There’s a growing trend where the employment periods are becoming shorter. People are switching their places of work more frequently, as an evolutionary response to the changes in the economic and financial environments. Perhaps an opportunity exists for a public feedback and recommendation system for employment relationships. I imagine it having a database of Portfolios/Resumes and Employers along with a quantitative and qualitative feedback on their workplace performance. Access to this database may be confidential.

My observations of the ratemyprof website are as follows: There are a few pitfalls that have displayed themselves, such as extreme polarization of the reviews (perhaps due to the immaturity or bias). Reviews are usually either really negative or really positive (perhaps due to the grades achieved in the course). As a reader/student/customer I frequently browse the site when selecting a professor. I have learned not to believe the literal meaning of the reviews but rather look at more statistical aspects such as trends and outliers to gather a more objective view of the professor.
I think that same (statistical model) may be achieved for employment history review, if the quantity or responses is significant enough to allow statistical interpretation of data. It seems to me that the trend of employment may be heading that way, as people tend to stay in one place for a few years and move on, especially for contract workers.

The benefits to this may be an increased level of responsibility and improved opportunity to network. Surely there are plenty of details that need to be turned to make this idea work. So my employment question is: Is there an opportunity for the aforementioned database to exist and be successful?

Edit – When I posted this message I had no idea abou the http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm. This is exactly what I had thought about without having direct exposure to this project.

Meritocracy is a system of a government or other organization wherein appointments are made and responsibilities assigned to individuals based upon demonstrated talent and ability (merit). – Wikipedia (Meritocracy)

First of all, the measurement of merit of an individual is quite difficult. We can use the productivity data from the current position, but that may not be accurate to predict the future performance. If we stick with the original definition of meritocracy and assign new responsibility to someone who is doing really well, but is not equipped to do the new job, then are we putting them at a disadvantage, by promoting them?

Second of all, the possibility of objective comparison of qualification of candidates is highly questionable, since a person (usually one person) makes the promotion decision. If it  accompanied by any type of personal interaction, which is highly likely, then bias is highly likely as well.

Third, internal politics may play a role in the promotion decision.

Overall it is probably virtually impossible to achieve perfect meritocracy, however the decisions that have been made on promotions may be reviewed by supervisors, and the evolution of the market has pressed for accountability of such actions. Regardless of how the decision has been made, it may be required to show merit or systematic approach. In that scenario the only real controllable variable for the employee is to believe in meritocracy and strive to achieve the abilities.

My question today relates to the possible productivity differences between Type A and Type B companies. Type A companies are likely going to peruse efficiency and productivity, they may not place enough emphasis on strategic decision making, blinded by the urge to meet pre-set goals. This seems to describe the classical organization, that have process in place to reproduce the successful results time and time again with the at most efficiency. Type B companies are likely going to work smarter and provide more personal service to their customers, with more emphasis on the human element and the knowledge element. Current trend seems to show that Type B companies are becoming more common in the job market, as competitive advantages based on cost are becoming less successful, value creation rises, and so does the Type B companies. If the previously honored productivity of Type A companies is no longer honored due to the need for overall value of service, does that mean that Type B is more productive at creating value?

If that is true, does that mean that Type B personalities are going to be in more demand in the near future?

This change was most likely influenced the most by entrance of women into the labour force. Now women will most likely stay in the labour force in the future, so does that mean that these policies will stay as well? Possibly, as technology keeps improving and requiring less and less of control it frees humans to do more human things. Communication skills become increasingly important and globalization connects offices across the world. Perhaps we can soon sign in to a work desktop and work from anywhere with internet access. That would be the future I am intrigued in.

Suggested soundtrack

I have decided to post somewhat of a rant today. So be aware of the negative messages.

The Internet is everyones beloved source of information/entertainment. It is fantastic to see all of these social networking sites that allow you to reconnect with your school buddies and other people that you barely know. So as the popularity of these sites grow, public relations people and human resource people are started to see a potential to find applicants from these sites.

Now i am sure that they are not going to report to their boss that the leading candidate was discovered through facebook, but it is inevitable for the informed people to advise their unemployed friends of the openings.

Facebook is perfect for keeping those faint contacts alive, just enough to find out about a job posting (faint contact they say is the best for job oriented networking). This so far sounds great, it increases the opportunity for unemployed to find jobs and find them quicker. Sure on the micro level it is fantastic.

Alright, now lets zoom out a bit. What social sites are passively enchancing is the emotional intelligence (eq – being able to communicate, keep contacts and so on). Again this sounds perfect, in our busy lives we need some assitance in keeping all of our contacts alive. Ultimately this fills any possible personality gap that the people may have, as the communication is text based, safe and relatively impersonal. Zoom out a bit more.

So on the macro level, this is definetely increasing the usage of Emotional Intelligence and also increasing the importance of EQ. What this means is “It’s not what you know it’s who you know”.  This phrase may be there for a while, but it was never really echoing in the society. Now that we have over 50% of households with internet service and most likely a slightly lower percentage of people on social networks (with EQ advantage). The wage gap and level of unemployment is going to grow even faster.

What this also may do, is endanger the roots of our society: achieved status model. If you can get a job by knowing a person that is doing the hiring, then you do not have to be the most qualified individual. The person that is hiring may vouch for you, or just simple select you from the crowd of highly talented workers. If the masses realize this, then we have a potential education problem on our hands (overestimation).

Recommendation: stay current with the social netowrking sites, use them in job searches.

The effect of this turbo-dynamic market is a turbo-dynamic labour market. We have an increasing amount of temporary, part-time and contract positions. We have an aging labour force comprised of baby boomers, that is reaching retirement within a decade. And we are facing the potential collapse of the old age security funds.

Just to look at one of the ways to survive the retirement boom, is to allow the baby-boomers to work until they decide to quit (as in after 65 years of age). However removal of the required retirement policy might cause complications in termination of these employees.

Let’s assume we have John Smith that is now 66 years old. He has worked for ABC inc. for 30 years, and is now in the senior position at the headquarters. He wants to continue full-time employment, however recently his performance has not been up to par. If the ABC inc. decides to terminate John Smith, then they must provide him with a generous severance package (30 years of service should amount to over a year of notice/pay in lieu, plus the amount may be higher due to the difficulty in finding new employer).

So the business so far has been structured the way that counts on people to retire at 65, when statistically speaking their performance starts to decrease. And this was perfectly fine with the government up till recently. Now that massive retirement threatens the social order/standards, the government wants to influence this model of retirement.

It is nothing surprising, historically Canadian courts have made decisions that promoted a distribution of social cost (promoted notice of termination). However this does seem to interfere with the standards ad ideals that baby-boomers lived by. They worked hard and many of them put away money to “live it up” during retirement.

Bluntly speaking the idea of the governments may be to reduce the amount of people that are dependent on the social security funding. Sadly one of the accepted solutions may be to keep baby-boomers (aka economy builders) working until they die. And on that note i would like to end my post with a quote from Max Weber.

“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.” Max Weber