Blog Post 4

Last week I learned a lot about the hiring process. I graduate in December and will be looking for a job so I have been very interested in how companies go about choosing employees. I began my interviews for the first assignment. I interviewed the HR guy at a local large construction company. I won’t name names because this will be available on the web and there might be some confidentiality issues. He gave me a lot of good information about how companies hire but was new to the company. Since I only need to use two interviews and I have interviewed more people than that I don’t think I will use his interview for the assignment. He said that they usually hire people based off of referrals. If they need to hire somebody they have the project managers and superintendents ask around and see who they can get. They will then have interviews with the perspective employee. They usually have one of the managers sit in on the interview to judge the persons technical skills. They also usually will run a background check on the person. They have a problem with affirmative action and hiring minorities for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because most of the employees come from referrals and people refer people like themselves they don’t get a whole lot of diversity in potential hires. Also, not many women apply for jobs in the construction industry just because of the nature of the work. He is working on getting an application tracking system on the website because he thinks it will help bring in more diverse applicants. Something else he said that was interesting was his response to what he looks for on a resume. He said that he looks for what is on top because that is probably what the applicant feels is the most important. The interviews that I have conducted have been interesting and I feel like they will give me an advantage when looking for a job.
My discussion topic for chapter six had to do with the tests that are often administered to potential hires. I have taken a few of them and found them to be rather ridiculous. One I took at Home Depot asked me hundreds of questions about honesty. It was obvious about which answer should be put down but I wouldn’t have been dishonest if I answered them all in the way it wanted me to. This makes it an interesting test. In theory the more honest the person, the lower they would score on the test. If I were in charge of hiring somebody I don’t think I would use those types of tests.
The discussion topic I chose for chapter seven had to do with diversity training. I have never received training in that area and I found it interesting. I wonder how somebody becomes qualified to teach and train about diversity. I feel like it would have to be somebody of the culture being learned about to be effective.

Blog Post 3

Last week in HR class I learned a lot about downsizing. My dad has been laid off from his job a number of times. Often times this was because of downsizing so this topic is close to home with me. I have always wanted to put myself in a position so I can avoid being laid off during downsizing. My major is construction management and construction is very cyclical. I know a lot of construction companies have downsized recently. This has saturated the market with qualified applicants, which is bad news for somebody like me who is looking for a job. It also makes me worry that in the future I will be laid off when the market takes a turn for the worse.
Something else that was very interesting to me about downsizing is that it doesn’t really work. I am surprised how many companies still resort to it. It is obvious that it has a negative effect on the performance of employees and also on the public image of the company. When a company begins to downsize to it looks as if it is going out of business. Also, when employees feel the threat of losing their job, they are afraid to take risks and make changes, even if they are positive. These issues remind me of one of my best friends. He worked for a company that recently started to do some downsizing. Although my friend was not laid off he was still concerned about what was happening in the company. This caused him to look for another job. He eventually found on and quit his job. He was the company’s regional manager for Eastern Europe which accounts for a large portion of the company’s business. These regions are now short of a manager that the company will have to replace. It won’t be easy to replace him because he didn’t train anybody to take his place. Also, speaking Russian is a requirement for his job so that narrows down the possibilities. This means that business will probably significantly decline in that region which will cost the company thousands of dollars, probably more than they saved by others at the company go.
We had an interesting discussion about downsizing in my group discussion. We discussed what else can be done instead of downsizing to help a company save money. Things like offering early retirement, employing temporary workers, and outsourcing seemed to be good alternatives to downsizing. The only problem is that they require planning and they also take a little longer to produce results. Downsizing can produce immediate financial results but in the long run will cost the company.
Something else we discussed in our groups was how much time is wasted while people work in the office. I know personally I have had jobs where more than half of my time was spent just sitting at a computer. I have often thought that there is probably a better way to do things. I think if people were hired to complete certain jobs rather than spend 8 hours a day in the office, employees would be happier, and work would be done more efficiently.

Blog Post 2

This week in class I learned a lot of things. First off, I enjoyed our guest speaker. I have never really considered human resources as a career. Although I don’t really see myself in that occupation, I felt it was good to understand the background and the daily schedule of somebody who works in that career. I enjoyed the stories he told. I have had some similar strange things happen in some of the companies that I have worked for and it is good to know how those issues are dealt with.
For my discussion topic we discussed the view of OSHA in the workplace. Most people view OSHA as an annoyance that makes the job take longer and can also make it cost more because of fines. I was wondering what could be done to help employers and employees have a different attitude towards OSHA. Even in companies that value safety, OSHA still seems to be a pain. The conclusion that we came to as a group is that employers needs to have a better safety attitude and train their employees on proper safety practices. As this happens, hopefully they will feel different about OSHA and realize that they are there to help keep people safe and alive. I am studying construction management so safety is always a hot topic for discussion.
I used to have a job doing lighting maintenance for commercial buildings. We often worked with live power and up high on ladders. We would have weekly safety meetings where we would be rewarded for being safe and taught some safety principles but as soon as we left the office things would change. It was more about getting the job done quickly instead of focusing on being safe. Because of this we did some very unsafe activities. Often we weren’t provided with a safe way of doing things. For example repairing lights in stairwells presents a challenge because you can’t set up a ladder on stairs. We often ended up rigging up things that were not safe to accomplish the task. On the other hand, if we were to try to do everything as safe as possible, we probably wouldn’t get enough work done and the company probably wouldn’t be able to succeed. This presents a struggle for employers. There is a definite balance between safety and making money. Usually doing things the safe way adds time to the project.
Another topic that this brings up is the cost of being unsafe. Aside from having to pay workers comp if an injury occurs, OSHA can impose some hefty fines. One of my friends was doing something unsafe and his employer was fined over on hundred thousand dollars. I don’t think this changed my friend’s attitude toward safety. It probably prevented him from doing the unsafe thing again but probably only to stop from getting fired. It did change his attitude towards OSHA. I wonder if OSHA could do something more effective than imposing fines like suspending workers or something. This might change the attitude people have.

Week One

This week I learned some interesting things and had some interesting thoughts. Something that came up during our group discussion was a question about whether or not our boss had ever asked us how we worked most effectively. Some people in our group discussed the actual work environment and others discussed a method to accomplishing tasks that works for them. I personally like to have a clear task and then figure out on my own the best way to accomplish that task. I like to organize and break things down into almost a checklist and then go through it. This helps me feel like I am making progress the whole way through. I do the same thing with homework. I list all the assignments I need to do and the topics I need to study for all my classes on the same page. I can then work through it and cross them off.
We also discussed in our groups some of the challenges associated with working in a diverse team. I had a boss over the summer while I was doing an internship that was from a different culture. He was very polite and never told me to do things. He would always politely ask and I felt that it made him uncomfortable to do that. I would rather have had clear cut activities to perform. I also never received any feedback as to my progress while I was working there. This made it difficult for me to progress and improve. He probably didn’t want to offend me by giving me negative feedback but I feel that I could have really benefited from some. This made me realize that as a manager I need to provide feedback to my employees even if it is uncomfortable.
Something else that was interesting to me was the part in chapter two about an aging workforce. The differences between the retiring generation and my generation are staggering. The fact that I grew up with computers, cell phones, email and so many other things will shape the ways companies function. I have often thought how long it will take before big business decisions are communicated and decided upon using text messages. My guess is it is already happening in some companies. Although much of the retiring workforce has become computer savvy, the newer generation has computers involved in many more aspects of their lives. I think this will bring about huge changes in the way a business functions. For example, most businesses could probably get rid of having an office. People can video chat meetings and send huge amounts of information to each other quickly over the internet. Because of this I think more and more people will begin to work from home and entire corporations will lose much of the office space the currently occupy. These days there isn’t much that can’t be accomplished from a home office.
Also, the part in the book about off-shoring made me think about the different skills I should be acquiring during my time at school. Do I really need to learn a ton about computers or will that type of work be going overseas to more specialized groups? With all the software programs coming out for different industries it’s hard to know what to focus on studying. For example, in one of my classes, rather than learning software associated with construction estimating, we are just learning how to do it on excel. This is because when we go work for a company we have no idea of what type of programs the company will be using.