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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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How long can you go without sending a text message?  Posting on your Facebook wall?  Playing a game on your smartphone?  Is it possible to take a break from your usual behavior to experience what it is like to live without technology tools?

“Chicago student takes 90-day technology break” is the headline of an article by Jonathan Bullington in the Chicago Tribune.  The journalist profiles Chicago student Jake Reilly who for 90 days, “cut himself off from cellphones and social media, a major life change for a guy in his 20s.”  Reilly even gave himself a title for his doing without technology:  The Amish Project.  His choice of a title reflects how he wanted time to lead a more traditional way of life.

Reilly realized that his use of “technology had taken over his life and the lives of his friends.”  He started his project by doing without his phone then cut ties to his usual modes of using technology which caused him to become “anxiety-ridden.”

Are you able to give up what for many is an online addiction?  How would you feel if you did go cold turkey for an hour, a day, a week? 

Reilly was quoted as saying it was “very scary” not to reach out to his friends via websites and to instead realize that it is just you and your thoughts.  He became more active and started to enjoy “face-to-face interaction more than he did posting on Facebook.”

After 90 days, Reilly resumed his use of electronic communications.  His project, however, made a statement that others can heed:  it is possible to cut back on texting, posting, and playing games on social media websites.

Users of the Internet have been ‘trained’ by corporations to take time to access and use social media websites so that they can be in constant contact with friends and family.  My “very scary” suggestion is to take time out from looking at a screen and, instead, take a look at the people in your life.  They are the ones to interact with at home, college, an event, the corner deli, etc.  And, while walking down the street, instead of looking down at a tiny screen, look around you to see and respect the other people who are part of your world.

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Today I wanted to write a short blog and was looking for some interesting information.  Based on a previous conversation with a CEO of the Facebook of sports, I put “LockerDome News” into my search engine.  Reading the press release dated today brought a big smile to my face.

“LockerDome Selected to Present at the Silicon Valley Bank Showcase” read the headline and the subhead was “Soaring St. Louis tech startup LockerDome continues to gain national attention.”  The copy started off “LockerDome, a social sports community, announced today that it has been selected as the only St. Louis-based company to present at the prestigious Silicon Valley Bank Showcase event on March 22, in Silicon Valley.”

Gabe Lozano, Co-Founder and CEO, and his growing number of colleagues have put an enormous amount of work into developing the social network for athletes.  It made me happy to see that Lozano is getting his and his team’s opportunity to find more support for their winning website.

In case you are interested, below is the remainder of the press release.  If you want to know more about Lozano and LockerDome you can go to www.lockerdome.com or do a search on LockerDome in the top of the column to the left to access previous posts on the company.

All best wishes to LockerDome on March 22!  I hope the team’s 7-minute presentation impresses the individuals who can take your company to a new level while gaining the respect and recognition for the opportunities you have provided for sports enthusiasts.

The Silicon Valley Bank Showcase, which began more than a decade ago, features early-stage startups in the software and services industry including consumer Internet, digital media, mobile, enterprise software, SaaS, infrastructure software, cloud computing, data management, and digital health companies.

LockerDome is one of only 25 companies across the country to be selected for the event, and will give of a 7-minute presentation to over 100 venture capitalists and angel investors.

“We are excited and proud that one of our portfolio companies has been selected to present at this highly-regarded event, and are confident that LockerDome will impress everyone there as the social network for athletes that is sweeping the nation,” remarked Judy Sindecuse, Managing Partner of Capital Innovators, an early-stage technology fund based in St. Louis.

“The Silicon Valley Bank Showcase is a great platform for LockerDome to gain national exposure to the investor community. We’re honored to be the only company from St. Louis that was selected to present,” commented LockerDome co-founder and CEO, Gabe Lozano.

In January, LockerDome announced that Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, a billion-dollar mobile payments device company, is one of its investors and a member of its Board of Directors. That news was right on the heels of LockerDome closing a $750K angel financing round.

LockerDome continues to build momentum. More than 550 of the top amateur sports programs, such as the Houston Dynamo Juniors, have launched their own LockerDome networks, which serve as their own private social network where their athletes, coaches, and parents can create profiles, upload media, and gain national exposure. LockerDome has doubled each of the last two quarters and is on pace to more than double again in Q1.

LockerDome is also quickly gaining traction with celebrity and brand networks, which integrate celebrity athletes’ sports identities and media brands side-by-side with amateur athletes, fans, and the rest of the LockerDome sports community. Since the beginning of January, already more than 50 such networks have been launched, such as with Chris Duncan, a former St. Louis Cardinals baseball player and current radio host for 101ESPN.

About LockerDome
LockerDome is a social networking site for sports. Just like Facebook is your personal persona and LinkedIn is your professional persona, LockerDome is your sports persona. LockerDome works with youth sports programs across the United States to launch private team and league networks, connecting their athletes and teams with other programs across the country. LockerDome allows you to join sports networks for the teams you currently play on and have played for in the past. In addition, you can follow professional athletes who are part of the LockerDome celebrity network. With a LockerDome ID, an athlete’s sports memories are accessible in one place, forever. Learn more about LockerDome at lockerdome.com.

About Capital Innovators
Capital Innovators provides tech startups with the seed funding, resources, and connections they need to get to the next level. The Capital Innovators 12-Week Accelerator Program provides $50,000 in seed funding, project-based mentorship from a seasoned pool of knowledgeable entrepreneurs, stellar perks, educational and social events, and the opportunity to pitch to angel investors and venture capital firms. Although hundreds of applications are received for the Accelerator Program each year, only five companies are accepted per class. Two classes are run each year – one in the fall, and one in the spring. Learn more about Capital Innovators at capitalinnovators.com.

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“If you want to leave here with a subject, everyone here repeat with me: Prioritize,” said Pastor Marvin Winans who delivered a stirring, powerful eulogy for Whitney Houston at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday, February 18, 2012. “Whitney Houston Eulogy: Pastor Marvin Winans Closes Funeral Processions” in International Business News US, offered excerpts from the Minister of Detroit’s Perfecting Church after he had spent over three hours hearing celebrities and well-known individuals deliver speeches and musical performances. 

When it was time for Winans to speak, he told his audience that, “I want to assure you that I won’t be that long, but I’ve been waitin’ on ya’ll all day.”  After the laughter in the church subsided, he went on to say that “I want us to recognize that our faith in god is not something that we attach to the end of our lives, but that we must prioritize,” said Winans. “You make your decision based on your faith. You walk according to what you believe. You can never say yes to God and have God make you a stranger.”

Of course I cried during the service at the loss of a memorable singer who went down some rocky paths that distracted her from being her best self.  But I was also moved by the word prioritize that Pastor Winans chose since our nation is also on a rocky path that doesn’t seem to be demonstrating its best self.

Scanning the headlines in The New York Times later on Saturday, I stopped to read this one, “Budget Woes Prompt Erosion of Public Jobs, With a Heavy Toll in Silicon Valley” (The New York Times, February 18, 2012).   My mouth dropped open and I thought, “What?  Silicon Valley is the home of billionaires and millionaires in the technology field.  How could they not be supporting the region’s public services?”

The city profiled in the article by Michael Cooper is San Jose, a robust and growing city of nearly one million located in the heart of Silicon Valley which is at the foot of San Francisco Bay.  What happened to it? Is it turning into another Detroit that may go into bankruptcy?  Cooper identifies a city full of challenges such as the one that the new Bascom Library and Community Center is “one of the four libraries the City of San Jose has built but cannot afford to open.”  He goes on to write that “The city’s Fire Department laid off 49 firefighters two years ago…the Police Department, which laid off 66 officers last summer…stopped responding to burglar alarms.”

What can we prioritize to turn this and other cities suffering similar circumstances around?  “The nation has lost 668,000 state and local government jobs since the recession hit—more than in any modern downturn, according to a new analysis of labor statistics by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government,” Cooper informs his readers.

Will Occupy Wall Street start an Occupy Silicon Valley protest in order to bring greater awareness to politicians and billionaires that a fifth of San Jose’s employees are being laid off and services reduced significantly?  Will they finally see that Silicon Valley is home to the 1% and that maybe a march on the Facebook campus will bring more global recognition of this?

“President Obama Courts Silicon Valley’s New Digital Aristocracy,” an article by Joel Kotkin in The Daily Beast, on February 15, 2012 that states the president’s presence with super rich techies “threatens the populist roots of the Democratic Party and perhaps the delicate social balance of our republic.”

Prioritize the nation’s needs, President Obama, and that need is for jobs, secure jobs in the public and private sectors, jobs that will let people know that they can have faith in the priorities you and other government officials set for our country.  God may not be making employees and those laid off in San Jose strangers; but President Obama and the Silicon Valley Digital Aristocracy are strangers to the nation’s real needs.

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“Opinion:  Facebook is Using You” by Lori Andrews (The New York Times, Sunday, February 5, 2012) should be required reading for everyone.  Andrews, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and author of I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did:  Social Networks and the Death of Privacy, describes how Facebook, Google, MySpace, and other social media use the data we input at their sites.

“Facebook makes money by selling ad space to companies that want to reach us,” Andrews writes.  However, that is not where your or my data stops.  “Material mined online has been used against people battling for child custody or defending themselves in criminal cases.  LexisNexis had a product called Accurint for Law Enforcement, which gives government agents information about what people do on social networks.”

During the undergraduate college classes I teach, I warn my students to not post inappropriate pictures or comments online since recruiters regularly search to find potential candidates on social media sites.  My students don’t really believe me because they are certain a recruiter can’t access their profiles.  There are ways, however, I caution individuals.  One of my students had a great interview with a human resources screener and even though she had given him her resume, he wanted to know how to find her LinkedIn profile.  Andrews found that “Employers sometimes decide whether to hire people based on their online profiles, with one study indicating that 70 percent of recruiters and human resource professionals in the United States have rejected candidates based on data found online.”

Each time I leave the Internet, I clean my PC of cookies—or as many as I can remove with the three programs I use.  The law professor suggests that “We need a do-not-track law, similar to the do-not-call one” and I totally agree.  It is my right to have my online privacy and not know who is searching my g-mail or showing me ads that I don’t want to see. 

It is time that the government step in and get a closer look on how social media is using us.

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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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“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 Impact of Technology on Workplace 2020” was the title of the final written assignment by students in my “Organizational Behavior” class that ended in late December.  After receiving Fortune Magazine’s January 16, 2012 edition, I’m not certain I will assign that same topic again since my students can find a lot of detailed information in one source.

“The Future Issue:  What’s next in technology, energy, banking, medicine, offices, education…” is a good overview of looking into a crystal ball of what 2022 holds for us.

For instance, the double pages on “Brave New Work:  The Office of Tomorrow” begin the narrative with this:  “Walk into a corporate office a few years from now, and you’ll be struck by how much it physically resembles the office of today.”  On the pages you see a typical layout of corporate offices with callouts to what are new ways of doing business—and ordering lunch—with advanced technology.  As for employee behavior, there will be a new kind of team building since “the challenges the world throws at them will change rapidly and unpredictably, team members will have to share certain psychological traits, especially flexibility, adaptability, and resilience.”

Colleen Leahey forecasts in “What—Me Retire?” that people will work into their golden years.  It’s a financial must for some people, a habit for others, and a community center for the rest.  Not one of my students mentioned what to do with the older worker but I know from the article that “The U.S. Labor of Statistics estimates that 13.2 million workers 65 and over will office hours in 2022, up from 7.3 million today.”  Make way, Millennials, for the Baby Boomers that are not going away soon!

When I look into my crystal ball as to what I’ll be doing in ten years, I see the same routines of writing, teaching, coaching, etc.  As an entrepreneur, I have the flexibility to work from home already and travel when going to a speaking engagement.  But instead of an in-person presentation will I be able to sit at my computer and deliver my talk through my PC?  Of course, privacy is a major, major issue of the future.

I suggest that you read the additional Fortune tellers so you, too, can see what just might be in store for you and how you can prepare for entering that space.

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When I see my students’ eyes and hands stuck to their smart phones in class, I often think, “Are you really that important that you can’t wait until the end of this session to check your e-mail to see if your manager has contacted you or you’re needed at work?”  Addiction to e-mail is a growing concern, one that is taking those affected away from their families, friends, and others in their lives—including their college classmates and instructors.

However, if you want to stay connected with your job after work, you don’t want to be part of the staff at Volkswagen, Europe’s largest automotive company. 

According to “Volkswagen Curbs Company E-Mail in Off Hours – NYTimes.com” by Reuters (December 23, 2011), Volkswagen labor representatives agreed with management that staff members “will receive e-mails via Blackberry from half an hour before they start work until half an hour after they finish.”  In other words, this level of personnel in the corporation will have no access when not at work.

If you are a board-level executive, don’t worry.   You will still be able to get your e-mails.

Why won’t staff get access to e-mails?  At first, I thought it was to keep the company information confidential.  The real reason, however, is a positive one:  to keep business separate from personal time.  According to the article, “Bitkom, a German technology organization, published a study this year showing that 88 percent of German workers are reachable for clients, colleagues and bosses by e-mail or mobile phone outside of working hours, compared with 73 percent two years ago.”

The basic reason for pulling the plug on e-mails was that Volkswagen was concerned that their employees were burning out.  In Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, “burnout is blamed for almost 10 million sick days a year.”  Burning out by checking e-mails when home is not a good return on the investment for an automotive or any company in Germany, Europe, or any country.

Thank you, Volkswagen!  I hope that this sets the stage for those in the U.S. to set the same standard of allowing staff to work and also have a life.

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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!