July 2011 Archives

It can be easy to fall into the trap of spending more and more attention on those who are not performing in your organization. It's human nature to want to bring the best out in all of your people, but sometimes you will encounter people who are so lost or so unreliable that the only choice may be for them to self-select their way out of your company.

One of the challenges of my company has been to manage a virtual team of interns who have done a great job of working on projects remotely. At times, I too have had non-performers who have turned in little work or turned in a less than quality product/service; the key has been to give more attention to them at the beginning and if they don't perform to rely on the higher performers and give them more recognition.

It has always been challenging for me to let go of people because I want to bring out the best in everyone who crosses my path in business. However, it makes it very easy to let someone go from your business when they disappear or find their own route to departing on their own; I have found taking this approach has always prevented me from having to deal with a potential unemployment case or a situation where I have to fire someone on my own.

With a new year of college about to start, what is your mind on? Probably decorating your room, buying your books, Facebook messaging your new roommates and getting as much time with your friends from home as you can. These are the same things my mind is on too, but what should our minds be on? I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but we should be thinking about what we're going to be doing next summer.

It seems so far away, but there are so few jobs and internships out there as it is that if we wait until we get home to look there will be nothing left. In a perfect world we would all have that paid internship in our dream job for the summer. I think we all know though that those paid internships are quickly disappearing.

For those lucky college students who happen to live in Los Angeles or New York City it still might be possible to find one, but those of us who don't live in a major city the search can seem hopeless. There is a way to get around this though and boost up that resume no matter where in the country you are and all it takes is doing what we already do best: use a computer.

This summer I knew I had to make money, but after giving up the search for that paid internship I settled for a regular job in my hometown. Sound like a waste of a summer? Not at all. With the help of trusty Google, I was able to in a few hours find multiple options for virtual internships I could do from my home computer.

There are tons of companies out there looking for a bit of extra help from college students looking to learn something too. It might not be paid, but showing that you tried to do something in your intended field, and that you can handle 2 jobs at once, is going to make a resume stand out down the road.

Any virtual internship is going to be really beneficial, but mine has been even better than I could imagine because I am interning with a Professor who walks me through things and is teaching me, while also letting me explore a bit on my own. Whoever you intern with though, it will make you look great and show you are one step ahead of the crowd.

Check out the virtual internships with Braathe Enterprises, where I've had the opportunity to work this summer.

After driving around visiting family and clients this week and putting about 700 miles of driving on my car in just a few days, I witnessed a troubling epidemic on the roads.

Apparently, we have an issue with drivers who suffer from injuries to their left hand that prevent them from using turn signals appropriately. Maybe we need to start a charity to assist these people so that they can use blinkers without the use of their left hand, or educate them on the ability to use them in the event they can use their left hand while driving.

At the workplace, there may be "signals" that we neglect to use like telling people we are leaving for the day, logging off a computer at the end of the night, punching a time clock appropriately and so on.

Learn to use signals properly, in the car and at work!

July is here and for me that usually means it is peak season for baseball, concerts, and idiots. Nothing has ticked me off more recently than the propensity for people who are "settled in" to their seats to not move when people are arriving or trying to get by.

Have you been the victim of the "leg twisting" lazy person who won't stand up for two seconds so you can get by? It takes them more time to twist and contort than it would to stand up and let you by.

It reminds me of last summer when two people were at a movie theater and had a seat on either side of them open. The theater security asked them to slide down one seat so two people could sit together, and they replied "sorry, we are already settled". Give me a break!

How does this relate to HR? Well, it's kind of a stretch, but I think many times there are processes at work that would be so much simpler if we just did them instead of made them more difficult for people. Returning phone calls, emails, and the like often are avoided because of not wanting to give off the impression that we are always reachable. Don't be so hard and fast in your rules of communication; I always like to answer the phone when its someone I don't recognize, because inevitably it ends up being a new client.

What annoying things happen at your work that are like the aisle "settlers"? Share with me privately at robert@galaconcierge.com

I was down at Citi Field last night for a hot night of baseball. Getting there early after my last appointment, I was pretty amazed that there were no vendors outside the stadium (even as late at 90 minutes before the game started). The only way to get a drink was to go over to the bar on the far side of the stadium.

Perhaps there are zoning laws I am unaware of, but to me this stinks of poor HR and operations management. By an eyeball count, there had to be at least 500-1000 fans outside the stadium about 2 hours before game time. Even if the Citi Field crew hired two staff people to run carts on each side of the stadium to come in at 6pm instead of game time, they could have sold hundreds of water bottles and hot dogs before people went in the door.

Do staffing decisions like this affect your bottom line? What can you do to stay open a few minutes later or start a few minutes earlier to get some sales that you would have missed?

I can recall many instances where even staffing one person 15 minutes early or 15 minutes late helped capture sales we never would have if we were so strict with our staffing.

So my message to the Mets and Citi Field; put out a water cart before the game, please!

At one of the restaurants I managed, we had issues with high amounts of food waste. Every night, we seemed to throw out quite a bit of food at the end of the shift, and also during the day when production was too high.

To combat the food waste on the night shift, I'd offer the staff the option to replace our brief meeting at the end of the night with a "brief eating" if all that was left over was enough food to feed the staff. In addition, we had to track spoilage all day during the day shift, and if we met the spoilage limit goals for the day, the people who worked during the day shift were rewarded with food on their next shift.

Within a couple days of instituting this policy, it worked! We threw away far less food, and the staff knew to balance wait times with production to ensure quality without waste.

Many students will start in a specialized program and realize it is not for them. It shouldn't be a hard thing to change your major considering almost everyone does it, but now it might require you to completely transfer schools. I'm going through it right now and it's not easy or cheap.

Luckily I'm keeping pretty close to my original major so classes will transfer, but for students who want to completely change it is probably out of the question unless they can afford to basically start over college.

So how do we beat the system? If colleges aren't going to change, it looks like we're going to have to get smarter. The rule we should all start following is that we absolutely need to be sure about our major before we start college or at the latest 1 year in. This sounds really intimidating to have our entire lives planned out by the time we are 18, but if we stop relying on just our high school classes to tell us what we are supposed to be majoring in it is possible.

There are other things that we can go out and do that will help us figure out what we really are passionate about. I won't bore you with the hundreds of ideas I have for what we can do, but how about just the top 3...

1. Don't keep the same summer job every year.

Most students will start working the summer after their sophomore year of high school which gives us 3 summers to try out different jobs before college. You may not want to give up the job security of staying at one place, but you could be saving so much money down the road. You might also not think that switching between retail stores or summer camps will help, but you might only need one small experience to help you realize your passion and the more different places you put yourself in, the better chance you will find that.

2. Travel, travel, travel.

Trust me I know how expensive it is, but if you get the chance do it. Traveling gives you experiences you could never have at home and you never know when you might come across some inspiration.

3. Take advantage of the opportunities companies offer for students. This is the last one I want to mention and then one I can really speak to considering I just did it. I knew I wanted to major in something creative and artsy, but wasn't sure exactly what. My mom saw that Pixar was offering a class in New York City and thought that might help me figure out if Animation is what I want to do. So I signed up, spent 2 days being taught by Animators, and will now be going to school for that.

Not every situation will go as perfectly as that I'm sure, but other companies offer things like this that students like us can really benefit from and can help us figure things out.
Other companies offer classes like the one I took from Pixar or offer internship programs or camps.

Disney is known for programs like this as well as a bunch of colleges like Carnegie Mellon that offer summer programs. Explore what it is out there and take advantage of anything you can to help make your decisions easier.

Nobody is going to help us be prepared and get a job but ourselves so we have to take control of our own futures. Just remember that while we might be making really serious decisions and working more than we like, it will always be fun if you love what you're doing.

I've enjoyed working with a few bosses who bring up the term "pissing contest" when people fight over silly things at work.

Workplace crisis can develop when too many "pissing contests" take place and when trust is at a low. It's up to leaders to not focus so much energy on the "pissing" and more on developing better ways of recognizing and rewarding hard work and effort.

The oneupmanship that can occur at work often happens because not enough attention is given to the people doing the work. It's not solved by micromanaging; instead, the good old MBWA (managing by walking around) to just make your presence felt on a regular (but non-predictable) frequency can make all of the difference.

One of my favorite tricks was to walk out for a few minutes onto a sales floor, spend about 15 minutes out there interacting with each staff member, and then heading to the back. Then, within about 5 minutes of going to the back, I'd come back out and just observe.

Think about ways you can be better at stopping the pissing contests that can happen at work. I'm looking forward to hearing some of your comments (which I will post next week).

robert@galaconcierge.com

A lot of my friends are still majoring in something they hate. Why? Because colleges aren't helping with this problem at all. I figured this out just by talking to my parents. When they were in school, colleges were pretty much the same. Every school would have each student taking the same classes for about the first 2 years and they would have to take every basic subject. This was also the time when they could take electives in a few different subjects to try things out and figure out what they liked. Then by junior year they were ready to make a decision about a major and concentrate on that.

When all the schools had the same basic majors, you could choose a school based on location or size and not have to worry about a specific program. We all know colleges are not like this anymore. Now if you want to do engineering you go to MIT and if you want to do art you go to RISD and so on.

The benefit of this is that if each college doesn't have to have every major out there, there can be a wider range of majors offered. This is great, but I think there are a lot of problems caused by this. The first is that programs like this want you to start on your major courses freshman year and take more of them throughout the 4 years which means that some basic courses have to be cut out. Some students might think this is great that they can avoid ever having to take a Math or English class ever again, but when we are only knowledgeable in our one specialized area and don't know even the basics of other areas, we are not very well-rounded people.

A second problem is that at some of these schools, the entire student body is very similar. It is nice to be surrounded by some people that are in your specialized area, but if the Art students aren't interacting with the Science students we don't learn how to communicate with different types of people. These two problems I would love to see fixed, but that would mean that every school would have to have a huge range of majors and professors which just is not possible yet.

The third and final problem, though, is the one I think we students can fix...

See our post this Friday for our part 3 of Career Choices and Colleges.

Kellie Rowan is a virtual intern for Braathe Enterprises. To find out more about virtual internship opportunities, visit http://www.braatheenterprises.com/internships

It seems like I can't turn on my television anymore without being bombarded by facts about our how terrible our economy is doing and how much worse unemployment got that day. As a college student, this is pretty scary. When we were going into high school we were always told just to focus on getting to college and graduating because as long as we did that we would get a job no problem. It doesn't seem like college quite cuts it anymore.

Students are trying to find really creative ways of getting in with those major companies like one I heard about at Boston College currently going for his eighth Bachelor's Degree. But what about those of us who don't want to spend 10 years of our life in college? What do we do? Should we just hope we happen to save some CEO's life and have them owe us a favor like it happens in the movies? I think we all wish it were that easy, but there is something we can do for ourselves that doesn't even require effort. It's finding our passion.

I think the thing that is missing from a lot of students going out for jobs now is that they aren't passionate about what they do. They're majoring in things like business and engineering even if they hate them because they think they will make more money in those jobs. I can't lie and say that all jobs make the same salaries, but if you have more drive to do something you are more likely to reach the top of that career and that means more money.

I know I'm a little biased considering I'm planning on being an Art major, but I think in the long run taking a risk and going for a job that you might think will make less money but you really want to do will pay off.

A lot of my friends agree with me on this, but they are still majoring in something they hate. Why? Check back on Monday for more.

Kellie Rowan is a virtual intern for Braathe Enterprises. To find out more about virtual internship opportunities, visit http://www.braatheenterprises.com/internships

Are you maximizing your job search possibilities? If you aren't on LinkedIn, you may be missing out on a great network of connections, access to jobs before they are posted publicly, and strengthening relationships with new and old connections.

This summer, I'll be at Prestwick Chase at Saratoga most Tuesdays from 1:30 to 4:30 offering business and Apple advice, and it is also a great time to stop by and find out how LinkedIn can be of great use to you.

If you'd like to schedule a personal consultation, I am also available via phone, GoToMeeting, or scheduled office hours.

Call me at 518-290-0812.

Few people know I am fueled creatively by my intense hatred for Angela Lansbury due to her portrayal of Jessica Fletcher in "Murder She Wrote". Lansbury and the writers of Murder She Wrote fooled my grandmother and many other unsuspecting viewers into believing that somehow this character just happened to show up anytime a murder happened and wasn't the perpetrator. I find it hard to believe, and also feel that the show should have been called "Murder She Did".

All kidding aside, sometimes seeing the same situation pop up over and over again with the same cast of characters can lend people to believe that its the people and not the system that are to blame. Whether its poor customer service, poor sales, or lack of consistency, it's easy to point the finger at your employees, when in actuality it may be the result of poor training, poor management, or a poor system run by otherwise competent people.

The next time you rush to judgement that your people are to blame, think about what you can do to improve your marketing, management, or training.

I was making my horrific holiday commute from exit 1 to 7 in Danbury, CT yesterday to visit my family for the holiday weekend. Making sure I finished up with my last client before 4pm so I could avoid the holiday rush, I nonetheless was caught up amongst some of the most insane and incompetent driving I ever see on the planet.

What always baffles me is why people go about 70 miles an hour and then go to a dead stop behind cars without regard for the people behind them or in front of them. Thankfully, the drivers around me followed my lead and drove a steady 10-20 miles per hour through all of the mess to avoid having these stops and starts when possible.

Sure enough, there was no accident on the road, but it took 30 minutes to get through this stretch because of all the stop and go traffic.

About 20 years ago, I remember there being signs saying "No Stopping" along this stretch, but to this day, I have yet to hear of someone who has received a ticket for speeding into traffic and coming to a dead stop in the highway.

If laws like this were enforced, these type of issues on the roads would be avoided. Similarly, in the workplace, if simple rules that aren't thought of enough were enforced, we'd have a more productive workplace.

What's your equivalent of the "No Stopping" law in the workplace? Think of internet usage, unauthorized breaks, lateness, and others that hamper productivity, and see how you can enforce them to ensure that the workplace is a place of value to everyone.