“I wonder…” Whenever I hear coaching clients start off a sentence with these two words, I feel heartened. It means wheels are turning…intuition is kicking in, and mobilization is in the offing. It means my clients are curious, and ready to move past what is safe…beyond the known. It signals that they’re ready to step out of their comfort zones. Curiosity does that. It’s the...

My conclusions about job search strategies come from years of experience with hiring managers, HR professionals, recruiters and from my own career changes: journalist to project manager to researcher to author to communications professional. They are conclusions drawn from years of helping applicants—at every level and in many different industries—make their way successfully through the hiring gauntlet. My fo...

Have you ever noticed that chance happenings, unplanned events, often determine your life career decisions? A cancelled appointment, a spontaneous trip, are unplanned events that may lead to unexpected life career directions. A satisfying career is attained by making the most of new, unforeseen experiences, and creating your desired course. Below are common career decision making myths. To advance your career, challen...

Many employees long for leaders who can solve workplace problems—from flawed systems and procedures to inconsistent policies and managers. They want their leaders to see through the trees and attack forest-sized issues, with the discernment and authority to fix them one by one. While this sounds great on the surface, employees who report to problem-solving leaders cite challenges that dwarf the problems themselves....

Designing an effective onboarding experience requires some trial and error, and you can hone your approach by asking new hires some specific questions at each phase of the onboarding journey. Although new hires are usually ramped up to productivity quickly, taking time out to address these questions will provide valuable information, a sense of investment and caring, and the perception that continuous feedback is respected...

Set audacious goals, and don't start the mentor relationship until you commit to these six steps. I recently Googled the word “mentoring,” and immediately noticed three things. One, it remains a trendy topic. Two, most everyone who writes about mentoring provides a definition of what mentoring is. And, three, many of them want to sell you a program on how to make mentoring work. Sadly, however, I notic...

In the prior article in this series, we concluded that the Supreme Court’s pattern or practice holdings in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011), provide important guardrails applicable to OFCCP enforcement actions. The Supreme Court has addressed substantive discrimination standards under Title VII relatively infrequently, and, when it does, its holdings are quite consequential. In Dukes, the Supreme...

On the face of it, missing data seems more of a mundane nuisance than a problem. This is particularly the case with applicants' voluntary self-reporting of race and gender data. Based on our experience, however, missing data is one of the most overlooked threats to AAP compliance. Unfortunately, most contractors do not realize this until they are deep in the middle of an OFCCP audit. The goal of this article is to help...

In August 2018, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) issued Directive 2018-04, identifying OFCCP’s plan to conduct compliance reviews focused on one of the three authorities that OFCCP is charged to enforce: Executive Order 11246, Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 (VEVRAA). A “focused” review is toute...

Introduction by Judy Young, Director of Training and Development at ILR School of Cornell University I have had the privilege in the past few years to contribute an article related to the employment of individuals with disabilities to this publication. I was just about to begin crafting this article when I met one of the participants in our school’s Diversity and Inclusion public workshop series who told me about...