Weekly Reading

When do you cut your ties and jump ship?  Is it a manager who pushes you over the edge?  Direction of the company?  Possibilities for advancement?  Apparently, Forbes believes the hiring and retaining employees is a monumental issue for business leaders in today's market.  Just look at the titles of articles they are pumping out: The Top 8 Reasons Your Best People Are About to Quit, What it Take to Retain Your Top Talent, 5 Ways to Attract and Keep Top Millennial Talent, How to Attract and Hire Incredible Talent, Five Red Flags that Tell You Don't Take This Job, How to Hire More Top Performers, and How Managers Keep Employees From Jumping Ship.  These are titles of articles from this week alone!  According to Forbes I am led to believe companies cannot retain their employees any better than atheists trying to retain their children.  

Has the market power of employment really shifted so much that employees actually have the power to reference check their future boss?  I believe so.*  The power is in the employees hand, and all they have to do is realize it.  Companies like Glassdoor make it easier for employee to realize which company they want to work for while also providing benefits they should come to expect as employees.  

The process of hiring and employee retention has really garnered my interest in the past couple months as I have been looking to hire, promote, and decide myself what I am doing with my career.  The studious readers of this blog will realize the asterisk (*) in my conclusions above.  I believe there are some conditions which do not fall into the norm of employee empowerment.  However, I am hedging my bet.  I don't believe I fall outside of the norm, and am willing to wager upon myself.  Today I officially sent an end date to the company I've worked at for the past 9 years.

I hope to continue to blog through my thought of what this looks like in the coming year... until then enjoy this weeks reading.

1. Quotes for Life Long Learners
2. Who tells the emperor he is naked?
3. This divorce is expensive?  Think again!
4. Education is a way of life.
5. Will you be able to pay that student loan? Or will you work a job that doesn't require a degree?
6. Provocative...but would you hire a homeless person?
7. Why speakers should care about their audience stress levels, therefore don't speak in these cities
8. Keep the friends who wound you
9. The building blocks for effective persuasion 
10. Why do people persist on believing things that are not true?

Bonus link which will either make you smile, roll your eyes, or just plain angry you.  Remember just like in your job, you have a power to change the politics!