April 16, 2004

Boys do make passes at girls who wear glasses ...
Posted by diane@downtownwomensclub.com">Diane Danielson at 9:46 AM -

and have graduate degrees. Finally some good news for the highly educated women of Boston. According to a brand new study featured on the front page of today's Boston Globe business section, while it's still more likely for a forty-something woman with only a high school diploma to be married when compared to her peers with graduate degrees, the gap is closing!

[Elaina] Rose, who presented her findings at a Population Association of America conference in Boston this month, said that in 1980 a woman 40 to 44 years old who completed three years of graduate school was about 14 percentage points less likely to have been married at some point than a woman with a high school diploma. By 2000, that 14-point gap had shrunk to 5 points, suggesting that changing social mores and women's pursuit of education have affected the marriage market.

Thank goodness. No more pretending to be the perfume gal at Filene's. (I swear that was the only way I could get dates back in law school!)

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April 15, 2004

Civilian workers' danger in Iraq
Posted by jbutler@bostonworks.com">Jason Butler at 2:46 PM -

Here is an AP story on independent contractors going to the Iraqi warzone to find a job. When confronted with the reality, many are coming home. Too many are coming home in bodybags.

An estimated 15,000 contract workers are helping to rebuild the war-torn country. In recent weeks, they have increasingly become the targets of insurgents trying to end the U.S. occupation.

Tommy Hamill, 43, of Macon, Miss., was reduced to driving a milk truck after hard times forced him to sell the dairy farm that had been in his family for 30 years. With two children at home and a wife in need of open-heart surgery, Hamill felt he could not pass up an offer from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root of $80,000 base pay to drive a fuel truck in Iraq for a year.

Hamill was eight months into the job when Iraqi militants attacked his convoy last Friday. Hamill's kidnappers vowed to kill him on Easter if American troops did not leave the city of Fallujah, but that deadline passed with no word about Hamill's fate.

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Spring is in the air
Posted by noseworthy@bostonworks.com">Nicole Noseworthy at 12:27 PM -

This time of year you can be certain of three things; taxes, rain/unstable weather, and spring cleaning. While you may be cleaning your home, don't forget to do a little spring cleaning at your home away from home - the office. Remember, your desk space says a lot about you (whether deliberate or inadvertently) to your boss and office mates.

To provide some tips about what's good and not so good in cube décor, ABCNews.com offers the "Top 10 Tips for Decorating Your Work Cube"

Work station, cubicle, panel system - no matter what you call it, one thing is for certain - it's not a private office space.

...what many cubicle-dwelling workers don't know is that less is often better than more when it comes to your work space.

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!#$%!@#$% !@#$% !@#$% !@#$
Posted by jbutler@bostonworks.com">Jason Butler at 9:16 AM -

It's 40 degrees, it's windy, it's rained for a week, and I just walked 15 minutes to the Central Square post office to drop off my !#@$ %!# %^$! #!@$ !#$ % !@#% !@#$ %!#$ #% !#@$ %^@#%$ ~@#$ ~!@#$ % !@#$ @#$ @#~$ !~@#$ taxes.

Oh well, the sun will come out tomorrow. You can bet your bottom dollar.

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April 14, 2004

Situation wanted for unemployed professional
Posted by jbutler@bostonworks.com">Jason Butler at 12:13 PM -

Times are tough. The New York Times reports that one thing people are beginning to do is post classified ads looking for jobs.

Jobs-wanted advertisements, also known as positions-wanted or situations-wanted ads, were once the domain of domestic workers or tradespeople, but more unemployed professionals like Mr. Mourer have taken them out in newspapers and online, and with varying degrees of success.

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April 13, 2004

All's fair in love and networking
Posted by cmoor@keystoneassociates.com">Colin Moor at 1:49 PM -

In the April issue of Fast Company Magazine there is an article about the developing trend in online business networking.

If it works for romance, why not commerce? A handful of companies have begun using Friendster-style social networking to help businesses and professionals find a perfect match. We're not talking romantic partners here, mind you, but access to previously unreachable customer leads, investors, business partners, job candidates, and employers.

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Bank of America creating jobs at Fidelity
Posted by jbutler@bostonworks.com">Jason Butler at 11:11 AM -

Here's one positive aspect of the BOA/Fleet merger: Fidelity will create some jobs.

Bank of America yesterday awarded Fidelity a large chunk of its human resource work, which will create about 375 jobs in Marlborough and Merrimack, N.H.

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April 12, 2004

It's a blog new world
Posted by deisenhart@bostonworks.com">Douglas Eisenhart at 4:21 PM -

Well, we may think we're pretty cool and cutting edge here in the BostonWorks Job Blog, but if we don't watch it we're in danger of becoming obsolete. John Mello's Personal Tech column from today's Globe explores some of the fresh territory opened up by new blogging tools and features, including wireless and photo-based blogs:

Moblogging [mobile blogging] allows bloggers to add postings to their blog sites from almost anywhere at any time, using a cellphone, RIM Blackberry, or wireless handheld computer.
- - - - -
Camera phones have given a whole new dimension to moblogging and rise to a new kind of blogging site that caters to images rather than words.

We can connect the dots (pixels?) between Mello's story and another one published by BostonWorks yesterday, how, with the proliferation of camera phones, employers are wary of potential abuses in the workplace. Imagine taking a clandestine photo at work, then putting it on the web via blog self-publishing technology, for the world to see, in minutes. Maybe it's not such a pretty picture.

Tomorrow morning all will be made crystal clear by none other than BostonWorks' blogging guru Jason Butler at a special panel on online job tools (sorry, closed session). It is indeed a blog new world.

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To work or not to work, that is the question ...
Posted by diane@downtownwomensclub.com">Diane Danielson at 12:45 PM -

For some maybe. But for the rest of us it's not really a relevant question (either fiscally or mentally). However, the latest book weighing in on the topic is nicely summarized by Cathy Young in today's Globe editorial, Rebalancing work and motherhood.

["Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life" by Daphne de Marneffe] does not paint a rosy, Hallmark-greeting-card picture of motherhood or shy away from its more frustrating aspects. But the author chafes at the not-uncommon feminist assumption that women who stay home have been merely guilt-tripped into giving up their own lives for domestic misery. Often, she points out, it's working women -- even ones who love their jobs -- who feel terrible when they have to leave their children.

De Marneffe may have tried to address both sides of the issues in her book, but she appears to be taking more of an "either/or", "all or nothing" stance. As Young rightly points out at the end of the article, it's more about "striving toward equality while recognizing reality, and seeking the best possible balance."

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It's not just about the cookies
Posted by diane@downtownwomensclub.com">Diane Danielson at 11:16 AM -

The Girl Scouts was not really the most progressive organization back when I wore the uniform. In the old days, in addition to selling thin mints and samoas, we also had to earn badges that included sewing (not my strong point), cooking (again, not my strong point), and camping (my first and last camping experience - I only did it for the badge). But the Girl Scouts of today have many more badge options - from Business to Aerospace to CyberGirlScout - and a lot more learning opportunities.

In Sunday's BostonWorks section, columnist Maggie Jackson outlines a weekend spent at the Patriots' Trail Girl Scouts' "Camp CEO," the goal of which is to encourage young girls to go into business.

''Even though boys don't know much about business, they still perceive it as a place they would go as a career," says Gail Deegan, a retired publishing executive who is on the board of the Patriots' Trail Girl Scout Council and helped create Boston's Camp CEO. ''Girls really rank helping others and making the world a better place as key motivators in choosing careers -- and they don't see how business fits with that."

But the Girl Scouts are trying to change that perception. And the 15 girls at last weekend's camp, who worked their way through paycheck calculations and projected cash flow sheets, learned a lot more than simply how to sell the most cookies.

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