My grandfather, “Win” (short for Winstanley), was a remarkable man.
Not for what he did in his career, especially. He didn’t build a multinational corporation. He wasn’t a US Senator. He was remarkable for the impact he made in the lives of so many.
In the last decade of his life, my grandfather had serious health issues. Having lost a kidney to cancer near the time of my birth, he began to have total kidney failure (as well as a serious heart condition) about 10 years later. He spent the last decade of his life managing through often life-threatening health episodes. Throughout all of this, he maintained an extraordinarily positive attitude which never failed to amaze everyone around him.
How did he do that? And how does it relate to career search?
My grandfather passed away in 1991. He had an immense impact in my life as well as the life of many others. Hundreds of people attended his funeral and the wake thereafter, where people shared stories about how he made a significant impact in their life.
I try to put the lessons he taught me to use every day–and perhaps they could prove useful to you as well.
All–Sorry for the radio silence this morning. My company moved its corporate headquarters this weekend and I’ve been a bit consumed in managing through the change (new commute, figuring out a new workspace, setting up the cube, finding where the bathrooms are, etc…).
I’ll be back Wednesday with something (hopefully) insightful. In the meantime, a sneak preview of the view from my new desk:
Hello and Happy Friday–
I’m (finally) taking a day off today, my first all Summer. I’m looking forward to a weekend of eating, drinking, exploring, and catching up with friends.
As I’ve spent most of my Summer painting the damn house (which, apart from touch up/detail work, is done), I’ve missed all of the best auto-related events of the Summer. I’ve been feeding my habit with great videos from Chris Harris on /DRIVE and Petrolicious. I thought I’d share a couple of my favorites with you.
First, Chris Harris’s video diary of his experience co-driving a Jaguar C-Type in the Mille Miglia. I love this for the visceral thrill they are able to impart about what it means to drive a beautiful, fast car quickly on thrilling, technically challenging roads. It’s spine-tingling for me in certain sections.
And second, the Petrolicious video on Jack Olsen and his remarkable 911. (The video is also nearly as much about the garage for which Jack has become somewhat of a celebrity for building, The 12-Gauge Garage.) Jack is a self-taught master craftsman (he’s a fiction writer by trade) who has turned a singular vision into an extraordinary car (and workspace).
Hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
In a prior post, I discussed some ways of obtaining information that can help negotiate a job offer. When you receive a job offer, it’s easy to only focus on the hard numbers:
These are the data points most easily benchmarked against your current position (or against the market). But if you focus only on those numbers, you are not evaluating the entire offer effectively.
Benefits are extremely important to you (and, potentially, your family). They are also a significant part of your compensation.
A great benefit package:
But how much do these cost–and how to weigh them as part of your offer? The Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated that, on average, benefits cost an employer 30.9% of the overall cost of employment. A 2011 SHRM report states that, on average, employers spent 19% on mandatory benefits (such as unemployment compensation, workers compensation, and Social Security); 19% on voluntary benefits (such as health insurance, flexible spending accounts, vision plans, insurance); and 11% on time not worked benefits (paid holidays, sick leave, vacation, personal/bereavement leave).That’s 49% of the total $ spent on employing you.
Now you have a sense of how much you should value that benefits package as part of your offer. What should you be looking at specifically?
Altogether, the differences between benefits packages can mean large overall differences in your compensation–or how much $ will be coming out of your paycheck (or pocket) that isn’t with your current plan today–with a new employer vs. current. It’s well worth taking the time to crunch the numbers and discuss the differences you find with the recruiter. It’s worth noting that most recruiters will not be able to make changes to benefits–with very few exceptions (seniority-based vacation accrual for one) they are usually the same for all employees. But they may be able to make a case for increasing your base compensation a bit if your out of pocket expenses will increase under the new plan.
In the past week, there has been a lot of press around the editor-at-large for Sheryl Sandberg’s non-profit organization, Lean In, posting an opening for an unpaid internship on Facebook. Controversy erupted around why an organization spearheaded by Sandberg, who made $91 Million from Facebook stock sales last week, would be offering an unpaid internship. Isn’t that counter to the organizations purpose, many asked?
For Lean-In, a registered non-profit, this might have been legal. In the for-profit world, however, unpaid internships are most often illegal. And this is why the story is important to you, dear readers.
If you’re a recruiter who has a client that wants to post an unpaid internship at your for-profit company, or if you are offered an unpaid internship, scrutinize the request or opportunity very carefully.
The US Department of Labor established new guidelines for Internship Programs under the Fair Labor Standards Act in 2010. In this document, they established a test for whether an internship should be paid or unpaid. They are:
I’ve bolded a couple of points that I consider most salient. In essence, an unpaid intern is on premises effectively for co-op educational experience. They may not produce any work that could benefit the employer–which is to say, most anything. And in some cases, normal business operations may actually be impeded through having the unpaid intern on premise.
Seems pretty clear, right? Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be for a lot of employers. Fox Searchlight was sued–and had judgement awarded against them–by unpaid interns that had worked on “Black Swan“. And this is simply the highest profile case of many where former unpaid interns have been awarded back wages. Warner Brothers/Atlantic Records was sued by a former unpaid intern in June. The Charlie Rose show was ordered to pay back wages to unpaid interns in a court judgement to approximately 190 former interns earlier this year.
But what about if you’re receiving academic credit? Doesn’t that give the employer a free pass? Not according to judicial precedent. The “Black Swan” ruling stated that receiving academic credit was of little importance in determining whether the interns should have been paid.
In essence: Internships in for-profit businesses should be paid. It needs to follow the concept of consideration. If an intern produces work of any value to the organization, they need to be paid a satisficing amount in consideration of that work.
I’ve been approached by hiring managers who know of a smart college student who is hungry for experience who would like to hire them as an unpaid intern. I get it: they see an opportunity for a cheap (read: free) resource to get some basic work done that they’d otherwise have to hire a temp to complete. I’ve had many educational conversations as to why doing this would place the organization at legal risk.
Recruiters: Have you run into this with hiring managers? How did you handle it?
Job seekers/students: Have you considered an unpaid internship? Did you end up doing it?
End note to the Lean In story: It was announced at the end of last week that Lean In will be doing a paid internship program. Amazing what a little press coverage can do.