace.  To my delight and my students’ reluctance, I developed a class session on emotional intelligence by having students get on a stage with a partner and recite excerpts from scenes in Romeo & Juliet and Hamlet, their favorite because they get to yell!

June 17:  Ten Guideposts on Your Reinvention Highway  Exploring a new career can be stressful and tiring.  Since I have reinvented myself a few times—I like to call it evolution—I share ideas on how to practice active patience to realize a new career.

July 7:  Holistic Professional Resume  In addition to teaching a business course, I also teach a program called “SuperCharge Your Career” at Zicklin.  What I don’t see on many resumes is Activities or another heading that can fill out the profile of a candidate and give an interviewer a sense of their lives outside the company.

August 30:  Career as a Farmer:  Sasha J. Farkas  Not everyone wants to work in an office in New York or any urban environment for that matter.  USA Today’s headline on December 26, 2011, “More Young People See Farming Opportunities,” confirmed that those in their 20’s and 30’s who have been downsized or unable to get a job, are seeking ways to survive on a farm.

September 13:  LockerDome:  The Facebook of Team Sports  Gabe Lozano, Co-Founder and CEO of a website for young athletes, read my post Women’s Month 2011: Shake the World and left a comment.  That comment led to a conversation, two interviews—his and Justine Siegal’s—and my own profile on LockerDome’s social media site.

October 29:  Disability:  A Second Career for L.I.R.R. Workers  Last year, I wrote about the ethical behavior of Long Island Railroad workers who claimed disability when they were obviously fine since they played golf sometimes daily.  Recently, I read that the cost of disbursing those on disability can be close to $1 billion.

November 12:  Walking Meetings  One of the many takeaways I had from reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson was learning the pleasures of a walking meeting.  A friend gave me that opportunity and I’m very grateful for it.

December 24:  Dear Santa:  My Wish List  It had been ages since I wrote a “Dear Santa” letter so I put tongue in cheek and infused my humor into the serious requests I made for the greater good—and not just the sweater and earrings I hoped Santa would bring!

Thank you for your time to browse and read my posts.  Looking forward to writing more in 2012!

Very best wishes for a HAPPY NEW YEAR!