Posts Tagged hr
Beware of the Glowing LinkedIn Recommendations
Posted by Dan Hall in Human Resource Practices, social media on July 8, 2009
I ran across a great article from The National Law Journal on the legal implications that LinkedIn recommendations might have on employment lawsuits. It is a definite read.
“Management-side lawyers are warning employers about the hidden dangers of LinkedIn, the popular business networking site that posts recommendations for job candidates. Specifically, attorneys are advising employers to be wary of giving glowing remarks about employees on the site because the employers risk having the recommendations used against them in a discrimination or harassment suit. ”
Read the full article here.
I have noticed a growing number of reciprocal recommendations between current and former employees of companies, which is to be expected to some extent. However, the danger lies in supervisors giving glowing reviews of former employees. eDiscovery is all too easy and becoming the norm rather than the exception. Twitter accounts, cell phone data, and social media profiles are now fair game in the legal arena. More and more companies are collecting this data and providing data streams to clients as a service. Lawyers are doing this same research.
Pretty soon we will see articles depicting the impact of a single LinkedIn recommendation on the outcome of a case (or maybe not, if the Company had decent counsel, they would settle out of court with a non-disclosure agreement).
Dan Hall
HR and the Executive MBA
Posted by Dan Hall in Human Resource Practices on July 23, 2008
I have been thinking of pursuing an Executive MBA ever since I took my position as a Seattle Human Resources Manager at Visible Technologies. Last night, I attended the University of Washington’s Executive MBA program’s summer BBQ and informational session. A couple of things were abundantly obvious to me quickly:
1. I was one of the youngest people in the crowd.
2. Start-ups didn’t seem to be strongly represented (it is a very expensive program).
3. There was not another single other HR professional in the room nor were there any in the class of 2008 at the UW EMBA program.
I had the good fortune of eating dinner with the Admissions Director to the program and I asked if they had a lot of HR professionals. He asked somewhat surprised, “You are in HR?” I replied that I was. He said “No. No, they didn’t receive very many applicants in the HR profession.” I told him I had my own theories on why that might be and left it at that.
Why is it that HR is under represented and not well respected? Below are some stats from some of the leading MBA programs in the county:
University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) EMBA
Students work in these functional categories:
Consulting: 20 %
Finance/Accounting: 32 %
General Management : 13 %
Marketing/Sales: 8 %
Management Information Systems : 9 %
University of Chicago (The Top MBA program according to Business Week)
Graduating students who accepted jobs in the following functional areas:
Consulting: 26 %
Finance/Accounting: 55 %
General Management: 7.5 %
Human Resources: 0.2 %
Marketing/Sales (Public Relations, Product Management, Market Research, Advertising, etc.): 7.5 %
Management Information Systems (MIS): 0 %
Operations/Logistics (Logistics, Purchasing, Engineering, etc.): 1.0 %
Other: 2.6 %
Apparently not many graduates choose the HR field. This is both a challenge and opportunity to the HR field to grow in the eyes of business leaders everywhere. I, for one, am up to the challenge.
Dan Hall
Seattle Human Resources Manager
