The end of the college year is right around the corner. In a few weeks college graduates will flood the industry fields looking for new opportunities. However, there is another type of valuable college student that may go unnoticed: undergraduates.

Many colleges and universities require a minimum number of internship hours for graduation. This can be in various majors including communications, business, teaching, sciences, etc. College students can be a very valuable resource for your business, and you can provide them with on-the-job lessons that will last a lifetime.

A strategic plan should be considered before bringing on any intern. The proper planning will ensure a great partnership for your organization and the intern as well.

Create a well-developed position description

Vague descriptions of a job will deter the brightest candidates. Including specific skill requirements and intern duties is essential, but also remember to include a thorough description about the company, and what it has to offer.

Don’t be afraid to dig deep

Many top candidates bypass unpaid internships. No one is saying that you need to pay an intern the same as your entry-level employees, but even an offer of minimum wage can woo a candidate from taking a different unpaid internship.

Trust your interns

If you are hiring competent interns, they could turn into eventual employees. Feel free to give them at least one big project to work on during the term. Or have them jump in on a team project. Interns want to do more than just file papers and get coffee. If you are giving them real-world experience, the internship reputation for your company will skyrocket, allowing for interest from great candidates.

Create a mentor program

Starting an internship, especially at a larger company, can be very intimidating. Assign a mentor on the first day of an intern’s term. That mentor can show them around the facility, take them to lunch and foster a working relationship. A welcoming mentor allows for interns to ask questions and get more out of their internship.

Don’t be a “namist”

Many employers drool over resumes from Ivy League schools. Some of the best candidates can be found at any university. It’s not where the student is learning, but what and how they are learning that counts. Review the skill sets that you are looking for in the position. Don’t just assume a big-name school will be providing you with a better prospect than that small school you are not familiar with.

Need more tips on how to find the right interns? Contact Clark Personnel Services for more information!

When you’re trying to find a job, it’s easy to think of the hiring manager as the villain. Or the dragon you have to get past to get a job. But to increase your chances of getting hired, try to understand the hiring process from a hiring manager’s point of view. Some points to ponder:

1. Hiring managers are human beings too

When you go looking for a job, you’re preoccupied, of course, with your own needs and priorities.  Well, a hiring manager is interested, first and foremost, in protecting and promoting her own career. And she’s not going to willingly make a decision or take an action that might jeopardize it.

Your goal is to help them feel secure about hiring you. Managers want employees who are competent in terms of knowledge and skills, yes—but who can also be managed easily. A hiring decision for a manager is about feeling safe, in terms of protecting her department, her goals and her team.

2. Hiring is a risk assessment exercise

Managers know that nobody is perfect. Everyone has shortcomings, weaknesses, faults, biases and prejudices. And everyone has a downside. There’s a lot of truth to the old cliche that people hire who they know. Why? It’s easier to hire somebody you know because it’s easier to assess their downside.

In formal interviews, many questions are designed to uncover weaknesses and shortcomings: What is your greatest weakness? Describe a situation in which you were unsuccessful achieving a goal, and how did you respond? How would you rate your ability to resolve conflict on a scale of 1 to 10, from low to high, then give me an example?

3. Hiring is about pain relief

Consider the priorities of a hiring manager. Managers are responsible for achieving the goals and objectives of their organization. If it were easy to attain those goals, they could do all the work themselves and wouldn’t need employees!

But, of course, various problems, challenges, issues and pressures get in the way of corporate goals and objectives. To a sales professional, these things are known as “pain points.”

Salespeople need to understand their prospects’ pain points in order to make that pain go away. In a job search, you’re selling yourself as the product or service for the hiring manager’s pain relief.

Your job in an interview is to uncover that agenda.  Listen for clues to the hiring manager’s pain points. Respond not with the features of your value proposition (i.e. your education, experience, personal traits) but with benefits (i.e. how you can help them with their pain points).

Establish rapport with a manager by focusing on their needs and priorities.  Flush out concerns. What challenges, issues, problems, pressure points are driving this hiring decision? Reduce risk. Find out what red flags the manager may have about hiring somebody they don’t know. Make it easy for them to hire you!

For more great interview tips, contact Clark Personnel today!

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: April 9, 2012

State legislators in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois and elsewhere are pushing to raise the minimum wage above the federal level in their own states, arguing that $7.25 an hour is too meager for anyone to live on.

Massachusetts lawmakers are pushing for a big jump, with the Legislature’s joint committee on labor approving a measure last month that would raise the minimum to $10 an hour, which would leapfrog Washington State, whose $9.04 minimum is the nation’s highest.

Voters in Missouri may be asked to vote on a minimum wage referendum in November.

These moves are giving momentum to an effort to persuade Congress to embrace a higher national minimum wage. Some liberal and labor groups, capitalizing on the energy and message of the Occupy Wall Street movement, are urging Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, to head a Congressional effort to raise the federal minimum to $9.80 an hour by 2014.

Congress last passed a bill to increase minimum wages in 2006, phasing in higher rates over several years. Although some states raise the minimum wage automatically every year as the cost of living increases, federal law does not provides for an automatic increase.

Many Democrats and their labor allies say the time is right to push for another increase, and not just because it is hard to live on the $15,080 a year earned by a person working full time at minimum wage. They say a public debate now over the merits of increasing wages is bound to put many Republicans on the defensive during an election year and would encourage low-income Americans — an important part of the Democratic base — to go to the polls this November.

“It’s always good to surface an issue that captures voters’ enthusiasm and distinguishes the bad guys and the good guys,” said Jen Kern, minimum wage campaign coordinator at the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for low-wage workers.

The business community is not at all happy about these developments and has warned President Obama, Democratic lawmakers and labor groups that with weak job growth, the time is definitely not right to raise the minimum wage.

“It’s a classic election-year ploy to make the Democrats look like they’re protecting low-income workers,” said Randal K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor issues at the United States Chamber of Commerce. “I think it’s well understood that raising the minimum wage hurts workers on the lower end of the pay scale in that it does kill jobs.”

But backers of a higher minimum wage disagree on the economics, pointing to studies that found that an increase in minimum wages did not result in a reduction in jobs. Ms. Kern argued that raising the minimum wage would even stimulate the economy. “You ask business why they’re not hiring. They say it’s because no one is buying anything,” she said. “Well, a higher minimum wage would give people more money to spend.”

In 2010, 1.8 million hourly workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, according to federal data. About 2.5 million had wages below the minimum, in part because of exemptions under the law for certain categories of workers like many students.

Analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research organization, suggests that raising the federal minimum wage to $9.80 would lift pay for more than 28 million Americans, increase the gross domestic product by more than $25 billion and create the equivalent of more than 100,000 full-time jobs.

Advocates for a higher wage note that the issue receives strong public support. In a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, 78 percent of New Yorkers polled supported an increase, while 20 percent opposed it. Even Republicans favored an increase, 53 percent to 43 percent.

Ms. Kern’s group along with other labor organizations like Interfaith Worker Justice, the Service Employees International Union and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United are mobilizing to press Congress to take action.

7 DO’S and DON’TS for Employers under the Alabama Immigration Act – Updated,
By: Tommy Eden, Attorney • Capell & Howard, P.C

On June 9, 2011, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley signed into law the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act (the Act 2011-535 “Act”) and on September 28, 2011 U.S. Federal District Judge Sharron Blackburn temporarily enjoined (stopped from going into effect) certain portions of the Act. On October 14, 2011 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals enjoined two additional provisions. Almost all of the provisions affecting Alabama employers remain in place as of this publication and impose significant new employer-related compliance obligations. At the core of the Act is compliance with the Federal Form I-9 requirements under the Immigration Reform Control Act of 1986 and enrollment in the Federal E-Verify program. The following list is a Do’s and Don’ts summary of the employer obligations updated following the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision of October 14, 2011:

1. DON’T knowingly employ, hire for employment, or continue to employ an unauthorized alien to perform work within the State of Alabama. Effective January 1, 2011, all Alabama business entities seeking to contract with the State of Alabama, or any political subdivision thereof (City, County, public authority, etc), or “transact business” with any of these same entities, should prepare now to verify the status of every new employee through the federal E-Verify procedures, secure documentation that they are in fact a business entity (most likely a record from the Alabama Secretary of State), fire unauthorized aliens and have an immigration compliance check-up conducted to allow the business to provide a good faith affidavit of immigration compliance [Sections 9, 15, 26 and 30 of the Act] to the political subdivisions it seeks to contract with or “transact business” with. Hopefully, a central filing by a business entity with the Alabama Secretary of State or Alabama Department of Homeland Security will allow for this to be an orderly process and no later than 90 days following the effective date of the Act all Alabama employers enrolled in E-Verify will have their name listed on a state website [Section 26 of the Act].

2. Do enroll in E-Verify. Effective April 1, 2012, every Alabama business entity or employer should be enrolled in E-Verify to verify the employment eligibility of every new hire in the State of Alabama. E-Verify provides a safe harbor so that an employer who uses the E-Verify system “shall not be deemed to have violated [Section 15 of the Act] with respect to the employment of that employee.” A business entity or employer that uses E-Verify to verify the status of an employee in good faith “and acts in conformity with all applicable federal statutes and regulations is immune from liability under Alabama law for any action by an employee for wrongful discharge or retaliation based on a notification from the E-Verify program that the employee is an unauthorized alien.” Three violations involving employment of unauthorized aliens can result in permanent revocation of all licenses and permits to do business throughout the State of Alabama.

3. DO schedule Form I-9 Supervisor Training. The federal E-Verify system is only as accurate as the information collected on form I-9. Also, do put an E-Verify policy in your employee handbook and make sure that you are using the latest version of Form 1-9.

4. DO have an outside Immigration Compliance Check-up done of your Form I-9s and Immigration Practices. E-Verify is an employer’s only get out of jail card with Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) and the only safe harbor under the Alabama Immigration Act. Millions of dollars of ICE fines and prison sentences have been levied against employers that are out of compliance. Effective January 1, 2012 every business entity, employer and subcontractor that contracts with any public entity in the State of Alabama will have to prove by affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that they are enrolled in EVerify and have a good faith belief that they are currently only employing those legally eligible to work in the United States. [Section 9 of the Act]. Two violations by an Alabama employer can result in permanent revocation of all licenses and permits to do business throughout the State of Alabama. Expect businesses to mandate by contract such affidavits as well.

5. DO properly terminate any employee if you become aware of their unlawful status. The employer could face severe business penalties involving probation, suspension and permanent revocation of Alabama business licenses and permits [Sections 9 and 15 of the Act].

6. DON’T enter into contracts with unauthorized aliens. The Act provides that no court shall enforce the terms of, or otherwise regard as valid, any contract between a party and an alien unlawfully present in the United States [Section 27 of the Act]. However, on October 25, 2011, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Scott Vowell found this provision violated Section 95 of Alabama Construction (prohibits impairing of contracts) in that he found the law, as applied to a contract which predated the Alabama Immigration Act, was unconstitutional.

7. DO have employees carry ID proving their lawful status in the U.S. Significantly, the 11th Circuit left in place Section 18 of the Act (drivers of motor vehicles to have their drivers licenses in their possession at all times or subject to detention to verify citizenship); and Section 30 (must prove lawful status to enter into any “business transaction” with public entity, i.e. business license, license plate, drivers license renewal, non driver ID card, etc.). An unexpired Alabama Drivers License or Nondrivers Identification Card issued by the Alabama Division of Motor Vehicles is sufficient verification of lawful status. Placing in your job description that possession of a valid driver’s license as an essential job qualification may be considered to ensure that your employees will not be detained while driving on company business. If you would like to schedule an Immigration Compliance Check-up of your Form I-9s and Immigration Practices, please contact deborahf@csbcpa.com. CSB will be performing these services in conjunction with Capell & Howard, P.C.

About the author: Tommy Eden is an attorney with Capell & Howard, P.C. and a member of the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law, and presented throughout the State of Alabama on Immigration Workplace Compliance in 2011. Tommy can be contacted at tme@chlaw.com or 334-241-8030. A more detailed legal summary for employers of the Act, and other links and resources, is at www.immigrationalabamalaw.com

This Do’s and Don’ts summary is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. “No representation is made that the quality of legal services to be performed is greater than the quality of legal services performed by other lawyers.”

As companies engage in the incredible marketing power of social media, they’re also discovering that while there are very few laws in place yet, there are plenty of legal concerns.

One of the biggest concerns? How much power do they have over what their employees post on social media sites? What about privacy, discrimination and the right of employees to discuss the terms and conditions of their employment?

Proactive Measures

To strengthen their legal rights, companies must be proactive in setting clear policies regarding employee use of social media. By establishing guidelines, companies can protect their own interests and give employees a roadmap for appropriate conduct.

Develop a plan. Companies must clearly communicate the appropriate venues for discussing workplace issues and then make sure that employee concerns are addressed. Just prohibiting workplace discussions on social media may not protect companies from action by the National Labor Relations Board.

Write a policy. If a company takes a neutral or positive stance regarding employee use of social media to discuss work, it must develop a policy to guide that use. Companies shouldn’t assume that employees know they shouldn’t post confidential information or that they should keep their posts strictly factual. The policy should spell out the rules in clear and concise language and make it clear to employees that they are company representatives and need to act appropriately in the virtual world.

Employers must be careful to define terms and provide examples to ensure that the policy is clear. Failing to do so can result in litigation.

Educate employees. As with e-mail, social media can be used effectively in the business setting. But employers shouldn’t assume that employees know all the pitfalls. The specifics of what is and isn’t appropriate should be reinforced through periodic training that focuses on particular aspects of the social media landscape.

Stress confidentiality. In addition to a social media policy, companies must incorporate references to social media into their confidentiality policies and other communications. Employees must be reminded to be hyper-vigilant regarding the information they post and ensure that the information is already in the public domain—or, at a minimum, not considered confidential or sensitive by the company.

Respect privacy. Company policies with regard to the use of Internet information in investigations should follow the law. There is no violation of the Stored Communications Act, nor are there privacy concerns, when investigations are performed with information available to the public. Therefore, if an employee’s privacy settings allow open access to material, the company can review it without issue. But if the material is password protected or is viewable by invitation only, then employers must respect those boundaries. Company representatives should carefully document how they access such information and ensure that any access is freely given.

By understanding the legal challenges posed by social media and then developing a policy to address them, companies can reap the benefits of new technology while minimizing potential problems. And if you have any further questions, contact Clark Personnel today!