Career Planning: Pitfalls to Watch
Corrections or additions?
These stories by Kathleen McGinn Spring, Bart Jackson, and Michael
Schumacher were prepared for the March 7, 2001 edition of U.S. 1
Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Hiring And Firing Without Regret
Even back in the lax old days, when the human resources
department said “Personnel” on the door, certain standards
applied. Interviewing a candidate as both a prospective employee and
prospective date in the same session was generally frowned upon. Now,
if you so much as mention that she looks good in that hair net, your
job candidate may initiate a lawsuit. Hiring is fraught with legal
razor wire, while firing frequently demands a two-forest paper trail
and more time than is left on the employee’s contract.
To help sort out the legal and practical morass of employment, 20-year
human resource professional Ruben Rivera teaches a five-session
course, “Fair, Square, and Legal.” The course is co-sponsored
by the American Management Association. The first session is on
Tuesday,
March 13, at 7:10 p.m. at Mercer County Community College. Cost: $225.
Call 609-586-9446.
“A clerk makes an error,” says Rivera, “and it costs the
company thousands.” The bill for rectifying a mistake by a
production
man can run to 10 times that amount. “But when a human resources
person makes a blunder,” he says, “it costs the company
hundreds
of thousands — and it doesn’t go away.”
Rivera grew up in Trenton, graduated from Trenton State College, and
began work in personnel for Trenton Rubber Company. When it was bought
out by Carter Wallace, Rivera followed that company to Cranbury, where
he spent the last two decades, until his recent retirement, working
in human resources. He is an adjunct professor at Rider University,
where he teaches collective bargaining, labor relations, human
resource
management, and management and behavior.
“Hiring is probably the most important management decision
made,”
says Rivera. Better made widgets, faster selling widgets, and better
handling of widget profits all come about as the result of better,
more energized employees. And while legal constraints have made hiring
more difficult in the past 15 years, he says, the whole process in
most corporations has sharpened immensely.
In the old days, all too often the hirer would just stare at the
candidate,
recalls Rivera. A bad manager would make up his mind in three minutes
— a good one might take seven. “They were looking to just
fill a slot,” he says. “They’d go with their first gut
instinct,
and a lot of mistakes were made.” Today the hiring process has
expanded to include more steps and more players. But despite the
increased
complexity of hiring procedures, there remains a simple list of
necessary
techniques and must-avoid blunders:
Update the job description. Such phrases as “. . .daily file the computer punch cards” can still be found in eventhe most progressive firms’ job descriptions. To get it right, talkwith the area supervisor and get in writing every chore and necessaryskill. These must be included not to only match a candidate’s skillswith a job’s requirements, but also to clarify future job evaluations.Find the unwritten skills. This requires informal talkswith the prospective hire’s co-workers, bosses, and managers todiscoverthe more subtle, yet equally valuable, job requirements. Does thejob demand a team player, or a heads-down plow horse who won’t beeasily enticed into office chatter? “A candidate who begins everysentence of his work history with `I…I…I…,’” says Rivera,”may not be the information sharer or team player you are lookingfor.”Avoid illegal questions. You can get snared intosix-figurelawsuits even while making idle chatter to put the candidate at ease.You cannot ask a person’s age or religion, of course. Asking if theyspeak a language other than English at home (unless it’s job related),or even how they intend to celebrate the Christmas holidays can makeyou a legal bigot, open to both personal and corporate litigation.You cannot ask if a candidate has a disability — although youmust ask after hiring if she needs special accommodations. You may,however, feel free to inquire if you are schmoozing with a convictedfelon. In fact, you must determine this later fine point, just soyour other employees won’t come suing you for not maintaining afelon-freework environment.Check resume continuity. “This old standard,”says Rivera “too often gets ignored. The applicant’s work recordshould establish a steady pattern — not too many jumps, goodreasonsfor leaving, no unaccountable gaps, no non-referenced employers. Lookfor sins of omission.”Once a candidate is hired, she enters the new world of businessdiversity.In today’s workplace, people must be treated fairly, but not equally.A Muslim receptionist must be allowed space and privacy for the middaycall to prayer. Even little things must be accommodated, says Rivera.”I’m Puerto Rican, very flamboyant with touching and use of myhands. Others thrive in a strictly hands-off setting. If you wantto make better widgets, you will accommodate these employees.”Of course, some individuals in the office seem beyond accommodation.They are rotters and you just want them out. Typically, such a workergets jammed into a “progressive discipline” program —a fancy term for having him fail the proper number of hoop jumps sohe can be fired legally. “This approach,” says Rivera,”automaticallyassumes that firing is the sole solution to the problem.” Instead,Rivera says, an examination process — although lengthy andfrustrating— may reveal the problem is more with the company than with theworker. In a tight labor market with high costs for hiring, training,and termination, the examination process could be a good investment.Rivera favors a course he calls “corrective discipline,” withoptions at each step. First is to re-evaluate the actual job againstits written description. Are the requests sensible? Has that littledaily side errand evolved into 17 hourly trips upstairs? Only afteryou have listed a sensible set of job goals, separating the essentialparts and the secondary parts (working and playing well with others,for example), does the employee get called in and confronted.Almost invariably the employee will chant the ancient mantra “Whyare you picking on just me? I’ve done everything you’ve told me todo.” Settle the question first, says Rivera. Assure the employeethat you are working on each employee’s needs individually, and todayis the day to focus on his. Then, respond factually to his insistencethat he’s performing adequately. Allow him time to respond. Andlisten.Ending this first session, both of you should work out specificimprovementneeds. Make those improvements obtainable and measurable goals. Setfollow-up re-evaluations on a lengthening scale. During these followups, see if he’s the wrong man for the job, and try to determine ifthere is a better job for him. Gradually wean him from scrutiny.Finally,if it’s not the wrong job or too many unrealistic tasks — if theguy is just a slacker — you have paper trails aplenty to firehim without fear of retaliation.”Of course, problems always abound,” says Rivera. “Simplegripes grow to arbitrated grievances if you don’t train yourmanagementand union committee to be sensibly flexible.” For that reason,Rivera plans to bring in as guest speaker a local labor attorney.”It’s always nice to get a good look at the guy who might be goingafter your hide someday across the table,” he says.— Bart JacksonTop Of PageDemystifying Mutual FundsWithin a few short weeks, gardens all around MercerCounty will be ablaze with tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths as bulbsplanted last fall, or in seasons further past, will once again becomeharbingers of more pleasant days to come. But as even the greenestgardener knows, this year’s quantity and quality may not be the sameas in previous years. It’s not uncommon for bulbs to rot inover-wateredsoil, or get eaten up by unscrupulous squirrels. All the same canbe said for mutual funds.”Sometimes the funds that went up the most last year are not theones to buy this year,” says Michael J. Delehanty, acertifiedfinancial planner. “One really needs to look at about 20 yearsworth of history,” he says, “and most mutual funds haven’t beenaround that long.”To illustrate his point further, Delehanty suggests one think of itas a coin toss. “Everyone is an average coin flipper,” hesays. “There are no great coin flippers, and the probability isthat for every 10 flips you’ll get five heads and five tails. Withinthat span of 10 flips, you may get three in a row of either headsor tails. And it’s the same with mutual funds; you may see three orfour good years, but that’s not enough time.”Delehanty teaches a three-week evening workshop, “How to BuyMutualFunds — Taking the Myth Out of Mutual Funds,” at Mercer CountyCommunity College, beginning Tuesday, March 13, at 7 p.m. Cost: $48.Call 609-586-9446.Delehanty, who graduated cum laude from Rider University, is alsoa principal at Sky Investments, a firm with offices in ForrestalVillage.”In order to take the myth out of mutual funds,” he says,”it is important to focus on the basics and put things in ahistoricalperspective.” For starters, mutual funds are nothing more thana basket where fund managers put the securities they buy. “Bydefinition, a mutual fund is a professionally managed, diversifiedportfolio,” says Delehanty. “Usually, the portfolio consistsof individual securities.Three of the main mutual fund categories are stock funds, bond funds,and a combination of stocks and bonds called balanced funds.”Sincea mutual fund is, in a sense, a basket of securities, the classfocuseson individual securities,” says Delehanty. “The first stepin understanding what stock or bond fund to invest in is exploringwhat factors affect the price movements of individual stocks andbonds.”Delehanty says it is important for investors to understand financiallingo. “Strengthening our vocabulary helps us to filter throughthe often overwhelming and sometimes contradictory information thatwe are bombarded with on a daily basis,” he says. “The abilityto convert information into knowledge is fundamental to success inthe dynamic world of investing.””The daily drone of financial information,” says Delehanty,”has helped to create a number of myths about mutual funds.”Some of the commonly held, but incorrect, beliefs about mutual fundsare:Past performance is an important indicator of futureperformance .Many mutual fund investors chase mutual fund performance.Unfortunately,last year’s winners may be next year’s losers. Certainly, 1999’stechnologywinners were 2000’s losers and 1999’s value fund losers were 2000’swinners. While the technology-laden Nasdaq was skyrocketing in 1999,due in part to dot-com mania, value managers like Warren Buffet andDavid Dreman saw their funds actually go down in net asset value.Those investors who sold their 1999 losers in early 2000 to buy 1999’swinners only compounded their losses. Had they held on to theirwell-managedlosers, they would have been rewarded if their managers were namedBuffet or Dreman.No load funds don’t charge fees. All mutual funds, evenmoney market funds, charge fees. The fees vary from fund to fund.An example of low management fee is the 0.18 percent charged byVanguard’sS&P 500 index fund. On the high end is the 1.2 percent charged bythe Kemper-Dreman High Return fund. The performance of the two fundsfrom late-February, 2000 to late-February, 2001, however, demonstratesthat fees are far from the only consideration an investor should havein choosing a fund. The first fund handed investors a 3.8 percentloss, while the second shot up 71.1 percent.No load is better than commission. Comparing the no loadVanguard S&P 500 fund to the commission Kemper Dreman High Returnfund last year, the commission fund had far superior performance.However, remember myth number one.Only buy mutual funds with long term track records. Itis statistically more reliable to invest in a fund manager with a20 year track record than one with a two year record. The problemis that the mutual fund industry has grown so rapidly that the vastmajority of funds do not have 20-year track records. Of 198 fundsclassified as large cap growth for the last year, only 67 have evena 10-year track record.Three years is a good long term performance record. Ifyou think so, try the coin flip test discussed above.United States government bond funds are guaranteed. Thoughthe individual bonds in the portfolio may be backed by the full faithand credit of the government, the mutual fund is not. A bond fundhas no maturity date, therefore there is no point in the future wherethe government can “guarantee” the value of the bonds. Theprice of your bond fund will generally move in an inverse relationshipto interest rates.Mutual funds are safe long term investments. Since mutualfunds are a basket of individual securities, they generally trackthe markets they’re invested in. The stock market has a strongcorrelationto the overall economy. As the 1990s was a good decade for the UnitedStates economy, so too, it was a good decade for stock markets inthe United States stock markets. In contrast, the oil shocks of the1970s created a tough decade for the domestic economy. The Dow Jonesindustrial average’s peak in 1969 was 968.9. Its 1979 trough was796.7.That is a 10-year decline of 17.77 percent.”Taking the Myth Out of Mutual Funds” is specificallydesigned for the novice, says Delehanty. “We review the students’portfolios as though they were corporations,” he says. “Weanalyze their personal income statement and balance sheet. From withinthis framework, a lifetime of investing can flow.”Top Of PageCareer Planning: Pitfalls to WatchTwo or so jobs ago Elaine Kamm was asked to startup a training and development department for the Fortune 100 companywhere she worked. “I did all the right things,” she says.”It was so good, they told me to hire more staff. And then morestaff. And more.” Supervising all those people, and managing abudget that just kept growing, Kamm had achieved a prestigious spotin her company, and was making lots of money.”One morning I woke up, and I was miserable,” she says.Formerlya consultant within the company, “an individual contributor,”she had discovered she did not like administration one bit. What’smore, she adds, “the stuff I needed to do, I wasn’t even goodat.” Sure, she says, she would have done a competent job, but”I knew I would never be outstanding.”Deciding her strength was in coming up with ideas, and not in managinga large staff and a budget to match, Kamm pitched the idea of anexecutivedevelopment department to her bosses. “I designed the functionfor a minimal staff, and a big consulting budget,” she says. Thenew position worked out well, she says, both for her and for thecompany.Kamm, now a vice president with Manchester Partners International,speaks on “Career Derailers and How to Avoid/Address Them”on Tuesday, March 13, at 7:30 a.m. at a meeting of Execunet at theDoral Forrestal. Cost: $35. Call 609-734-3427.In the 20 years since she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychologyfrom Fairleigh Dickinson (Class of 1981) and a master’s degree inindustrial organizational psychology from the Stevens Institute ofTechnology, Kamm has been working in the field of executive consultingand training. Her husband, Stephen Germany, is a “technologyperson,” a systems development consultant. They have a son, Adam,who lives in Colorado with his wife, Kelly, and their two-year-olddaughter, Payton. Kamm, who lives in Hunterdon County and works fromManchester’s Princeton office, says she flies west four times a yearto see Payton.Drawing from her years of experience, as well as her own careeradventures,Kamm offers this advice to executives who want to keep their careerson track:Avoid becoming complacent. A commonly accepted theoryis that success is the best predictor of more success, Kamm says.But the tendency of successful people to think they need only keepon doing what they’ve been doing to keep on succeeding can be a careerkiller. That’s because change is the new constant, and the skillsand behaviors that won praise and promotions in one situation don’tnecessarily work well in another. “Every time you get a new boss,it’s a new job,” Kamm says.Mergers and shifts in company priorities also can create entirelynew situations. And so can promotions, as she found out in theadministrativejob she hated. The killer closing techniques that served a starsalesmanso well in the field may hurt him in a sales management role. Thein-your-face style that won points with one manager may backfire witha new manager who abhors aggressive behavior.Scope out your strengths. Everyone has skills, andlimitationstoo. Kamm discovered this when an overload of the detail workessentialin an administrative position stripped the joy from her work.Switchingback to the consulting work she loved allowed her to keep movingahead.Realistic self evaluation will clarify career direction. Ignoringnatural skills and accepting promotions — or new jobs — solelybecause they offer more money or prestige can knock a promising careeroff the tracks. Often, Kamm says, “a top salesman is promotedto sales manager, and everyone asks `what happened to him?’” Whatmost likely happened, she says, is that the salesman kept on doingwhat he was good at — selling — and did not develop as amanager.Create a feedback frenzy. Self-knowledge is a good thing,but often is not enough. Most people need to turn to those aroundthem to get a sense of how they’re doing. “People who are reallysuccessful seek feedback,” Kamm says. “They really want it.It’s not just that they’re looking for someone to say `Greatjob.’”This feedback should come in frequently, and from every direction.Kamm suggests that work evaluations should be sought not just fromsupervisors, but also from co-workers, and underlings.Ask what’s different. When there is change at work,perhapsan acquisition, “a lot of time is spent being angry and holdingon to the past,” says Kamm. Don’t waste time this way is heradvice.”People need to ask `what’s different?’ They need to look atthemselvesand ask `How can I made adjustments in my behavior to fit in withthe new boss, new acquisition, new job?” This is not easy, shesays, because everyone has what she calls “success factors,”behaviors that have worked well in the past. “It’s a naturalthing,”she says. “Psychology tells us we keep doing things we getrewardedfor.”Top Of PageValued Customers Stick AroundEach year thousands of New Jersey’s small businessesring up their last sale. Many started life feeding on advice fromthe Small Business Administration, the National Association of WomenBusiness Owners, or the local Chambers of Commerce. But often thenew business owner becomes completely consumed by day-to-day tasksand loses sight of the basics of the business plan he crafted withthe help of experienced mentors.”Individuals often get into their own business to have a job andgain independence,” says Mike Pucciarelli of Bartolomeiand Pucciarelli CPA & Consultants “But often they don’t realizewhat is needed to make it grow.”Pucciarelli, along with his business partner, Jim Bartolomei,speaks on “Making Your Business Soar” on Tuesday, March 13,at 8 a.m. at the Palmer Inn. Cost: $350. Call 609-396-2480.Pucciarelli holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from MontclairState College (1981). He specializes in tax and business planningfor small to medium-sized companies.The goal of his seminar, Pucciarelli says, is to encourage businessesto stretch beyond their initial goals. “We call this maintaininga flight plan,” says Pucciarelli. “It’s important for abusinessto know where it is going.”Pucciarelli says one of the top reasons a business loses customersis perceived indifference, which occurs when customers believe thatthey no longer really matter to a company based upon how they aretreated. It’s not unusual, he says, for a business to concentrateso hard on gaining new business that it gives the impression ofabandoningits existing customers. And once a customer has left, at a minimumit is extremely costly to get him back again. In many cases, it justwon’t happen.Some elements that add up to a perception of indifference are afailureto return phone calls, use of voice mail rather than a receptionist,and not paying attention to customers when they walk in the door.”Businesses need to keep doing the small things for theircustomers,”says Pucciarelli. “They need to improve their internalprocesses.”Then a business can get more business from its customers, and notbe so dependent upon new ones.”I tell businesses that they are wasting their money by spendingthousands of dollars on advertising if, when someone calls, they geta company’s voice mail,” he says.The flip side of perceived indifference, Pucciarelli says, isperceivedvalue. When customers believe their needs are important, price isless of an issue. “A business can grow,” Pucciarelli says,”simply by adding value to their existing products andservices.”— Michael SchumacherTop Of PageFor Job SeekersThe Jewish Family & Children’s Service of Greater MercerCounty will run its Project Reemployment program starting Monday,March 19, from 9 a.m to 3 p.m. at 707 Alexander Road. It continueson Tuesday, March 20 and Friday, March 23.This program is for those who are currently unemployed or are facingimminent job loss. It offers information about self-assessment, skilldevelopment, resume writing, interviewing, and searching foremployment.It is free, but pre-registration is required. Call RachelWeitzenkornat 609-987-8100.Top Of PageEntrepreneur of the YearThe business council of the Princeton Chamber ofCommerceis accepting nomination for its Ninth Annual Entrepreneur of the YearAward. The candidate must be a chamber member and have been inbusinessfor a minimum of three years. The award includes a donation to thewinner’s favorite charity by supporting sponsor, Fleet Bank, publicityin area newspapers, and CCPA’s newsletter, and qualification for stateand national recognition.Call the chamber at 609-520-1776 for nomination forms and additionalinformation. Deadline for submissions is March 16.Top Of PageMath ContestThe New Jersey Society of Professional Engineers’EducationalFoundation is sponsoring MATHCOUNTS, a math achievement competitionto be held on Saturday, March 10, at the Bell Atlantic CorporateTrainingCenter in South Plainfield. The approximate 2,500 New Jersey studentswho are participating in the program this year compete for trips tothe Washington, D.C., national finals, to the NASA Space Camp, andfor scholarships.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
