Feb16

Don’t Be Blind to the Signs You are About to be Terminated

by admin on February 16th, 2012 at 2:50 pm
Posted In: At-Will Employment, Employment, Income, Work

I feel the need to vent.

I’ve received three calls today from long-term employees who were fired out of the blue and have no idea what they are going to do with themselves. Again I say it. Never stop making yourself more employable, and keep your eyes open for the writing on the wall that you may be about to lose your job.

I’ve written before about how you must continually be improving your employability, so this time I will focus on how to recognize the warning signs that you may be getting the boot.

The company implements extreme cost-cutting measures.

First understand that the signs may not have anything to do with you, but rather the overall economic health of the company. If you see the company is struggling, then you should assume that a reduction of the staff will soon follow.

In the traditional office environment, things like overtime, company lunches, free soft drinks and other perks will disappear. In the retail setting, just look at the shelves. A struggling store will cut back on inventory. There will be a hiring freeze, and the company could be encouraging a staff reduction with severance packages.

You have seemingly become incompetent.

Alternatively, the signs could have nothing to do with the economic health of the company, but rather how you are suddenly being treated.

The vast majority of terminations are not wrongful under the law due to the at-will employment presumption. Nonetheless, that does not stop employees from suing for wrongful termination anyway, and those actions are costly to the company. Therefore, the company will want to build a package on you so that if you do sue, there is a paper trial showing that you were incompetent in your job. To that end, the following acts are red flags that you are being papered. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Dec28

Top Ten Ways to Blow a Job Interview

by Aaron Morris on December 28th, 2011 at 10:48 pm
Posted In: At-Will Employment, Employment, Income, Work

Interviewing prospective employees is an amazing process.  How long does an interview last?  Ten minutes? Thirty minutes? Maybe an hour and a half if the interview is over lunch?  And yet, even over such a short amount of time, it is amazing how some interviewees cannot keep from revealing their true natures.  They are doing something that will likely change their live in a significant way, and they can't put on a good show for even that small amount of time.

I don't mean to imply that someone should put on a false front, but interviewing is like a first date; the other person knows you possess some flaws, but they want to feel like you respect them enough to forgo slurping your soup just this once.

So, make sure your phone is off before you walk into the interview.  Unless your wife is nine months pregnant, don't even check who is calling.  Be super nice to the support staff, because they may well be asked about you.  Don't be late, and don't act rushed.

For a list of ways to blow an interview, go to Top Ten Ways to Blow a Job Interview.

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Dec28

Time Management – Do You Create An Effective To-Do List?

by Aaron Morris on December 28th, 2011 at 9:54 pm
Posted In: Employment, Income, Organization, Work

to do list

With the new year a few days away, I wanted to offer a useful article on the most basic of motivational and organizational tools, the humble to-do list.  Some lessons have to be learned over and over, and in my case it is implemenation of a to-do list.  I know I’m not alone in this, because I took a poll over a couple of days, and did not find one person that was properly using a to-do list.

What were they doing wrong?  Well, assuming they even maintained a to-do list, they did not have it with them.  Most had a to-do list on their desk at work, but that fails to do anything about personal goals and long-term projects.

So, my simple advice:  Keep it with you and keep it simple.  I experienced a quantum leap in efficiency in bringing all my back-burner projects to the front burner when I started keeping a to-do list in my top pocket.  If I have a thought, I pull it out and write it down.  Yes, I WRITE it down.  I keep an electronic to-do list on my iPhone, and it syncs across my Kindle Fire, iPad and PC (the program I use — Remember the Milk — is free at rememberthemilk.com).  That is very useful, and I really like that I can sit down for a brainstorming session and create a master list of projects and then break it down into individual tasks, but in my experience a lot of my spontaneous ideas don’t get recorded if I have to pull out my phone and navigate to a to-do program, and then type in my thoughts.  Pen and paper still wins, at least for me.

On that subject, I came across the following article by Lawrence Ng [reprinted here with permission]about implementing to-do lists.  It’s all pretty common sense stuff, but as my poll revealed, most people don’t follow these suggestions. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Dec14

10 Workplace Myths that Will Bite You in the Butt

by Aaron Morris on December 14th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Posted In: At-Will Employment, Employment, Income, Work

I spend a good part of my days explaining basic employment law to callers, and on occassion I get a caller who tells me I obviously don’t know what I am talking about, because what I am saying is contrary to one of their cherished myths about employment law.  The sad thing is, I usually get that type of call when the employee has relied on a given myth and been fired as a result.

One example of this is the myth that you should refuse to sign a performance review or disciplinary write-up if you don’t agree with what it contains.  Wrong.  The employer can then fire you for insubordination for refusing to sign.  Another popular one is that under the First Amendment, an employer can’t fire you for something you say, and certainly can’t do so for something you said on your own time.  Wrong.  The First Amendment provides only that the government can’t abridge your free speech; that restriction does not apply to an employer.  Then, of course, there is the grandaddy of them all, that an employer needs a reason to fire you.  Wrong.  If you are an at-will employee, your employer does not need a reason to fire you.

Now, nothing is black and white under the law.  Having just debunked the above three myths, I’ll show you exceptions. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Jun18

Kicking the Unemployed While They are Down

by Aaron Morris on June 18th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Posted In: At-Will Employment, Employment, Income, Work

In a go-go employment market, it might be reasonable to assume that an unemployed job applicant did something wrong to become unemployed.  In other words, most people look for a new job before ditching the old, so when someone is out of work it may well be for job performance.  Refusing to consider unemployed applicants can be an effective, albeit imprecise, initial screening process.

But in the current economy with ten percent unemployment, that assumption is nuts.  Many outstanding employees are without work through no fault of their own.  Nonetheless, many employers are holding onto their policies that "the unemployed need not apply."  And they are not being at all shy about advertising the fact, literally.

Some job postings specifically state that applicants must be currently employed, or even that "unemployed candidates will not be considered".  Sony Ericsson advertised that the unemployed need not apply for jobs at the company's new Georgia facility, and a South Carolina recruiter imposed the same restriction for grocery store managers.

If you have not yet embraced my preference for working for yourself in order to control your own fate, perhaps this news will motivate you to meet me half way.  Even if you work for someone else, you can work for your own company at the same time.  In this way, there will never be a gap in your employment, and you will never be applying for a job as someone who is unemployed.

The story was reported by CNNMoney.com and can be found here.

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