Why Do People Hate Diversity In The Workplace?

The U.S. population of color surpassed the 100-million mark in May 2007. Today, one in every three Americans is a person of color.

Let's think about that for a minute....One in three Americans is a person of color. So why do we hear such backlash about diversity in the workplace? I have read forum after forum of people (presumably of the majority) that think having people of color working at large companies is a mistake. In fact I read one on Monster.com's forum as well as one on CafePharma today.

One of the aspects we learned from yesterday's post is that people respond to a situation depending on with whom they're interacting. If that's the case, wouldn't you want to maximize the comfort level of your customer interactions as much as possible? If you can interact with someone like you when you're in a deal situation, wouldn't you be more likely to close? If that's the case, then it's very likely that having a diverse workplace makes economic sense. And isn't that what businesses are about?

Do Women Negotiate For Salary As Well As Men?

There is a fantastic article in the Washington Post today called "Salary, Gender, and the Social Cost of Haggling". The point of the article is to enumerate how social dynamics dictate whether men and women should negotiate for raises and higher pay. So who's better, men or women?

The answer is both. The goal in career development is often to maximize your compensation given your circumstances. What the academic researchers in the article suggest is that men often feel more comfortable asking for more money because they correctly believe that they won't be penalized for doing so. Women, conversely, have the social recognition that their penalty for asking for more money is much higher than that of men. Therefore, they are maximizing their salaries often by NOT asking for more money.

So what does all this mean to career development? I believe it indicates that when you can justify a higher starting salary or better raise, then you should attempt to do so. On average, you will get more money (7.4% more according to the article). If you perform up to the value, then no one will think twice about paying your price. Asking for higher compensation without justification can result in greater penalty because the perception of the hiring agent could be that you are driven first by greed rather than the goals of the company. Often companies see that as a red flag, man or woman.

Graduating from Law School? Find a Mentor

This video is very humorous. It could apply across other professional school career departments as many of my friends have told me. The real question is, what does this law student do to avoid this type of situation right before graduating?



What isn't funny, however, is the true content behind the humor. Getting a job out of law school may not be difficult, however, the key is knowing what you want to do. The crossroads of graduating from professional schools is real. For many this is the first time you have self-directed your life. You knew the path to get you to law school and graduate...after that? Now you have to direct your life. That can be daunting.

The key to any positive career direction is typically not career counselors at your school. Face it, they work at the school and are not in the industry that you are entering (and many of them never were). What you want is a mentor.

If you ask anyone, they would say they would want someone who has been there before, who can help them navigate their careers to be accessible to them at these crossroads. Networking during school can help you find an alum who is willing to help you. This relationship can mean the difference between an accelerated career, and one with many frustrations.

Do Lawyers "Really" Get Paid?

Great article on 7/25 in the Houston Chronicle discussing salary expectations for students entering law school. Apparently the top 3 law firms in the city announced that they were increasing their starting salaries to a hefty $160,000! With that kind of motivation, students seem to flock to law schools. As the article points out, most lawyers, however, don't have the grades to get the top dollars and can languish around courthouses trying to scrounge up clients. The pay for that work? Try anywhere between $35k and $80k per year. So the question is, do lawyers get paid?

This article could be about MBAs or doctors, too. If you're at the top of your B-School class and you want to be a management consultant, you can expect an offer in the $130k - $170k range for total compensation right out of school. Doctors, after residency, can get $200k plus in the right field. The issue is that there are indeed tiers--and just having the letters doesn't guarantee the numbers.

Let's get back to lawyers for a minute. Attending law school is expensive. With three years needed to graduate, you can estimate total costs including tuition and living expenses to exceed $50k per year (and that's living on PB&J everyday). So after graduation, if you're aren't already independently wealthy, you're sitting with debt exceeding $150k. What if you aren't at the top of your class getting that $160k salary (that could eventually get to $400+)? What if you're making $60k or less? How can you possibly re-pay that loan? You might retire before it's paid off.

These considerations don't come into play before school because everyone thinks they'll graduate at the top, join a prestigious firm, and live "the life" of a lawyer. Again, this holds true for MBAs, too. The question is this, what is the value of a law degree? Is it worth it?

When To Stay Corporate

After yesterday's exchange, I think it makes sense to return to you, the career-driven individual with a quick discussion. Here's a favorite topic of mine....Many people ask me when should they leave their corporate jobs. I respond, "if you have to ask, then you need to stay." Becoming an entrepreneur is incredibly rewarding, but you have to be ready. The pressure is immense, and the accountability stares you right in the face everyday.

There are two levels of readiness:

1. Commitment
2. Experience

Commitment is the utter will of wanting to be an entrepreneur, having a passion-driven mission that no one, not even your mother, can talk you out of. You know what you want. You know it will work. You know it HAS to be done. Bill Gates had that commitment. How many people do you know who would drop out of Harvard? That kind of motivation can overcome any lack in #2.

Experience counts for quite a bit. It builds confidence, a track record of success that you can always lean on in lean times. Knowing that you've been stretched beyond your limits and still succeeded makes the approach to entrepreneurship real. It's not the kind of experience of telling others what to do without getting your hands dirty. It's the kind of experience that comes with having to be accountable for results when you have no help. When the task is so daunting that you have absolutely no idea how you'll complete it at the outset. But you come through. You know you can. You've done it before. That's experience.

So when should you stay corporate? When you don't have the above two items. Some pepople believe in getting a job in an entrepreneurial organization to get exposure. If that's your transition step, then fine, but it's not necessary. You can get the experience you need at your corporate job.

When you have both experience and commitment, jump ship. Don't wait. Don't overthink it. You'll save yourself the aggravation of regret later in life. Ask yourself this question: what's the bigger risk, depending on yourself, or some dim-witted supervisor whose whim drives your day? Know when--then take that leap of faith. You'll find, win or lose, it's worth it.

A Response to Jason Goldberg, CEO of Jobster

Jason Goldberg, CEO of Jobster, responded directly to today's post, Jobster - A Sad Story. His comment is below. My responses appear in green after each paragraph.

Jason Goldberg said...

Hi there springraise. Welcome to the online recruiting blogosphere.

Jason, thank you for commenting on today's post.

You raise a number of interesting points in your post. Rather than dissect them one at a time, I will just put forth that Jobster is an innovative company which has and will continue to push the needle on recruiting technology. If you check your facts, Jobster was doing tags in recruitment long before their current popularity. You might recall that we acquired a company in mid-2006 called GoJobby which pioneered tagging for recruitment. We were also doing the "twitter" thing long before twitter showed up. We were first to do video resumes, etc.

Applying an already used technology first "in recruitment" or any other vertical does not constitute originality. What users expect from leading and innovative social networking companies is the ability to take an interaction (especially one as complex and visceral as that of finding employment) and invent that special functionality that changes the game, meets an unmet need, and solves a compelling problem. Users know it when they experience it. As a member of Jobster, my feedback to you is that I don't see it...and we both know I am not alone.

Anyway, I'm sure i'm not going to make you a Jobster fan over night. What matters most to us is that our users value our service and continue to provide us with awesome feedback for further innovations. Likewise, employers drive all of our employer-facing innovations.

The focus of this blog is assessing site benefits to the individual candidate. I have little doubt that the "innovations" Jobster provides to the employer community are driven by them as they provide much of the company's revenue. Oftentimes that conflict shifts a company's focus away from the needs of the candidate to those of the employer, as it has with Payscale.com and Salary.com. Has Jobster eaten that forbidden fruit?

On Facebook, Jobster had an exclusive relationship with Facebook until July 2, 2007. That relationship gave us a head start on Facebook vs. other technology companies, allowed us to build 35k+ Facebook user relatioships, and got us very close to Facebook user requirements. We are now super excited to be launching our new Facebook application tomorrow.

Thanks for the clarification on the exclusive relationship with Facebook. I hadn't seen anywhere that the exclusivity was finite. Congratulations on getting 35k+ users. I look forward to seeing results from any upcoming user satisfaction surveys from that group.

It's true that I will not be converted to the Jobster doctrine overnight. There is much work to be done to satisfy the needs of job searchers. I believe that Jobster has a hodgepodge of functionality unmatched to the needs of its job seekers.

Jobster - A Sad Story

When I originally sat down to write this entry, I thought I would write a scathing review of Jobster. I mean, there's so much material there, that I could criticize the site ad nauseum. Then it hit me, it's kinda sad.

Everyone knows the story; Jobster started out with one model, burned through a ton of venture money, then "reinvented" itself early this year after a round of layoffs as "the social network for jobs". Let's be clear, Jobster does NOTHING new. Their CEO Jason Goldberg has used most of his nine lives. Most CEOs would've been ousted by now, but I think Goldberg practices voodoo or something with his board and investors. I can't think of a viable alternate explanation.

Here's the sad part: Jobster is a copycat product. Period. They take what has been proven to work in other social media and tack it onto their product. There's no innovation here. It's sad because Jobster is seriously trying to dupe people into believing its hype. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Function Copied
Tags (I don't need to say anything about tags, do I?)
Profiles (ditto)
Linking your network (Linkedin launched with that functionality circa 5 years ago)
Free Job Posting (That benefits the employers more than the candidates)
My Featured Jobs (matches you with jobs that match your profile - hmm, sounds like a prominent and successful dating site pioneered that one)
My Statistics (who's viewed your page - not sure who invented it, but it clearly wasn't Jobster)
Network News: Live Feed (Can you say, "Twitter"?)
Job Alerts (please...)

I mean, it's just sad. All that functionality and nothing original. Jobster is the Vanilla Ice of job sites.










Jobster's coup of the year in the jobs game was getting the exclusive Facebook deal. Great deal for Jobster, not so sure about Facebook--disregarding financial gain, of course. We'll see how it works out in the long run.

I almost feel bad for Jobster, except I think Goldberg has had too many chances. I think LinkedIn is a superior service, not to mention inventive and original. Jobster and its investors seem to be looking to ride a wave rather than disrupt an industry.

Pharma Layoffs

With big pharma announcing fairly strong earnings this week for the quarter--and getting the applause of Wall Street--I thought it might make sense to look at the amount of layoffs experienced in the industry since November 2006. Let's check the tally:

Layoffs
Pfizer 7,800
Schering 1,100
Bayer 6,100
Merck 7,000
AZ 3,000
Lilly* 2,500
Total 27,500

Wow, that's a lot of layoffs since November of 2006! This doesn't even include the small and medium sized pharma companies that have laid off workers.

Note: Lilly may be the most insidious of employers. Rather than have "layoffs" when they want to shrink their workforce, they have what they term "reallocations". Basically they offer workers either undesirable jobs or require that they move to corporate headquarters in Indianapolis in order to remain employed. Why do they do this? So management can say to the press that they've never had to layoff anyone. People just leave on their own. To me, that's disingenuous.

That is a lot of people to re-enter the workforce. It shows how important networking is to continuous career development. When the chips are down and you have to find another job, your network is the fastest way to get an interview.

Pharma sales reps are getting hit particularly hard as well. It costs pharma companies about $5,000 per day just to get a rep in the car in the morning on average. Since they employ thousands of reps each, you see why they look first at the sales force when cost reductions are required. And that figure doesn't include salary, bonus, or benefits compensation.

To compound matters for reps, management of each of these companies is looking for ways to reach doctors and patients through more efficient means. Social networking sites for doctors like Sermo (fantastic company) are attracting more and more attention from pharma because they're able to reach doctors online and survey them quickly and efficiently. Sermo recently signed a deal with the American Medical Association (membership 250,000) to be their official online network. What do you think this means to the "sales force of the future"? (That's a Lilly term for how they're transforming their sales teams)

So as people in the pharma industry plan their careers, they have to keep a close eye on the dynamics. With so much change happening so quickly, opportunity recognition can mean the difference between success and failure.

Career Changes Change the Plan

If this blog entry were a movie, it would be entitled, "Not Another Career Change Article". There are so many advice columns about how to change careers, it makes me think people all change careers and become writers. Well, the fact is people change careers an average of two times during their professional lives. This somewhat surprising fact begs the question? If we're going to change our careers, why career plan in the first place?

I asked that exact question to a management panel while in a summer business leadership program in Washington D.C. between my junior and senior years of high school. One man's answer changed my life...


"Because if you don't plan to succeed, you're planning not to."


To that point in my life, I hadn't heard the cliche "a failure to plan is planning to fail," but these two quotes are surprisingly different in focus. Sure, you have to plan. Plan everything. Things change, of course, but it's better to know why you're going 'off-plan' than swerving aimlessly looking for something to hold on to.

But the idea of planning to succeed means that, no matter what you do, you will be successful. It's not just the planning that's important, it's the outcome that results from the plan that sets the mind. When you put this in context of a career change, then you understand why some people are successful, and others are not. Why some people seamlessly integrate into new roles, industries, and functions, while others continue to languish in their comfort zones, pining away for something else.

Plan to succeed, and you will.

Who Do You Work For?

Do you know who you work for? I'm not talking about your employer, but really, who do you work for? When I first got out of college, I worked for me. When I got out of graduate school, I worked for Sallie Mae. When I started a family, I worked for them. With Springraise, I work for you. That being said, a concept that is extremely important to discuss is career goals.

Every employment choice you make from your first job through retirement effects your career. Let's be real: you work for money. When you have money, you work for causes. People who work in lower paying jobs that have more intrinsic value to them make enough money to sustain themselves doing what they want to do. That's perfectly acceptable--enough money is there to work for that cause.

One of the few site "gurus" I've seen that has something fairly good to say is Susan Heathfield from About.com. Here's an excerpt from one of her pieces on the subject:

If you value helping people in need, you can anticipate a particular salary over the course of your career. As long as your values are more important than what you are paid, your choice is fine. But, you cannot set a goal of making a million dollars a year, make a career choice that pays $40,000 per year, and expect to be happy with your career decisions and the money you make over time.

Now that makes sense, doesn't it? Most people, however, don't manage or even start their careers with that concept in mind. We all believe we should be paid enough to become millionaires no matter what we do. Life doesn't work that way, so career planning is needed.

Unfortunately, we typically try to maximize value (either compensation or intrinsic) per job change, rather than maximize long term potential. Why? Because career planning takes time we don't have--or don't give ourselves. We don't have time to look at our careers because most of us are "working for" someone else. Once we realize we need a job change, we try to get as much as we can for something we're qualified to do because we have to feed the kids or pay the bills. The larger career goal (if there is one) is oftentimes lost in the necessity of making ends meet.

The best career management advisors coach us to have a long term view of our careers, to know where we're going and how each step helps us get there. If we know the goal, we can always find a step that keeps us on course. If we know we want to work in a field that tends not to compensate well, we may decide to work for a finite period of time in a field that does until we're ready to jump. Then, it doesn't matter who we're "working for" at any particular time if we pursue a change. We would know our path and know how to achieve our goals.

When you plan your career, no matter what responsibilities you have, you're always working for you.

The Cloud of Secrecy

Something happened to me a while back that should never, ever happen while searching for a job. After going through two days of intense interviews with a top flight strategy consulting firm, I got a job offer. No, I'm not saying I shouldn't have received the offer because I performed well. What happened that shouldn't have is that the compensation package was $20K more than I expected!

Don't get me wrong, these are the kinds of "should never happens" that you want to have, but there is no way I or anyone else should be that far apart in expectation of compensation. I had done my homework. I used one of the "salary" company's information; it's almost useless for consultants because of the nature of the business. The range in pay was about $70,000. Not helpful. I also checked in with my network of consultants to see what the market was like these days. I was an analyst with a top firm back in the day and still had a few friends in the industry. What I found intriguing was that although my friends gave detailed descriptions of the direction of the consulting industry (full of needless jargon, I might add) none of them gave me a decent picture of compensation. They kept it vague, describing "compensation structures", "percent raises", "payment timing". None of them said, "I make $X and you'll probably be in a range from $A to $B." That's what I asked for.

Why wouldn't these friends share their info? Then it dawned on me--when I was working for a major Fortune 500 company, I never shared my compensation with my peers. The HR department and managers directly discouraged me from sharing this information. They set up this "cloud of secrecy" about revealing compensation to peers. They said things like, "trust me, you're one of the highest paid at your position," or "you don't want to cause a stir in morale by sharing your salary with others on the team," or "your compensation information is proprietary company information." The last one always made me snicker.

What's the big secret? We all know that some people get paid more than others. Is this data confidential? Would I be committing corporate treason by letting my colleagues know how much I made? Absolutely not. The issue is that the threat of losing your job is a profound motivator for silence. Companies don't want employees (at any level) to demand upward pressure on compensation (this is why managers dislike unions). The reality is that managers and employees can keep each other accountable by revealing pay for themselves and team members. Team productivity can foster healthy competition. Managers can motivate the team by showing that other performers are compensated for success. That way, there are no secrets--and people can feel motivated by the openness rather than threatened by the cloud of secrecy.

Salary.com: What were you thinking?

I had only planned one post for today, but when you see something like this, you just have to say something about it. In their infinite wisdom, Salary.com decided to press release a host of new companies that have integrated their enterprise compensation management platform. The companies are:

AmerisourceBergen Corporation (pharmaceutical distributor with higher market cap than EVERY pharma company in the world)
Comcast Corporation (that "trusted" cable company)
CSX Corporation (do their trains ever get anywhere on time? I've consulted to them in the past)
Elizabeth Arden, Inc. (MAC is much better)
Expedia, Inc. (been using CheapTickets for years)
Hitachi Computer Products (America), Inc. (do YOU have any Hitachi products?)
John Hancock Life Insurance Company (I need life insurance, so JH is off the list)
The Motley Fool, Inc. (not sure their inclusion matches their brand strategy)
The Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc. (I now endorse Coke products)
The Rockefeller Foundation (do nonprofits overpay?)
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications (USA), Inc. (glad I traded in my SE phone for a Blackberry)

Basically, Salary.com just gave me a list of companies I will never work for or from which I will no longer buy any products. I guess I should thank them for that.

The question is, if you're a company that proclaims to help individuals "manage" (of course, not "maximize") compensation, why would you press release companies you've partnered with? The only plausible answer is that Salary.com values companies more than individuals. What were they thinking?

LinkedIn: Getting It Right

So I was making my daily trek to LinkedIn this morning, and what did I see? A homepage that I'd not noticed before. Usually when I type in "linkedin.com" my personal page comes up with all the tabs and gives me a ton of content about what's going on in my network.

This morning, I see this:

I guess LinkedIn is going the Facebook route by simplifying the interface specifically to convert new members. I like it! Admittedly, I may be late on seeing this new design, but this does give me an excuse to talk about the company--which I love.

LinkedIn does so many things right, it's hard to criticize them. They have steadily worked to improve the product over time, never ceasing to focus on customer acquisition. Ried Hoffman must perpetually think, "how can I get more people on LinkedIn today?"

The user interface puts as much information as can be handled, and still beneficial. You have the ability to edit your "resume" and choose different ways to display the information (e.g. using months and years, or just years to show dates of employment). LinkedIn also introduces new features in a periodic, yet still aggressive manner. It seems like they think about what people want--unlike Jobster that just copies successful functionality and calls themselves "new".

What do I like best about LinkedIn? Its core focus on the individual. In his own LinkedIn bio, Ried says, "LinkedIn’s primary customer will always be each individual professional. LinkedIn also provides services for companies, professional associations, alumni associations, non-profits, and conferences." Without a doubt LinkedIn generates revenue from corporate entities, but still remains focused on creating functionality that enables individuals to better manage their networks. Listen up Payscale, Salary, and Jobster....

Monster 2.0?

You'll soon see that I'm not a fan of "job" sites. Well, maybe you read that in last Friday's "Top 5" but the reason why will become more clear in the coming weeks. Anyway, to the subject. Recently, I was interviewing a candidate for a job who works at Monster.com when he asked me how Monster could enter web 2.0. Now I had some ideas on this, but I wasn't about to give them away in an interview when this person was applying for a job! Apparently Monster's been trying for quite a while to come up with a way to move their current model into the next wave--but they can't figure it out.

How could this company, sporting a leadership industry position and a $5 billion market cap, be so stumped by web 2.0? At least being a beacon of light for successful web 1.0 companies hasn't made them rest on their laurels. Good for them. They see how companies like Jobster are trying to disrupt the industry (we'll discuss Jobster another day). They see how things can change very quickly in the industry and they don't want to be caught AOL-style. The fact is, Monster's in trouble.

When was the last time you saw a job you wanted on Monster? Have you ever taken the advice of their "gurus"? Do their bloggers ever say anything insightful? Monster knows they have some time to figure this out, but not long. You see, here's what the industry looks like going forward:

Job posts will be free everywhere--as they should be. Recruiters will find less and less talent on Monster (already happening) as they shift to other friendlier and more targeted sites. Functionally, Monster can't help you get a job. They can't facilitate conversations. Monster's a huge mahogany desk in the interview room--something that comes between you and your interviewer. It's hard to move and immediately communicates an adversarial relationship. Distant, cold.

Other sites are more engaging, sharing profiles of recruiters, facilitating unregulated two-way conversations. Recruiters have profiles that attempt to sell you on their personal attributes as well as their companies'. In this way, web 2.0 brings the players closer. That "Monster desk" can't be moved to replicate those conditions. Job search engines, Indeed.com and Beyond.com can render Monster's job listings obsolete because they can draw from an even larger pool while popping on some value added services.

What's worse for Monster is that stodgy companies want to seem "hip" so they're trying all kinds of new media to attract and meet talent. I mean, geez, even Bain interviewed candidates on Second Life (now that's going too far in my opinion). So now Monster has a declining user base, a disappearing source of revenue, zero "it factor", and a host of competitors nipping at its heels. How can it turn the tide?

Well it does have two things that none of its competitors has. One is tons of cash. You can wait things out when you're in a strong cash position. They know they can't wait too long. The second is a bit more subtle. Here's a clue: when a feather lightly touches your skin, it happens. But just like in the interview w/ that candidate, I'm not going to give this away.

It Takes A (Corporate) Village?

I read a press release today from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) reporting that many corporations have an "it takes a village" mentality when dealing with career development for employees. They conducted a study that says that 68% of 382 companies have career development programs in place. Their primary goals are not skills development, however, but focus more on coaching and mentoring.

"By far the most common type of development programs are mentoring and coaching. People aren't relying on trainers. They're relying on one another, tapping into each other's experience and expertise, especially in larger corporations." says Jay Jamrog, Senior Vice President of Research at i4cp.

The interesting part of that quote is the relying on "other's experience and expertise." Clearly, sharing information is a great thing to do (as was covered here last week) to advance your career and the data from this study supports that assertion. I believe, however, that you have to go one step further, and that is sharing information that often seems taboo, like salary and bonus information.

In career development, context is key. Corporations often have salary bands that are the context provided for workers when discussing compensation during performance reviews. Your "percent in band" value tells you how much upward movement you have in your current position before needing to change bands and/or positions. What it doesn't tell you is how valuable your background is in your compensation package. How would you know if someone with your equivalent background is being paid more than you are for the same position? That certainly happens, but it's taboo to discuss. If you want your career to develop, you should know how your background and experience contribute to your career compensation. Use the "village" around you to get a sense of where you are and if you're fairly compensated. If you don't, you can't maximize your potential--and what kind of career is that?

Top 5 Scary Things About Career Development

So it's Friday 13--today is the perfect day to share what "scares" me about career development. Let's jump right in!


Top 5 Scary Things About Career Development

#5. Career Advice Columns
Have you noticed that there's an advice column for every aspect of your career? Have you also noticed that these articles are written by people who write for a living and don't manage careers? That scares me. They're not HR people, psychologists, or even people who have "done it." How do these people know if my skills are transferable? How do they know that I can find a mentor easily? And what's more, why are they experts? (one could say the same thing about me...but I'm no expert and I don't write about what you should do with your career) All I say is, BEWARE the self-professed experts.

#4. Career Coaches
These people scare me because half of them are quacks. They're phenomenal public speakers, but their content is so questionable, they should be giving presentations in The Riddler's costume. Now I've sat through NUMEROUS career coaching sessions and I will not call out the Planter's Nuts here, but be very careful of who you or your firm hires as a career coach. The safe bets are those affiliated with Insights, EQ, and Personal Branding.

#3. Job websites
Can you count the number of job websites there are out there? CareerBuilder, Monster, HotJobs, Jobster, Vault--it's an alphabet soup of sites who post jobs. The Alexa Employment Directory contains over 1,300 job sites! Madness. And what do they really do? They hire all of the #4s and 5s to provide content to help you with your career! Their technologies are arcane in this day and age, and not one of them actually helps you get a job! Now that's scaaaary.

#2. Your boss
This person, whoever he or she is, temporarily holds the keys to your economic viability. Very often they're morons, or possess slightly higher intelligence than Dwight Schrute. What do they do well? They know how to make themselves look good to those who can promote them. They're politically savvy and hold on to the adage that mediocrity rises to the top. The bosses that don't scare me are those who are actually confident about themselves who want to find ways to promote you because they recognize talent. They seek it out, develop it, and let it soar because they genuinely want you to succeed, and they know it will benefit them in the long run. In my experience, that's about 5% of the managers out there....


And the #1 thing that scares me about career development...


1. You
That's right, you scare me. Not because you're all that intimidating, but because you're often the only person who can stop you from achieving all of your career dreams. Sure #2 might have a hand in holding you down for a while, but you are the only one who can allow yourself to be stopped. We live in a world of endless opportunity. Don't allow someone else to hold you back. You're great. Be great. If you don't, eventually you'll realize that you're the common denominator in every career experience you've had. See why that's scary?

Check in on Salary.com

After yesterday's announcement by Payscale.com, I thought, why not check in on Salary.com to see what their position is on helping employees maximize salary potential. According to Salary.com's Corporate Overview section: "Today, the consumer-facing site generates over 4 million visitors per month and syndicates its content across a network of over 2,000 sites including AOL, Yahoo and Monster.com. These services help to educate employees, and equip them with the critical tools necessary to engage employers in meaningful dialogues about pay and performance."

I find it so strange that neither Payscale nor Salary explicitly say that they help consumers maximize their compensation. What does "...equip [employees] with the critical tools necessary to engage employers in meaningful dialogues about pay and performance" actually mean? It means, we don't want to anger the corporations that pay us a lot of money for our salary reports by advocating higher salaries for employees.

From Salary.com's "Business Offerings" section, which is the next paragraph from the one discussed above: "Today’s strategic HR department is faced with new mandates from the executive suite to attract and retain the best talent and demonstrate the ROI of sound workforce management strategies. " Wait, did I read that right? "ROI of sound workforce management strategies"? Besides using the ROI measure erroneously (you can't apply that measure to people by definition), the implication is that Salary.com produces software solutions to help companies maximize their profit on each employee hire.

Can both of these market leaders service somewhat competing interests effectively? Or more simply asked, Can these companies continue their two-faced actions and expect to keep our trust?

The Measure of Our Success

Marian Wright Edelman writes that our success should be measured not by how we help ourselves, but how we help others. The altruistic nature of this definition provides background for how we may view the success of our careers also. The problem is that in a hypercompetitive marketplace with an unforgiving investor base looking for constant share price escalation (not to mention somewhat burdensome regulatory requirements), the pressure on each and every employee to produce is higher than ever. How can we possibly put in the time to help our colleagues succeed when that endeavor could lead to our own failure?

Therein lies the paradox. If our success is truly measured by company-wide achievement that outperforms the competition, then it is our business to help each other succeed in the workplace. Now, incentive plans often do not motivate employees to help one another, but that’s an entire entry in itself. How can we be “successful” by helping others to succeed in the workplace without compromising our own career goals?

The answer is simple and universal: SHARE INFORMATION

This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s true. By sharing information, you strengthen others while doing the same for yourself. Take for example, “that guy”. You know “that guy”. “That guy” is the one who hordes information so he can look better than everyone else in a meeting. He doesn’t attend work sessions with the team without managers present because he doesn’t want to share information. His motivation is to make himself look great in “big meetings” at your expense. He revels in establishing superiority to you and your colleagues. He plays dirty. You despise “that guy.”

But here’s the thing: “That guy” may have short term success, but he can’t succeed over time. Think about it. He has to constantly come up with new information alone, without input from anyone. He isolates himself purposely, but he can’t benefit from collective thought. His ideas may sound good to him, but because he hasn’t shared them with others, he may not know that the idea has been tried and failed, or that with some feedback, the idea could be great instead of good. The pressure he places on himself to outperform multiples of people is immense. He’s destined to fail.

By sharing information, you strengthen everyone around you. You build a network of people who are willing to share knowledge and insight with you (especially at times when you’re not at your best). By helping others, you inevitably help yourself. In that scenario, you will outperform “that guy” faster than he thinks. The team with whom you share your information will be nurtured consistently produce great work. Now all your team has to do is assign credit to individuals for different aspects of the team’s winning performance. Promote team success and assign credit to all members. Everybody wins.

So the key to continuous success in your job and over the length of your career is sharing information. Clichés became clichés for a reason: Two (or more) minds are better than one.

Payscale.com Sells Out

Wow, Payscale.com just got a huge infusion of capital for their Series C. $8.8 million is a tidy sum to focus a business toward becoming a large company. The question is, "is this investment good or bad for career professionals?"

Payscale.com hails itself as "the largest real-time online compensation data source in the world for employers and individuals." That's probably true as they boast "over 8 million unique salary profiles." Impressive. There are two curious findings, however, in Payscale's company information and press release.

The first, and least worrisome, is that according to the bio of company Chairman and Founder, Joe Giordano, the company was founded in 2000, but the press release distinctly states the founding year as 2002. You don't usually miss that one. Secondly, Payscale is press releasing the close of $8.8 million--but their round isn't fully closed as they want to land $10.3 million total. Why press release prior to the close of the round? What's the problem getting the last $1.5 million? Red flag. Usually when that happens it means pressure from the round leader to get their name out in the public eye.

After reading the latter point, I looked straight to the funding sources. Leading the round is The Corporate Executive Board Company (CEB) (Nasdaq/NM: EXBD). According to their website, they are "a leading provider of best practices research and analysis focusing on corporate strategy, operations and general management issues." That caught my attention.

Then later in the Payscale release, "The CEB investment in PayScale is driven by an increasingly global demand for real-time, peer-to-peer information." Global demand by whom? Very likely corporations want compensation data to keep costs down. And then the validation: "CEB will now provide PayScale Professional, a web-based compensation data solution for the enterprise. PayScale Professional is PayScale's award-winning compensation data service for HR professionals and hiring managers and is a primary salary validator for more than 3,500 organizations worldwide." I see where this is going....And lastly, "CEB provides its integrated set of services currently to more than 3,700 of the world's largest and most prestigious corporations, including over 80% of the Fortune 500."

It seems that Payscale has placed its bet on corporate data needs to drive their growth. Nowhere in this release does Payscale say that one of their primary goals is to help people maximize their compensation. The 8 million salary data points are ours. Where is Payscale's focus? Corporations, or employees? Is Payscale the company you now want to give your compensation information to? Seems like Payscale has sold out.

springraise is coming...

There’s an article every single day about how to get ahead in your career. Just today I’ve read four, one in Time, one on MSNBC.com, and two on CNN.com . The internet has been used to disrupt almost every industry today, but less so in career development. Sure you can go to a job “bored”, I mean “job board” and see millions of listings for jobs you don’t want—or you can attend networking events filled with people who don’t care about you if you can’t help them. Can we possibly consume all the articles and books that alleged gurus tell us are necessary to maximize our careers when doing so would undoubtedly take up more time than our jobs allow us to have? Why hasn’t the internet produced a tool that helps us decide which moves to make, how to characterize our careers in a way that contextualizes our positions, and helps us navigate our futures?

Springraise is coming…