U.S. companies in March posted the highest number of job openings in nearly four years, a sign that hiring could strengthen in the coming months after slowing this spring.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that employers advertised 3.74 million job openings in March. That’s up from a revised 3.57 million in February. The March figure was the highest since July 2008, just before the financial crisis erupted that fall.

The increase in job openings suggests that weaker hiring gains in March and April could be temporary. It usually takes one to three months for employers to fill openings.

Even with the increase, roughly 12.7 million people were unemployed in March. That means an average of 3.4 people competed for each open job. While that’s far better than the nearly 7-to-1 ratio when the recession ended. In a healthy job market, the ratio is usually around 2 to 1.

Read the full article on www.npr.org!

Yου′ve heard thе term structural unemployment before–thе type thаt exists whеn available skill sets don’t match open jobs. Once mostly bandied аbουt wіth regard tο industries Ɩіkе farming, manufacturing аnԁ health care, increasingly thе term applies tο a range οf οthеr vocations аѕ well. One οf thеѕе іѕ advertising аnԁ marketing.

Interactive media outfit Razorfish, fοr instance, ѕауѕ іt hаѕ аbουt 200 positions open іn thе U.S. bесаυѕе іt саn’t find thе rіɡht public tο fill thеm. Agreed hοw quickly technology іѕ changing, digital agencies nowadays аrе increasingly looking fοr user experience specialists, data analysts аnԁ coders.

Thе types οf skills applicants frοm communications οr creative backgrounds аrе expected tο hаνе аrе аƖѕο changing, аѕ agencies emphasize customer engagement, social media, qυісk response times, аnԁ a passion fοr bу nеw tools аnԁ adopting a variety οf аррrοасhеѕ.

Read the full article on forextrademarketing.com!

Some organizations will excite you. They’ll stimulate your success and growth. Others will be stressful. They may lead you to quit before you’ve accomplished much or learned what you hoped to. With the pressure (or excitement) of finding a new job, it’s all too easy to pursue a job opportunity or to accept an offer with only a hazy view of how the institution really operates. The path to an institution you’ll like is to investigate the culture you’re thinking of joining before you accept the position.

Sean (name has been changed) is a master at this. He pursued a job offer at a Fortune 500 company to be the first Chief Administrative Officer (CAO). He was well-qualified, presented himself well, and got the offer. He’d been competing with capable people. He was proud he’d “won the contest.”

The next step was a return visit, after which he’d decide to accept the offer. Sean had already learned a lot about the company’s businesses and some things about the organization. His priority now was culture and how the new position might fit: “I asked people, ‘What are you excited about? What are you proud of? Who are your close friends in the company? How does the group function together?'” Sean learned things like who the heroes were, what made them successful, and what his biggest challenges and opportunities would be in the job. The different people he met with were learning from his questions. It was almost like he already worked there, and they were jointly determining how to make the new role successful.

Read the full article on hbr.org!

Boredom is an unlikely new frontier in workplace research. Commonly associated with goofing off, taking absurdly long lunch-breaks, and playing internet games on the sly, new studies suggest it’s something that affects high-performing employees as well as those in menial jobs.

Sandi Mann, a senior psychology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, in England, says boredom is the second most commonly hidden workplace emotion, after anger, and believes modern workplaces are becoming more boring.

“Changes in legislation all the time leads to bureaucratic procedures that people find boring,” she says. “We seem to be in a culture of having meetings, which a lot of people find boring. There are a lot of automated systems now, so a lot of the things we do are quite remote. We have more people working night shifts, which are more boring because you’ve got fewer people to talk to.”

In addition, Mann feels that, as a society, we’re becoming less inclined to tolerate boredom. She says: “People have more of an expectation to be fulfilled by everything they do. Compare our grandparents’ generation: there wasn’t any desire to have self-actualization and to reach their potential. They didn’t go down the coal mines in order to be fulfilled.

Read the rest on cnn.com!

Benjamin Franklin was a man of action. Over his lifetime, his curiosity and passion fueled a diverse range of interests. He was a writer (often using a pseudonym), publisher, diplomat, inventor and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

His inventions included the lightning rod, bifocals and the Franklin stove. Franklin was responsible for establishing the first public library, organizing fire fighters in Philadelphia, was one of the early supporters of mutual insurance and crossed the Atlantic eight times. Self-development was a constant endeavor throughout his incredible life.

Benjamin Franklin was clearly a man who knew how to get things done.

This week, Valve’s hipper-than-thou employee handbook was unleashed on the Internet, to much envy and amusement. Companies like Valve, Zappos, and Facebook spill on how they maintain continuity and culture using clever onboarding practices and simple reassurance.

In Douglas Adams’ famous book series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, space traveler Arthur Dent carries with him a galactic guidebook with the two words on the cover: “Don’t Panic.” Solid advice for a hapless spaceman. And perhaps for new hires, too.

On the first day of work, employees at Valve Software are handed a 56-page employee handbook (which hit the Internet this week, and where we got the illustrations in this story) and a desk with wheels. They’re then told to find something to work on. Appropriately, the handbook preface reads, “This handbook is about…how not to freak out now that you’re here.”

Read the rest on fastcompany.com!

You may think you’re getting more accomplished by working longer hours. You’re probably wrong.

There’s been a flurry of recent coverage praising Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, for leaving the office every day at 5:30 p.m. to be with her kids.  Apparently she’s been doing this for years, but only recently “came out of the closet,” as it were.

What’s insane is that Sandberg felt the need to hide the fact, since there’s a century of research establishing the undeniable fact that working more than 40 hours per week actually decreases productivity.

In the early 1900s, Ford Motor ran dozens of tests to discover the optimum work hours for worker productivity.  They discovered that the “sweet spot” is 40 hours a week–and that, while adding another 20 hours provides a minor increase in productivity, that increase only lasts for three to four weeks, and then turns negative.

Read the full article on inc.com!

Ed Trevisani hangs with his young sons when they come home from school. He volunteers as a Boy Scout leader, serves on nonprofit boards, and teaches management at Philadelphia-area universities. He’s even been known to sit on the back porch in the middle of the workday. Not bad for a guy who’s still pulling down as much as he did when he was a partner with IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Trevisani is a Wharton MBA and GE alum who now manages high-powered projects for Fortune 500 companies and advises executives on operational issues, change management, and potential mergers. He does all these assignments on a temporary basis, working as an independent contractor.

Read the full article on hbr.org!

The TV show Mad Men has won fans for breathing life — and a heavy whiff of bourbon — into the fictional advertising world of 1960s New York. But surely no American company has such a liver-pickling culture in this day and age, right?

Yes, it could have been an episode of a program on the DIY  Network…if they had a show for redecorating an office, subtracted the hulky host and replaced them with me. Nevertheless, last Thursday afternoon, I sent most of our Chicago team for an afternoon game at Wrigley Field and let them know that they could work from home on Friday because I would be cleaning the carpets and touching up paint in the office. When they left for the game at noon on Thursday, the crash began!

Day One

First, I put our very own Vice President of Operations, Matt Crook, on carpet cleaning duty. Then I grabbed a brush and attempted to stay out of the real painters way. When we finished at 11 pm, on day one, we had clean carpets and freshly painted walls. Per the advice of our crash decorator, Darbie McCollian from Restore Decor, we added new color to our two offices and updated our signature orange wall.

Day Two

This one started early! After loading the 17′ Uhaul, I was on the road at 6:30 am to fight Chicago traffic and get the new furniture and accessories to the office. This time my brother-in-law, Brandon, was along for the ride. When we arrived, Darbie, Matt, Brandon and I began unloading the truck and getting it all to the 4th floor. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I invited our new Controller, Dan Alexander, to join in on the heavy lifting. “Welcome to the company Dan, now grab a box”. At the close of day two it was out with the old and in with the new!

Day Three and Four

Saturday and Sunday was Darbie’s time to shine. Our crew had been reduced to Michelle, myself, and Darbie because even during a crash, people should still get their weekends off. While Darbie was methodically bringing her design through to the home stretch, Michelle and I were modifying the individual workspaces and reorganizing the files to accompany the new arrangement. By Sunday afternoon, the crash team had put in 40 hours in four days and we were soooo close to being finished….

Day Five

I arrived at 6 am on Monday to hang two new original pieces of art and change out a file cabinet, which arrived to us with a dent. Mission complete as of 7:16 am on Monday. In four plus days we had cleaned carpets, freshened up the colors on the wall, updated our waiting area, added a company sign, created additional interviewing space, reorganized the individual work spaces to be more comfortable and efficient, created more storage in our mini kitchen area and found room for an additional work station!

Finally, it was time to unveil our surprise crash to a very deserving team…and they loved it!

Thank you to Darbie McCollian at Restore Decor, the crash team of Matt, Brandon, Tim the painter, Dan, Al Grossman at Signs Now in Geneva, and Michelle for coming up with the idea for the crash and most of all to the Chicago Smarties who’s hard work and dedication have ultimately allowed us this luxury.

The human resources department is known for being touchy-feely, but in the age of big data, it’s becoming a bit more cold and analytical. From figuring out what schools to recruit from to what employees should be offered flexible work arrangements, data analytics are helping HR professionals make more informed decisions.

The success of Oscar nominated film Moneyball isn’t hurting either, said James Raybould, director of insights at LinkedIn. The movie, based on the Michael Lewis book, tells the true story of Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane. Using statistical analysis, Beane was able to recruit undervalued baseball players and lead his underfunded baseball club to the playoffs.

Read the full article on blogs.wsj.com!

AMC has a new reality show coming out in April called, “The Pitch.” It’s billed as a real-life advertising agency pitch-scenario with real agencies and a real client (Subway). AMC will give us a sneak peek on April 8th after a, you guessed it, Mad Men episode (smart). But what’s interesting to me about this new show is that the big agencies, like BBDO, DDB, McCann, and several others, were approached by AMC to participate, but they turned it down.

The speculation as to why they turned it down, according to the New York Times, “Getting Ad Agencies Into Reality TV,” by Stuart Elliott, is that the big agencies didn’t want to expose their “secret sauces” for all, including competitive agencies, to see. They have proprietary strategic processes to protect. One-of-a-kind brand planning techniques to keep secret. Trademarked brainstorming methods that were invented here. Right?

Read the full article on www.forbes.com!

12 April 2012/ AIGA Chicago

Design Thinking – Morning Star

Design Thinking is a biannual lecture series devoted to those who are driving this constant process of change. It features design leaders, educators, curators, and authors who are actively reshaping the creative process, directing currents in contemporary culture, and redefining the meaning of design.

It’s happened to most of us at one point or another: you turn in your notice at a job, and the company scrambles to make a counteroffer designed to make you want to stay. It can be tempting, especially if the raise or benefits they’re offering are sweet enough compared to the job (we hope) you’re headed to, but in almost every case it’s a bad idea to take the counteroffer. Here’s why.

Putting aside the notion that even if you take the counteroffer, you’ll always be “that person who resigned but stayed for the money,” it’s worth remembering that counteroffers are usually made when a company—or a manager—is in panic mode and doesn’t want to suddenly lose a potentially valuable employee—at least not until they can be replaced easily. So while you may take the counteroffer, enjoy the fatter paycheck or bigger bonus, and think everything is okay, it’s very likely that your management is working on ways to work around you or replace you so they can eventually eliminate an “at risk” employee, one they assume will start looking for a new job eventually again anyway.

Read the full article on lifehacker.com!

Do you earn more or less than the world’s average wage? Type in your monthly salary and we’ll give you the answer.

The average wage, calculated by the International Labour Organization, is published here for the first time. It’s a rough figure based on data from 72 countries, omitting some of the world’s poorest nations. All figures are adjusted to reflect variations in the cost of living from one country to another, and as Ruth Alexander of BBC radio’s More or Less programme underlines, it’s all about wage earners, not the self-employed or people on benefits.

Check it out on www.bbc.co.uk!

Political campaigns used to be short, frenzied run-ups to an election — after which the winning candidate would turn to the stately task of governing. But over the past few decades, politics and policy began to mingle. Political advisors took White House roles, and polling began to drive decision-making — “The Permanent Campaign,” as journalist (and later Clinton staffer) Sidney Blumenthal presciently dubbed it in his 1980 book.

The advent of 24-hour cable news (and later, the Internet) opened a gaping maw, ravenous for content. Politicians knew they’d be dissected constantly, not just during campaign season, with querulous Crossfire hosts debating who has “The Big Mo” and who’s on the downswing. Most people — even former political operatives, like me — can agree this is bad for democracy. But candidates have accepted it as the new normal and, with savvy teams PR experts on call, they’re making do.

The real problem, though, isn’t the impact on politicians.

It’s the fact that everyone else — including regular professionals — is also now expected to perform round-the-clock personal brand maintenance, and most people don’t even realize it.

Read the full article on blogs.hbr.org!

If you lost your job today, after commiserating with pals tonight it might seem enticing to update your social networks with the news. Canfield warns that a blast to Facebook that you’re unemployed and in need of a job can seem desperate and off-putting to both personal friends and potential business contacts. Waldman, on the other hand, has more positive news. In an experiment conducted for his 2011 title Job Searching With Social Media For Dummies, he asked a friend to do exactly that. “He had been out of work for about three months and was getting nowhere,” Waldman recalls. “So he updated his status and made himself vulnerable; he told his entire LinkedIn network he was looking for help.”

Within the next seven days he received nearly 20 messages, and, surprisingly, the only negative comments were from friends who were concerned he might “look desperate.” The other half? Legitimate job leads. “If you’re willing to put yourself on the line,” he says, “It might be worth bucking the status quo and making yourself a little more vulnerable.” This just might be a mistake that pays off.

Read the full article on forbes.com!

Whenever I try to conjure up what innovation looks like, the same slideshow of images clicks across my mind: that photo of Einstein with his tongue sticking out, Edison with his light bulb, Steve Jobs onstage in his black turtleneck, introducing the latest iThing. Unoriginal and overdone, to be sure. And not all that accurate.

Because it’s not just about that romantic “ah ha!” moment in front of a chalkboard or a cocktail napkin, it’s about the nitty-gritty work that comes after the idea:  getting it accepted and implemented. Who are these faces? And, most importantly, as I’m sure you’re all asking yourselves: where do I fit in?

Read the full article on forbes.com!

Oftentimes when people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I work in advertising, they ask, “Don’t you wish you got to be an ad man in the golden era, like on Mad Men?” I usually smile and respond with “What makes you think the golden era was 40 years ago? We are living in the golden era right now–the most exciting and unpredictable time in marketing history.” We are witnessing a complete social transformation. The entire industry has been flipped on its head.

So what’s changed? In the ’60s, agencies controlled a brand’s message and how it was broadcast to an extremely broad target audience on a small number of platforms. Today, consumers are in control; scattered across a variety of social networks, niche online communities are very selective about what they want to consume and the mediums through which they want to consume it. It is a common industry consensus that bombarding or spamming consumers with intrusive advertising and brand messages simply no longer works, not to mention it’s incredibly expensive. So why do so many brands and agencies keep making the same mistakes?

Read the full article on fastcompany.com!