Last week, we saw the Department of Labor reveal the worst unemployment statistics the U.S. has faced since 1983, with a total of 15.7 million Americans officially out of work and looking. The new national average of 10.2% is an important psychological threshold — but what’s even more shocking to think about is that it is an average. Many locations and demographics are experiencing much scarier numbers. Who is most and least affected by this plague of joblessness? What is the demographic makeup of the unemployment line?

The numbers vary from state to state, of course. For instance, RiseSmart’s home state of California has experienced 12.2% unemployment recently. Michigan, Nevada, and Rhode Island are also suffering. However, states such as the Dakotas, Utah, Iowa, and Nebraska are all doing comparatively well.

But regional differences are to be expected as local economies go through boom and bust times. It’s the demographic numbers that will really make you look twice. The New York Times has published a thought-provoking interactive chart that graphs out unemployment rates for different groups of Americans, called “The Jobless Rate for People Like You.” You can adjust the chart for race, gender, age, and education levels and get 12-month averages for that demographic, current as of September 2009 (they don’t reflect our latest awful reality of 10+%, but still show a sobering truth).

The variations are shocking. Truly, not all groups have felt the recession equally. Make up an imaginary unemployed person; give them an age, a gender, a race, and an education. See what their chances are; then change an element or two.

Take away that college degree, or change the race, and you’ll quickly find that some groups have unemployment rates much higher than the 10% we’re all worrying over. The highest unemployment rate –- a staggering 48.5% –- is suffered by black males under age 24 without a high school diploma. Their female counterparts (same race, age, and education) also faced discouraging odds at 36.8%, but the change of gender alone makes a difference of 11.7%.

Education helps, because these same groups, had they finished high school, would be facing just 25.8% unemployment. Before you pin it all on dropping out of school, though, consider a schoolmate of theirs: a white male of the same age who didn’t complete high school. The white dropout, statistically, faces just 25.6% unemployment (virtually the same as the black male who completes his diploma). If the white student finishes high school, it drops to 15.5%.

There are many more dismaying inequities to be found by experimenting with the chart. The unemployment line of America, according to these numbers, contains more men than women; more youth than elders; a vastly unequal representation of races; and an inordinate amount of the less-educated. In fact, education is the factor that affects these rates the most. There are definitely trends based on age, race, and gender, but possession of a high school or college degree seems to do the most, across the board, to increase one’s chances of getting and keeping a job.

For more unemployment statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Unemployment Statistics is an excellent place to start. You can examine national, state, and local statistics through the lens of various demographics, and research mass layoffs, too. If you are interested in how the unemployment crisis is affecting older workers, the Urban Institute has produced comprehensive “Unemployment Statistics on Older Americans.”

Whether you are a job-seeker or a Human Resource professional (or both –- it’s known to happen from time to time), it is important to know the real face of joblessness. Our country is facing the worst unemployment crisis in decades: probably the worst any of us will see in our careers. We owe it to ourselves and to the people we meet and consider working with to understand what is really going on in our offices, our unemployment system, and our society.

We’ve seen the value of microblogging sites such as Twitter for sharing short ideas, links, and personal updates, but that kind of website is wayyy too public for business collaboration. (Think about all the secret projects, private sales figures, and other sensitive matters that you’d prefer everyone keep in nice, secure, private, trackable emails.) Nonetheless, there is a need for a new way to talk to colleagues — something informal, real-time, attention-based, and inclusive…. something a lot like, well, Twitter.

In all honesty, your people may already be using services such as Twitter, Facebook, and instant messages for intraoffice messaging to boost productivity and circumvent email, which is a crushing weight on most workers. (It’s also a closed system, where someone who might benefit from the information often gets left out.) While we’re confident that email will stick around, we support finding a way for workers to securely share more information under a broadcast model, and we support top management, HR, and IT in finding a way to facilitate this in a secure and controlled manner.

In a nutshell, microblogging services are the next big thing in employee communications. Think of it as “Twitter for the workplace.” Imagine a system with all the benefits of Twitter, but designed in a secure fashion with business clients in mind. It might be free, it might be paid for, or it might be open source. Some software runs behind a firewall, and some is hosted outside, depending on your needs. Some microblogging applications have even been designed to work with Lotus and Microsoft SharePoint enterprise software!

There are many services vying to become the de facto “enterprise microblogging” application. Here are the great qualities they all have in common.

• Unlike Facebook, there is no “reciprocal friending” awkwardness… with microblogging, you lend your attention, not your friendship
• It’s broadcast-oriented communication, so you can follow someone in the organization you haven’t met
• Employees can search by keywords for projects that interest or affect them, much like Twitter’s hashtags
• It’s reply-optional, so is perfect for “FYI info”
• Microblogging clears the inbox by diverting informal communications out of email
• It allows people a way to collaborate rapidly, in real time
• It creates an archived knowledge base for new employees to read, unlike emails, which are designed to be private

Seems pretty fascinating all of a sudden, doesn’t it? If you are interested in learning a little bit more about what microblogging could add to your team’s collaboration, we have some great sites to share with you. These are some of the front-runners in the field.

Yammer — Yammer’s motto is “connect and share with your coworkers,” and users constantly answer the prompt “What are you working on?” It’s for people who share the same company domain name, and no one else. It comes in flavors for the desktop, BlackBerry, iPhone, IM, email and SMS, so it will fit seamlessly in with different employees’ favorite devices. Yammer is free when used informally, but there is a small licensing fee once the IT department gets involved.

Present.ly – Present.ly is a microblogging platform that is used by employees of CNET and The New York Times. For a small team, it is free, and web-hosted; if you wish to add more users, or use it behind a firewall, upgrade to a paid version. Present.ly has a Twitter-compatible API, so Twitter tools can be used on the system with just small modifications.

Communote – Secure microblogging for enterprise with hashtags, usernames, mobile access, and more. Communote is delivered as software-as-a-service. It has a limited free trial, and a paid business version.

SocialText’s Signal – Signal is available as part of the larger SocialText collaboration platform, but also as a stand-alone microblogging appliance. It can be hosted, or behind a firewall. Up to 50 users is free, and more will cost a small fee. Signal is interesting because it offers a server appliance that runs the software locally, meaning that you can run your own back-ups.

Are any of you RiseSmart blog readers involved in enterprise microblogging? We’re interested in hearing who is using this software: who loves it, and who hates it? Talk to us in the comments!

The scenario: You’ve been called in to interview with a company that you know virtually nothing about — and the interview’s tomorrow. While you’re excited that they want to recruit you, you’re sweating bullets at the thought of giving meaningful answers about this mysterious organization.

The answer is quick, simple, and painless. Just turn to your computer. Research nowadays is easy, and often free. There are a wealth of great sites and services that specialize in getting you up to speed on an organization.

Here’s the RiseSmart guide to making the most of the 24 hours before your interview.

1) Start with your basic homework.

• Read the company’s website, paying special attention to the annual report and press releases.
• Hoover’s has free look-ups of businesses with in-depth reports about them. Input the company name, and read away.
• Do a search for news stories about the company, written by an objective journalist. Try Reuters and this compilation of business trade articles.
• Review what you’ve learned. You’re going to want knowledge of products and services, market positioning, company leaders and organization, culture, and compensation.

2) Then get a little more advanced.

• Look up the company’s leaders, and the person interviewing you, by name on ZoomInfo. Don’t tell them that you did this, but use every morsel you find.
• I like this easy pathfinder for company research from the Los Angeles Public Library.
• If it’s a publicly held company, they must file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• WetFeet is a fantastic resource. Check out their list of major employers.
• Google the organization on the “wonder wheel” setting to show you related searches you might not have thought of (and the company might not WANT you to think of).

3) Check out what current and former employees say.

• GlassDoor has anonymous reviews of company culture and insider salary info.
• Look through your contacts on LinkedIn, and see if anyone in your greater circle works there, or has worked there. Ask for an informational interview, perhaps a 10-minute phone call.
• Run searches on the company name plus positive and negative terms such as “great place to work” or “sucks.” You might be surprised what you can find.
• Search on Twitter for the company’s name as a hashtag.
• Utilize Google’s Blog Search function to find out what regular people are writing about the company.

4) Don’t forget about researching the entire industry and the top competition…

• Hoover’s has more than 600 fantastic free “industry overviews”  to place your hiring company in a wider context.
• Capital IQ, Lexis-Nexis, and OneSource can all help with this, but usually require a license to use.
• WetFeet has a free directory of industry guides to check out.
• Do a search on the company’s name plus the term “poach.”

With a small amount of intelligent, targeted research, you can be ready for a surprise interview with just 2-3 hours of research conducted the night before.

Tips compiled from my own experience, and from the excellent job research articles at:

• Quint Careers’ “Guide to Researching Companies, Industries, Countries”
• Gotta Mentor’s “Researching the COMPANY”
• The Job Hunter’s Bible “Web Sites for Job Hunting Research
• Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management “Company Research FAQ”

Instant communication is a fact of business life these days: emails, Twitters, texts and more pour in through our computers, phones and Blackberries as quickly as we can process them. It’s enabled unprecedented productivity and global teamwork in our time, but there is a growing backlash against this breakneck pace — and the imperative of email.

The “quest for the empty inbox,” some experts say, is hijacking our productivity and hampering our ability to concentrate on longer-term strategic goals.

The confusion starts at the very top. In a recent Variety article, “Execs are Inundated and Twitterpated,” Editorial Director Peter Bart shares,

I was with a group of top executives who admitted they had no idea how to cope with the chaos of email. One CEO said he simply ignored his email. Another said he assigned an assistant to sort through it, and then ignored it. A third said he had taken to sending petulant emails to associates who sent unnecessary email.

If our leaders can’t handle their own communications, how can anyone hope to?

Email demands an unsustainable amount of effort from everyone involved. What is being sacrificed is our ability to actually do our work. “Communication may be the bedrock of business systems today, but it has also become an albatross around our necks and is draining us of our productivity,” says Brent McConnell in “The Mythical 40 Hour Workweek.” “As organizations have flattened over the last two decades and command-and-control hierarchies have been replaced with matrix-style organizations, communication between an ever increasing number of interested parties has sapped nearly all productivity from today’s corporations.”

McConnell is expanding upon the ideas of the book The Mythical Man Month, which famously demonstrated that adding resources to a project did not necessarily speed up the project, because the need for all parties involved to communicate added tremendous overhead.

The problem goes beyond mere deadlines, and into the much more serious territory of goals:

Not only has excessive email communication become the norm in business, it’s also how we are defining success in our workdays.  In times gone by we defined our success by how we contributed towards the company’s objectives and whether or not we influenced the bottom line.  Today we define success by whether or not we’ve processed all our incoming email and at least looked like we handled all the day’s “hot” issues. How many times have you gotten nothing productive done during the day, but felt successful just because your INBOX was empty?  We’ve become a slave to our communications systems and reacting to them rather than intelligently planning and using email and IM as tools for thoughtful articulation of messages.

There’s a new book out this fall that deals with the pace of email and one’s quality of life: The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox by John Freeman. I’ve read his much talked about manifesto on “slow communication” that was published in The New York Times, and listened to a National Public Radio interview with Freeman just yesterday. “The computer and e-mail were sold to us as tools of liberation,” writes Freeman, “but they have actually inhibited our ability to conduct our lives mindfully, with the deliberation and consideration that are the hallmark of true agency.”

The author decries the “frantic” pace of modern communication and questions if it is really working for us. He advocates a work-life balance that will probably sound alarming to anyone really dependent on their email. Set your email to check a pre-determined number of times per day, and don’t check it extraneously, he advised on the radio. Switch over to the telephone if an email exchange turns into a staccato back-and-forth negotiation of one-liners. Set your colleagues’ expectations that you do not respond instantly. Focus on your real goals.

All good thoughts, but many employees deal with extreme pressure from peers and managers to be constantly available; refusing to participate in the email frenzy signals laziness or insubordination. One of the NPR callers stated that her employer actually required employees to send emails, to prevent them from “unproductively” visiting one another at their desks. This really seems short-sighted to me, as there is a lot of communication best done face-to-face. Yet, I sympathize with a company’s desire to offer some kind of guidelines as to how its employees communicate.

And so I look to our readers.

• Has anyone been asked to author a policy concerning responsiveness to email?
• Have you been instructed (or instructed your staff) as to when to use IM versus email versus the telephone?
• Does anyone work in an environment where a return to “slower” communication (such as checking email six times a day) might be acceptable?

My worst interview ever, as a hiring manager in an editorial group, went perfectly… on the surface.

I didn’t know it had actually been a complete disaster until the candidate called me up two hours later. Was he calling to thank me, or had he possibly left something behind?

No. The candidate suavely asked me to dinner that evening. I stammered, “You do understand that I am the supervisor of the position you interviewed for, right?” “Oh, yes,” he replied, “but I had so much fun speaking with you that I thought you would like to go on a date with me as well as consider me for the job.”

His inappropriate actions did not win him the job — or the girl. And more importantly, it was an unmistakable wake-up call for me that I needed to adjust my interviewing skills into something more structured, and less like a friendly chat. I worked hard over the next two years to learn how to convey authority better.

A lot of hiring managers interview poorly, truth be told. For one thing, “hiring manager” isn’t a job title, it’s a role all managers have to play from time to time. They’re usually not trained to do it, and it’s a drain on what they consider their primary responsibilities.

Their interviewing offenses range from asking illegal questions about protected status, to stretching the decision out interminably, to being notoriously unstructured in their interviewing style.  Recruiting blogger Kiran Gali offers some hands-on advice on this last point in “Interview Tips for the Hiring Manager.” He writes:

Often Hiring Managers do not have a structure around their interviews. When I say structure I don’t mean the sequence of questions, but I am referring to more about the logic. For instance, not many hiring managers know about the concept of using CAR (context, action, result) or STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result ) models which are really helpful. If the candidate says that he has been able to hit a revenue of X Rs (or $) in the very first quarter of his last job, asking context related questions such as what was the target, how well established the product is, what was the most sales done by anybody in team.

Action related questions would be something like, what did the individual do get that sales, was it any different from anyone else, what specific actions he has taken to cross sell or up sell the product. Questions related to Results center around, what percentage of total sales he contribute, was there any dip in costs related to their sales or did it cost more, did he end up exhausting the sales pipeline, has success allowed good references and hence a perennial pipeline. To put it simply, what was the context, which actions the individual took that made the difference, and how did it impact the top or bottom line.

This seems to me like a very helpful methodology that many hiring managers may not be familiar with. The same post also gives advice on hiring managers’ tendency to keep candidates on hold, the need for hiring managers to take notes throughout the interview, and on training your hiring managers to engage in company branding. Recommended reading!

“Hiring Managers Don’t Know Interview Questions,” from the Cube Rules blog, focuses on reassuring candidates that their impressions are correct: many hiring managers really don’t know what they’re doing. Don’t worry too much  about the occasional weird question, awkward silence, or meandering conversation, they say. The key, they stress, is that there are really only 3 basic interview questions that you have to answer. They all boil down to: Can you do the job? Will you love the job? And, what people do you like to work with? If you can bring anything the hiring manager asks back to this, they say, you’ll be golden. (Still, it couldn’t hurt to start training hiring managers to be more talented as interviewers!)

To help your people move toward success, check out this amazing article from CIO magazine. It’s called “The Hiring Manager Interviews,” and it is a collection of 16 interviews with high-ranking tech execs from such well-known organizations as the American Diabetes Association, Pacific Gas & Electric, Northern Trust, US Airways, Kohl’s, and many more. Highlights: exactly how Facebook’s head of technology grills applicants; how the CIO of Harvard Business School gets team buy-in by involving his whole staff; and how the CIO of Jack in the Box learned from her own hiring mistakes. It’s high-quality material that is sure to enrich the interviewing practices of anyone who takes the time to read it.

With a bit of effort and training of your management team, you can help them become great interviewers who make wise choices. As a plus to you, you’ll soon have a team of excellent interviewers available to help you make the right decisions for your organization’s staffing.

Just when you thought it was safe to walk by your co-workers’ cubicles without a blindfold, a new technological menace may be coming to a small screen near you. It took years for employer-employee etiquette to merge into manageable desktop rules regarding pornography and social Web sites. Now, “sexting” has arrived to threaten the workplace environment.

Too Much of Too Little

Speeding ever more quickly to a Blackberry or iPhone near you, accompanied by innocent chuckles:  well, you don’t really want to know.  And that’s the problem.  Too much of “too little,” as in the form of tiny but sexually explicit cell phone images and photos.  The screens may be small . . . but the pixels tell way too much of the story.

A recent story in the Workplace section of The Daily Oklahoman noted that a former waitress is suing a Hooters restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, claiming a manager used texting as a way to sexually harass her.  Well, you say  . . . that’s Hooters.  Right, and if sexual harassment were limited to places where skimpily dressed waitresses push hot wings, HR managers everywhere wouldn’t have big thick binders, training sessions and pending cases.

In the same story, a jeweler notes he handles all the potential “little device” problems by having his employees leave their cell phones in the car or the break room.  Maybe that works at a jewelry store where rings of a different sort are in order, but in most businesses, separation from cell phone is a death sentence.

False Sense of Security

Chris Pentella, in her blog, Workplace Diva, notes that sexting is recognized as a rapidly growing workplace problem in part because the technology gives users a false sense of security.  She quotes Shanti Atkins, CEO of ELT, Inc., a San Francisco firm that specializes in ethics and compliance training.

Atkins, whose firm is now offering sexual harassment training based on sexting, says it is “a huge, growing problem because the technologies are developing faster than companies can keep up.”

Mark Toth, chief legal officer for Manpower North America, says sexting is a real challenge for employers because they can’t yet monitor it, but can be held responsible for it.

“It has the potential to create significant legal risk as some employees appear to believe that texting is far more casual than e-mail or other forms of communication, employers can’t/don’t monitor it and, thus, the normal rules don’t apply — anything goes,” said Toth.

Time to Update the Manual

What’s a conscientious employer to do . . . short of confiscating phones at the door and proceeding backwards in the technology time tunnel?

Experts advise that HR managers, who are already updating their manuals to cover tweeting and instant messaging and social sites, include “sexting” as well, to eliminate loopholes like “that was just between my boyfriend and me . . . and no one else was supposed to see it.”  Oops.

Make sure employees know that texting and sexting both create a permanent record that could be used in a sexual harassment case.

You might be tempted to appeal to employees’ sense of virtue and love of Mom and apple pie, by asking them if Mom would really approve of sending nude photos or potentially misinterpreted “compliments”  over the phone.  Of course, you can’t always be sure of the answer to that one, so concrete and enforceable policies are probably a better plan.

As we get deeper into influenza season, fear of the flu in general and the H1N1 swine flu virus in particular is on the rise. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that as of this week, flu activity is on the upswing, and is “widespread” in 41 states. Meanwhile, the H1N1 vaccine is limited and difficult to obtain. This is causing public reactions from “caution” to “concern.”

You may be wondering why there is so much fuss about the flu this year. Regular influenza kills as many as 36,000 Americans every year, but this year we have that problem plus the issue of swine flu, which may explode onto the scene. The 2009 H1N1 virus (a.k.a. “swine flu”) is particularly dangerous because:

• It is a new combination (made of human, swine, and avian elements) and virtually no one has natural immunity to it
• The vaccine is not yet widely available
• This strain attacks the young and healthy population in disproportionate numbers

Is your organization ready to deal with a pandemic flu? You should be planning on two different levels, advises the Pivotal HR Team blog:

So how does an organization address what could be the “Perfect Storm” as it relates to flu season?  A suggestion is to take a two-phased approach:

Phase 1 is all about Flu Prevention – Provide your employees and managers with practical tools to help prevent the transmission of the flu (seasonal and H1N1).

Phase II is all about a Business Continuity Plan – This assumes a severe flu outbreak whereby business continuity is threatened in certain markets or regions.  This phase requires that you give careful thought to how you would continue to operate under a severe labor shortage.

How can you plan for a possible crisis caused by pandemic flu? The CDC has just issued an information packet designed to help businesses plan their response to the 2009-2010 influenza season. I highly recommend that you download it at this link. It has everything from prevention information to appropriate response strategies, and is very broad in scope.

One quick fact you’ll need to know is that the CDC advises: “If you are sick with flu-like illness, CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.) Stay away from others as much as possible to keep from making others sick.”

This seems like common sense, and it is echoed by the majority of workers. In fact,  91% of Americans said that they want their co-workers to remain at home if they are infected with the H1N1 flu virus, according to a survey released this week by Mansfield Communications, Inc. If someone does report to work with the flu, 83% of the survey respondents said that they would be likely to inform a fellow colleague or senior management. The same organization ran a poll last month that found that 69% of workers said they had received no communication about policies in the workplace pertaining to H1N1.

These numbers show that people expect to have their exposure minimized to the flu… but how to accomplish this? The HR Superstar blog recently published a sample of a corporate flu policy, gleaned from a friend in another organization. It could be a good starting point for crafting your own policy, if you feel one is warranted. It follows the CDC guidelines I referenced above, and it reads:

If an employee is sick with a fever (100 degrees F or above), do not come to work. Please remain at home until the fever is below 100 degrees for 24 hours. The fever should be determined without the use of fever-reducing medications. Managers, if an employee comes to work and has flu like symptoms (fever-flushed appearance and cough or sore throat) they should be sent home and remain home until they have not had a fever (100 degrees or above) for 24 hours. If a person, that is living in the same household of an employee, has H1N1, the employee should notify their manager and stay at home for a period of 24 hours to see if they develop flu like symptoms. If the employee is able to work at home during this time, then it can be arranged. If they do not develop flu like symptoms in 24 hours, they are able to return to work. In both circumstances, the manager should notify HR Compliance of the incident.

The law and human resources blog HR Briefcase asks if people should bring doctors’ notes to HR after they have been home with the flu. The answer to this is actually “no.” The CDC recommends that employers waive this requirement during a pandemic due to strain on the healthcare system. However, each employer is allowed to follow their own policies and adapt them to the situation.

There is a great deal you can do now, before anything happens. Visit the flu.gov website for extensive materials (even some in foreign languages) to help you get your organization prepared for seasonal influenza and swine flu.

When we exhibited at HRE’s HR Technology Expo — the biggest HR tech conference in the United States — last month, we noticed something interesting. We were the only outplacement services firm there.

There’s a reason for this. RiseSmart is in the process of disrupting the $3 billion-plus corporate outplacement market by, for the first time, bringing technology to bear to reduce the industry’s cost structure, while improving service delivery. Among our innovations, we search Web-based job listings on behalf of laid-off workers to help them find jobs — something none of the big players in outplacement do currently.

We’ve been fortunate, since moving our offices from Dallas to Silicon Valley last year, to have Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) in our corner. NVP invested $3 million in Series A funding, which has helped us to grow our business to build an impressive roster of clients, including some of the most forward-thinking companies in the Fortune 500.

Now we are delighted to welcome Storm Ventures as a RiseSmart investor. We announced today an additional $4.6 million in Series A funding, including $2.8 million from Storm Ventures and $1.8 million from NVP.

In addition, Storm Ventures managing director Sanjay Subhedar will join NVP’s Venkat Mohan and myself on our company’s board of directors.

From our press release, here’s what Sanjay and Venkat say of the deal:

“RiseSmart has created a business model that promises to be a game changer in the $3 billion plus outplacement industry,” Subhedar said. “RiseSmart’s Transition Concierge is disrupting the cost structure for corporate outplacement providers, while leveraging technology to deliver superior value to a growing roster of Fortune 500 clients. “

Said Mohan: “RiseSmart has grown rapidly since NVP made its initial investment in June 2008. The company has gone the extra mile to provide an excellent customer experience to both corporate clients and transitioning workers – and that has paid off in word of mouth and new business referrals.”

I can only express my deepest gratitude in the confidence Storm Ventures and NVP have shown in RiseSmart. We don’t intend to disappoint them.

Think twice before you use Twitter to vent or blab about work: that indiscreet tweet could cost you your job.

There have been a number of incidents this year involving people using the popular microblogging site in ways that have gotten them fired. Some classic examples (including the graphic for this blog post) are covered in ResumeBear’s “Top 30 Ways to Lose a Job on Twitter.” The list is long, but includes such bone-headed moves as tweeting about sleeping with the boss’s daughter, failing a drug test, or lying to the boss.

This reminds me of the high-profile case of @theconnor, who infamously tweeted in March: “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” Sure enough, a Cisco employee soon posted: “Who is the hiring manager? I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.” While the candidate quickly made their account private, it was already too late — it had gone viral. Not only did this individual lose the offer, but they were widely ridiculed online.

The takeaway? Your material IS indexed in searches, and people are naturally curious. Mention of a company name will likely be discovered by people working at that company.

The most recent case of Twitter-induced firing is that of a Los Angeles waiter, Jon Barrett-Ingels. According to gossip blog Defamer, he was dismissed from his job after tweeting that Hung actress Jane Adams didn’t tip on her bill. (Allegedly, Barrett-Ingels had previously tweeted indiscreetly that Heroes star Ali Larter was out and about without a bra on, and described The Office castmember B.J. Novak as looking “hungover.”)

The takeaway? This person seems to have been using his proximity to fame in a gossipy and non-professional manner. While we don’t know the legalities of his particular case, it’s good to remember that whether you are dealing with a celebrity, a corporate entity, or a regular customer, your employer has the right to expect you to behave responsibly in connection with your duties. Even if you have not signed confidentiality materials (and many do), it is certainly not part of any customer service tradition to publish embarrassing information about customers.

Numbers back up these anecdotes. A Proofpoint survey from August 10, 2009, says that the state of the economy is leading to increased risk of data loss events. Employees “oversharing” through social media is a big part of the problem, they say:

Concerning social networks, US companies are also experiencing more exposure incidents involving sites like Facebook and LinkedIn as compared to 2008 (17 percent versus 12 percent). US companies are taking a much more forceful approach with offending employees — eight percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation as compared to only four percent in 2008… Even short message services like SMS texts and Twitter pose a risk. 13 percent of US companies investigated an exposure event involving mobile or Web-based short message services in the past 12 months.

Both employees and employers have a ways to go in coming up with good strategies to deal with this new form of communication. Employees should use caution and good sense in deciding what to share on Twitter, while HR (and possibly Legal or Risk Management) needs to educate employees about the risks the organization faces on Twitter due to liability and loss of reputation.

Have you ever written up or fired someone for something they admitted to on Twitter? Would you look at their Twitter feed if you received a complaint about it? Do you have a policy in place that covers employees’ tweets?

Halloween is coming soon, and whether you’re ready for it or not, your employees are already working on their costumes and buying fun-sized candy bars. It’s time for you to think about your policies for celebrating this entertaining, but potentially tricky, holiday.

This year, October 31 falls on a Saturday, so many offices will be spared dealing with the actual “day of,” but Friday afternoon is sure to be a popular time for people to celebrate with colleagues who they don’t see on weekends. Many people will be wondering if they can bring their children to the workplace (they love to show off the little ones in costume), so you should plan now whether a “family” event makes more sense for your workforce, or if an “employees only” gathering would be a better choice for your organization.

In the blog post “Watch Out for Halloween Hi-jinx,” HR blogger Susan M. Heathfield points out that office celebrations can be motivational and boost morale. However, she warns:

When employees fail to take sensitivity, diversity, and honoring differences to heart, law-breaking, morale-busting situations can occur in the office.

This may seem over-the-top — it’s just a simple kids’ holiday, some insist — but it’s HR’s job to be aware of these possibilities. With a little planning and sensitivity, there is a way to balance celebration with professionalism.

“Halloween At Your Place of Employment,” by Jennifer Loftus, delves more deeply into these issues. Loftus notes that while most people consider Halloween an innocuous holiday, some view it as genuinely occult and would object to taking part. On the other side of the coin, some pagans consider Halloween a religious holiday (and may ask for the day off). Other workers won’t have any opinion beyond Halloween being a frivolous waste of time! A good human resources worker will be ready for all these points of view, and more. Make it crystal-clear that any celebration is optional, and try to come up with some kind of time limit or activity window to focus the celebration so the whole day is not lost.

Beyond the realm of personal beliefs, Halloween opens up all kinds of legal concerns due to wild costuming and play-acting behavior. For instance, fake weapons and mock violence can be frightening to bystanders, and can even call up ambiguous messages regarding the serious issue of workplace violence. Between the party atmosphere and the strange attire, it is definitely NOT a day for HR to take off. You’ll want to have issued some kind of policy beforehand, and then you’ll want to be on the scene to (nicely) enforce it.

The Wall Street Journal takes on the issue of costumes in “Beware of Workplace Horrors: Office Halloween Do’s and Don’ts“:

Employers will probably want to lay down the ground rules beforehand when it comes to costumes, said Michael Karpeles, head of the labor and employment group at Goldberg Kohn, a Chicago-based law firm. “It’s OK to allow people to dress up, but I think that companies should let their employees know that certain types of costumes are not appropriate – if they’re especially revealing, for example,” he said. Also shy away from disturbing, horror costumes or ones with religious themes that might rub co-workers the wrong way. And remember, office policies such as those regarding sexual harassment don’t take a holiday at work events.

For more on this topic, check out “Costumes at Work? Avoid Liability Nightmare at Halloween.” Steve Miller, a partner at Fisher & Phillips, a national labor and employment law firm, writes: “Costumes that are sexually provocative, carry a political or social message, or are otherwise simply inappropriate for interacting with colleagues and clientele, could lead to a liability nightmare for employers.” Some of his top tips for HR professionals to have a successful Halloween holiday are:

• Clearly communicate costume guidelines in advance. If employers opt to allow costumes on Halloween, they should send an e-mail or memo beforehand reminding employees that they are permitted to do so, but must use good taste and judgment.
• Rewind the clock to last Halloween. Think about any feedback the company received from employees or customers last year. If the majority of the staff opted out of dressing up, perhaps the company should re-evaluate whether costumes are a fit for the company culture. If the holiday went smoothly and most people participated, it may be a positive celebration for the company.
• Offer alternative celebrations. Companies should create a program that works for everyone. Rather than a policy of we’re dressing up in costumes and you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to, host a company potluck or luncheon where staff can still celebrate Halloween with something fun.

What is your workplace planning this Halloween? Are you doing anything special in terms of a party or a costume contest? Are you planning on issuing any kind of guidelines? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.