It’s not new, but Computerworld has an excellent story explaining how non-compete clauses in contracts are dangerous.

The good news is these contracts are hard to enforce in many countries and even in the US, courts often recognise these clauses as unfair and refused to enforce them.

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• Headhunted? Close the deal (billbennett.co.nz)

Australian magazine Human Resources Leader warns companies not planning to replace staff sacked during the recent economic downturn are likely to see a “decrease in the quality and sustainability of knowledge workers’ performance”. It quotes research showing knowledge workers are “buckling under” the extra pressure.

This is pretty basic stuff, but it shows HR professionals are at least aware of the problems created when businesses cut too many staff.

My view is many large companies who cut staff in the downturn will struggle to recover from the loss of skills and expertise. What’s more, many savvy knowledge workers will avoid these employers in future.

Knowledge workers doing the work of three people

In 2001, Chris Woodhead, England’s chief inspector of schools caused a storm when he accused British universities of devaluing higher education by offering ‘vacuous degrees’.

At the time, London’s The Sunday Times carried a surprisingly candid interview with Woodhead. Among other things he questioned whether many vocational courses deliver on their claims.

Woodhead says many courses don’t prepare students for the real world. He argues some vocational degrees do little to help a student’s employment prospects and do even less for their employers. Britain’s Institute of Directors backed these comments, so did a number of individual employers.

Daft courses are here too

The criticisms could equally apply to courses currently on offer in Australia and New Zealand – not to mention some of the less prestigious American universities, which have a long tradition of offering worthless qualifications and dubious courses.

Woodhead grabbed the headlines by decrying certain ‘quasi-academic’ degrees on offer in the UK including: Golf course management, pig enterprise management, knitwear and beauty therapy courses.

And then there is ‘Madonna Studies’ – just in case you’re wondering we are talking about the popular singer here rather than theological investigation concerning the mother of Christ. Thankfully this nonsense is no longer on offer.

Sure, these daft-sounding degrees are easy targets, but Woodhead has a point. How many employers need workers who can deconstruct the lyrics of ‘Material Girl’?

How many employers need workers who can deconstruct the lyrics of ‘Material Girl?

You can read more about Woodhead’s comments and various responses at the BBC news web site. Just to prove what a straight shooter he is when getting stuck into the value of various university courses, you can also read Woodhead’s comments on media studies – which he describes as a one-way ticket to the dole queue.

Is there value in media studies?

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether there is any real value in media studies or the more offbeat subjects mentioned.

It’s interesting and disappointing, but predictable that most of the angry defensive response from academics to Woodhead’s comments focused on his trashing of seemingly silly courses rather than his more important points regarding vocational education in general.

Clearly British academics are as insecure as antipodeans when it comes to handling constructive criticism.

Woodhead’s important point was the balance between vocational training and coherent academic learning is now completely out of kilter. The issue is not whether our society needs people trained at public expense in the subtle art of looking after golf courses, tending pigs or even reading newspapers, but whether such a course is on an academic par with an honours degree in Astrophysics.

Bigger picture

Woodhead rightly points out the danger in less obviously worthy courses of devaluing all higher education. It’s a very real danger. I’ve personally known employers in knowledge industries who are suspicious of all graduates – they think universities fill people’s heads with stupid ideas. Many of those who get beyond that level of thinking have doubts about anything other than a straightforward vocational degree.

I always found this attitude prejudiced and hard to understand until I interviewed a seriously strange person with a media studies degree for a newspaper job.

Common sense tells me one or two crazy examples are not enough evidence to deduce a trend and I like to keep an open mind but I have to say few of the media studies graduates I’ve interviewed are cut out to work in the media. It’s hard to image who might employ them. On the other hand people used to say the same thing about sociology, which has since become quite respectable.

It doesn’t make sense for education to stand still in a world where everything careens about at a frantic pace. However, there does need to be some kind of benchmark for higher education.

Lively debate about vocation versus academic learning

There’s always been a lively debate over the value of degree level vocational training and more academic learning. Both have their place in higher education and ideally, most people entering the knowledge workforce will have the opportunity to experience both kinds of learning at some point. Modern economies need people trained in sophisticated skills as well as people trained how to think.

Yet there is a lot of real doubt about the worth of some courses. This isn’t new. Back in the late 1970s an acquaintance of mine was accepted to study computer science at an American university. He sent me a copy of his first semester timetable. Of about 30 timetabled hours, only four hours could be loosely described as studying computers.

Of course, there’s a lot to be said for getting a liberal education, but this bloke spent six hours a week on the university golf course as part of his computer science degree. In year one he was expected to reduce his handicap to six in order to pass – a handicap of four represented a high distinction.

Playing golf would ultimately account for 15 percent of his degree. Those of us studying in, then still rigorously academic, British universities were shocked by this revelation. On the other hand, from a vocational training point of view it’s not such a dumb idea. A career in the computer industry, particularly in commercial sales, might well be helped along by an ability to knock a small white ball into 18 holes.

Ultimately the only way for knowledge workers and would be knowledge workers to steer through the higher education maze is to spend time researching the options. It’s obviously worth checking the academic reputation of courses, subjects within courses and institutions before signing up.

Less obvious and more difficult is checking with potential employers about the relative merits of these things. You’ll need to be extra canny about this – people often just pass on their own prejudices rather than provide valuable insight. But education is too valuable to waste. You don’t want to spend three years getting a Mickey Mouse degree – even if you plan to work for Disney.

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In 2001 Australia’s technology sector faced recession following the dotcom crash. At the time I interviewed Professor Michael Vitale of the Australian Graduate School of Management for The Australian Financial Review on the subject of hiring skilled workers during a downturn.

His words are just as relevant today as we pull out of yet another recession:

The main difference between IT companies and the rest of the economy lies in the ongoing, severe shortage of people with the right mix of talent, skills and experience, Vitale says.

It has been going on for some time and shows no sign of abating. The recession might see some companies slow or halt their recruiting, but that’s just like a starving person skipping a few meals – at the end of the day they’ll still be undernourished”, he says.

Importantly, Vitale says despite a severe shortage of talented, skilled, experienced IT workers, there’s no room for compromise.

“Every word in that phrase is important. IT workers need to be talented, skilled and experienced. Anything less won’t do. The shortage doesn’t mean you should be any more tolerant of people who aren’t performing.”

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• In the Talent War, the Ceasefire Is Over (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)

You got the secretive phone call. You met the head-hunter in a discreet pub or café. You jumped through the hoops, passed the tests and sailed through the interviews.

Now there’s only one step before you make the jump: negotiating the right deal.

Because you’ve been headhunted, the negotiation is slightly different from when you answer an advertisement or otherwise find your way to a new job.

People asked you to come and work for them. They paid an expensive head-hunter to find you, woo you and tempt you into taking their approach seriously.

Face it, they aren’t going to go to all that trouble and then lose out on winning your skills because of a few dollars here and there.

Negotiating a deal

If negotiating a deal is like a game of poker – and there are similarities – then you’ve been dealt a decent hand. But as any card player will tell you, the cards you are holding are only part of the game. You still need to keep your wits about you.

Most people understandably reduce an employer’s entire offer to its cash equivalent when evaluating salary offers. This makes a lot of sense and I’m not going to disagree with the general principal.

However, it is worth paying close attention to working conditions while in negotiation.

For example, if you don’t like overseas travel – maybe you have a young family – make sure there’s written agreement on the amount of required overseas travel.

Likewise this is a good moment to ensure you have adequate support staff, the right working environment, a budget that covers your expected expenses and so on.

Hours and leave

This is the best time to talk about working hours and annual leave entitlement. Once you sign it’s too late.

It’s usual for today’s employers to talk rather vaguely about you technically being paid for a working week of so many hours, but being prepared to actually work as many hours as it takes to complete the various tasks that are assigned to you. This is fine up to a point, but if your employer is effectively asking you to commit to unlimited hours, it is not unreasonable to put some qualifications. For example you might ask that you never have to work on Sunday because you’re an active member of your local church.

Annual leave is a sticky issue. You’re entitled to a certain amount of leave by law. In practice the amount of leave your employer will permit you to take will probably be considerably less than your legal entitlement and will almost certainly be less than the amount nominated in your contract. These days most people get a handsome payout for unclaimed holiday pay when they leave a job. The money can be nice, but time to unwind can be better.

A long time ago I worked with someone who quickly climbed through the ranks of a sizable organisation. Each time he was promoted he negotiated a deal that increased his annual leave – in many cases he traded leave entitlement for pay.

The result was he reached a level where he was entitled to 10 weeks leave a year. This might not be possible today, but the principal is good. For most of us cash-rich, time-poor knowledge workers annual leave is a luxury.

In my opinion it is a good idea to actually specify some leave dates when negotiating initial terms and conditions before joining a new company. Try and get them written into an agreement. If you’ve been headhunted the employer will almost certainly agree to this as it seems a cheap way to complete a deal. Even if you haven’t been headhunted, the salary negotiation is your best opportunity to fix this.

Get professional tax advice

It might pay to get some professional advice about the salary component of any deal. The big trap people fall into when head-hunted, is to overlook the tax considerations of any extra salary. Unless you’ve been hired by a US company to work in the states, you will almost certainly already be on the highest rate of income tax.

This means that looks like a 20 percent pay rise on paper might actually be as little as a 10 percent increase in take home pay. In many cases it is possible to negotiate terms that minimise the tax impact.

Finally, there’s a little twist to negotiating salary when you are headhunted. In many cases the head-hunting recruitment process is one long whirl and very flattering. It’s possible to have your head turned by the process – you may laugh, but many headhunted executives end up with poor deals because they have been charmed or otherwise wooed into accepting far less than their new employer is prepared to play.

It doesn’t help that these processes tend to proceed at a breakneck pace. The usual rule of salary negotiation is to do plenty of homework and benchmark your salary against industry norms – if the employer is in a hurry there may not be time to do this properly.

If possible try to slow the process down. Don’t make it look as if you are dragging your feet, but buy yourself some time to do the research. A few days shouldn’t make any difference to your new employer, but they can make a big difference to you.

If you’re still sending out a job resume (or CV) with statements of the ‘bleeding obvious’ then its time to give it a make-over.

In Five Signs Your Resume Is Passe, Devine Caroline suggests avoiding sentences saying, for example, references are available on request. As she points out, of course they are available, would you refuse to send them if asked?

Overall I agree with four of the five points. I’d take issue with the advice about not squeezing a resume to fit on a single page of paper. While it seems silly, particularly in an era when the resume is going to arrive in an email and not in a letter, to cram many years of experience into 300 words or so, there’s a good case to keep things as tight as possible. Devine Caroline does make this point, but I fear some readers may not grasp the importance of brevity.

See: Five Signs Your Resume Is Passe

Punk Rock HR offers an even better piece on creating a modern resume: Fluffy Stuff on Resumes

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Some American business schools promote MBA programmes by talking about a ROI or return on investment. This is a straightforward financial calculation that allows you to calculate how quickly you’ll pay back your costs in time and money when you sign up for a course.

The assumption is that your earning power will increase dramatically once you’ve graduated. Typically United States MBA graduates are financially ahead after three or so years.

You can’t always estimate of the value of taking work-related courses so directly. And anyway, learning extra skills isn’t just about money; you’ll gain extra understanding of your work, improve your confidence and find it easier to complete various tasks.

You might even enjoy life more.

Any extra skills you get will have some benefit in the workplace – even when the connection isn’t obvious. If you continue your education, you will be a better employee.

Think of it this way, you go for a job and there are two candidates. One has taken a string of courses in evenings and weekends, the other has done nothing. Who do you think is going to get the job?

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By Bill Bennett

Australian and New Zealand employers are out of touch with reality according to a research carried out by Hudson, a recruitment company.

Those aren’t the words Hudson uses, but it’s what the company means. In Talent Tightrope: Managing the Workplace through the Downturn, Hudson says; “Employers consistently think their employees’ sentiment is twice as good as it is in reality”.

“In every aspect of current workplace sentiment, whether job satisfaction, motivation, morale, perceived stress levels or job security employers are clearly unaware of their employees’ frame of mind.”

Mark Steyn, CEO Hudson A/NZ.

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