LG Eyes Dispute Against Iridian
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Barbara Fox were prepared for the
September 22, 2004 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights
reserved.
Life in the Fast Lane
Talk to those who have used the services of an expensive
career counselor, and they either paint a very happy
picture (they found the right job) or a very unhappy one
(they did not find the right job). Bernard Haldane
Associates, a half-century old career counseling firm, has
been portrayed both ways. The Princeton office of this
company has changed its name to Carnegie Career Partners,
says Barry Layne, who has taken his string of career
counseling offices away from the national firm. Based at
Princeton Overlook, Layne now has 11 offices under the new
name, compared to the 19 offices he had previously.
The decision to leave Bernard Haldane came, says Layne,
when he disagreed with that company’s policies. “We had
been around for quite some time. Most clients were happy
with the service. Yet we were unhappy with decisions that
the corporation was making. We chose to leave of our own
volition.” Layne predicts that a new Bernard Haldane
franchisee will open in Central New Jersey soon under the
name BH Careers International.
“Our position is, we didn’t want to bad-mouth anyone.
Bernard Haldane has been around since 1947. The name was
such that we didn’t want it any more,” says Layne. Seven
other franchisees left at the same time, together
accounting for about 35 of the former 100 Bernard Haldane
offices worldwide.
But Jerry Weinger, owner of the flagship Bernard Haldane
firm for 14 years, says that Layne’s departure “is in the
best interests of the organization,” though he also says,
“I wish him well.”
“Our product is superior, the systems are superior, and
our services are at a modest price,” says Layne. Instead
of fees that ranged from $5,000 to $10,000, his new
company’s fees can go from $3,000 to $7,000, depending on
the services provided. “We certainly can’t guarantee a
particular salary, but we can tell you that we will work
with you and stay with you until a position is found under
the agreement.”
Layne says he has a satisfaction guarantee that will
assure clients can get a refund based on a schedule they
receive at their first appointment. No such guarantee
existed at the parent company until recently, says Layne.
He also offers a business intelligence product, called
Carnegie Advantage, which aims to predict what companies
are likely to be in a hiring mode in a particular market.
This Boston-based company monitors wire services and other
sources for real time business intelligence (on funding,
grants, purchase deals, and emerging businesses) and
assembles this data. “It makes the search easier in that
they know where to start, so they can at least start with
companies likely to be in hiring mode,” says Layne.
Layne grew up in upstate New York, where his father owned
dry cleaning franchises, and went to State University of
New York at Albany. He had owned Corrugated Concepts, a
manufacturing and import company in Trenton, where he
developed a line of under-bed storage boxes and imported
closet accessories from China to be sold to mass merchants
such as K-Mart and WalMart. “I sold the company to a large
paper company in Pennsylvania and pondered my fate,” says
Layne. “I went to the West Windsor public library to
research career moves and found an old ripped-up book by
Haldane on career satisfaction. I thought it was an
interesting process – how people can identify transferable
skills in a formal way – and learned he was the father of
the career consulting business.”
He met with the manager of the closest office and then
with the chairman in New York City. “He told me I would be
a natural and the New Jersey territory would be available.
My wife thought I was crazy. We had two kids, and I was
changing to a field I knew little about. But manufacturing
is so multifaceted. Little did I know that my transferable
skills were a natural for a business helping a variety of
people in a variety of career areas find their own way.”
He bought his first Bernard Haldane franchise in 1990 and
set up his office at Tamarack Circle on Route 206, moving
to Princeton Overlook in 1995.
Among the noteworthy career changes he engineered was to
find a job for a man who had been a hostage in Lebanon for
six or seven years. “I can get the president of the United
Sates on the phone, but I can’t get a job,” Layne
remembers him saying. He eventually found a job in the
government sector, through his contacts.
In other cases, Layne was able to help those who lost
their Wall Street jobs due to legal difficulties. “I saw
them after they had gone to prison or lost their licenses.
One client is using his ‘horse trading’ skills at a barter
company. We had a chemist who transferred his skills to
work for a Silicon Valley firm. You don’t know where they
are coming from and where they can go to.”
When it comes to complaints, “it’s a service business,”
says Layne, “and sometimes people want to blame someone
for their shortcomings.”
At one of Layne’s former franchise locations in
Minneapolis, complaints escalated to the point that the
Minnesota attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit on
behalf of the state’s consumers. Layne is among the
defendants named, and the state spokesperson says the case
is in the discovery stage.
The Minnesota complaint alleges that the Minneapolis
office of Bernard Haldane, in its advertisements and sales
presentations, represented that it had exclusive access to
a “hidden job market,” that its fees were based on a
purported “market analysis” and would likely be reimbursed
by the hiring company; and that consumers who used its
services would obtain a job within 90 to 120 days. The
lawsuit alleges that these representations are false,
deceptive, and misleading.
One previous Minnesota client said that what she received
for her money was “a website address with old listings, a
videotape of interviewing techniques, an outline to create
my own resume with little guidance from Haldane, a couple
of hours of false promises from a Haldane ‘counselor,’ and
no response when I requested a refund of the unused
portion of the exorbitant fee I paid to Haldane.”
Another former client said, “I didn’t pay Haldane nearly
$14,000 to tell me to go around contacting my past
business associates begging for a job.”
“Minneapolis is far away and unfortunately was an office
we didn’t get to very often. We had a very low complaint
ratio,” says Layne. “But we certainly acknowledge the
residual problem there under the Bernard Haldane name.
That was one of the factors that caused us to want to
revamp our product and our protection for the consumer.
While nothing has been proven, and while it is a complex
matter that we hope will be resolved shortly, it has
caused us to revamp our product and our protections under
the new brand.”
Layne plans to do no advertising: “We will attract clients
with the quality of our services.”
Carnegie Career Partners, 100 PrincetonOverlook, Suite 100, Princeton 08540. Barry Layne, owner.609-987-0400; fax, 609-987-0011.Top Of PageExpansionsResources Connection (RECN), 502 CarnegieCenter, Suite 104, Princeton 08540. Susan Reed, clientservice director. 609-514-5158; fax, 609-514-5147. Homepage: www.resourcesconnection.comResources Connection has moved from Princeton OfficeGallery, a shared office on Independence Way, to subleasedspace at 502 Carnegie Center. Founded in 1996 by Deloitte,the company spun out in 1999 and went public in 2000. Itis based in Costa Mesa, CA. This office has been open forfour years. Wendy Rose is managing director, and SusanReed is client service director.The company supplies personnel in these fields: accountingand finance, human capital management, and informationtechnology professionals, also audit solutions, supplychain, and legal personnel.Top Of PageLG Eyes Dispute Against IridianLG Electronics has filed a lawsuit against IridianTechnologies over LG’s licensing deal for Iridian’s irisrecognition technology. Based in Moorestown, Iridian isthe company that resulted from the stock-swap merger ofIriScan and Sensar, a Sarnoff spinoff.A Korean company with a sales and service office for irisrecognition access products in Jamesburg, LG Electronicswas the first company to license and produce acommercially viable iris recognition platform, and it hassecond generation products in more than 1,000 locations onsix continents (U.S. 1, February 25, 2004). The UnitedStates headquarters of LG Electronics is in EnglewoodCliffs.In late August Iridian announced it would terminate thelicensing agreement that it had established in 1997.Iridian also, according to LG, called up some of LG’scustomers and made statements about the dispute that LGbelieves are inaccurate. LG Electronics, in return, hasfiled a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Newarkagainst Iridian Technologies in the dispute.”Licensing disagreements are not uncommon in thecomplicated agreement between licensee and licensor,” saysDavid Johnston of LG’s Jamesburg office. “We weresurprised that Iridian issued the announcement. It electednot to follow the mechanism for resolving disputes thathad been agreed to by both parties. We had beennegotiating and expected them to be resolved amicably.”Iridian did not return a reporter’s call.”We are selling and servicing our products,” saysJohnston. “We have contacted our customers and talked tothem about how Iridian alleged that our license has beenterminated. We have assured our partners that Iridian’sactions should not be construed an impediment to ourselvesand our partners.”Johnston’s recent contracts include the Canadian airportsecurity transportation business, registered travelersystems in Boston and Reagan Airports, and the securitysystem at a major United States airport. Perhaps the mostinteresting was the use of iris recognition technology atthe Democratic National Convention. Personnel who gave outmore than 30,000 credentials at the convention had to passthrough the system, as did vendors at two small hotels.LG has asked the court to rule that LG products do notinfringe Iridian-held patents and to enjoin Iridian frominterfering with the relationships that LG has withexisting and potential customers of LG IrisAccessproducts.LG Electronics U.S.A. Inc., 1095 SouthCranbury Road, Suite 3, Jamesburg 08831. David Johnston.609-860-8456; fax, 609-860-0666. Home page: www.lgiris.comTop Of PageNew in TownRelycom.com, 666 Plainsboro Road, Suite 1171,Plainsboro 08536. Sai Varanasi, vice president.609-716-7323; fax, 609-716-7327. Home page:www.relycom.comPrasad Dorbala has moved his firm’s New Jersey office fromFords to Princeton Meadows Office Center. A formerexecutive at Cisco and AT&T, he offers enterprisetechnology solutions based on Relycom’s architecture anddesign, including the MAIS system for network managementand a global service model, RGSM, a framework fordistributed project management.Top Of PageCrosstown MoveBeacon Management, 116 Village Boulevard,Suite 210, Princeton 08540. 609-514-1801; fax,609-514-1806. Home page: www.beaconprinceton.comGrant W. Schaumburg Jr. and Mark S. Stratton have movedBeacon Management’s office from 47 Hulfish StreetForrestal Village. Phone and fax are new. The companydeclined to comment.Schaumburg has worked in futures management for nearly 30years, according to the company’s website. Formerly atrader and trading systems manager at CommoditiesCorporation (now Goldman Sachs), he was a founder andpresident of Mount Lucas Management Corporation, whichoffered futures investment programs to large pensionplans.Stratton, the president, developed the firm’s proprietaryresearch, trading, and investment account software thatgenerates specific trading instructions for each account.”Beacon investment software simulates the historicalperformance of a quantitative trading approach applied toone or more markets,” says the website. “Computer programsalso simulate the daily interaction of multiple tradingapproaches applied to multiple markets.”Karen L. Zaramba is the vice president of operations.Top Of PageContracts AwardedTelelingua USA, 46 Sayre Drive, Plainsboro08536. Lionel Mellet, CEO. 609-951-9511; fax,609-951-0550. Www.telelingua.comTelelingua has contracted with Educational Testing Serviceto provide translation services to help market and deliverETS’s products to more than 180 countries. A full-servicetranslation company, Telelingua USA focuses onpharmaceutical, medical, educational and technicaltranslations and localization (U.S. 1, January 7, 2004).CEO Lionel Mellet had been vice president of technologyfor Berlitz International until he opened the Americanbranch of this Brussels-based translation company. Histranslators use a web-based software platform that letstranslators in diverse locations collaborate on a projectin real time. Also working for the company are anotherformer Berlitz employee, Hector Baraona, and Mellet’swife, Cecelia.Zargis Medical Corp., 755 College Road East,Princeton 08540. Shahram Hejazi, president and CEO.609-734-6510; fax, 609-734-6565. Home page: www.zargis.comZargis Medical Corp., a spinoff of Siemens CorporateResearch, has taken a step toward a commercial rollout forits Cardioscan, the first and only computer-aided medicaldevice to support physicians in analyzing heart sounds forthe identification of suspected murmurs, a potential signof heart disease. Zargis obtained U.S. Food and DrugAdministration clearance to show a graphical display ofthe median energy level, timing, and duration of suspectedheart murmurs during specific segments of the diastolicand systolic intervals of heartbeats recorded byCardioScan. The majority of Zargis Medical is owned bySpeedus Corporation.Bayne Law Group LLC, 116 Village Boulevard,Suite 200, Princeton 08543-3036. Andrew J. Bayne Esq.609-924-4295; fax, 609-924-4298. Home page:www.baynelaw.comPasser and Crown Inc., 531 Lake Drive,Princeton 08540. 609-924-5686; fax, 609-279-1598.After Andrew Bayne and Keld Hansen were featured in thesame U.S. 1 Survival Guide item on international trade(August 18), they got in touch and formed a partnership.Passer & Crown Inc. is an international investment bankingand consulting firm offering middle market andconfidential support to companies of various sizes,industries and geographic locations.The Bayne Law Group provides international contracts,transactions and dispute resolution for small andmiddle-market business interests throughout the world.”We found out it was a wonderful idea to make a completepackage of services, one stop shopping,” says Hansen.”Between us, we have an interesting concept. Often peoplego first to a lawyer and then to a business consultant.”The lawyer does what he is asked to do, but the businessconsultant might decide that the deal requires moreflexibility. “When these things are solved together theclient can sleep better.Top Of PageManagement MovesFranklin Photo & Imaging, 3417 Route 27,Franklin Towne Center, Franklin Park 08823. 732-297-5656;fax, 732-297-3404.Two brothers, Jan Gojdycz and Michael Gojdycz (pronouncedGoydich), bought the Moto Photo store at the FranklinTowne Center.Top Of PageDeathsDuncan W. Alling, 66, on September 13. He was headmasterof Princeton Day School from 1986 to 1994.Thomas A. Peterson, 60, on September 14. Formerly anofficer at J.P. Morgan & Co., he was most recently aconsultant with Computer Sciences Corp.Corrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
