Diversity Journal

Tips for College Seniors to Secure a Job On Graduation

Grace Austin — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:26:32 +0000

It’s that time of year again: graduation. And while many offer advice to recent grads on life, simple steps for attaining a job can sometimes be the most helpful. Here is some advice for college graduates:

1. Inventory the skills you can sell to a potential employer

Evaluate all the work—part-time, full-time, and volunteer—that you have accomplished over the last four years. Volunteering and fundraising for a charity demonstrates that you have business development skills. Paying for college on your own means you have ambition and motivation. Being an RA (Resident Assistant) at college shows that you know how to manage people, are trustworthy, and reliable.

2. Be able to communicate your passion

Know who you are and why you have chosen your path, and craft that into your ‘career story.’ If you have known since you were a child that you had the desire to help others, and can site valid volunteer or employment history, a potential employer in charity or nonprofit will recognize your aspirations and abilities.

3. Itemize your competitive advantages as a recent graduate

Your adeptness with social media.

Your hunger to work hard to make a difference.

Your willingness to be flexible and learn on the job.

4. Network with people you know

In this economy, word of mouth advertising is incredibly helpful. Let your family friends, professors, and relatives know the kind of job you’re looking for, what your contributory skills are, and why you’re excited to do that kind of work. Ask them if they know people you can talk to.

5. Tap into your university alumni base

Alumni enjoy assisting recent grads, especially if you have practical skills and are willing to pay your dues. Gather your list from tips one and two above and email alums to ask for a discussion about their careers. Don’t come out and directly ask for a job at the start, learn about them, talk about your interests, and opportunities may develop.

6. Stay focused and have a thick skin

You may get more no’s, but if you stay true to your goals, keep trying, and get feedback along the way, a job opportunity will likely show up. You can’t wait for a job to land on your lap, you must hit the pavement and persist to win.

7. Be willing to start at a lower level but be clear about skills you’ll gain

Perhaps you’ll need to “settle” for a job that isn’t your ideal. If it can provide skills that you can leverage for future career growth, go for it. After one to two years, with some proven experience, you can transition to a higher level job.

8. Stay positive about yourself and your capabilities

In a rebounding economy, it may be disheartening for new college graduates to apply and interview for many jobs that may never materialize. Remember to look at the big picture. Life is a long journey and you will land a job. At the same time that you plow forward and persistent look for a job, remember your talents (perhaps review a letter of recommendation) and importantly, remember to take care of yourself and focus on moving forward on a positive path.

Judy Shen-Filerman is the principal and founder of Dreambridge Partners with expertise in advising individuals how to navigate American corporate culture. Her firm specializes in communications and leadership development for newcomers to American corporate culture, ranging from women and minorities to non-Americans.

College Gyms Going Green

Grace Austin — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:52:15 +0000

Going green has become not just a saying but a movement and lifestyle to many. College campuses all over the country are jumping on the trend, looking for new ways to go green.

Many higher education institutions throughout the U.S. have installed exercise equipment that helps generate electricity, and more are following.

Chapman University in Orange, California, Michigan State University, Tennessee Tech, and the University of South Florida have all recently installed green equipment from SportsArt Fitness. Producing energy from the external effort put forth by the exerciser, machines such as ellipticals and various cycles have replaced older equipment at these schools, converting about 75 percent of energy generated back into the electrical grid. The machines are strapped with a DC voltage booster that sends the energy back into the power grid through inverters.

SportsArt claims the products can generate up to 2,000 watts per hour.

Anita Miller, senior product manager for SportsArt Fitness, described the Green System further in a press release: “The power inverter attached to the Green System is about the size of a stereo receiver and has a 208-240VAC plug that needs to be wired to the grid for safety. To operate the system, a person would simply start exercising. A booster box connected to each cardio machine harnesses the energy expended by the exerciser and funnels it to the inverter which converts it into electricity.”

ReRev, founded by a 21-year-old Hudson Harr in 2007, has installed systems at Drexel University, James Madison University, Oregon State University, Texas State University, and the University of Florida.

Other companies, like Green Revolution, have also created similar eco-friendly products. Green Revolution was initially founded in 2007, the brainchild of conservationist and former Accenture Partner Jay Whelan.

The company states the machines can not only reduce energy costs and dependence on fossil fuels, but also help raise awareness of green issues.

The Green Revolution’s Human Dynamo, a power-producing stationary bike, can be combined with others to create a Team Dynamo, which can drive a single generator.

Green Microgym in Portland, Oregon, not only uses green fitness equipment, but also solar panels and recycled rubber floors. The gym reportedly uses about two-thirds the energy of most gyms. Green Microgym is just one of many fitness centers throughout the country that advise to a green ethic, using machines that utilize human energy.

Although there are critics that say the amount of energy is not sufficient to power 3,000-square foot gyms, the trend has definitely caught on throughout colleges and gyms around the country.

Comcast Promotes Cathy Avgiris to Chief Financial Officer of Comcast Cable

Grace Austin — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:14:37 +0000

Comcast Corporation has promoted Cathy Avgiris to chief financial officer of Comcast Cable, effective July 1, 2013. Avgiris, a twenty-one-year Comcast veteran, will report to Neil Smit, president and chief executive officer, Comcast Cable. She succeeds Dave Scott, who is retiring after twenty years with the Company.

Cathy Avgiris

“Cathy brings broad operational expertise, a strong financial background and a deep understanding of our company and our industry to her new role,” says Smit. “She is an exceptional leader who has successfully managed some of Comcast’s largest and fastest-growing operations and I look forward to working with her as we continue to grow our business.”

Avgiris has been instrumental in the growth and development of Comcast for more than twenty years. In her current role as executive vice president and general manager, Communications and Data Services, Avgiris leads Comcast’s XFINITY Internet, XFINITY Voice, and consumer wireless business. Avgiris is also responsible for launching the Verizon Wireless partnership, managing the Company’s Internet Essentials program, which provides low-cost Internet service to low-income families, and overseeing Comcast’s WiFi initiative.

During her tenure with the Company, Avgiris has also served as SVP and general manager of Comcast Digital Voice and SVP of Finance for Comcast Cable, where she managed all financial and administrative activity for Comcast’s high-speed Internet and Voice services.

Working Mother Names “25 Best Companies for Multicultural Women”

Grace Austin — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:32:42 +0000

Working Mother has named the 2013 “Best Companies for Multicultural Women,” recognizing 25 U.S. corporations that create and use best practices in hiring, retaining, and promoting women of color. This year, multicultural women at the Best Companies received 15 percent of all promotions to manager and above as compared to 13 percent in 2011. However, multicultural female representation among the top tenth of earners at the Best Companies fell to 7 percent from 13 percent last year.

Working Mother’s June/July Issue

The top five best companies for multicultural women are Deloitte, General Mills, KPMG, PwC, and State Farm.

The Working Mother Research Institute, which conducted the study, found a significant jump in participation rates for Best Companies’ education programs. For example, 42 percent of all employees participated in gender diversity education this year, up from 23 percent in 2012. A full 76 percent of the Best Companies have mandatory diversity training for their workforces.

The report shows that white women are leaving manager (29 percent), senior manager (26 percent), and corporate executive positions (20 percent) at the Best Companies at higher rates than they are being hired into those jobs. By comparison, multicultural women are being hired into these positions at exactly the same rate at which they leave them.

Twenty-three percent of executives who report directly to the CEO at the Best Companies are women, while 5 percent are multicultural women. That’s an increase over last year’s Best Companies, where women represented 19 percent of all executives reporting directly to the CEO, 4 percent of whom were multicultural women.

Female multicultural representation has held steady for the past two years at the manager, senior manager, and corporate executive levels at the Best Companies, shrinking significantly as they move up the corporate ladder. White men are the only employee group to gain representation as they advance in their careers.

The Working Mother Best Companies for Multicultural Women requires candidates to have at least 500 U.S. employees. Winners are selected based on their answers to an extensive questionnaire on representation; hiring, attrition and promotion rates; recruitment, retention and advancement programs; and company culture. The Working Mother Research Institute created a scoring algorithm based on the previous year’s benchmark results to determine the winners.

http://www.workingmother.com/best-companies/2013-best-companies-multicultural-women

Gen-X Generation Growing Up

Grace Austin — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:22:58 +0000

A new study from the MetLife Mature Market Institute, The MetLife Study of Generation X: The MTV Generation Moves into Mid-Life, has found new findings on the lives of the Gen X generation. According to the study, 70 percent of Gen Xers live with a spouse or partner. They have an average of 2.5 children and 82 percent own their own homes, though 17 percent of those report that the value of those homes is less than the debt attached to them. Forty-three percent have remained in the same type of career throughout their working years and just more than 40 percent have been with the same employer for ten years or more. Seventy-five percent are working full- or part-time. Most are part of a dual-earner household.

Now in its sixteenth year, the MetLife Mature Market Institute is MetLife’s center for aging, longevity, and the generations.

Approaching or in middle age, Gen Xers are part of the sandwich generation because many are caring for both their children and their parents. Ten percent are grandparents. Aged thirty-six to forty-seven, just 19 percent earn less than $35,000 per year and fully 29 percent earn more than $100,000. They are arguably better educated than any generation before them—43 percent graduated from college.

The nationally representative survey was conducted by GfK Custom Research North America. A total of 1,000 interviews were completed by phone—respondents were all born between the years of 1965 and 1976.

The term Generation X was coined in the 1991 novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, by Douglas Coupland.

Other aspects of Generation X found in the study include:
• The majority (63 percent) of Gen Xers still have both parents living and almost two in ten regularly
provide care for their aging parent(s)
• Almost six in ten Gen Xers report they include exercise in their daily routines
• Approximately 20 percent have never been married
• Most would like to retire at age sixty-two, but believe working until at least age sixty-seven is inevitable
• Many Gen Xers identify as baby boomers
• Two in ten Gen Xers have been married more than once

What is the Proposed New Law for Immigration Law Reform?

Grace Austin — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:15:36 +0000

By Genilde Guerra & Robert Kravitz

After months of closed-door negotiations, the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight” has offered a summary of its proposal for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Here is how the Senate bill would handle legalizing the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country, changing or establishing the programs under which future workers can come into the country, and how to better shape the family-based immigration system:

Undocumented immigrants in the U.S.:

America’s roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants will have a chance to become citizens, but will have to wait for tough border security measures to be instituted before they can complete a long process.

The exceptions to this are young, undocumented immigrants known as DREAMers (named after previous legislation), as well as some agricultural workers. Both would have a streamlined path to citizenship, with the wait for DREAMers being five years.

Everyone else, however, would apply for “registered prospective immigrant” (RPI) status by passing a background check and paying a $500 fine alongside assessed taxes. That status would be good for six years but could not be obtained before DHS submits its two border security plans to Congress. RPI status would give the newly-documented the ability to travel internationally and work in the U.S. and can be renewed for another $500.

After ten years as an RPI, immigrants could apply to become green card holders through a new immigration category if they meet several criteria:

Continuous presence and employment in the U.S. over that decade
Up-to-date tax payments
Demonstrated knowledge of U.S. civics and English
Payment of a $1,000 fine.

Note that all individuals who are waiting for green cards when the bill is enacted will have to have been processed through the immigration system before RPIs get green cards. That means those in the country illegally today would have gone to the “back of the line.”

After five years with a green card, these immigrants would be able to apply for U.S. citizenship, meaning the first bloc of potential U.S. citizens other than DREAMers and agriculture workers would take their citizenship oaths just before 2030.

Streamlining the Visa Process:

The Senate bill would completely revamp temporary worker programs:

It would increase the number of high-skilled visas from 65,000 to 110,000. From there, the number would fluctuate based on need, with a ceiling of 180,000. The new law would require higher wages than the current law, and the jobs would need to be posted on a central jobs bank site hosted by the Department of Labor so Americans could find and apply for the positions, too.

It would create a new low-skilled worker program called the W visa, beginning in 2015. An initial pool of 20,000 temporary workers would grow to as many as 75,000 over four years. At that point, a new bureau responsible for studying labor conditions would decide how many visas would be available.

And it would scrap the current agricultural worker program (H2-A visas) for a pair of new visa offers. Agricultural workers, like DREAMers, would have an opportunity for an expedited path to citizenship under certain conditions.

The bill emphasizes the need to shift immigration resources toward immigrants with advanced degrees and those with master’s degree or better in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) from U.S. universities who meet certain specifications. It specifies that 40 percent of all employment-based visas be given to those two groups.

Beyond employment-based visas, the bill would create an entirely new category of “merit based” visas that would take into account education, employment, and length of residence in the U.S., among other considerations. These would come into effect five years after the bill’s enactment and begin at 120,000 visas, though that could rise to a maximum of 250,000. It is this category that those who are in the country illegally now would be funneled into after a decade as RPIs.

Guerra and Kravitz

Family reunification:

The Senate bill will likewise shift U.S. immigration policy toward family members.

Chiefly, the bill focuses on getting spouses and children into the country, but it will cut back on allowing siblings and adult, married children to join their families in the U.S.

Those who could bring their spouses and children to the country without delay include green card holders, employment-based immigrants, doctoral degree holders in any field, some physicians, and some immigrants of “extraordinary ability” (like athletes, artists, executives, and others). Limits or bars on immigration among these core family members in the past put pressure on spouses and children to illegally immigrate to be with their loved ones, advocates say, and these changes will help alleviate those concerns.

Moreover, the bill says that the entire backlog of family-based visa applicants will be cleared within ten years.

But U.S. citizens will no longer be able to sponsor siblings, beginning eighteen months after the bill is enacted. And the only married, adult children who can apply to join their families will be those under age thirty-one. The bill also eliminates the diversity visa program, which brings in immigrants from countries underrepresented in the wider immigration pool.

Please email attorney@kravitzlaw.com or visit www.kravitzlaw.com for more information on the authors.

The Risk of Prejudice in Computerized Prediction

Grace Austin — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:45:32 +0000

Today’s predictive technology introduces a new risk of prejudice on a massive, automated scale. Predictive analytics predicts what each person will do so that companies and government agencies can operate more effectively. In some cases, this technology does drive life-changing decisions. Large organizations like Hewlett-Packard inform human resource decisions by predicting whether each employee is likely to quit, and states such as Oregon and Pennsylvania analytically predict whether each convict will commit crime again (recidivism) in order to make sentencing and parole decisions.

Given this influence on the lives of individuals, predictive analytics introduces a new risk of prejudice in two ways:

1. Prediction of minority status. Fueled with data, computers automatically detect one’s minority status. A new study from the University of Cambridge shows that race, age, and sexual orientation can be accurately determined by one’s Facebook likes. The capacity to predict grants marketers and other researchers access to unvolunteered demographic information. Some such personnel may be keen on managing and using this information appropriately, but have not necessarily been trained to do so.

2. Prediction with minority status. When utilizing predictive analytics, it is difficult to avoid incorporating minority status into the predictive model as one basis of prediction. There is no place this threat is more apparent than in law enforcement, where computers have become respected advisers that have the attention of judges and parole boards.

While science promises to improve the effectiveness of law enforcement, when the organization formalizes and quantifies decision making, it inadvertently instills existing prejudices against minorities. Why? Because prejudice is cyclical, a self-fulfilling prophecy, and this cycling could be intensified by the deployment of predictive analytics.

Crime prediction systems calculate a criminal’s probability of recidivism based on things like the individual’s age, gender, and neighborhood, as well as prior crimes, arrests, and incarcerations. No government-sponsored predictive models explicitly incorporate ethnic class or minority status.

However, ethnicity creeps into the model indirectly. Philadelphia has developed a recidivism prediction model that incorporates the offender’s ZIP code, known to highly correlate with race.

Similarly, terrorist prediction models factor in religion. Levitt and Dubner’s book SuperFreakonomics details a search for suspects among data held by a large U.K. bank (not a government-sponsored analysis). Informed in part by attributes of the 9/11 perpetrators, as well as other known terrorists, a fraud detection analyst at the bank pinpointed a very specific group of customers to forward to the authorities. This micro-segment was defined by factors such as the types of bank accounts opened, existence of wire transfers and other transactions, record of a mobile phone, status as a student who rents, and a lack of life insurance (since suicide nullifies the policy). But, to get the list of suspects down to a manageable size, the analyst filtered out people with non-Muslim names, as well as those who made ATM withdrawals on Friday afternoons—admittedly a proxy for practicing Muslims.

But even if such factors are kept out of predictive models, it’s still difficult to avoid involving minority status. Bernard Harcourt, a professor of both political science and law at the University of Chicago, and author of Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age, told The Atlantic that minority group members discriminated against by law enforcement, such as by way of profiling, are proportionately more likely to show a prior criminal record (e.g., since they may be screened more often), which artificially inflates the minority group’s incidence of criminal records. Rather than race being a predictor of prior offenses, prior offenses (prosecutions) are indicative of race. By factoring in prior offenses in order to predict future crimes, “you just inscribe the racial discrimination you have today into the future.” It’s a cyclical magnification of prejudice’s already self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even Ellen Kurtz, the research director at Philadelphia’s Adult Probation and Parole Department and a champion of crime-predicting computer models, admits, “If you wanted to remove everything correlated with race, you couldn’t use anything. That’s the reality of life in America.”

There’s no clean way out. Although designed for the betterment of decision making, data mining inadvertently digs up some dirty injustices. In principle, the math getting us in trouble could also remedy the problem by quantifying prejudice. But that could be done only by introducing the very data element that so far remains outside the analysis, albeit inside the eye of every profiling police officer: race.

Eric Siegel, Ph.D., is the founder of Predictive Analytics World (www.pawcon.com)—coming in 2013 to Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, Berlin, and London—and the author of Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die (February 2013, published by Wiley). For more information about predictive analytics, see the Predictive Analytics Guide (www.pawcon.com/guide).

Fostering a Growth Mindset

PDJ — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:33:50 +0000

By Gabriella Giglio, EVP of Global HR at American Express

Openness to learning can have a profound impact on your life, relationships, and career. People with “fixed mindsets” believe particular behaviors and level of intelligence are set in stone and cannot be developed, while those with a “growth mindset” believe these qualities can be improved through your own efforts and experiences. Encouraging a growth mindset—a concept developed by Carol S. Dweck—has allowed American Express to evolve work habits, professional development, and ultimately foster a culture of learning and innovation.

In October 2012, we hosted our biannual Women’s Conference to provide our top 200 senior woman with the skills and resources to develop and advance to the top levels of American Express. That’s where I met Marissa Campise, vice president at Venrock, a Silicon Valley- and New York-based venture capital firm. Campise shared great stories about how embracing a growth mindset in a male-dominated industry was critical to her career progression. Fostering a culture of learning in the workplace is challenging whether one works at a small startup or a big corporation, so we addressed how companies can help employees adopt an openness to change. Here’s a portion of that conversation:

Giglio: We see apprehension to take risks and be open to failure as one of the biggest challenges to achieving a growth mindset in the workplace. We’ve really focused on motivating and empowering our employees to be innovative and creative, because that’s when the magic happens. For me, a turning point in my career was taking a role that required me to move to Hong Kong. At that time, Asia was not the growth market it is now and many questioned my decision. I learned so much in my time in Asia and gained a better understanding of what it meant to operate as a global company. The experience made me a better leader and fueled my desire to learn more about our business internationally, and as a result, I spent the next six years in London.

I know for you it was also important to take advantage of those new, sometimes daunting opportunities. Was there a time in your career where you had to take a risk to move your career forward?

Moving on from failure can be tough, but it can be easier when you know you’re succeeding or failing on your own merits

Campise: Absolutely. Joining Venrock last year was a huge risk, for example. I held a coveted position at another prominent venture firm and gave that up because I wanted to build big, sustainable companies, something Venrock is known for. It was also daunting to enter a new culture, where I would be the only woman on the investment team, but my colleagues were quick to bring me into the fold as part of the team. Venture capital as a business is all about taking risks—you are guaranteed to encounter failure—and sometimes those risks pay off in a big way. At Venrock, individuals are empowered to lead deals and learn from one another to make big decisions. It’s ok to try new things and explore the unpopular because sometimes the best opportunities are the ones that involve working in new, unchartered territories.

Giglio: But when those failures do happen, it can shake an employee’s confidence. We found it important to help employees shift their thinking, have them start to think about failures as opportunities to learn. Rather than sweeping mistakes under the rug, help them realize success can only happen because of missteps. It’s about learning and identifying what needs to change, how to change it, and to apply that knowledge moving forward.

Campise: Moving on from failure can be tough, but it can be easier when you know you’re succeeding or failing on your own merits. Especially for women, I think we’re in a better position to accept failure in a culture built on meritocracy. And while it is important to learn from your failures, I also try to prioritize what’s most important in life to put failures and problems into perspective. For me, family, close friends, and health all comes first. The rest has a solution.

Giglio: That’s a very good point. It’s important to know your priorities and to let them guide your decisions, which takes courage. We try to help our employees develop these softer skills, and their business skills, as they advance in their careers. We offer concrete learning paths and programs that help them develop the specific professional and business skills needed to lead others. Mid-level managers benefit from these experiences the most because their leadership style and openness to change has the potential to influence the next-generation workforce.

Campise: I think most people don’t really feel like they know who they are or what they’re capable of early in their careers. Either they will embrace opportunities to grow and learn, which will help build self-awareness and confidence, or it will prove too difficult to have a winning attitude, creating more challenges and road blocks for one’s career path. You have to challenge yourself, pick yourself up, and move forward. Make sure you also celebrate your successes and find those ways to inspire yourself, so you are always driving towards something.

It’s important to know your priorities and to let them guide your decisions, which takes courage.

Giglio: At American Express, we talk a lot about the fact that “growth mindset” is built on courage. You need to have the courage to be open to learn, to see the possibilities, and take risks, knowing that they might not always work out as planned. Anything else you’d like to add, Marissa?

Campise: Most organizations don’t encourage risk-taking and instead punish failure. Innovation won’t emerge from organizations like this. In the startup world, we do everything we can to encourage risk-taking. Don’t be afraid to think differently. In history, some of the greatest entrepreneurs are the ones who took the greatest risks and dared to explore uncharted territory. At Venrock, we have found that many of our successful companies achieved greatness doing something different from their original idea. Navigating their way to success required bold thinking, risk-taking, and an openness to change. Those qualities have to be in their DNA. In the VC industry, you can’t find those types of entrepreneurs if you don’t embrace the way they see the world. We search for that force.

Giglio: Marissa and I both believe a growth mindset can absolutely be developed, and it starts with the realization that every day is a learning opportunity. I’d encourage employees to seek new experiences, and learn from the challenges and failures that occur. If our employees are constantly changing and adapting, it’s not failure. It’s ensuring a winning strategy for them and the company.

How to Manage Successful Diversity Marketing

Grace Austin — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:19:53 +0000

Your organization is doing important work when it comes to managing diversity programs and community initiatives. But if you aren’t getting the word out about your accomplishments, what good are they doing? In a recent study of senior marketing leaders at Fortune 100 and Forbes Top 200 corporations, only 11 percent of executives consider their organizations “very effective” when it comes to marketing, including integrating new tools like social media into existing strategies.

Just as a company often needs to go through a transformation to embrace diversity in the workplace, the same can be true for creating an effective marketing campaign. Here are five tips to help you navigate the changes needed to be more successful in promoting your diversity programs and services.

1. Start with your strategy. Are you trying to create a more diverse workplace or position your organization as an industry leader in diversity practices? If you start by clarifying your long-term vision, you can use it to guide your marketing initiatives. This ensures your campaigns are effective and move your organization in the right direction to reach your goals.

2. Build a better brand story. Creating a memorable brand starts by discovering your unique diversity story. Next, you integrate your marketing communication tools and activities to share those messages and create a consistent experience for all of your stakeholders. Diversity and inclusion have always been a part of the core values and culture for Ogilvy, one of the world’s top advertising, marketing, and public relations agencies. These characteristics of the company’s brand are infused into everything it does, from hiring employees to producing campaigns for clients.

3. Strengthen your marketing reach. Don’t think you have to do all of the work when it comes to your marketing. From teaming up with employees to creating collaborative partnerships, there are ways you can maximize resources right at your fingertips. Even the media can help toot your horn and extend your marketing reach. Starbucks has a great track record when it comes to diversity initiatives and often relies on the media to help promote this good work. For example, Black Enterprise has ranked it as one of the “15 Best Companies in Senior Management Diversity” and “15 Best in Corporate Board Diversity” in the country.

4. Simplify the plan and process. One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is creating marketing campaigns that are too complex. Keep things straightforward by picking one thing and doing it well for a month, a quarter, a year, or whatever time you need to get the right results. Use a streamlined approach to track just the basics: what needs to get done, who is doing it, where it needs to happen, by when, how much will it cost, and how will it be evaluated.

5. Speed toward the right results. Once your marketing plan is in hand, its time to turn your ideas into action. One of the best ways to do this is through a test pilot where a marketing campaign is conducted for a set period of time during which progress is evaluated and the approach is adjusted accordingly. For example, if a university is trying to find solutions to raise numbers of Hispanic student applicants, it could try a social media campaign on Facebook for one academic year and measure its return on investment and impact on results within that specific community.

Whitney Keyes is a professor of global reputation management and marketing and serves as a fellow for the Center for Strategic Communications at Seattle University. She is the author of Propel: Five Ways to Amp Up Your Marketing and Accelerate Business. For over twenty years, she has worked as a senior Microsoft manager, a strategic adviser for American Express, and consulted to thousands of businesses around the world through her work for the U.S. Department of State to empower women leaders and entrepreneurs in Malaysia, Kenya, and Namibia.

Growth of Healthcare Jobs Expanding Rapidly

Grace Austin — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:44:59 +0000

As Americans grow older, the growth of jobs in the healthcare industry, particularly those catering to seniors, is set to expand greatly. Senior caregiving is expanding the most in major cities throughout the U.S., especially in Southern and Western cities like Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

According to Caregiverlist.com’s Senior Care Employment Index, senior care agencies have seen a 40 percent growth since 2008. There are now almost 11,000 agencies operating in the U.S., and 1,000 were opened last year alone.

The same site claims that senior caregivers earn 38 percent more than the national minimum wage. These positions include companion caregiver, certified caregiver, certified home health aide, and certified nursing aide.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over the next two decades the number of seniors will almost double, to 70 million people. By then, one in five people will be seniors.

“Caregiving will continue to evolve as our lifespans continue to increase. Now that younger generations have better knowledge to assist in living well—and laws have even been passed to make sure we do certain things to protect our health—we aren’t allowed to smoke in office buildings anymore, to name just one, this means a new reality of living to be 110 years old or longer,” says Caregiverlist.com CEO Julie Northcutt. “Who will provide for the care for these additional years of living and how will we pay for it? These are the questions we will have to tackle.”