Fri, March 30th, 2007 - 11:05 am - By Gordon Basichis
We saw this fact sheet on Inc.com
What We’re Worrying About
These days, computer security threats are coming from all directions. Here’s what is keeping entrepreneurs up at night, according to a recent survey by the research firm Forrester.
By: Inc. Staff
- Viruses and worms: 73%
- Spyware: 66%
- Spam: 64%
- Outside hackers: 57%
- Identity theft: 55%
- Security configuration compliance: 55%
- Employees violating security: 46%
- Internal hackers/attacks: 41%
- Regulatory compliance: 39%
- Dont know: 28%
Copyright © 2006 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved.
Inc.com, 375 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Corra, being a background screening service, hears a lot of the uglier stories out there. Companies find their files and data, their intellectual property and proprietary information, compromised or outright stolen by hackers, crackers, and, worse, perhaps, their own employees.
While many companies put up firewalls and take elaborate precautions to assure Internet and database security, by not conducting the proper background checks, they leave themselves upon to inside predators. That’s why it is always wise to conduct criminal background searches and Credit Reports. The criminal search is obvious, while the credit report may often indicate those desperate enough to be susceptible to breaking the law.
So take Corra’s advice and be sure to check them out before you hire.
Thu, March 29th, 2007 - 12:13 pm - By Gordon Basichis
We found this article, which is an excerpt from Goldsmith’s book, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There,” on Strategy + Business.com
The Favoritism Test
by Marshall Goldsmith
Learn to avoid the pitfalls of rewarding sycophants in the workplace.
I have reviewed custom-designed leadership profiles at more than 100 major corporations. These documents typically feature boilerplate language that describes the leadership behavior each company desires. Such chestnuts include “communicates a clear vision,†“helps people develop to their maximum potential,†“strives to see the value of differing opinions,†and “avoids playing favorites.â€
Not one profile has ever included a desired behavior that reads “effectively sucks up to management.†Although given the dedication to fawning and sucking up in most corporations — and how often such behavior is rewarded — it probably should. Almost every company says it wants people to “challenge the system,†“be empowered to express their opinion,†and “say what they really think,†but there sure are a lot of companies that are stuck on sucking up.
Not only do companies say they abhor such comically servile behavior, but so do individual leaders. Almost all the leaders I have met say that they would never encourage such a thing in their organizations. I have no doubt that they are sincere. Most of us are easily irritated, if not disgusted, by derriere kissers. Which raises a question: If leaders say they discourage sucking up, why does it dominate the workplace? Keep in mind that these leaders are generally very shrewd judges of character. They spend their lives sizing people up: taking in first impressions and recalibrating them against later impressions. And yet, they still fall for the super-skilled suck-up. They still play favorites.
The simple answer is: We can’t see in ourselves what we can see so clearly in others.
Perhaps you are now thinking, “It’s amazing how leaders send out subtle signals that encourage subordinates to mute their criticisms and exaggerate their praise of the powers that be. And it is surprising how they cannot see it in themselves. Of course, this doesn’t apply to me.â€
Maybe you’re right. But how can you be so sure that you’re not in denial?
I use an irrefutable test with my clients to show how we all unknowingly encourage sucking up. I ask a group of leaders: “How many of you own a dog that you love?†Big smiles cross the executives’ faces as they wave their hands in the air. They beam as they tell me the names of their faithful hounds.
Then we have a contest. I ask them, “At home, who gets most of your unabashed affection? Is it (a) your husband, wife, or partner; (b) your kids; or (c) your dog?†More than 80 percent of the time, the winner is the dog.
I then ask the executives if they love their dogs more than their family members. The answer is always a resounding no. My follow-up: “So why does the dog get most of your attention?â€
Their replies all sound the same: “The dog is always happy to see me.†“The dog never talks back.†“The dog gives me unconditional love.†In other words, the dog is a suck-up.
I can’t say that I am any better. I love my dog, Beau. I travel at least 180 days a year, and Beau goes bonkers when I return home from a trip. I pull into the driveway, and my first inclination is to open the front door, go straight to Beau, and exclaim, “Daddy’s home!†Invariably, Beau jumps up and down, and I hug and pat him and make a huge fuss. One day my daughter, Kelly, was home from college. She watched my typical lovefest with Beau. She then looked at me, held her hands in the air like little paws, and barked, “Woof woof.â€
Point taken.
If we aren’t careful, we can wind up treating people at work like dogs: continually rewarding those who heap unthinking, unconditional admiration upon us. What behavior do we get in return? A virulent case of the suck-ups.
The net result is obvious. You’re encouraging behavior that serves you but not necessarily the best interests of the company. If everyone is fawning over the boss, who’s getting work done? Worse, it tilts the field against the honest, principled employees who won’t play along. This is a double dose of bad news. You’re not only playing favorites, but also favoring the wrong people!
Leaders can stop encouraging this behavior by admitting that we all have a tendency to favor those who favor us, even if we don’t mean to.
We should then compare our direct reports on three measures.
First, how much do they like me? (I know you can’t be sure. What matters is how much you think they like you. Fawning is acting, and effective suck-ups are good actors.)
Second, what is their contribution to the company and its customers? (In other words, are they A players, B, C, or worse?)
Third, how much positive personal recognition do I give them?
What we’re looking for is whether the correlation is stronger between measures one and three or measures two and three. If we’re honest with ourselves, our recognition of people may be linked to how much they seem to like us rather than how well they perform. That’s the definition of playing favorites.
And the fault is all our own. We’re encouraging the kind of behavior that we despise in others. Without meaning to, we are basking in hollow praise, which makes us hollow leaders.
This quick self-analysis won’t solve the problem. But it identifies it, which is where change begins.
Corra knows that sycophants are not necessarily the best workers. They may spend more time sucking up than actually working. As with many other things, there is a dark side to a person being overly complimentary. Honesty is often the first victim. Besides who needs someone running behind you, telling you how wonderful you are when either you already know it or you know it is for obvious political gain.Aside from an extensive interview and perhaps psychological profiles, there isn’t much you can do to determine if you are about to hire a sycophant. Maybe it’s an indicator if he leaves a greasy slime on his chair when he leaves–just kidding.We think personal reference checks may be helpful. And, of course, sometimes when someone is being overly nice, he is hiding something from you. So always run a criminal search, and we always recommend an education verification. When people lie, they lie about education most often.As Corra says, check them out before you hire.
Tue, March 27th, 2007 - 11:42 am - By Gordon Basichis
We saw this article on Inc.com
Building a Better Web Team
Expanding your business online requires an integrated staff. But that’s not a problem; it’s an opportunity.
The epicenter of my life is at that little dot where technology and media intersect.
I spend a great deal of my time working with businesses on practical steps they can take to develop their online presence. It’s a great deal of fun, but it also forces executives and managers to step outside of their comfort zones when they make decisions. I’ve experienced the clash between the online and offline departments. It’s rarely pretty, and often involves heated exchanges.
I assumed these problems of opposing interests would go away the further we moved into the digital age. When the current work force moves along, I thought, the next crop of “native digerati” would inherently understand what skills were needed to operate in the world and how those skills would be applied.
I was foolish to think that.
The last few months I’ve had one very basic question thrown at me from small and mid-size media employers, employees, and potential employees. The question has come, in various forms, from companies searching for people to lead their online departments, students hoping to secure a job when they graduate, and mid-career media types looking for a way to stay relevant in the digital age.
In a nutshell, the question boils down to this: What skills do companies need to effectively work with media and technology?
The top publishing executive of a small magazine with a staff of about 30 first posed the question in July. She wanted to move her business beyond the printed page. To do that, she realized she needed someone to run the online component of her business without upsetting her print staff.
She eventually boiled her company’s online vision down to three simple areas: she wanted strong editorial stories, an elegant layout, and a Web-friendly display. It wasn’t long before she realized that she had two of those three skill sets in-house — the editorial and graphic departments — but she didn’t have anyone who could customize their off-the-shelf Web publishing system, which meant all of their content was posted with pre-made templates. It’s impossible to have a unique and flexible site with pre-made templates.
With that knowledge in hand, she decided that her first hire should be a Web producer.
Good Web producers should have a strong background in programming (ASP.Net, C#, Java, Microsoft Visual Studio), a solid base in Web development applications (HTML, CSS, XML), and a passing understanding of graphics (Flash, Photoshop). It’s imperative that this person has excellent verbal and written communication skills along with some project management experience.
Once her producer is in place, the publisher can use her in-house editorial and graphic design staffs to create her Web presence, and since she’s using staff already with the publication, she can be sure that her online and offline platforms will share a similar editorial and graphic language.
That solved the publisher’s problem, but it didn’t exactly answer the question from my students’ perspective. They are facing a dizzying array of choices at our university. Should they major in Computer Science, Electronic Media and Broadcasting, or Journalism? Which major will make them more attractive job candidates to companies?
I tell them, not at all sarcastically, yes and all of them.
Let’s go back to our Web producer. Six months from now, once the publisher’s operation is humming along, she will be forced to make another choice. The site has attracted a spate of new visitors and advertisers, so it’s time to expand. Who is the next hire?
The answer is that for every new property you add to your site, you’ll need to hire specialists in each area. If you want to add video and audio, you’ll need a specialized C#/ASP.Net programmer who can manage that section of the site, you’ll need someone who can shoot and edit digital video and audio (Final Cut Pro), and you’ll someone to manage that editorial process.
At Northern Kentucky University, we offer a hybrid degree called Media Informatics, which trains students on media creation, database programming, and Web development. This hybrid degree is gaining traction in universities around the country, precisely because the job market demands students have a wide range of digital skills.
Which brings us to our last question: What should companies do about mid-career employees?
It may seem counter-intuitive, but these people offer the greatest opportunity for a small business because they bring specific institutional knowledge. As online operations grow, mid-career workers spurred on by attentive managers can get specialized training — for instance, editing digital audio for podcasts — that will allow them to more easily work across multiple mediums, while insuring that the online and offline properties don’t spin off into two separate entities.
This is a boon for the company as they can bring experience to their new platform, while giving seasoned employees a new challenge.
Brad King is an assistant professor of media informatics at Northern Kentucky University, and he blogs about technology and culture at MIT’s Technology Review.
Corra regards this as an extremely helpful article. Any company looking to take maximum advantage of its web presence should read this article very carefully. With research reporting back that a visitor decides within seconds whether he wants to explore your website or not, you best make a terrific first impression.
Then there are IT people and IT people. Some are much more creative than others, and that group is a lot more difficult to find and recruit than your average snap in the pieces IT person. You want a staff that gives thought to your objectives and then designs a unique and possibly innovative website that will keep those eyeballs coming.
Corra recommends that in addition to the criminal background search you run an education verification search and an employment verification search. For greater detail and sense of your candidates ability, you may want to conduct several reference checks as well. These often differ from employment verification searches as they go into greater and more subjective detail about your candidate.
Be unique and be innovative. Your business and the world at large is better for it. But as Corra says, check them out before you hire.
Mon, March 26th, 2007 - 1:44 pm - By Gordon Basichis
Corra, being headquartered in California, can sense a slight malaise among people. One one level the job market is very robust with amazing salaries being offered to candidates with exceptional skills. Clerical employees and laborers are not finding it hard to get work, either. But in the middle, there is some pressure as many industries pick up their proverbial catcher’s mitt and move their offices elsewhere. The recent Nissan move took a big bite out of the job market. There are others either moving or talking about it. It’s raised enough concern that certain pundits are calling for incentives to keep and lure companies here. California is, after all, the birthing ground for many smaller and medium sized businesses. As HR Managers, you are are recruiting from the largest state in the country. Many souls immigrate to California from around the country and around the globe. So be sure to have a comprehensive employment screening program in place when recruiting candidates. Be sure to run criminal checks and education verification searches. A Social Security Trace will assure you that your candidate is legally entitled to work in the U.S. A credit check is necessary for anyone with access to sensitive databases, cash or product, or proprietary information. So, workers whether they are optimistic or not, should realize that any company that wants to hire them will check them out before they hire. |
|
|
Thu, March 22nd, 2007 - 2:44 pm - By Gordon Basichis
We found this on the Courier Post Online.
EDUCATION: Poll: It’s best to get a business degree
If hindsight is 20/20, new students may want to heed the advice of their predecessors, according to the staffing firm Accountemps.
Thirty-nine percent of executives said if they were in college today, they would choose a degree in business administration to best prepare for future success, according to an Accountemps survey released last month.
The other top responses were liberal arts (21 percent), accounting (14 percent) and computer science (11 percent).
The survey was conducted by an independent research firm and developed by Accountemps, which places temporary accounting, finance and bookkeeping professionals.
Corra is a big believer in higher education and is mystified that more young people do not at least obtain a bachelor’s degree in today’s highly competitive and very global marketplace. But, hey, nobody ever accused younger people of being overly endowed with good sense.
Then there are those who would like to fake their degree. They either went to college for a couple of years or, as Corra sometimes finds, they never went at all. So before you decide on that sincere looking face sitting across from you, be sure to run an education verification check along with a criminal check and social security trace.
As Corra says, check them out before you hire.
Wed, March 21st, 2007 - 3:34 pm - By Gordon Basichis
Resumes Inching Up; Survey Shows Longer Resumes Now More Acceptable
BI) Michael Worringer
MENLO PARK, Calif. — The “keep your resume to one page” rule may be on its way out, a new survey suggests.While more than half (52 percent) of executives polled believe a single page is the ideal length for a staff-level resume, 44 percent said they prefer two pages. That compares to 25 percent polled a decade earlier who cited two pages as the optimal resume length; 73 percent of respondents preferred a single page at that time.Respondents also seemed more receptive to three-page resumes for executive roles, with nearly one-third (31 percent) citing this as the ideal length, compared to only 7 percent 10 years ago.Both national polls include responses from 150 senior executives — including those from human resources, finance and marketing departments — with the nation’s 1,000 largest companies. They were conducted by an independent research firm and developed by Accountemps, the world’s first and largest specialized staffing service for temporary accounting, finance and bookkeeping professionals.”Many employers are willing to spend a little more time reviewing application materials so they can more easily determine who is most qualified and act quickly to secure interviews with these candidates,” said Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps.Although employers may be willing to review longer resumes, job seekers shouldn’t go overboard, Messmer noted. “Employers want to see that applicants can prioritize information and concisely convey the depth of their experience,” he said.
Corra never believed that keeping you resume to one page was a viable process. Some candidates have enough experience that could fill a small volume yet alone a single page. Brevity is often a blessing, but not when you miss the necessary facts.Still, you shouldn’t go overboard. As any HR Manager can tell you, they have enough of a pile of resumes on their desks that they don’t need your lengthy tome. As for you HR people, a longer resume may mean more facts to check out.When most people lie, they will most often lie about their education. So it pays to run an education verification check. Running a criminal background report should go without saying. Credit reports have become pretty essential, and Social Security Traces are basic but very essential in a world of theft identity and mismanaged information.
So read that resume with care and then check them out before you hire.
Mon, March 19th, 2007 - 4:02 pm - By Gordon Basichis
We found this article on Inc.com
Find the Fox
Someone on your target’s team wants to help you.
By: Stephanie Clifford
Selina Lo Ruckus Wireless
Selina lo rarely has an easy sale. She sells an imperfect product–a newfangled wireless router that handles video, voice, and data–to U.S. and global markets that aren’t always geared to multimedia Wi-Fi. As she puts it in her sales presentations, “We make the worst case suck less.” But the CEO of Ruckus Wireless, based in Sunnyvale, California, seems to be up to the job. When she was vice president of marketing at Alteon WebSystems, she was a major force behind its $8 billion acquisition by Nortel (NYSE:NT) in 2000. At Ruckus, which had revenue last year of $7 million selling the router and other wireless products, she has enlisted telecom customers from Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Hong Kong and has gotten $30 million from investors, including Motorola (NYSE:MOT) and Sequoia Capital.
Lo’s plan starts well before the meeting, when she unleashes her sales team to find what she calls “the fox.” The fox is Ruckus’ ally in the customer company, and it’s usually a technology person who’s unhappy with the current provider or is excited about working with Ruckus. The fox tends to be instrumental in setting up the first meeting. For her initial presentation, Lo selects the Ruckus attendees carefully, based on the names and titles of the client’s attendees. If she’s seeing a CEO, just she and her sales guy are usually enough. If it’s a more technical group, she’ll haul along a systems engineer or the CTO.
Lo then checks out everyone she’s meeting with, reading their bios and Googling them to see where they’ve worked. “You don’t want somebody to think you checked out their entire past,” she says, but “you try to strike up more links between you and that person.” While she takes the personal side, her sales team takes the strategic side, reading through the company’s press releases to find which other companies they work with and looking for transcripts or videos of top executives talking at conferences where they might say what their “pain points” are. That lets Lo aim her PowerPoint right at the customer.
“Some people just want to sell you something,” says Scott Ulsaker, video business manager for Pioneer Telephone in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Ruckus “wants to know what works best for you. Their desire to work and integrate with us has probably been second to no other company we’ve worked with.”
Such efforts, Lo believes, can be harder for a woman. “When you’re a woman walking into a room of guys, which is probably 98 percent of my engagements, it can be a negative,” she says. “But you can turn it into a positive.” She often finds that the customer’s tech guys will push her on some issue they don’t think she knows, but if she responds well, she wins their respect. “When she gets up there, she really knows it,” says Bob Payne, one of her VPs of sales.
At the meeting, the Ruckus team attacks the room like a well-trained squadron. First, Payne introduces Lo to the highest ranking client. Just to make sure, he jots down everyone’s names and uses them in conversation so his teammates get them right, too. Lo sits across from the highest-ranking person on the customer’s team; “you want to be able to look that person in the eye,” she says. And Payne sits a little behind his customers, on their side. That makes it easy for them to whisper questions to him during the presentation. More important, it lets him watch when they take notes. If he sees them add a question mark to something, he’ll jump in to clarify the point.
Lo tries to augment the presentation with some schmoozing. “You have to establish your competence and your credibility, and then it’s time to know them personally,” she says. Especially if the fox isn’t high-ranking, she’ll arrange a dinner with him. “Having a dinner with that guy is usually very useful,” says Lo, “because he feels like, Wow, you are the CEO, and you would spend dinner with me?” She tries to win his loyalty and also get the scoop on his company. Whomever she’s having dinner with, she always watches her alcohol intake–to make sure it’s high. “Being able to outdrink your customers is a big plus,” Lo says.
Lo’s competitive side comes off as charming to most. But when she offends a client here and there, her sales guys step in to soothe feelings. Anyway, that competitive streak lands more clients than it loses.
Stephanie Clifford is a senior writer.
Corra knows this is good advice. But then how do you find the person who can not only sniff out the fox but charm him enough so that he becomes your advocate? Your Bloodhound must be a special person with natural talents and special skills. So, again, how do find that guy?
Sometimes they will rise to the occasion. Sometimes they make themselves apparently by behavior patterns and by exhibiting certain skills. When you are recruiting new executives you should use your preemployment screening program to help determine if your candidate had these skills. Extensive interviews and perhaps psychological testing are prime components in determining your charming Bloodhound.
An education verification check can be helpful, and a credit report may provide insight into how someone regards and structures his personal finances. An MVR report is not only indicative of his driving habits, but abstractly it may indicate any substance abuse problems.
So interview, screen carefully and perhaps employ psychological tests. Run background reports and check him out before you hire.
Fri, March 16th, 2007 - 11:23 am - By Gordon Basichis
We found this article on Political Gateway.
Report: U.S. employers to ease hiring
MILWAUKEE — U.S. employers plan to ease hiring this spring, a quarterly employment-outlook survey from the Manpower Inc. employment agency reported Tuesday.
“A look at the last three quarters of survey data suggests that employers are shifting into neutral when it comes to hiring,” Chairman Jeffrey Joerres said. “Companies expect to coast through the next three months without much growth in the way of staff.”
He said the “subtle” change “may not yet be perceived in the job market,” but it is “a break from the three-plus years of nearly unchanged hiring plans.”
Of the 14,000 U.S. employers surveyed, 28 percent said they expected to increase payrolls in the next three months, while 7 percent said they expected to trim staff levels, Manpower said.
Fifty-nine percent said they expected no change in the hiring pace and 6 percent said they were undecided about their hiring plans.
The U.S. figures were part of a quarterly Manpower survey of from nearly 50,000 employers in 27 countries and territories.
Copyright Political Gateway 2006©
Copyright United Press International 2006
Corra is not particularly thrilled about this news. A job slowdown can mean less work for us. It may also mean a general slowdown in the economy. Someone maybe should tell Alan Greenspan to be more discriminating about his speculations, before he creates a national panic. We shall just have to wait and see.
A job slowdown can also mean a better selection for the businesses who are still wanting and willing to hire. Instead of slim pickings, you may have the chance to recruit the more qualified people. Or not. Which means you better make sure they really pan out to be who and what they say they are.
So run background checks, including criminal and the Social Security Trace. For those with access to your financial material, your sensitive databases or intellectual property, you should most definitely run a credit check as well.
Check them out before you hire.
31