February 4, 2009

Edited and Written by Ira S. Wolfe

Published by Success Performance Solutions. Major Sponsor,

2008 Best Places to Work In Pennsylvania

What's Inside this issue of The TotalView:

1.  It's funny how a few decades changes everything!

2.  Perfect Labor Storm Warnings

3.  Create Effective Interview Guides in Minutes

4.  Get the right Clues before you hire

5.  Quotes from the Hire Authorities

1.  It's funny how a few decades changes everything!

The Veterans grew up between the World Wars and during the depression.  Education for most people was limited to high school.  The next career step was the armed forces for most males and combat for many.  Upon discharge, a few men returned to school but most started their one-stop-career, staying with the company from young adulthood through retired.   Most Veterans grew up in a family with the same parents, same home, two siblings, one family car, one family radio, no air conditioning, and maybe a phonograph. For entertainment, the family would spend a few days at the beach or the lake, play board games and attend Saturday matinees at the town movie theater.  Communication was limited to U.S. Mail and phone, often shared with eight neighbors via party lines.  Veterans worked hard and waited until retirement to play.
 
Now fast forward to the life of an 18-year-old today.  Young lives are shaped by step-families or single parents. Few 18-year-olds have lived in the same house for more than a few years, moving as parents upscale or forced to house-hop to live with divorced parents.  Many are single children who own their first car at 16 years old, joining the three or four other cars parked in the driveway.  They have owned a personal mobile phone since 8 years old and have never lived in a world without the Internet.  In their bedroom you'll find a digital TV with 500 stations, laptop computer with high speed access, I-Pod with hundreds of music and video files at their fingertips, and a video game console with enough high tech features that makes the CIA envious.  Family vacations include Europe, cruises, DisneyWorld and the Caribbean.
 
Finally and possibly the starkest contrast of them all: the Veterans grew up in a world  where children lived with their parents until high school graduation or the first job.  From that point on, these young adults were on their own, generally married by their early 20's  and raising a family just a few years later.
 
Today our youth lives in a world of "helicopter parents," hovering over their children's every move, and "snowplow parents," clearing a path for their children.  Described in a column posted on The Wall Street Journal Online, "a new generation of over-involved parents are flooding campus orientations, meddling in registration and interfering with students' dealing with professors, administrators and roommates."
 
"Hovering" has been so epidemic the University of Vermont and other schools have employed "parent bouncers."  The job of the bouncers are to "un-invite" moms and dads who try to attend registration. At the University of Georgia, students who get frustrated or confused during registration have been known to interrupt their advisors to whip out a mobile phone, speed-dial their parents and hand the phone to the adviser saying, "Here, talk to my mom."  According to Richard Mullendore, a University of Georgia professor and former vice president of student affairs, "the cell phone has become the world's longest umbilical cord."

More about Generational Diversity, Generation X, Generation Y, Millennials

2.  Perfect Labor Storm Warnings   

Subscribe to the Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 blog and receive skilled worker shortage updates like this:

 

As a nation obesity levels have skyrocketed over the last three decades. Today, over weight and obese employees make up over two-thirds of the workforce, costing employers up to $1,991 per person, per year, in excess medical and productivity costs. By 2020 it is projected that over 70% of Americans will be overweight and over 40% will be obese.
 
Source: America's Weighty Problem by Free and Clear

Learn more about workforce trends. Purchase the NEW Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 books (soft and hard cover versions) at PerfectLaborStorm.com.

New Perfect Labor Storm videos added. Watch now!

3.  Create Effective Interiew Guides in Minutes

The Automated Online Interview. Screen candidates over the web. Candidates provide written responses to customized interview questions online --ideal for a pre-interview screening or first interview.

SELECTPro(R) is web-based program that helps interviewers design and organize behavior-based selection interview in minutes. It also allows the interviewer to easily create a custom Interview Guide: a document (or script) that the interviewer uses to conduct a behavioral job interview.

4. Get  the Right Clues before you hire!

Are bad attitudes, lack of commitment or low morale cutting into your bottom line? Are you frustrated by new hires not showing up for work, stealing you blind, or having a short fuse?

Get Candid Clues before you hire. Candid Clues exposes a candidate's attitude toward dependability, honesty and frustration tolerance plus the optional scales for computer abuse, sexual harassment and illegal drug use.

Read more about Candid Clues for honesty and integrity checks.

5. Quotes from Hire Authorities

"In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation - a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago - played out on the national stage."
 
President Barack Obama, 2009

Permission is granted to consultants, managers, business owners and HR professionals to reproduce content from this newsletter for your internal publications, or to distribute copies to your workforce, on the condition that you reproduce the credits and contact information as follows: "Reprinted with permission from Ira S Wolfe and Success Performance Solutions. Copyright 2008 Ira S Wolfe."  We also hope you will forward the newsletter in its entirety and recommend to others that they subscribe.

Ira S. Wolfe Copyright 2009 - All Rights Reserved. Reprints and other distribution by permission only.