I recently encountered a fellow jobseeker who was looking to get into a field she had no educational, work, or volunteer experience in. She did however, have a tremendous passion. This made it all the more difficult to break the news to her, as I was working on her resume, that finding work even remotely in her field, especially in an economy where people are downgrading their qualifications to get positions below their experience and skill level would be damn near impossible.
However, I am an optimist. I believe that if we feel passionately enough about something, we can accomplish anything, and thus follows some advise to others in a similar situation.
If you want to work in an industry or career path that you have no relation to in any conceivable way, do not lose hope. Every industry and career has related industries and careers that may be easier to get into. Take the law for example, if you wish to become a lawyer or paralegal, and have no office or legal experience, attempt to find work in the private security industry, or as a dispatcher. Volunteering is another excellent option - it may even result in a job. Start small and in time, your resume will begin to take shape in a more suitable way to your desired profession.
The main thing is to not lose hope, and actually make an effort to get that resume aimed in the right direction.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Addressing health and safety issues
The thing with some organizations, is that they let issues such as health and safety slip. They create all the appropriate paperwork to be legally compliant, they jump through all the hoops required to have a health and safety committee and employee representation; they may even move forward with monthly meetings.
But is any of it actually making employees safer? Unfortunately, endless meetings and paperwork tends to generate nothing but more meetings and more paperwork. To be fair, I am a big fan of paperwork. If it's not worth writing down, I tend to doubt the worth of doing it, but that's the point, that after (or before) recording something, something needs to be done! ACTION needs to be put forward to reduce accidents and lost time. What frustrates me most is that employers tend to see these actions as costs, and fear that if they create real dialogue they're opening themselves up for endless vapid complaints from employees and a loss of authority. After all, the boss decides what's dangerous and what isn't, right?
Of course, then something inevitably happens. An employee falls and breaks a hip. Or perhaps gets a disease caused by asbestus in the workplace. Or huge fine from the government for violating the law.
Businesses need to understand the most financially viable solution is to invest short-term and collect long-term, rather than cheap out on getting the right equipment and ensuring everyone is following procedure (free since you need someone there to administer and make the policies regardless) to avoid such major costs that could shut you down, if not permanently, at least enough to seriously harm your business prospects.
But is any of it actually making employees safer? Unfortunately, endless meetings and paperwork tends to generate nothing but more meetings and more paperwork. To be fair, I am a big fan of paperwork. If it's not worth writing down, I tend to doubt the worth of doing it, but that's the point, that after (or before) recording something, something needs to be done! ACTION needs to be put forward to reduce accidents and lost time. What frustrates me most is that employers tend to see these actions as costs, and fear that if they create real dialogue they're opening themselves up for endless vapid complaints from employees and a loss of authority. After all, the boss decides what's dangerous and what isn't, right?
Of course, then something inevitably happens. An employee falls and breaks a hip. Or perhaps gets a disease caused by asbestus in the workplace. Or huge fine from the government for violating the law.
Businesses need to understand the most financially viable solution is to invest short-term and collect long-term, rather than cheap out on getting the right equipment and ensuring everyone is following procedure (free since you need someone there to administer and make the policies regardless) to avoid such major costs that could shut you down, if not permanently, at least enough to seriously harm your business prospects.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The fad of EQ
I apologize for the hiatus, but I just didn't have any inspiration and did not want to fill this blog with drivel. Fortunately, the world of social science research has come to my aid, and as such, follows my rant.
It seems these days all people in the business world and certainly in HR can talk about is the prevalence and importance of EQ, and the development of this new aspect of intelligence in our employees and leaders. In fact, in an article published in the Harvard Business Review this month, a couple professors from a US university took to studying the brain of business managers while they are attempting to resolve complex hypothetical situations. They had assumed that the main aspects of the brain being used would be the ones that process information and higher level thinking, when in fact, the brain would go so far as to block off that part of the brain in their best performing subjects to allow more energy to go to the instinctual and emotional parts of the brain.
Amazing, no?
I tried to find the original study but a publication is not even posted on the university website. But I'd like to offer my two cents anyway. The thing is that at this day and age, no self respecting HR person can come out and say that EQ does not matter. It would be ludicrous, as there actually is quite a bit of research that supports that having EQ, especially in a management role, can increase morale and make your employees work harder for you. It improves your ability to communicate with employees as well.
That said, however. To say that in a strategic situation, EQ is MORE important than IQ, even with MRI results to back you up, are absurd. First of all, the study is not even peer reviewed, hell, it's not even posted! Secondly, what the article claims is that "when we examined the best strategic performers in our sample, we found significantly less neural activity in the prefrontal cortex than in the areas associated with “gut” responses, empathy, and emotional intelligence." However, no explanation is made for what constitutes a top performer. Not only would any HR person tell you that you can't rank employees without a benchmark or some previously outlined expectation, any scientist would tell you such parameters are vital to both making sense of the results and having validity with the scientific community.
Bottom line is that a good manager knows how to balance his or her IQ and EQ in a contextual, case by case basis. Rather than repressing their logic to best address "a hypothetical situation" (of which no details were given). Which is something I think the researchers backed up to saying by the end, but certainly not what they were spinning from the so-called results of the study.
It seems these days all people in the business world and certainly in HR can talk about is the prevalence and importance of EQ, and the development of this new aspect of intelligence in our employees and leaders. In fact, in an article published in the Harvard Business Review this month, a couple professors from a US university took to studying the brain of business managers while they are attempting to resolve complex hypothetical situations. They had assumed that the main aspects of the brain being used would be the ones that process information and higher level thinking, when in fact, the brain would go so far as to block off that part of the brain in their best performing subjects to allow more energy to go to the instinctual and emotional parts of the brain.
Amazing, no?
I tried to find the original study but a publication is not even posted on the university website. But I'd like to offer my two cents anyway. The thing is that at this day and age, no self respecting HR person can come out and say that EQ does not matter. It would be ludicrous, as there actually is quite a bit of research that supports that having EQ, especially in a management role, can increase morale and make your employees work harder for you. It improves your ability to communicate with employees as well.
That said, however. To say that in a strategic situation, EQ is MORE important than IQ, even with MRI results to back you up, are absurd. First of all, the study is not even peer reviewed, hell, it's not even posted! Secondly, what the article claims is that "when we examined the best strategic performers in our sample, we found significantly less neural activity in the prefrontal cortex than in the areas associated with “gut” responses, empathy, and emotional intelligence." However, no explanation is made for what constitutes a top performer. Not only would any HR person tell you that you can't rank employees without a benchmark or some previously outlined expectation, any scientist would tell you such parameters are vital to both making sense of the results and having validity with the scientific community.
Bottom line is that a good manager knows how to balance his or her IQ and EQ in a contextual, case by case basis. Rather than repressing their logic to best address "a hypothetical situation" (of which no details were given). Which is something I think the researchers backed up to saying by the end, but certainly not what they were spinning from the so-called results of the study.
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