Don’t Bargain Basement Yourself

In today’s job market, you might be tempted to offer to work for free or at a reduced salary during a trial period to prove yourself to an employer. Don’t do it, says consultant Edward Navis of Full Spectrum HR in Little Falls, N.J. You’ll simply devalue yourself and set the company up for a pay discrimination suit, he says.

“From a marketing perspective, people look at free things as having no value,” Navis says. “And even if they say yes to reduced pay, they may not see you as worth more at the end of the trial period.”

Regardless of the economy, companies have to stick to the standard of equal pay for equal work and equal qualifications. If you’re a member of a federally or state-protected class based on your disability, race, religion, gender, etc., and the company lets you work for free, or at a reduced rate, you could later file a pay-discrimination case against the employer.

The same theory applies when companies do layoffs and re-hires. “A recent court decision found in favor of a 60-year-old chief financial officer facing a job loss because of tough financial times,” Navis says. “He offered to take a steep pay cut, bringing his salary down to $60,000 annually. His offer was rejected, but he later found out that his replacement, much younger than he, was earning more than that. He filed an age discrimination claim, and things aren’t looking too good for the employer right now.”

– Dona DeZube

Security, Virtualization, BI Among IT Priorities

CIOs continue to invest in certain technologies. Reporting on a survey by Robert Half Technology, NetworkWorld says:

Seventy-percent said their companies will invest in IT initiatives in the next 12 months, with 43 percent indicating that information security projects would be a top priority. Twenty-eight percent plan investments in virtualization and 27 percent will be looking to make their data centers more efficient with technology buys.

Furthermore, 26 percent will invest in VoIP and software-as-a-service initiatives, both technologies that promise lower costs and greater flexibility for IT departments.

Green IT is on the list for at least one-fifth of respondents. Nineteen percent plan to invest in business intelligence. About 18 percent have budgeted for social networking projects, and another 17 percent plan to buy Web 2.0 technologies.

Social Networking Can Bite Employers, Too

We’ve all heard of job candidates done in by some compromising tidbit in their Facebook profile. Well, here’s the flip side: At least one retail bank, fearing discrimination lawsuits by spurned applicants, has ordered its entire staff, HR department and even the external recruiters it uses to avoid sourcing any information about candidates from social networking sites.

The outside employment lawyer for Amegy Bank of Texas, a 2,000-employee subsidiary of Zions Bancorporation, concluded the company could never prove it had rejected an applicant based on permissible information (sexually suggestive photos, boasts about deceiving a customer or a boss), if the applicant’s profile also included information that isn’t legal grounds for rejection, such as being pregnant.

As a result, “Amegy adopted the following policy toward using social networking sites in the hiring process: Such sites are strictly off limits — no if, ands or buts,” reports Law.com’s In-House Counsel Web site.

The bank is also instructing its external recruiters that social networking sites are “totally off limits when it comes to staffing matters.”

The policy isn’t based on past case law, but on “old-fashioned common sense” and management’s desire to avoid any risk of litigation or damage to its reputation among employees and customers. “One of my favorite sayings is, ‘How your staff feels is eventually how your customers will feel’ — if they feel respected and treated fairly, they’ll tell customers,” Amegy Chief Executive Paul B. Murphy, Jr., told the publication. He’s also concerned that in the current economic climate rejected applicants are more likely to consider suing, because they have fewer attractive alternatives.

Amegy also is starting to examine whether to use professional networking sites such as LinkedIn to source candidates. The company does use job boards, but employee referral is its preferred method of recruitment.

– Jon Jacobs

Age Discrimination Hits Layoff Victims

Although many workers 45 years and older have been able to avoid layoffs lately, those that are let go have a higher mountain to climb than younger colleagues when it comes to landing another job. The New York Times says older layoff victims were out of work an average of 22.2 weeks in 2008, compared to 16.2 weeks for younger workers. Even though many are complaining to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming age discrimination when they were let go, it’s nearly impossible for job candidates to prove discrimination in the hiring process. That’s leaving a lot of people in a lot of industries out in the cold.

Techies Not Focused on Stimulus

President Barack Obama is feeling pretty good about the $787 billion economic stimulus plan. He said today the package’s impact is beginning to be felt and work “is coming in ahead of schedule and under budget,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Coincidentally, we polled users last week, asking if they were using the plan as a guide to job opportunities.

• 61 percent said “no.”
• 35 percent said “yes.”

Fascinating. For all the talk about the plan’s tech focus, IT professionals don’t seem too excited. More on this later. Mark’s been reading the bill – yes, reading the bill, which could explain why he’s so grumpy lately.

Click here to participate in this week’s Dice poll.

BlackBerry Starts Selling Apps

No sooner did I search the Web to find lists of useful business applications for the iPhone than RIM officially launched its BlackBerry App World to capture some of that iPhone app magic for itself. The 500 available applications are either free or $2.99, and payment is via PayPal, so you have to set up an account there if you don’t have one already.

Now, down to business. Does BlackBerry App World have anything useful for businesspeople? I certainly hope so, given that the BlackBerry is a far more important gadget in the corporate area than the iPhone. PC Magazine did a quick survey to find 20 good BlackBerry apps in the store, but I was surprised to see that many of the ones they picked were actually games or crossovers from the iPhone, such as the amazing Shazam, a program that can give you the name of songs you hear just by holding your BlackBerry up to the stereo speaker or car radio. (If you’ve never seen it in action, you really must. It’s like a magic trick.)

PC Magazine also found all the requisite Twitter and Facebook and Google enablers and, more helpfully, discovered a free Bloomberg app that delivers valuable real-time financial info in a flash. That’s one businesspeople are sure to like. Here’s hoping more apps like that show up soon. So far, AppWorld is off to a subdued start.

Some CEOs are Downright Popular

NetFlix’s Reed Hastings of NetFlix, Genentech’s Art Levinson and General Mills’ Ken Powell. What do these chief executives have in common? Strong approval ratings from their employees, according to the latest “naughty or nice” CEO report put out by Glassdoor.com.

Also getting high marks:

• Apple’s Steve Jobs
• Google’s Eric Schmidt
• Adobe Systems’ Shantanu Narayen
• NetApp’s Dan Warmenhoven
• Cisco Systems’ John Chambers
• Intuit’s Brad Smith
• Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang
• Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff

Check out MercuryNews.com to find who didn’t score so high with their employees.

Is the iPhone Serious Enough for Business?

Every day brings news of yet another cool, amazing, fun, whiz-bang application for the iPhone, but the more fun people have with it, the more I wonder if it has a spot in the workplace. Can it be a BlackBerry-beating business tool? Are serious business applications available?

My search for iPhone business apps leads to a few excellent round-ups published over the past few months. If you’re wondering whether you can take the iPhone seriously for business, look through these few dozen apps and see what you can use.

• MacWorld found 11 good business apps when it searched the App Store. Most of them are cool convenience ideas, like turning your iPhone into a wireless thumb drive, using it as a presentation remote control, or using it as a place to jot down verbal reminders to yourself that can also be e-mailed to others.
• Business Pundit found 25 handy business apps. Its list is more of the same: mileage counters, budget trackers, to-do lists, VAT calculators, and perhaps most important, tools for accessing your computer back home when you’re on the road.
• ZDNet points out that companies such as Oracle, SAP, and Sybase have iPhone versions of their flagship products that let users tap into the databanks back at HQ. However, it notes that according to research firm Gartner, “The iPhone 3G does not deliver sufficient security for custom applications, so businesses wanting to deploy such applications will likely have to bear with a lower level of security.”

For even more iPhone ideas, check out Inc. magazine’s list of favorite apps as well.

Finding Stimulus-Based Jobs

Everyone is trying to anticipate where the government’s stimulus package is going to create jobs, so it makes good sense to follow the news to find out how and where new IT positions may be. TechCareers suggests there’ll be a need for engineers and project managers to oversee stimulus-based projects in manufacturing and construction sectors, and looks at when such jobs might be created in other industries:

Since the stimulus bill is just getting its footing, don’t look for all of the jobs to start sprouting up immediately. However, there are a few that are coming available as we speak. For example, temporary placement agency Adecco is said to be currently offering 1,500 positions in the mortgage sector, while 1,400 positions are said to be offered in engineering and IT – and about 1,000 in finance and accounting. These numbers look to increase in the coming months; however, the full 3.5 million won’t likely see the light of day for another 2 years.

No Surprise: Companies Cut Tech Budgets

Research firm Gartner reports technology spending will fall 3.8 percent worldwide and 1.6 percent in the U.S. this year. That’s down significantly from 2008, which saw a 6.1 percent rise worldwide. It’s also  nearly double the decline that occurred when the tech bubble burst in 2001, says CNNMoney.

Meanwhile, companies have started to cut IT budgets, which doesn’t bode well for IT employment. Jobs are being hit particularly hard in sectors like services and finance, which combine to employ 50 percent of the nation’s technology professionals.

Forrester Research estimates U.S. tech jobs will decline by 1.2 percent this year, after three years of at least 2.5 percent growth. They ‘ve already fallen by nearly 1 percent since the November peak, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Year to date, 8,000 tech jobs have been slashed, including 4,100 just last month.

But not all IT jobs are in peril, according to Forrester:

For the most part, those whose work is essential to the daily operations of a business, like systems experts for networks and communication, are expected to have more job security than others. Very strong demand for communication, e-mail and video conferencing have put experts in those fields in high demand.

“Jobs for systems analysts and network analysts will buck the downward trend and continue to grow in 2009,” says  Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels. “The recession will cause a slowdown in job growth, but no downturn.”