My son is almost six months old, and being the overachiever he is, is already beginning to crawl.  My husband and I hired a baby-proofing consultant to come to our house and tell us what we needed to do to each room so that Jonah does not choke, fall, get electrocuted, or pull a piece of furniture down on his head.  At the end of the first visit, we had a list 50 items long.

Now if taken individually, we could probably do the suggested safety improvements ourselves.  For example, it will take about 5 minutes to install a latch on a cabinet.  Maybe 10 minutes to put cord wraps on the windows.  Probably an hour or so to buy a gate, and another few hours to figure out how to screw it in without ruining our nice wood paneling. 

Should my husband and I attempt to wade into unchartered waters and spend an agida-filled weekend ignoring our son while clumsily shopping and maneuvering small pieces of hardware so that we can save a few bucks?  Or is it worth it to pay Larry the baby-proofing consultant a fee of $1000+ to procure all of the materials and install everything with the knowledge, handiwork, and efficiency of someone who has been doing this for 18 years. 

At work, there were will be tasks that you are good at, and tasks that you have substantial experience completing.  And then there will be those things that technically you could do yourself, but perhaps your time and energy would be better spent elsewhere.  Even if it pains you, maybe it’s time to think about delegating tasks that someone with a different skill-set or at a different level is better equipped to handle.  After all, there are only 24 hours in a day, and if you insist on completing every assignment that comes your way, you simply won’t have time for the things that are important and will make your life and career more fulfilling in the long run. 

For many organizations, determining a set compensation package for each job title is a significant and time-intensive role of the HR department.  Assuming that you don’t have this set package to work from, however, how might you go about deciding how much to offer a new hire?  Here are a few tips to keep in mind, based on material in my book Success for Hire.

• Be competitive: Use industry and local market comparison studies to make sure your compensation is in line with that of similar organizations with similar positions.

• Align pay with your goals: If you’re charged with developing a highly skilled, outstanding workforce, you must pay above industry or regional averages to attract the quality employees you seek. If, on the other hand, the strategy is to get cheap labor in the door quickly with little regard for turnover, you can pay people less.

• Practice equality: If you already have people working in the same function as the candidate, you should be offering a salary in line with what your existing employees are making. Taboo as it may be, issues of pay are often discussed in the workplace, and the last thing you want is for one of your best people to find out that the new hire came in earning $15K more.   

• Know the value of the whole package: Benefits, especially healthcare insurance packages, have never been pricier, and how competitive your offerings are can and should affect the base salary you’re willing to pay a candidate.  You must understand how much it costs you to provide certain benefits to your employee, and pass that knowledge on to the candidate during negotiations.

• Don’t use a poor economy as an excuse to pay less:  You don’t want to get too far out of line with what you would have paid that employee during better times.  You risk losing her when the economy improves. She may never feel valued by your organization if her pay is out-of-line with her experience and contribution. She may never really stop her job search, using your company as a resting place until the right offer arrives.

Well, the gymnastics competitions that are my favorite part of the Olympic Games are over.   As usual, the events were dogged with controversy.  This year, it had mainly to do with the ages and scores of the Chinese gymnasts.

In 1997, to counter the increasing trend towards younger and younger gymnasts, the International Gymnastics Federation introduced a rule that competitors must be 16 in the year that the event is held.  But gold medal winners He Kexin and Yang Yilin looked far younger.  And sure enough, says The Guardian, online documents called into question whether either of the gymnasts would reach their 16th birthday this year.  The documents relating to He include a page from the Chengdu Sports Bureau website from 2006, which gave her year of birth as 1994, a report in last November's Cities Games at Wuhan which gave her age then as 13, and a story in the China Daily newspaper in May this year, which gave her age as 14.  Yang's age was given in online files from the General Administration of Sport in China. Records from 2004, 2005 and 2006 give her date of birth as August 26th 1993. That would make Yang only 15 this year, and 14 when she competed in last year's world championships.  Clear-cut as the evidence looks, the IOC allowed these girls to compete because the Chinese government produced “official” passports documenting their ages as 16.

Then, there were the scores.  I watched most of the events, and I couldn’t count the number of times ultra-experienced commentators Tim Daggett and Elfie Schlegel remarked that a Chinese gymnast was scored too high on a routine.  When these guys say that something gets a deduction, I believe them, and yet the international panel of judges seemed obviously swayed by the cheers of the home court crowd, who of course wanted the Chinese girls to come out on top. 

Given circumstances, it would have been easy for the other competitors to become discouraged.  After all, in a lot of people’s opinions, some of the women winning gold instead of them were ineligible, and often not even as good.  But every gymnast handled defeat and unfairness with grace and dignity.  We never saw them look outraged, or heard them complain publicly to the media.  The way these young women handled themselves sets an example for all of us in the workplace.  Things aren’t always going to work out the way we think they should, and sometimes this will make us angry and want to quit.  We have to remember that the way we react in an unjust situation often says more about us than any other kind. 

On his blog, Seth Godin responded to a reader who believes luck and randomness is just as critical to success as hard work and effort.

Seth says: “Without a doubt, luck is involved. I don't think anyone would tell you otherwise. The choice one needs to make, though is this: either you believe that luck is dominant, in which case, why bother with effort? Or you believe that luck is random, in which case it can be eliminated from your thinking and you can focus on all the stuff you can control.

I don't think luck alone gets you into Harvard Law School or a clerkship at the Supreme Court. I don't think luck gets someone to buy your car (the best in its class and a great value) instead of the lame alternative.  I've been astonishingly lucky with many elements of my career. Mostly because solid singles turned into doubles or the occasional homer. I figure most of the failures are my fault and many of the successes were really good breaks. But I can't imagine how lonely and depressing it would be to view myself as nothing but a pinball, batted around by forces over which I have no influence."

I understand where Seth is going with this, and I think he’s correct in that it’s useless to wait around for the fickle finger of fate to point its finger at you.  However, I don’t know that one has to make a choice between believing luck is dominant and believing it’s random.  And I think you do yourself a disservice if you dismiss it altogether.  For example, when I’ve tried my hardest at something and have had every reason in the world to succeed – but someone else still comes out on top at my expense – occasionally it makes me feel a bit better to chalk it up to luck.

There are a lot of talented people in this world with outstanding work ethics.  Persistence is the #1 factor in getting what you want out of life, I don’t dispute that.  But luck is certainly in the mix too, and occasionally it's both dominant and random.  

Most people have to check references in some shape or form, whether it’s for a candidate or a babysitter.  I don’t know about you, but until I wrote Success for Hire I never really knew how to do it. Here's what I learned:

While you can e-mail a reference initially, connect either in person or by phone with at least one reference for each person you’re thinking of hiring.  While reference letters or e-mails can be helpful, speaking with a person allows for a better interpretation of tone, and for the ability to ask questions on the fly. 

Some experts say that the primary goal of a reference call is to verify the basics of what the candidate told you in the interview, but I believe you need to do much more than that.  After all, would a person really provide you with a reference who couldn’t back him up on obvious things like how long he worked at a company, and what he did there?  What you should be looking for is the reference’s perspective on the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses as an employee.  In this respect, you should ask open-ended questions about job accomplishments, intellectual ability, personality and character, interpersonal and technical skills, business judgment, level of commitment, management style, and areas for development.  As in the interview, don’t broadcast to the reference exactly what you’re looking for.

The problem with most references is that they tend to be very vague in their comments.  They don’t know you from Adam, and so they don’t want to say anything that might get them into trouble.  If you’re getting a pleasant but generic image of the candidate, re-phrase your questions so that you’re presenting the topic of a candidate’s weaknesses in a non-aggressive manner.  For instance: “We are really excited about the possibility of bringing John on board.  If he is selected for the position, what are some areas in which you think he could use some development?’”

If you’re speaking to a reference and she mentions someone else you might want to talk to, take her up on it and get the person’s contact information.  Calling a candidate’s references is not just an item to check off your list before making an offer.  It’s in your best interest to do everything you can to make sure to get to know the candidate as intimately as possible, and the more people you ask, the more complete your picture is likely to be.

Juggling multiple jobs is becoming more and more common, as people seek work that will provide an additional paycheck or personal satisfaction that is lacking in Job #1.  Over at Stepcase Lifehack, Thursday Bram, a writer who has done this herself, has these insights to share:

Keep firm dividers between your different jobs. Even if you are the boss on your second job — you’re working for yourself — you have an obligation to keep that work separate from your day job.  Focus on what’s in front of you. When you’re on the clock for Company A, you know exactly which projects you should be working on. If Company A is paying for this time, you should be theirs, heart and soul, at least until you clock out.

There will come a day when an emergency comes up at Job A when you’re supposed to be taking care of something for Job B. It’s a fact of life. Unless you have very understanding supervisors or clients, you’re going to have to choose between your jobs. In the moment, it’s very hard to make that decision. I’ve decided between jobs based on which I enjoyed more, which paid better and which was more likely to fire me.

In terms of what you tell the boss:  some companies don’t want you to work anywhere else. They want you to put in your eight hours, go home, sleep well and come back rested. Others consider employees who go looking for other projects as assets — such employees have a jump start on networking and have a wider variety of experiences.

Unfortunately, most supervisors do not come with a label describing which variety they are. Because it can be very hard to figure out your boss’ stance, the general rule seems to be that you keep quiet on your extracurricular activities. I wouldn’t talk about Job A at Job B, although, if my boss was to bring up the matter, I’d be entirely truthful.

There are only certain circumstances in which your employer has any legal right to ask you to stop working at your second job. If you have a non-compete agreement and your side job — whether you’re freelancing, working for the competition or providing consulting services — your employer can say something. If you’re on call for both jobs at once, your employer can say something. But in most other cases, your employer has no grounds to object.

I’ve been in this situation too, and Thursday’s tips are golden.  Keep them in mind so that you are able to go about all of your endeavors without making waves.

I recently had the chance to chat with Chris and Stuart, two enterprising twenty-somethings who founded Gradspot, which they hope will become the premiere online destination for life after college.  They are super-impressive young professionals, having graduated from Harvard and Emory respectively and boasting work experience in the finance, technology, and publishing industries.  The backbone of Gradspot is made up of Survival Guides organized into five categories: Apartment, Career, Lifestyle, Money, and Health.  Chris and Stuart have also just published The Gradspot.com Guide to Life after College, and they were kind enough to send me a copy.

There are lots of books out there for new college graduates who have just crash-landed in the real world, but Chris and Stuart’s book is a refreshing addition to the genre, mainly because it’s clever without being silly or snarky.  Peek inside the book and you’ll find: 

• Tips and tricks culled for everything from handling an office romance to finding compatible roommates and switching your cell phone plan.
• Thoroughly researched solutions for the most common recent grad issues, developed not only from the experiences of Gradspot writers, but also from the opinions of topic experts and other recent grads.
• Fun, easy-to-navigate chapters that are perfect for flipping through when you, um, need to entertain/edify yourself for five minutes or so.
• “Confessions of a Match.com User,” “Confessions of a Nomad,” and other hilarious anecdotes from post-college life.
• Interviews (with rappers and Ph.D.s alike), exhibits, and top ten lists

The Gradspot.com Guide may be amusing, but it’s pretty serious in its mission to educate new grads.  And best of all, if you’re a cash-strapped twenty-something in need of the personal finance tips offered in Chapter 5, you can get the book FOR FREE!

My new book, Success for Hire (ASTD Press) features employee recruitment and retention practices that a lot of people think they know but in reality, don’t put into practice.  One of those practices is effective in-person interviewing, which can ensure that you hire the right candidate the first time around.  The next time you speak with a job candidate:

• DO look for candidates who are different from you and will add variety to your team.  Recognize that human beings have the tendency to gravitate to people like themselves, but your goal should be to hire people who will complement your strengths, not duplicate them.

• DO spend at least 45 minutes with every interviewee. Managers who think they can size someone up in 5 or 10 minutes are wrong, pure and simple.  All of the advance preparation in the world won’t help you if you rush to judgment on a candidate.

• DO focus on the big picture.  Steel yourself against the seduction of star quality. A candidate might be amazing in one area, but if his skill set isn’t a good match for the whole job, you should probably keep looking.

• DO move on to a new question if you see that a candidate is visibly uncomfortable.  The candidate may be nervous, so give her the benefit of the doubt.  Once things are back on track, you can either rephrase it or ask for the same information in a different way. 

• DO look for red flags that could indicate a potential problem, and probe for explanations.  Be on the alert for blushing, sudden loss of eye contact, sudden twitching, stammering, or fidgeting, a significant change in the pace of speaking, heavy perspiring, or inconsistency between nonverbal behavior and words.

• DO assess the likelihood of retention.  It costs a lot of time and money to hire someone, so you want to be sure he’s going to stick around a while.

• DO look for patterns.  Does a candidate have a history of making lateral moves?  If so, you may be hiring someone who will want a different job in your company in a few months.  Does she complain that all of her previous companies were too bureaucratic?  If that’s the case, then she’s likely to come to the same conclusion about yours.

• DO permit the occasional pause.  We all hate silence during a conversation, but resist the urge to jump in and help the candidate with her answer. 

Stay tuned next week for the DON’Ts!