The ultimate hiring freeze is scheduled for 3:11 Los Angeles time today. That’s one minute before the winter solstice, the time when the Mayan calendar — and the world, some say — comes to an end.
Now if the world does end — and you bet I’m milking this one — then what’s the hurt in making the final hours of all those job seekers happy. So email all your applicants with job offers; accept all counteroffers; and, what the heck, tell everyone in the company the new retention program means everyone’s getting a raise.
Should we all still be here at 3:13 PST, then please join your department head, the company counsel, and appropriate others at the Airing of Grievances ceremony as part of your final corporate Festivus celebration.
Going Fungal
If Tom Savage’s new company 3Desk doesn’t turn out the way his mom thinks it will, here’s a hearty ERE invite to hop the pond for an open mic shot at standup. (Check the schedules here, Tom, and call ahead.)
3Desk is a job board for hiring freelancers and contractors who work onsite. When I put it that way, it doesn’t sound especially clever. You can find those folks on Craigslist, Elance, and Freelancer, among others).
What is clever, is how Tom is pitching it. In a press release Tom says 3Desk won HRO Today’s European iTalent competition “for its marketplace for face-to-face freelancers, fending off chubbier rivals. It was
said other contestants missed Zapoint (www.zapoint.com) of the competition, or made Small
Improvements (www.small-improvements.com).”
His mom was evidently excited though,
There was some disappointment when Mrs Savage (Chief Parental Officer), a devout luddite, was informed Apple Inc. doesn’t have a monopoly on small ‘i’s’ – ‘I thought my son had won the contract to supply the world’s largest firm with talent. But it’s great 3Desk has gone fungal.’
On the Other Hand
I hate to add to Mrs. Savage’s disappointment, but the studies and surveys I see say a majority of workers don’t want to go into an office. When I was still commuting to a job, my office departure time was as critical as a NASA countdown. Even ten minutes late could add 20 minutes to the hour commute. Now that I commute from one part of my house to the office part, I can’t believe I used to revel when the commute took only an hour.
A Citrix study says employers are in a race to offer a mobile workplace. By 2020 89 percent of employers will offer a mobile workstyle, says Citrix, which, like most vendors who do surveys and studies, has a vested interest in the issue. Still, there’s plenty of support for the overall conclusion that remote work will be a lot more common by the end of the decade than it is today, and not just for IT either.