…the…survey found that 55 percent of hiring managers who have job openings for which they can’t find qualified candidates reported that they typically hire people who have held the same title as the open position. Comparatively, among hiring managers who don’t have an issue with filling open positions, 42 percent restrict their hiring based on previous job titles.

This would be more comical if it weren’t true.  It’s a bit like saying that people who only date good looking people are more disappointed by their pool of potential mates.  If you’ve chosen to look at only one superficial set of criteria and ignored the rest, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Ferguson’s article is basically a plea to hiring managers to think more broadly, but there is some backdoor career advice for job candidates: titles count.

While the practices of hiring managers may be frustrating, the survey points out that titles are a powerful career tool.  And while they are a currency of value in the hiring process, they are cheap as an employee retention tool.  To be more blunt, it’s often easier to ask for a title upgrade than for a raise.  Calculating the value of a title on a future resume might be one of the best career decisions you make.  Think about it the next time you negotiate a pay increase or talk about your aspirations during a review.

Yahoo has around 14,000 employees. This means that, by definition, they have lot of people to cover for people out on leave. When you have 50 people in the accounting department, having one or even two out on leave can still be manageable. When you have one person who does the accounting, payroll, and manages the office, you’ll have a much more difficult time covering if she’s out.

But Lucas also points out that the law is actually pretty clear on this.  Yahoo’s policy may seem lavish, but the law is pretty specific on this point:

Even the fabulous Yahoo policy, as stated in all the news reports, violates federal law, as the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires employers to offer 12 weeks of leave (unpaid or paid) to mothers and fathers.

The key point of difference is the paid or unpaid part of the statement.

For the most part, people understand that having a child involves some sacrifice, juggling, and compromise.  A workplace can help a lot by offering flexibility and long-term vision.  The arrival of a child is but one of the many ways that  force the live/work conversation.  But it’s healthy to have those conversations with employees and work with them to ensure the job gets done as well as the job of life.

Yahoo seems to have traded universal flexibility for targeted, lavish benefits.  This might be the right move for them.  Afterall, a company targeting very young recruits, may find this particular benefit a usefull highlight in the list of benefits.

But what about the broader conversation they’re having with employees?  Is there flexibility to juggle schedules for teen activities, sickness, elderly parents?  Targeted policies have a way of creating fairness for only so some.

Read the entire INC. article here:  Link

HubSpot is a great example of a company that defines their culture and shares that definition very publicly. There is a slideshare document that outlines this culture, doubles as the company handbook, and has generated 384,000 views in just one month.

Why define a culture?  Why publicize it?  In today’s world, culture is the next great commodity.  That’s a double-edged sword.  People want a great product.  Check.  They want great service.  Check.  They want good pricing.  Check.  They want to know and like who they are working with.  OK.  Check.  Kind of.  Wait.  Really?

Here’s today’s version of quality, service, and price: People want to work with people they like, trust, and hold something of value beyond the bottom line.

The reason that this is a double-edge sword is that culture is something that can easily be talked about, but not acted on.  You have to deliver a great product at a great price, but anyone can say they have great service.  Anyone can say that they have a great culture that is different.  Keep in mind, this is not a short mission statement tacked to the wall.  HubSpot posted 155 slides that go into some pretty great detail about the values that company holds dear.

It’s a great sales tool.  It’s a great HR tool.  It’s a great recruiting tool.

Can’t read all the slides now?  David Meerman Scott summarizes the slides and the culture at his blog where he cites personal experience with HubSpot:

1) Culture is to recruiting as product is to marketing.

2) Whether you like it or not, you’re going to have a culture. Why not make it one you love?

3) Solve For The Customer — not just their happiness, but also their success.

4) Power is now gained by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it.

5) “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

6) You shouldn’t penalize the many for the mistakes of the few.

7) Results should matter more than when or where they are produced.

Influence should be independent of hierarchy.

9) Great people want direction on where they’re going — not directions on how to get there.

10) “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”

11) We’d rather be failing frequently than never trying.

I believe that leaders should reward their best employees and deal with low performers on a case-by-case basis – instead of making wholesale policy changes. When organizations use broad draconian measures on account of a few low performers, that’s a sure sign that its leaders are trying to avoid conflict and equally please high performers and low performers at the same time. But that approach isn’t effective and rarely works. Not only do the low performers get to hang on for longer than they should, the top performers are punished. The result? Morale sinks.

It’s an interesting point because bold management decisions are often seen as, well, bold.  But Wakeman is basically saying that sometimes a bold decision is only a way to avoid conflict within an organization.  In other words, the bold move is actually the weak choice.

So what’s the answer?  It depends.  If you’re in a management position where you can shake things up, lose people who are low performers, and control absolutely who’s on your staff — then implementing a policy – any policy – should be on a case-by-case basis.  (By the way, controlling who’s on your staff also means confidence in your talent pool.  Do you have high performers waiting in the wings that you can afford?)

But if you’re in a position where you need to make high performers and low performers work well together, then a sweeping change would be the better choice.  Why?  Because management isn’t always about being able to control, absolutely, who’s on your team.  This approach isn’t without downsides.  You may lose top performers, but your overall productivity may rise.

The problem with this approach may come from always managing to the lowest common denominator.  If you can’t reward good performance or punish poor performance to at least some extent you’re not really managing.  And that’s the real problem to manage.

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.

Mayer was attacked for stifling innovation.  She was attacked for being a woman and making a decision that would negatively impact ‘her’ gender.  She was defended for being a woman and unfairly maligned for making a bold decision a man would not be criticized for.  Some saw it as the nail in the coffin for a company struggling to find its was in a Google dominated world.  Others saw it as the death knell for their own sweet gig working their PJs.

But what about the actual trend of working from home?  Or what about contract working?  While the discussion of working from home vs. the office is often subjective and emotional, it actually can be a very practical dollars and cents discussion.  Being under one roof implies that every member of a team must be employed full time.  That can dramatically increate overhead and make an organization less nimble.

Furthermore, by placing so much value in ‘face time’ you magnify the value of being an employee (as opposed to a contractor.)  In other words, in trying to solve a problem, or accomplish a task, your team may ask for a new hire as opposed to a budget to hire a freelancer.  That’s usually not a great financial choice since many of the costs (benefits, payroll taxes, etc.) are hidden from budgets but still impact the bottom line.

Should you allow people to work from home or should you follow the path of Mayer?  The best idea is to create a culture that asks people to measure their value against the goals of the company.  Are we able to achieve our long term goals with a policy of flexibility or not?

By focusing on goals, your decision is rooted firmly in what will do the company the most good.  This focus also helps employees decided for themselves if working from home is a good decision that will help the company achieve greatness.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has decreed there will be no more working from home for Yahoo staff

In this post from Lifehack.org, the author outlines basic advice taken from Penelope Trunk at Yahoo! Finance.  It’s great advice for people managing a team of 4 or a company of 400.  The interesting point that Trunk makes is that there is happiness actually in the work that people are given to do:

Delegate your best work.
A great way to make more time to help people grow is to delegate your own work. But don’t delegate your grunt work — who wants to do that? Delegate your best stuff and the person you give it to will feel really lucky to be getting more work to do. You get more time no matter which kind of work you delegate, so you might as well be popular.

This seems obvious, but it’s absolutely a point that many people miss.  All work is not created equal.  Some work is actually a reward for hard work.  This kind of reward system could have an amazing effect on a team, magnifying positive results.  Imagine someone tackling a job with the enthusiasm because they know their hard work is their reward.  This is the kind of good management advice that defies the typical carrot and stick approach.  People who really love their work and are talented want to use that talent on projects that will allow them to challenge their minds and grow as professionals.  That’s a carrot for both an employee and a manager.

Read more of the tips here:  http://www.lifehack.org/articles/management/how-to-grow-healthy-employees.html

Did you ever try to figure out why it is so hard to stop checking your smartphone, even when you are having dinner with a friend you haven’t seen in ages, celebrating your anniversary, watching a movie, or out on a first date? It’s really quite simple: None of those things are as interesting as the constant hum of your e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter account. Reality is over-rated, especially compared to cyberspace. Technology has not only eliminated the boundaries between work and life, but also improved both areas.

The article also praises workaholics as the builders of society citing the fact that nations with the highest GDP are inhabited by workaholics.  And, besides, work should not be just work or even a career; it should be a calling so consuming that it has to be out of balance.

Here’s the problem: we live on a planet with other people and those people need each other.  Your friends and family are an important support network that will wither away if ignored.  No matter how fulfilling work is, you need to take time to cultivate the other side of your life.

Chamorro-Premuzic isn’t completely off-base when he talks about finding work that is fulfilling enough to consider tipping the scales every now and again.  But the key is to find the confidence to turn off work now and again, and enjoy what you’re working for.

And from a management standpoint, encouraging employees to take a break may just be good business.  A recent Atlantic article cited a study that showed vacation increases productivity.

Thinking about tipping the scales of work and life?  Don’t tip to far.  It could actual make you less of the go-getter you thought you were.

1.)  Shared Work Space

Creating a place where people can work together in groups or just get away from their desks is one way to shake things up around the office.  These types of spaces can be where informal collaborations turn into the next innovation and chance encounters great working relationships.  A table and some chairs?  A bar? Cafe?  This is the kind of idea that scales up and down easily.

2.)  Private Space

With many offices, space to find some peace and quiet can be hard to come by.  Private space can be essential to meeting deadlines or thinking through a project.  Just make them truly Do Not Disturb and make sure a policy of reserving space is implemeted.

3.)  Clean Desk Policy

This may not be that popular, but a clean desk policy ensures that people stay organized and on top of projects.

4.)  Large Screens

Computer screens are relatively cheap.  Expanding out the field of vision onto one big screen or even two screen is economically feasible and money well spent.

5.)  Revamp the Phone System

A centralized phone system is a must for most companies, but decentralizing to cell phones may be a better call.  Employees can move more freely and begin to look at their desk as less of an anchor point for the day.

Related Article: Does Your Workplace Suck from Life Clever.

Have any of your own ideas about boosting productive?  We’d love to hear them!  Comment below:

Merlin Mann has been advocating something he call Inbox Zero for  a long time.  Basically the technique centers around  acting on emails quickly and efficiently.  In this post, he outlines ‘cheats’ for efficiently dealing with email.  Don’t get too excited; these aren’t special codes within Outlook that  wipe away those weeks of unanswered emails.   They’re really more like strategies for dealing with email quickly and efficiently.

Here’s a sneak peek:

The delete key

Seriously: is this an email you are ever going to respond to? If it’s more than a week or two old, either answer it or delete it now.

If this strikes you as unsatisfactory or feels “mean and icky,” then ask yourself why, precisely, you’re still staring at this message instead of responding to it. Under what conditions, in your mind, will this email magically become more “answerable?”

For more cheats visit: http://www.43folders.com/2006/03/13/email-cheats

(For a list of 25 other examples click here.)

So why do we ask these questions?  And how should a candidate respond?  Is there a correct answer?

Truthfully there is not a single category of curve ball question.  There are really several motivations for asking such questions and understanding these motivations can make or break the success of a job interview.  Here are several of the motivations that lead to this type of question:

1.)  Shake Things Up
Sometimes a curve ball is exactly that: something unexpected to shake the confidence of someone.  A reaction can be revealing and can show off the true nature of a candidates personality.    Best advice on how to respond: stay calm, smile, and do your best to answer the question.

2.)  Gain Insight
When you’re asking about sandwich personalities, you’re really asking about personality. It can be difficult to talk about yourself and adding in a metaphor, however silly, can be easier than talking about yourself.  Best advice on how to respond:  use humor, but answer in a way that reflects something truthful about yourself.

3.)  Evaluate Creative Thinking
Are penguins in sombreros really part of the job?  Probably not.  But a creative answer might be.  The ability to think creatively and quickly is often key to success on the job.  This is a way of digging deeper and seeing creativity in action rather than just talking about it.  Advice responding:  Take it seriously and don’t confuse clever with creative.

4.)  Sell, sell, sell
Sales is often a big part of a job even if it’s not in sales.  ”Sell me this pencil” is often a curve ball.  It forces someone to act in the moment and show off real skills or deficiencies in sales skills  or even the ability to speak passionately about a product.  Advice:  be passionate but don’t over do it.  You’re being asked to sell a pencil not, “the greatest, most efficient writing implement ever created.”

5.)  Leadership
Asking someone to give instruction on cooking an omelet  isn’t just for positions in the culinary arts.  This type of simple task can reveal what communication skills someone has and also what kind of leader they will be.  Advice: make eye contact, be firm, and be brief.

The biggest issue with this style of interview, is that it puts pressure on the candidate in the moment.  That may be the intention, but creativity on the job tends to be over the long haul and not in the moment.  Some creative and talented people are creative and talented only after giving serious thought to a problem.  It’s important for both the interviewer and the interviewed to realize that this is only part of the interview.