Advice
Does Pushing Diversity Hurt Women at Work?
Editorial Team
Women or minorities who promote diversity in the workplace are penalized by their peers but white men who do so are not, a new study says. When white men promoted diversity in the workplace, it did not improve how bosses rated their performance and competence. When women and non-white executives promoted diversity in the workplace, their evaluations from bosses were worse.
Workers Idled by Recession Return To Work — At Last
Editorial Team
Some workers whose careers stalled or ended in the recession are returning to work or looking again, now that the jobless rate has fallen to 4.9%, USA TODAY reports. They’ve been drawn back by employers who are raising pay or becoming less selective. “We’re just hearing a lot more openness” from employers, Tim Gates of staffing firm Adecco, tells the paper.
Interview Advice: Anticipate the Nutty Question
Editorial Team
Legendary newswoman Barbara Walters once famously asked actress Katherine Hepburn: “If you were a tree, what kind would you be?” (Oak, Hepburn said.) Such seemingly off-the-wall questions often crop up in job interviews, says Stanford’s Stephanie K. Eberle. Practicing how to answer the “crazy, sometimes irrelevant questions” can perfect “your ability to improvise and to be comfortable with yourself in the moment.” Read more of her tips here.
The Truth About Millennials in the Workplace
Editorial Team 
There are 83 million young adults in the U.S. born between 1982 and 2000, called Generation Y or Millennials. I used to employ some of them, and I raised one myself. Don’t believe what you hear about their being spoiled or presumptuous on the job. Let me explain what I’ve discovered, thanks to a Brookings study and several surveys, about what’s really going on.
Millennials work hard
Two business writers tell about a retirement party for a department supervisor where a young employee stepped up to the division boss and asked to be considered for the soon-to-be open supervisory position. After listening to the 25-year-old’s lengthy explanation, the irritated boss said, “Don’t you think you’re a little young for the job?” The employee answered, “What does age have to do with it?” To his way of thinking, good ideas about how to do the work faster, better, and more easily should qualify him for the position. Well, shouldn’t they?
Straight A’s in School Can Spell Disaster in Your Career
Editorial Team
High-achieving students risk becoming terrible employees, The New York Post reports. Honor roll worthy qualities – careful preparation, pleasing others and conceding to authority – don’t always translate into needed work skills such as trusting your instincts, improvising and influencing superiors.
Women’s Pay: An Inequity Persists
Editorial Team
The pay gap between men and women has been closing but women still earn 20 percent what men do. How could this be, after all the strides that women have made in the past four decades? It may come down to this: work done by women simply isn’t valued as highly, according to this piece in The New York Times.