Gaileen Sutton

With the economy in recession and the difficult times that loom over, ethics seems to take a back seat in some corporate and even government circles. Everyday day seems to bring reports of layoffs. It is no surprise that 62% of people are reportedly less trusting of businesses now than a year ago, according to a recent Edelman survey across 20 countries.

John G. Agno uses the example of Southwest Airlines, to put across his point that trust and a good reputation in the marketplace is most aided by a “strong, stable strategy.” He uses this example because Southwest Airlines uses the same business strategy for nearly four decades, and one that has managed to largely avoid the blows dealt to other airlines in recent years.

Example of Southwest Airlines was again cited by Mary Jo Asmus at Intentional Leadership. According to her another way to build trust in the market place is in the concepts of servant leadership and sharing of power.

According to Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership put it, “Adversity doesn’t build character. It reveals it.”So you cannot build trust internally when the organization is facing mass layoffs and fighting for its very survival. Believe it or not, even this ordeal can be a trust-building exercise. After all, the fact that the organization is going through this trial matters less than how the organization goes through it.

To sum it all the , the way an organization handles layoffs will directly affect its reputation in the industry and possibly even the entire marketplace when good times resurface. Invest the time and resources into taking care of the people who have brought so much to the table for so many years.

No one is asking you to spend a fortune on them, how well your laid-off employees fare is a strong indicator of how much trust will be placed in your organization in the future.

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Many employees, including six-figure managers and executives complain that they feel powerless in negotiating with their employers. This is true whether the topic of negotiation is a raise, a promotion – or the last important interaction between employer and employee, the severance discussion.

Here are five tips for cutting the best severance deal for you, despite the recession: 1. you can always negotiate a better deal. Even if your company has a policy that says every employee at a certain level, with certain tenure, receives X weeks or X months of salary as severance, decisions ultimately are made on an individual basis. All severance packages are not created equal. This is the most important thing for employees at all levels to understand.

2. Know your leverage. Remember that Leverage is the currency you have to trade with your employer in severance negotiations, Examples of leverage are(1) the employer wants to protect against you criticizing the company after you’re gone;(2) the employer wants to protect against being sued, particularly if you’re an older worker, a woman, or in a racial minority; or (3) the employer may need you for something later, such as testifying in a lawsuit or providing information to a replacement.

3. Severance is the toughest kind of negotiation – because it’s not just business, it’s personal. The key is to bring up the leverage you have without sounding threatening. For example, if you say, “I think this could be age discrimination,” the negotiations will immediately be over. But if you say, “Are you getting rid of me because you think I’m over the hill?” it raises the same issue, but in a way that isn’t an accusation. It can even induce sympathy from your boss.

4. Once you’ve settled on, say, six months of salary as your severance, the negotiations don’t stop there. For example, many employers offer outplacement services. If you are planning to start your own business or already have a new job lined up, you might ask your employer to convert this benefit to cash. On the other hand, if you are interested in going back to school, you might ask the employer to convert part of your cash payment to a tuition benefit, which will reduce the amount of taxes you have to pay on your severance check. Be creative and look at whether you’d be better off converting some of your non-cash severance benefits to cash, or vice versa.

5. Chances are, the timing of 401(k) vesting is the last thing on your employer’s mind when they lay you off. But employees have successfully argued in lawsuits that they were fired so their employer wouldn’t have to vest them. You can use this fact as leverage in your severance discussions. At most companies, you have to work there for a certain period of time before your employer’s 401(k) matching contribution vests – meaning you can take it with you.

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Temping is exactly what you need, if you are unable to let yourself grinded by full-time legal job’s long hours. The legal industry now a days automatically convert to temporary staffing as a means to keep a lid on costs. Industry analysts estimate that legal temporary staffing, whether for lawyers, paralegals, or clerks, represents a $300 to $500 million market, with growth rates of over 25 percent annually.

The increase in the temp numbers has been accompanied by an increase in the reputation for temporary lawyers. Jeff Silber, an analyst at institutional research group Gerard, Klauer, Mattison, & Co., recently told The National Law Journal: “Temp lawyers used to have a stigma, but the legal staffing business is really starting to move upscale.” For job seekers, the increasing availability and prestige of legal temping jobs means a better lifestyle, higher compensation, and the chance to crack some of the country’s most exclusive firms.

The legal temp field breaks down into two categories these are: traditional temps and “wholesale lawyers.” This latter term was given by David A. Robinson, who is the author of the ABA’s “Practicing Law Without Clients.” this author defines this lawyers as the freelancer lawyers who does requires anybody help they find their own assignments, producing legal product for the “retail lawyers” working for the client. “Most of what wholesale lawyers do is ghostwriting,” Robinson told the NLJ, citing the example of a West Virginia lawyer who worked writing administrative law judge opinions for 15 hours a week at $75 dollars an hour.

Many traditional temp lawyers, like their counterparts in other industries go through the intermediary of temp agency. These organization have grown up their business in the 1990s, as the law firms remain wary of over hiring. Legal staffing agencies include New York’s Strategic Legal Services (www.strategiclegal.com), Washington DC’s Pat Taylor and Associates (www.pattaylor.com); and Law Corps (www.lawcorps.com). Pat Taylor and Associates boasts a sparkling client list featuring top notch firms and organizations such as Latham & Watkins, Patton Boggs, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Arnold & Porter; Skadden Arps; Mayer Brown, National Geographic Television, and Paul Hastings.

Over traditional lawyer temping arrangements offers several advantages. Many people say that the most prominent advantage of working part time is simply working part time. Wholesale lawyers can easily make their own hours and easily telecommute, a boon to those who wish to spend more time with families or wish to pursue law other than the law.

For those lawyers who works through an agency, there are two important advantage for them. Firstly these lawyers can easily avoid being pigeonholed into a particular career path or substantive area of the law, increasingly the fate of full-time associates at many firms. It is granted that these temporary lawyers may often get assignments in less exciting jobs, notably document management or discovery chores. However one temporary attorney told the NLJ, ” discovery is on par with the rest of law – it’s no more or less exciting.”

It is true that second temp jobs are not always temporary. Temp staffing specialists estimate that 15 to 20 percent of temps get permanent offer. And for those who got rejected during campus placement, the temp job can provide a handy back door.

Of course, temping isn’t all hearts and flowers. Pay can stoop as low as $14 dollars an hour (far, far below the compensation of most full-time lawyers). Although many law firms hire temp attorneys to cover themselves in case business goes down. Should things slow down, the temp gets the axe before anyone else. Many temp attorneys, however, seem willing to live with these risks to enjoy the independence and other benefits that temping affords.

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If we see the questions on the Interviewing message board we can see that it shown some of our readers’ difficulties in getting a search after leaving or losing a job. But according to me it is useful for us to start at the beginning.

One thing is very clear about the work culture of the new millennium is that nearly all work is now short term, frequently even careers themselves. You have to prepare for change whether it suits your style or not. If we mention the current statistics so we can see that almost all say that the average job is only about three to four years now, but if we talk about 15 years ago when the average tenure of the job was 10 years.

Whenever you join any new organization it is good to understand well in advance that there will be many ups and down mostly during the first week of you’re joining. This ride will mostly include sadness, lack of interest, denial, anger, and then some more anger. Everyone goes through this stage to one degree or another, and I don’t believe the people who say they don’t

Don’t start directly calling to everyone you know and start sending out resume, answering ads, and calling recruiters. Most of the times chances are like that you are not really prepare to immediately start a search after a separation. It is not good to do a job search “on the rebound”. Because you will say the things that you will wish you hadn’t. It’s always good to share your true feelings about the situation with only a few people- maybe a significant other and/or a friend would be quite enough. You don’t want everyone to avoid you (”Uh oh, here comes the whiner…”). Now’s the time to adopt the marketing stance that your career – no matter how you perceive the reality – has been sunshine, light, and success. And you want everyone to know about those successes.

Networking is not calling to everyone you know. Networking is indirect relationship building, quite a different thing.

It is good to develop a target, in my private practice, I have seen people who says that they want to be on TV,” I never knew what that meant… did it mean television repair? Developing a target is the centerpiece of beginning of your search. It is good to know hat what is job function – specifically? What is the desired culture? Geographic location? Size of organization? Do you want to start your own business? Consult? Do you have Dot-com-Virus? This may all involve some extensive self-assessment, with or without outside assistance – but it’s necessary.

And then, of course, you need to research your target.

Stick to the marketing plan and stick to that. Work the system; there are no shortcuts, except for the occasional bolt of lightning. If you are discipline and consistent this thing account for a lot in this process.

If you are really serious listening while developing those relationships, your target might adjust and shift.

If you are creating daily structures and devise techniques for stress improvement then it is good because its not a terrible thing to do something that you enjoy during this period, something that you couldn’t do while working full time.

Losing or leaving your job doesn’t mean that carry the stigma it used to, except in your own mind. It’s a part of the culture now. Everyone believes this or not that everyone has to go through this stage one day.

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