Sustaining High Performance

How is top talent dealing with the current financial crisis onslaught? In a word -- badly.

A new study published this week by the Center for Work Life Policy details a sobering picture.

Loyalty and trust are at an all-time low:

the number of employees who feel loyal to their company has fallen 42% over the last year, while the number who trust their company is down 41%.

Top female talent is particularly skittish.

Eighty-four percent of women in this study are considering leaving - compared to 40% of men.

The voices in this study are powerful. A male investment banker (who has lost 80% of his net worth in the last year) tells of bad dreams and grinding his teeth so badly he recently cracked two molars. A woman trader talks about being "almost glad" of a recent diagnosis of breast cancer. In her words "it's only stage one and it sure puts the crazy stress around losing my job into perspective."

Source: http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/hewlett/2008/09/in_finance_embattled_top_perfo.html

Intrusive Questions

Someone just showed me a job advertisement that contains the following language from some over stuffed HR Manager...

"In the interest of time, your cover letter, resume, salary requirements, and current base salary & incentive compensation MUST be included for your candidacy to be advanced."

"In the interest of time"

This tell me that this HR Manager considers THEIR time to be of much more importance than YOUR time! Who would want to work with an outfit with an attitude like this?

"your cover letter, resume, salary requirements, and current base salary & incentive compensation MUST be included"

First, since this job was listed on Craigs List, are you absolutely SURE where this information is going?

Are you comfortable with just ANYONE having access to this information?

Why does ANYONE really need a cover letter in today's day and age? This sounds like a holdover 20th Century mentality. Again, not a good sign in a 21st Century global environment! But this HR Manager obviously doesn't realize this.

Why would anyone just want to handout "current base salary & incentive compensation" information over the Internet to a complete stranger without any indication that the firm is actually interested?

Or is it that the HR Manager is so clueless that they have to find out the salary range for jobs like this from the job candidates themselves?

"for your candidacy to be advanced"

Isn't that a nice turn of phrase? It implies to me that we're doing you a big favor just THINKING about you!

I really wonder if the senior executives at this outfit have any clue what their HR Manager is doing?

And the impression this creates on the general public.

It sometimes shocks my students to learn that unscrupulous and unethical companies use tactics just like this, not to actually offer a real job to someone, but to gather competitive intelligence about their competitors, who is working for them, who their clients are, what they are working on, what the company's plans are, what tools they use, and what they pay for various positions, from unsuspecting employees who only want to impress a potential new employer with their knowledge and are honestly considering a job change. Sometimes these tactics go one step further to actually interview the "job candidate', to entice them to spill their guts about their present employer. Little do they realize that they are being used... and they are, of course, promptly discarded.

Even if this particular job offering is real, this sounds like a place that I wouldn't want to associate with myself!

Don't You Just Love "Executives"?

Having watched many companies with bright prospects and more than ample resources crater under the burden of so-called "professional executives" and all the great advice they received from those hired high priced "corporate headhunters", nothing much surprises me these days.

Here is an interesting post about failures at Skype.

Key points to ponder...

First eBay installed a string of executives who came out of eBay into the company. Over time, dedicated Skype executives prior to the purchase left or were asked to leave.

Second, when the first wave didn't work, Skype hired more people, some with ties to eBay and others recruited by headhunters employed by eBay.

At each turn Skype has grown, but heck, a rolling boulder going down the hill picks up more snow too. Skype is growing by sheer inertia and problems like the ones reported in the Register are evidence of that.

They can't keep up with the issues.

This means Skype has cost eBay more than they paid...and likely isn't really paying back.

Do you think any of those executives or headhunters gave back any money when their advice didn't pan out?

Nah!!!

Capitalism at its finest!