May 30, 2020

Unemployment's Paying More Than a Job? - Hiring Made Human

By Robert Merrill • Issue #13 • View online

The world is better when humans do work they love! In a hub of insight, ideas, playbooks, and actionable tips, Hiring Made Human is working to put the Human back in Human Resources.

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Quick Hits:

Hiring an entry-level role? Good luck.
Let the Adventure (in career-design) begin!
Viewing the pandemic as a spiritual challenge
How to network well on LinkedIn (and not look like a noob doing it)
Is remote work here to stay… or not? Two articles share competing viewpoints

With Unemployment Benefits Now Exceeding Many Low-Wage Incomes, Finding Willing Workers is Becoming Harder Than Ever

Data shows states where unemployment can exceed low-wage incomes

It appears that nearly 70% of Americans on unemployment are earning more than they did in their pre-laid-off jobs. Some as much as 150% more. What does this mean for recruiting and the economic recovery?

Making recruiting entry-level workers even harder than it has been in the past, many people are finding their unemployment benefits outstripping the amounts of money they would have earned had they not been let go.

*How has your recruiting been affected by unemployment?

Let the Adventure Begin

@askrobmerrill

I have a mug that says this on the side in cute, right-aligned, lower case serif letters:

let the

adventure

begin

The alignment, the blatant disregard for conventional spacing, capital letters and punctuation give it a playfulness I love and I find makes my heart smile a little each time I read it.

In a small way, isn’t this what work could feel like, too? I can hear the voices of droning mall-store bosses lecturing well-rehearsed ted-talks on the merits of hard work and thats-whats-wrong-with-your-generation speeches, but aside from all of those sounds, let’s just ponder for a moment.

What if work actually did feel adventurous?

I think, if you look around at the people you admire in your field, the ones who make it look effortless, I think you will find one thing they have in common is, almost a sense of wonder that they get to do what they do and, perhaps, a sense of awe as if the things that seem to just “go right” for them, they never would have expected.

If you want to possess this same sense of wonder, today is the best day to begin this journey! Check out my blog if you’re wondering why RIGHT NOW is the best time to have an adventure:

Let the Adventure Begin | Ask Robert Merrill

While the world has a collective freak-out about COVID—19, you have all power to recreate your future with adventure in mind. Where would you like to go today?

www.askrobertmerrill.com • Share

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We all know that mistakes happen. Catch a peek of last week’s email, “You are ‘Amy Cooper’ and So Am I” and subscribe so that you never make the same mistake again!

Still here? Check this out:

An appreciated employee will always do more than expected.

Many bosses treat employees as a means to an end, as a cog in a machine. They do not give employees recognition, appreciation, opportunities to grow, and do not trust them with new responsibilities.

www.linkedin.com • Share

Rise to This As a Spiritual Challenge

Several years ago, I participated in a conference on spirituality and sustainable agriculture at Harvard Divinity School. One of the speakers, an undergraduate student named Sarah Williams, told us a story about how she’d been assigned to shadow a farmer near her university in Washington state.

forge.medium.com • Share

How to Ask for Help on Linkedin

Asking for help on LinkedIn can feel daunting and vulnerable. Here’s three quick tips on how to do it right.

www.askrobertmerrill.com • Share

Remote Work Is Not Here to Stay

The spread of the novel coronavirus has pushed companies to rely on remote work in recent months. Some think this practice could (finally) be here to stay, touting laundry lists of benefits to employees and employers alike.

medium.com • Share

Why Working Virtually Will Become A Permanent Option

An odd thing is happening amid the tragedy of the coronavirus crisis. The working world is splitting into two: those who love working from home and those who don’t. Some prefer working from home because they are more productive and have more fun.

www.forbes.com • Share

The effect of COVID-19 and disease suppression policies on labor markets: A preliminary analysis of the data

World leaders are deliberating when and how to re-open business operations amidst considerable uncertainty as to the economic consequences of the coronavirus.

www.brookings.edu • Share

The AI Economist: Improving Equality and Productivity with AI-Driven Tax Policies

Our work fits within a larger context of recent advances in RL. RL has been used to train AIs to win competitive games, such as Go, Dota, and Starcraft. In those settings, the RL objective is inherently adversarial (“beat-the-other-team”).

blog.einstein.ai • Share

4 ways to get high-paying writing work

Turning what you love into a business involves being good at business. While I learned The Elements of Style, I also learned Million Dollar Consulting (not affiliate links).

writingcooperative.com • Share

Being Productive Starts With Knowing Your Limits

Everyone has a built-in limitation — these limitations are physical, mental, social, and chronological. Until you recognize those limitations, you can’t demand the best of yourself or deliver your very best every day.

medium.com • Share

As Hunger Swells, Food Stamps Become a Partisan Flash Point

Democrats are seeking to raise benefits as research shows a rise in food insecurity without modern precedent amid the pandemic. But Republicans have balked at a long-term expansion of the program.

www.nytimes.com • Share

How To Stop Checking Your Phone: 4 Secrets From Research

Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. To check it out, click here. If I told you we check our phones 5 billion times a minute you’d probably just shrug and agree.

www.bakadesuyo.com • Share

Think Strategically About Your Career Development

In a world where the average employee sends and receives 122 emails per day and attends an average of 62 meetings per month, your boss or HR leadership simply doesn’t have the time or bandwidth to properly think through how best to deploy your talents moving forward.

hbr.org • Share