As consumers become savvier, as social media brings more transparency and accountability, and as resources become more scarce, all of these things will conspire to make corporate social responsibility more significant, says Susan McPherson, a business executive.

She sees this initiative taking several different forms.

One is with employee engagement. She predicts that companies will become more involved with non-profit organizations through employee volunteer work. This will be even more prevalent if the economy continues to struggle, she says. About 80 percent of all businesses are planning to do some type of employee engagement effort in 2012. These efforts also help with the productivity and effectiveness of employees – engaged employees report being happier at work. Also, the profits at companies where the employees were more engaged grew three times faster than for other businesses.

McPherson also believes that companies in the future will partner with non-profits to help grow the business and to improve image and exposure. A 2010 survey showed that two-thirds of brands are involved in some type of non-profit partnership, an increase of almost 10 percent over the previous year. Almost every marketing manager believes this is an effective business strategy.

Another trend that will drive these partnerships is the rise of social media, which will increase the pressures for more transparency from organizations. Consumers will have the means to communicate their feelings directly to businesses and non-profits. Businesses and non-profits that engage with consumers will come out ahead, McPherson says.

Corporate boards will be faced with corporate social responsibility issues more and more, McPherson says, with investors more concerned about environmental issues, with risks to business reputation, with political spending, with natural resource management, and with diversity issues. These issues will of necessity become part of business strategic planning.

With the depletion of global resources, things such as supply chains involving scarce resources and how they are handled will become more significant as well, McPherson adds.

Human resources professionals have a lot on their plate today: sourcing, hiring, planning benefits, employee engagement…and now social responsibility initiatives. Let Bayside Solutions help lighten your load by allowing us to help you find terrific workers for your San Francisco-area company’s temporary staffing needs. Contact us today!

One thing a company can do is sponsor a kind of signature volunteer program that is of a short-term duration, but one that involves the entire company. For example, JP Morgan Chase has a volunteer program called Global Days of Service, which is a month-long effort of volunteer service each year by Chase employees around the globe. The Chase employees get together with family and friends to volunteer in a variety of service projects. In 2002, volunteers at Chase worked in more than 950 projects in 275 cities around the world.

In another kind of volunteer effort, companies can help out non-profit organizations by volunteering their skills and business expertise. An example here is America Online, which offers IT help to non-profits and schools. The goal is to help them more effectively use resources online for whatever purpose they have. .

To get the most out of your volunteer programs, your company should follow a three-point plan outlined by the Points of Light Foundation:

• First, your company should acknowledge that community service and employee volunteerism are not just the right thing to do, but important to your business achieving its goals.
• Next, your company needs to make a commitment to create and encourage volunteerism for all employees, and you need to look at community service the same as any other business function.
• Finally, you need to focus your efforts at serious social problems in the community.

Community service programs have wide-ranging benefits. They help workers do their jobs better, acquire new skills, work in teams, think creatively, and help with job satisfaction. They also are an important factor in attracting and retaining good employees. And, as is well known, they also improve the company’s image and reputation.

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The problem may be that the businesses are looking for the perfect resume – too perfect, in fact. They think the best person for the job is the applicant with the 3.9 grade point average from some elite school. But, Anders says, they are finding out that these people don’t show as much initiative as the companies would like to see. Too often they are waiting to be told what to do.

In looking for the perfect resume, businesses are unintentionally weeding out the more freewheeling types, the people who may not have had the best grades, but aren’t afraid to take chances, Anders says.

Anders says companies need to change their mindset, to take a harder look at people who have “jagged resumes,” ones that show successes and failures, because the failures might be evidence of risk taking, of people trying to transcend themselves. Steve Jobs was one such person – he never finished college.

On the face of it, it may look unnecessarily risky to consider such candidates, but if done properly, businesses can find good people, Anders says. To be effective, companies first have to determine what kind of character traits they are looking for, the ones that are indicators of future success. For example, Anders says Teach for America looks for perseverance. Linear Technology looks for the kind of people who like to tinker, and have been doing it since they were children. Resilience, efficiency, curiosity, and self-reliance might be other traits that are important. But whatever the traits, Anders says, the motto should be, “Compromise on experience, not on character.”

Also, Anders says, companies should determine what shortcomings are acceptable. For example, work histories that show that the person jumped around a lot may not really matter all that much. A little eccentricity or mediocre grades also may not be a problem, whereas ethical flaws, or a lack of motivation, may be deal breakers.

Because of the turbulent economy, more people than ever have these jagged resumes, For some hiring managers, that might mean instant disqualification of the applicant, but for others who are willing to look harder and more perceptively, there may be real gems found in the less-than-stellar resume.

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Stephen Paskoff, CEO of a provider of ethics and compliance learning solutions, tells the story of someone working at a financial services firm who had to complete 17 online courses covering financial transactions ranging from ethics and discrimination to harassment in about one day. The man said he clicks his way through the courses but learns little. He just tries to get through it as quickly as possible to get his bonus.

Another person who works at a manufacturing firm says he clicks through the courses as fast as he can. Everyone looks on the courses as pretty much of a joke, he said. Once the courses are completed, management never mentions them again.

Paskoff says when the courses are delivered this way – without any context or follow-up – they really are of little benefit to employees. These type of click-through courses are set up just to give employees some legal information and document that they received it. But just getting information in this way really doesn’t do much to change behavior.

Paskoff argues that to really change the types of employee behavior that causes problems in the workplace or that is even illegal, workers really need a strong motivation for change, and with that, simple guidelines to follow.

The information cannot be conveyed simply as a one-time event, without any follow-up or emphasis from management. Company leadership needs the tools and the know-how to continually reinforce the messages delivered in the online program.

The problem isn’t with the online compliance training, which can be very effective, but with the delivery of the message. The way these online courses are handled tells the employees that the company really doesn’t value them and what they have to say all that much. They come across as some unthinking ritual. A company’s leaders need to provide continual support for the messages in these courses, and the messages themselves must be clear, simple and direct, so that they can be easily followed. Otherwise, the courses will continue to be mostly a time-wasting exercise, providing merely the legal cover the company needs in the event of employee claims against the company.

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Dealing with diversity has now become more important than ever because of population shifts happening in every marketplace, making them look more multicultural, according to noted business consultant Sylvia Ann Hewlett. For example, in the United States, Latino, African-American and Asian-Americans make up one-third of the population and contribute to 85 percent of U.S. population growth. In the United Kingdom, minorities make up 10 percent of the population, but contribute to 50 percent of population growth. Developing countries now produce more than half of the global GDP and are expected to grow twice as fast as the United States and European Union.

Because of these changes, companies now have to reevaluate how they attract, develop and keep good workers, Hewlett says. Business can no longer use the same management techniques for everyone. How employees are managed needs to be tailored to different groups, according to Hewlett.

To attract top workers, companies are focusing more on women. Intel, for example, was losing many of its mid-level female workers, so it organized career development workshops to help women find and move into more challenging projects.

Companies also are trying to build global networks among their employees, Hewlett says. At Cisco, for example, the firm puts together workers from different job areas in locations around the world together with senior level managers from different geographical areas and also different ethnicity and gender, which helped make global connections.

Companies also are putting more emphasis on making work times and locations more flexible for employees. Studies have shown that a large majority of the employees favor these kinds of options in the workplace, according to Hewlett. For many workers, offering a flexible workplace is the major criterion in choosing where to work. Citibank is an example of a company focusing on a flexible work environment. At Citi, employees can set up different schedules for the days they will come into the office. The company began the program in a few cities, but plans to expand it worldwide.

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Simply put, it states that “actions of people always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended.” Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it, according to economist Rob Norton.

It shows up in business decisions as well. New human resource policies or procedures may end up having unintended consequences – causing a chain reaction of events that end up where no one anticipated.

The law can be seen at work in the airline business, says business consultant Ron Ashkenas. In order to bring in more money, airlines are charging fees for services that used to be free, such as checking baggage and food service. While these fees have brought in a lot of revenue for the airlines, they have also had unintended consequences. One is that passengers are now jamming more things in their luggage, and people are bringing more food on board. This all has the effect of hurting customer satisfaction because it leads to more congestion and odors on the plane. It also may be affecting airline schedules, as people take more time to find overhead space for their stuffed luggage, delaying takeoffs, Ashkenas says.

So, unintended consequences are always there to be reckoned with. What can you as a human resource professional do to lessen their impact?  Ashkenas has a few suggestions.

First, he says you need to plan ahead as much as possible. Realizing that unintended consequences are lurking out there, you want to run through all of the possible results your change will have, to run through all of the scenarios with the people who will be affected.

Test things out on a smaller scale first, Ashkenas says, to see what the reaction to a change will be. He cites the example of a company that wanted to use a new sales forecasting method. Instead of instituting it companywide all at once, the company tested it out on one product in one region to see what the reactions of the sales staff would be, and how the other process changes would work. This gave the firm the chance to modify the program before rolling it out throughout the entire company.

You can’t foresee all the unintended consequences, but planning for them as much as you can will be a big help.

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So you apply and land an interview. The interview is a great success. You get along well with everyone there, and they seem to really like what you have to say.

Afterward, you send a thank you note and wait. A few days go by, then weeks, and still no word. Finally, you get a letter of rejection in the mail. You are dumbfounded. It looked like the perfect job. You breezed through the application process.

You may get the urge to take this rejection personally, but don’t. There may be many reasons why you didn’t get the job, some of which might come as news to you.

The first thing to remember is that this isn’t an exact science. There is no fool-proof method that hiring managers use to choose people. Some of the selection is actually taking place at a subconscious level. It is more intuitive. So the whole thing is not really about you, it’s about the recruiter.

Another thing to keep in mind is the competition, especially with the current high unemployment rate. There were probably 200 or more other people who applied for the same job you did, and only about 10 (if that many) even got called for an interview. So, in a way, you can consider yourself lucky that you made it to the interview stage. This is actually an opportunity for you to take advantage of – apply for other openings at the company for which you believe you are qualified. Since the hiring managers now know you, and you have made a good impression, you may end up with something better down the road.

Another reason for the rejection letter may have to do with abrupt changes in direction by the company. It may have wanted to hire you, but changes to budgets or other factors may have led to a sudden imposition of a hiring freeze. Again, keep in touch with the company – you may be contacted again later when it starts hiring again.

Another factor in the rejection may just have to do with the hiring manager’s impression of whether you will be a good fit for the position, or how well you will fit in with the current employees. So, again, this is not about some failure on your part, but more about the culture of the company.

Stay proactive, and don’t take things personally. If you get rejected, contact the hiring manager and tell her to remember you for future openings and ask her if r she could refer you to anyone in her network who may be hiring.

Speaking of hiring, Bayside Solutions is always looking for terrific professionals who want to work in some of the Bay Area’s best companies. Contact us today to learn more about the temporary, direct-hire and temp-to-hire opportunities we have.

Pipelining is essentially recruiting now for openings you believe you will have down the road. Doing pipelining on a daily basis, for an hour or two a day, will enable you to stay ahead of the recruiting curve and have a stable of candidates ready when you need them.

There are a few important things to keep in mind if you plan to use a pipelining approach.

The first is to be continually coming up with the names of companies where you might be able to find job candidates. Each day you would be searching for more competitors from whom you might be able to recruit new people. You should at the very least be looking for two to three new companies each day. If you are on a team that is charged with finding new candidate sources, you can get the word out about your finds using a company network drive or an online sharing tool.

The next thing you need to do to make your pipelining successful is create a list of people. Using spreadsheets is the best way to do this, setting up easy to manage classification fields. For example, the list could include name, job title, company, location, contact information, and other notes. You can sort your lists by the person’s name and company. You also want to make sure you are getting all the people with the particular skills you are looking for.

You also want to create a list of social media resources on which you can focus in order to look for candidates. These include the most popular sites, such as LinkedIn, and others, including Plaxo and Jigsaw. You can begin with these sites and then look for others.

You also need to create contact information. A good way to do this, for example, is to split up the things you will need to do, spending one or two hours one day on creating a people list, another two hours the next day on creating a company list, and then finding contact information on those people the next day.

Pipelining can save you a lot of time in looking for potential candidates, allowing for quick recruiting.

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They find it somehow improper that people can get jobs just by connections.

But, as much as we may like to believe that all jobs are advertised, the unspoken reality is that many jobs are not in the public domain, or the hiring managers already have someone in mind for the job even before they interview candidates, according to career strategist John Lees.

Conventional wisdom has it that about one-third of all jobs are filled through informal connections. In many industries, it could be a lot higher. This way of finding great employees – and finding jobs – is called the hidden job market.

Employers face conflicting pressures, Lees says. On the one hand, they want to be open and see who they can get for a job. But on the other hand, employers are guided by an even stronger desire – they want to know who they can hire fast and without risk. So, to minimize the risk, they look at people they already know.

So, if you’re pursuing just those positions that are advertised, you’re taking more of a passive approach to a job search. Finding a great job is more likely to come through making connections through and to people the people you know.

You need to connect with as many people as possible. But networking is not about self-promotion or an old-boy network, according to Lees. It is about making new discoveries. If it feels uncomfortable, as if you think you are using people, or that you are humiliating yourself, it means you are not going about it in the right way.

Real networking is not just about you, but about discovering things, gaining knowledge, and making connections.

The hidden job market is not a fair one. But if you think that the job market is available to all on an equal and equally open basis, you are only going to extend the amount of time it takes to find a job. Plus, you may miss out on some of the most intriguing opportunities. The best way to help your career is to ask yourself the question: Who else should I be talking to?

Some people with whom you definitely should be chatting are the recruiters at Bayside Solutions. We have many upon many connections with some of San Francisco’s top companies and we can help you market your skills and qualifications to them. Contact us today!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, recent research has shown that this bias against the unemployed is not influenced by their skill level or how they lost their job.

In the research, people were asked to judge various pretend job candidates. In the study, the same résumé was shown to two groups of people. One group was told the résumé belonged to someone currently employed; the other group that the résumé belonged to an unemployed person. The groups rated the résumé of the employed person more highly even though it had the same information as the unemployed person.

The groups were looking at the same résumé, but they rated the ability of the employed person higher, based solely on the résumé, than the ability of the unemployed person. And the groups said they would be more likely to hire the employed person.

And it didn’t matter how the job applicant lost his or her previous position, whether he or she was laid off, fired, or left voluntarily: the candidate was still viewed less favorably than a person who was employed, even though all of the applicant’s qualifications were the same. The only way to remove the stigma of unemployment was if the loss of the job could not be connected to the person at all, if, for example, the person lost the job because the company went bankrupt.

The research showed that people make psychological connections to being unemployed that leads to prejudice.

The longer a person has been out of work, the harder it is to find a job – this is also well known. But researchers have thought this was mostly because hiring managers were concerned about skills eroding among the long-term unemployed. But the research showed that even when there is no evidence of a skill downgrade, unemployed job applicants still face discrimination.

It is this psychological stigma attached to unemployment that can help explain why those who are out of work have fundamentally less opportunity of getting back into the working world.

If you’ve been out of work for a long time, working as a temporary for Bayside Solutions can help you show employers that you have the work ethic they seek. We have many short- and long-term – and even direct-hire – positions with some of San Francisco’s best companies. Contact us today and get back to work!