Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the real world (you know - outside, with the other people, and the fresh air?) were like the internet? What if people at a board meeting acted as if they were commenting on blogs? Video is NOT work safe, but probably will make your coworkers crack up.

I wish I could go to board meetings like this. My humor would be appreciated!

There are certain situations where using an excuse makes you look like a lazy ass. For example, if I came in to a conference call 5 minutes late and was asked a question about the discussion that occurred before I was on the line, it’s completely appropriate for me to say “I’m coming in late to this conversation”…and ask to be brought up to speed.

When you receive a chain of 7 or 8 emails in a single day, and you’ve been copied on each email, it is NOT appropriate to say “I’m coming in late to this conversation”…and ask to be brought up to speed. All you need to do is open your eyes and read the emails that 4 or 5 other people have sent to educate you. I had to bite my tongue (fingers?) to refrain from telling this jackass to READ his emails - but instead I copied and pasted to “bring him up to speed”.

Seriously - how hard is it to go through your inbox and READ emails before sending something like that? It’s not as if this person wasn’t copied on the earlier emails - he was! Duh.

I’ve posted about an annoying coworker before, but a lot of people are a lot worse off than I am. After reading about the awful things people have to put up with on AnnoyingCoworker.com, I’m happy that the worst thing I have to deal with is a loud radio. I’m laughing out loud at some of the experiences here, from someone cooking a disgusting fish stew each week for their lunch, to a thief stealing food out of the office fridge, and someone else who hacks phlegm nonstop all day.

If you’ve got a story to share, you can submit it at the site and people will vote on who has it the worst!

I mentioned previously I’m going to Dallas in September for a training course for work. Good thing work is footing the bill, since it’s a $1500 course! Add in my airfare, food, and hotel, and the company will spend about $2500 to educate me for 2 days. I’m worth it though.

eLearning solutions are definitely an option for many other courses that aren’t as software specific as the one I’m taking. And web based training makes sense for a company that has many different offices. A company such as mine can save the expense of airfare and hotels by providing web based training. In fact, you can customize the training specifically for your needs, providing new hires with courses and references libraries, and eliminate the need for a trainer to lead a hands on course. And the course modules can be easily created using PowerPoint

We do something similar for new hires, and it’s really a great tool, especially for new hires. We have an orientation package, and classes to brush up on Word or Excel, and then specific trainings for certain groups as well.

I remember getting my first job when I was 14 - the position was as a cashier at a local tourist shop. I lied and said I was 15, knowing that they wouldn’t want proof, since I was being paid under the table. At that time (1990) minimum wages was $4.25 I believe. I was offered $5 an hour, without any taxes being taken out. For a 14 year old, this was a sweet deal!

That was…eek, 17 years ago. As I’ve aged, grown smarter, and developed more skills, I’ve made myself more attractive to employers, which is now why I get paid a lot more than I did back in 1990. Good thing too, because the current minimum wage (which was just raised) is only $5.85 per hour.

I’ll say it again in case you didn’t hear me. The current minimum wage, in America, in the year 2007, is $5.85 per hour, and that’s after a recent 75 cent increase.

$5.85 per hour.
$46.80 per day.
$234 per week.
$12,168 per year.

I made more money blogging last year than some people in this country did for hard, back breaking labor. Yes, for sharing my opinion online, in the comfort of my air conditioned house, I made more money than the person who made my hamburger at McDonald’s, the janitor who cleans my office each night, or the cashier who rings up my groceries each week.

Could you live on minimum wage? Are you living on the minimum wage? Find out for yourself if you can by Jobacle.com Minimum Wage Challenge during the week of August 20th. Live on $5.85 per hour for a week. Give yourself $234 (and that’s a pre tax figure, so I’m being generous) for the week and get gas, buy food, pay your bills, and hope for the best. Hopefully your kids don’t get sick that week, or you’ll need to plan to pay a copay and a prescription out of that $234.

You can find out more details on the Jobacle blog. Visit the Working Podcast while you’re there for great tips on how to vault yourself into a better paying career.

*Edited to add: The minimum wage has 2 planned increases over the next 2 years. On 7/24/08, it will go up to $6.55. On 7/24/09, it will go up to $7.25.

Like this entry? Please Digg it! See link in comments

Why is it that things always break around 4:30, or half an hour before quitting time? Why is my inbox suddenly flooded at that time, almost daily? Don’t these people realize I want to STOP working? At my old job, that never happened. People mentally shut down around 4:45 every afternoon. It was time for soda refills, and potty breaks, and waiting out the clock. We need less of a work ethic and more time wasting.

When you work in an office with open cubicles, it’s really not cool to use an old school radio at your desk, without using headphones. We’ve got a new consultant sitting catty corner from me, and apparently, she’s clueless about office decorum and the unwritten rules of the workplace. Not only is she playing a radio (which isn’t THAT loud, but it’s loud enough that all of the cubes around here can here it), she’s playing this annoying station. I’m not even sure what station it is, but all of the music so far has been horrible folk tunes from the 60’s and 70’s. My ears, they are bleeding.

We’re a very quiet office. Most of the people that work around me aren’t on the phone a lot, so the only sound you’ll hear all day is the sound of typing, and quiet conversation. The radio is so out of place and inappropriate, but I don’t have the balls to say anything. I’m just going to start up my iPod and tune her out. And hope that the radio disappears when she goes to lunch. Wouldn’t it be a shame if the cord was mysteriously cut?

Bored at work? Filing your TPS reports just not giving you enough to do? Why not turn your office or cubicle into a place of argri-tainment by growing a bit of office corn? (Argriculture + Entertainment = Argri-tainment!)

As you can see from this corn project, anyone with a bit of time on his hands (and a window!) can grow corn. I don’t have a window, so I’m going to have to try mushrooms. But back to the corn - you can use all sorts of office tools in your venture, like rulers to hold up the stalks. Get a pretty coworker to assist with corn rotation. Assist your corn in pollination (watch out for sexual harassment in the workplace! Just watch out for those grasshoppers.

Seriously, what would you do if your boss or a coworker started growing corn in his office?

Perhaps your workplace isn’t as polite and well-mannered as mine is. Maybe you deal with rude coworkers who eat your lunch and steal your coffee mug. If keeping your coffee mug for your usage only is an issue, this is a handy dandy little mug designed to render itself useless to anyone but you. Just take the hole out of the Lock Cup when you’re not around, and plug it back up when you’re ready for a hot steaming cup of joe.

Guaranteed to mess with your co-workers heads!

Part of my job at work is to deal with certain big name job boards, and job postings. It’s amazing how many companies want to hire bilingual employees. The number of jobs I’ve seen over the past 2 years requesting “bilingual only” has increased a lot, if not doubled. It’s a great time to pick up on that Spanish you started in high school, by taking a Spanish course designed for professionals. You’ll get one on one or small group training which will have you speaking the language in no time. Even if your position doesn’t require that you be fluent in 2 languages, it’s a great skill to have, and it may just help you to communicate with customers, clients, and employees better.

At my last company, we got raises and reviews at the same time every year. It was nice knowing you could count on that - but at the same time, unless you got a sudden promotion, you knew you weren’t getting a raise until that time next year. (Lucky me - I did get a promotion, and a few months later when my manager left, petitioned to our operations manager for more and got it again!)

In my new job, they used to be a bit lax about reviews…but not raises. I’ve got a raise once or twice a year, ever year, but this year was the first time I ever had a formal review. I guess someone finally purchased some employee evaluation software and got the ball rolling on doing scheduled reviews! Programs like ManagerAssistant make doing reviews easy. With this program, you can track employee performance and activities and use the software to review that employee as often as you’d like. No more checking one spreadsheet to see how often an employee called in absent or came in late…because it’s all in one spot. The newest version of ManagerAssistant will be launched in just a few weeks.

Another reason I like them? The company is right in my area…they’re based out of St. Petersburg, FL. I love supporting local companies!

A lot of the staffing we do at work is for uber geeks. Not geeks like me, but super geeks, who have gone to school to learn even more geeky things. Me? I went to school and learned about ethics and the 3 branches of government. Not exactly helpful knowledge. Had I known that I had an aptitude for this geek thing, I would have studied and done cool things like getting my A+ Certification. PrepLogic.com does that, as well as CCNA, Cisco, Oracle - it’s a geek dream. They provide practice exams and video training too.

All that I know about PHP, I’ve learned from tweaking my wordpress blogs. I’m amazed when people use PHP to create things from scratch - I simply don’t know enough about it to be able to do something like that. PHP training isn’t something I need for work either, so the chances of the company paying for me to learn it are slim, but the Open Technology group also offers MySql training, and that IS something I can apply at work. The instructors have great qualifications, like being Oracle Certified DBA’s (hey, I work with a few of those guys!) and you have the option of going to their site for training, or having it at your office (provided you have a group of 4 or more)

There’s even an advanced Excel course, and speaking as someone who is staring at a spreadsheet right now, containing over 25,000 rows of data, I’m all about learning how to use that better, and make what I do quicker and easier.

I’d imaging that with a little PHP training you could even pick up some freelance work, catering to those of us who don’t know what the heck we’re doing.

I follow the stock market a tad, but only for the companies we own stock in. So uh…2 companies. If you’re into the stock market (more than me, anyway!) and fancy yourself a writer, you may want to join Stocknik as a investment writer. You don’t have to be an investment pro, but you should enjoy investing and be able to write articles on it, and there’s even a chance to get paid for your submissions. You can visit the site and Learn more at Stocknik. This is a great opportunity for a blogger or freelance writer to write more on a niche subject and possible earn some cash in return.

How many times have you needed work done on your site and blog that was above your level of expertise? How did you go about finding someone to do the work? I usually ask friends, or I’ll spend a lot of time looking online for solutions, and try to work out the problem myself. Sometimes, I just can’t figure things out though, and I need the advice of a pro. A great solution is to hire a freelancer who accepts web design jobs. Freelancers are typically more receptive to doing smaller side jobs. Those of you with knowledge in Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, and other design software may be able to find sidework there as well to keep you busy, or enough to give you a regular income.

Have you ever thought about turning your technical knowledge into a paycheck? We hire quite a few consultants in my workplace, and they get paid a lot more than an hourly or salary employee. The drawback to that of course, is that you may have dry spells between consulting gigs. Of course, you also have the freedom and flexibility of being your own boss. If you’ve got the right kind of work ethic and personality, consulting could be a great thing for you to get into. You can’t jump right in though - you’ll need to take the time to research it. Starting a consulting business isn’t something you can do overnight. How will you get new leads? What to charge? This book by Dr. Mike Beitler is a small investment to make if you’re considering consulting. Dr. Beitler has worked for 30 years getting others started as consultants, and the information he provides will give anyone interested in consulting a good overview of what it takes.

A lot of us in the tech industry know all to well about outsourcing. Some of you may even be out of a job because of it. Outsourcing isn’t all bad though - especially in the case of a business owner who simply has too much work to do on his own, or smaller projects that can be done outside of the office environment. Outsourcing projects is something we frequently do in my workplace - why put one of our top people on writing lines of code when we can do it for a lot cheaper and put our guy to work on a more important project? And as more and more job seekers go freelance, and turn to the internet for work, I see outsourcing becoming even bigger.

Outsourcing.org is a new portal devoted to oursourcing - those buying, and selling. You’ll find a forum where sellers can introduce their product or company to prospective buyers, and another for general outsourcing discussion. The Outsourcing projects area will allow you to post jobs, without worrying about fees or commissions. There are listings for people to write content, flash animation, PHP work, SEO work, and even moving sites from one host to another. These are things that I know a LOT of you reading this can do - so I strongly suggest checking it out - maybe you’ll pick up another source of income!

I work for a staffing company in a technical capacity, but even though I’m not a recruiter, I still keep my eye on what’s going on within the staffing industry. There’s a new job search engine that’s creating a buzz in my circles:

Online search engine for all career-related topics, job postings, and advice

This search engine, created by www.FreeCareerSearch.com, scours the internet for the job site that works best for each user. As I know, from my job, there are a lot of niche job sites. A cruise ship entertainer probably isn’t going to find a gig at most typical job boards. But there ARE job boards that exist specifically for people in the entertainment industry. This site presents you with results based on the type of job you’re looking for, at a site with jobs relevant to you.

As I’ve mentioned before, I work in the staffing industry, and have for the past several years. In my last job, I did background investigations, so I got to pore over resumes to make sure everything matched up with what we verified. In my current job, I support recruiters. All of our resumes are on paper currently, but Audio Resume would like to change that. Imagine for a moment that you’re an employer, and instead of getting just a stack of resumes, you get a stack of resumes and one with the ability to HEAR a resume at a unique URL provided to you by the job seeker. (For a sample, listen to the resume at: http://www.audioresume.net/audio/1 ).

Imagine being able to hear a job seeker tell you about their experience and the position they seek, without having to meet them in person. Not only that, you can decide for yourself if they are well spoken and at ease in speaking to people over the phone. (A must for most sales, help desk, staffing and management positions!)

A potential employee using an Audio Resume would definitely stand out from the crowd and get noticed. You’d probably appear more technologically savvy than the rest of the competition, and you’d be able to give a personal touch to a paper resume.

I work in staffing, and we do have a few on board that could be considered power recruiters, but we’re nowhere near the league of headhunters that A.E. Feldman Associates has put together. They’ve been in the business long term - since 1967 - and they have the experience in places to fill positions nationally, from middle to top level management, associates to partners. One of their practice areas is communications and technology and they have a consistent record of successful placements in all of the industries they’ve chosen to work in. It’s always interesting for me to take a look at the competition and see how they handle certain situations and who they’re working with…I wonder if anyone from my office has ever heard of them?

Technorati Tags: headhunters, recruiters, staffing, employment, find a job