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Accenture recently published the results of a survey of middle manages in the United States, Europe and Australia. In yet another indication of the discontent in business organizations today, fewer than half of the 1,025 respondents were either extremely or very satisfied with their employers and a third described their organizations as "mismanaged." Among the chief complaints was a lack of support from and communication with senior management and the absence of developmental programs below the executive level. How might that be averted in your organization? Executives, of course, must recognize and value the role of middle managers, but assuming that foundation is in place, you might set up: an area on your company's intranet for line managers and get the CEO to contribute a blog there to communicate with the leadership team and solicit its input on key issues, policies and practices; a curriculum designed specifically to help prepare middle managers for the challenges they face on-the-job and in advancing their careers (I recommend that you start with Interviewing 101); and/or a Best Practices discussion board on your intranet where managers can interact with their peers to solicit problem solving advice, lessons learned and other information helpful to on-the-job performance. 08/09/06

U.S. Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs posted updated FAQs on its Web-site. Among the key points, the agency now specifically approves search protocols that can limit the number of potential candidates on which an organization must store data. Historically, Federal contract employers have always had to store the resume of and collect EEO/AA data on every applicant who submits a paper resume. On the Internet, the requirement is actually less rigorous, because employers need only store the resume of and collect data on qualified applicants. That's easier said than done, however. You can assess a lot of prospects before you find a legitimate candidate, especially in the large resume databases of job boards. How can you protect yourself from having the agency consider some or all of those prospects qualified? Remove them from the zone of consideration. Increase the specificity of the search criteria in the first iteration of your search, using keywords to specify all of the required qualifications a person must have in order to be considered for the position. Yes, I realize that restricts your ability to apply judgment in the process, but it also protects you from having to store data on candidates in which you ultimately have no interest. Even better, it also ensures that the judgment you do apply is focused on differentiating between qualified applicants. That's the most effective use of your talent. 02/22/07

6FigureJobs.com polled its members to see who, among today's business leaders, they would most like to have dinner with. The top five vote-getters were: Warren Buffet, Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway; Steve Jobs, Chairman of Apple; Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft; Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Founders of Google. The list is instructive in several ways. First, age is irrelevant. Both seniority and youth are represented among the executives, suggesting that innovation and performance are a function of talent, not time. Second, the winners have had their downs as well as their ups. Jobs lost his first job at Apple in a headquarters battle, and Gates has struggled with government regulators in both the U.S. and Europe. Despite these setbacks, they bounce back, proving that resiliency is one of the key elements of success. 7/16/06

6FigureJobs.com released the results of its survey of how senior professionals and executives view the impact of gender on a person's pay. Although males out-number females by three-to-one among the site's 400,000+ members, more than three-fourths of the survey respondents (78%) said that they believe that there is a disparity between compensation for men and women. Almost half (44%) said that pay inequality was more egregious in some industries than in others, a view borne out by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. According to the BLS, the largest disparity exists in the construction and manufacturing industries, while the smallest gap occurs in the education, health services, professional and business services and financial sectors of the workplace. Whatever your gender, however, it's important that you have the information necessary to assess the reasonableness of an employer's offer. Check out any salary surveys that may be posted on the Web-site of your professional or technical association and use the resources of such sites as Salary.com and the Monster Salary Center. 07/26/06

AfterCollege, Inc. introduced an On-Campus Outreach service to help employers optimize the results of their campus visits. The new service, which was field tested last year, taps into AfterCollege's university network in order to promote campus visits by a company; it includes event registration and attendance tracking capabilities.

AirPower Wiki made its debut as a site where business travelers can find and add to a listing of those rare and often hidden electrical outlets in airports. With the power available in computer batteries still limited, knowing where you can plug-in can often mean the difference between a productive layover and a waste of time. For example, wouldn't it be nice to know that you can find all the juice you need at the base of the fire hoses in Spain's Madrid Barajas Airport or behind the automatic teller machines at Chicago's O'Hare International? Sure beats wandering around with your laptop in hand and a frustrated frown on your face. 08/09/06

America's Job Bank located in Albany, NY, has changed its URL from www.adj.dni.us to jobsearch.org. The site is operated by the U.S. Department of Labor and the State Employment Service. According to WEDDLE's 2003 Recruiter's Guide to Employment Web Sites, the site posts jobs at no charge and offers free access to 485,000 resumes, primarily in the fields of administration, computers, management, programming and sales and marketing.

American Staffing Association released the results of its study of temporary work in the U.S. workplace. It found that over half of the workers polled (59%) have, at some point, taken a temporary job as a stepping to landing a permanent position. In other words, temp work isn't something that's done only by the unemployable or by those willing to work in the lousiest jobs for the lousiest employers. It can and often does provide an opportunity for you to show what you can do in a meaningful position that can lead to full time employment with a great organization. The survey respondents also cited a number of other advantages to taking temp work, including scheduling flexibility (41%), additional income (40%), and access to training (40%). Almost nine-out-of-ten (88%) would recommend temp work to a friend or relative. And, most of the more than 13,000 people surveyed were of working age; only 10% were students and just 3% described themselves as retired. 09/07/06

Angela Manfredi, the Singled Out columnist for The Palm Beach Post, launched a nationwide search for the ideal husband. The arrangement would not be legally binding, but the selected person will be paid a salary for his two-week assignment. As Manfredi puts it, the relationship would be "strictly financial, not romancial [sic]." It's not all fun and games, however; according to Manfredi's Web-site, the hired husband must rescue her from lousy conversation partners at dinner parties, take care of her car problems, perform household chores, and-it's Florida, after all-be responsible for hurricane preparations.

Annals of Improbable Research, a scientific humor magazine, has cited a recent academic study entitled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Leads to Inflated Self-Assessments." In a nutshell, the research found that incompetence is bliss. Those who don't perform up-to-speed, also don't recognize their own lack of competence or the competence of others. This profound cluelessness was supported by data reported in The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book. Written by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, it looked at the emotional intelligence of workers by creating an "emotional intelligence quotient" (EQ) composed of their self-awareness, social-awareness, self-management and relationship-management skills. It found that the average EQ for workers was 74 (on a 100-point scale), and that EQ scores increased with seniority in the organization. Supervisors averaged 77 and managers averaged 77.5. At that point, however, an interesting phenomenon occurred: beyond the managerial level, EQ scores declined. Directors dropped to 74.5, junior executives slipped to 72.5, senior executives came in at 71, and CEOs actually earned the lowest emotional intelligence quotients in the enterprise with an average of 70.5. For all of you out there who are absolutely convinced that the boss doesn't get it and is totally ignorant of their ignorance ... you just may be right. 2/2/06

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