Archive for the ‘Careers’ Category

Q: I enjoyed your article on stay-at-home moms returning to work. Do you see men facing the same issues? After 10 years at home with my kids, I am beginning to interview for jobs and am preparing for the transition you describe.

—R.C., Marietta, Ga.

A: Many at-home dads have faced challenges in making the transition back to work, as described in the column, but they are seldom willing to tell their stories for the record. Men typically encounter even more skepticism than women when they return from time at home caring for their children, says Carol Fishman Cohen, co-founder of iRelaunch.com, a Web site for people returning from career breaks. The recession has actually eased the stigma by making it easier for returning dads to blend into the crowd of other jobless men.

Networking is even more important for male on-rampers than for women, Ms. Cohen says. The key is to forge connections with people who have known you in roles other than parenting, she says. Former classmates or co-workers or fellow committee members in volunteer activities can help you reconnect with the working world. Consider signing up for a career re-entry seminar at a university or community college near you, to brush up on basic skills, practice interviewing, network and look for job leads.

If you can’t find a social or professional networking group with other men who have taken time off, consider starting one yourself, says Mercy Eyadiel, director of alumni career services at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which offers a career re-entry program with the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. If you are able to consult with a career or life coach, doing so could help you clarify your goals and set an action plan and timeline, Ms. Eyadiel says. When interviewing, don’t apologize for your time away, but focus on what you could do for a new employer.

Q: If parents of teenage children divorce, is it right for moms or dads to leave their homes open when they aren’t present, so the kids can come and go as they please? My husband and I don’t allow my teenagers in our home when we are away, bolting our door when we leave. However, my ex-husband leaves his house open to the kids 24/7, even when he travels on business. The kids accuse me of lacking trust in them, but I am concerned that they or their peers might use the house for parties. Am I off base?

—L.M.

A: Not at all. “It is very risky for teens to be unsupervised for long periods,” says JoAnne Pedro-Carroll, a Rochester, N.Y., clinical psychologist and an expert on children and divorce.

Teens do best with consistent structure and clear rules, she says. “Deep down, too much freedom results in a concern that their parents really don’t care about them. Teens need and want limits to help them learn to manage their impulses and choices.”

Your question raises another issue—cooperating with your kids’ father, says Dr. Pedro-Carroll, author of a forthcoming book on children and divorce, “Putting Children First.” It would help your teenagers if the two of you could agree on how they should be supervised while either of you is away. “Right now, your kids are caught between two extremes: A bolted door at one house, and too much freedom at the other,” Dr. Pedro-Carroll says. She advises working toward an agreement that will ensure that they always have a responsible adult present.

Many divorced parents have such a requirement as part of their parenting agreement to cover times when one parent is out of town. If the other parent can’t oversee the kids, then the responsible parent must make arrangements to find another adult to help out. If you don’t have such an agreement, she says, “it may be time to renegotiate.”

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

By LAUREN WEBER

Everybody knows them – those expense account tight-wads who go out of their way to keep business-travel costs low for the better of the company. But do the bosses notice? Photo: Getty Images.

When Boris Siperstein travels for work from his home in Austin, Texas, he often does so with a folding bicycle tucked under his arm.

He expensed the $180 Dahon model, bought on sale, to his private-equity firm, but biking to meetings in such locales as New York City, Mumbai and Mauritius, he says, has saved his company a few thousand dollars in cab fare. Mr. Siperstein, 38 years old, was also known to sleep on the floor when he visited the company’s former Manhattan headquarters rather than pay upward of $200—his personal cutoff for a hotel.

Ryan Collerd for The Wall Street Journal

Boris Siperstein brings his folding bicycle to get around on business trips. Pictured, in Philadelphia.

And forget about flying business class. He folds his 6’3″ frame into a coach seat—even on 16-hour hauls to India, where many of his company’s investments are based.

“I would never in my wildest dreams spend an extra thousand dollars to stay in a hotel room that’s slightly more comfortable than the bed I get in a $100 hotel room,” he says. “Why would I do that with an airline seat?”

Welcome to the world of expense-account tightwads. Citing everything from habit to principle to commitment to their employer’s bottom line, these workers go out of their way to keep expenses low, staying in bargain hotels, swearing off room service and scouring the Web for cheap flights.

In an era of belt-tightening, employers would presumably be thrilled with staff who scrimp on travel and entertainment expenses, which average 8% to 12% of corporate budgets, according to research firm Aberdeen Group. But that isn’t always the case. Some managers don’t care, while other bosses think it odd or worry about how clients will react.

One of three partners at his Hoboken, N.J.-based firm, Mr. Siperstein says his thriftiness has occasionally raised “perception issues” among the partners. But he sees it as a competitive advantage for the firm. “If a client doesn’t see what this says about me, then they’re missing one of the things I bring to the table.”

Still, many of them just think “Boris is a different kind of bird,” says Mr. Siperstein, who describes his income as “comfortable,” but is frugal with his own money too, keeping a roll of toilet paper in his car for spills and runny noses, rather than a “packaged fancy tissue box,” and frying up anything in the fridge that is in danger of spoilage.

On business trips to Shanghai, Christopher Kao, a videogame producer for digital entertainment firm Break Media, says he skipped foreigner-friendly restaurants, instead picking up orange juice and dumplings at local convenience shops, usually for less than $2.

“My expense reports had receipts for $2.11, $1.45, 71 cents. I’m sure the HR people thought it was really funny,” he says. At one hotel where his team stayed, each room had laundry machines. So Mr. Kao, 31, spent a Sunday morning washing his clothes, “sitting in my underwear and reading ‘Hunger Games’,” rather than sending them out to be professionally cleaned.

Mr. Kao says co-workers commented on his thrifty choices—”You’re braver than me,” he recalls one saying of his penchant for local food stands.

He was laid off in January when Break closed its U.S. gaming operations to focus on core Web properties.

Andy Tu, Break’s vice president of marketing, says the company has “a corporate ethic to be responsible with our spending” and appreciates frugal employees.

David Payne, 41, travels extensively in his job as contract trainer for a Brooklyn software firm, but says he is too cheap to have hotels do his laundry. For a while, he washed clothes in the bathtub.

Now he travels with a 32-oz. or 64-oz. bottle of detergent in his checked bag, and heads to coin-operated Laundromats. He estimates he spends $10 per trip this way, compared with $30 or $40 for hotel service.

Does he think executives value his efforts? “I don’t think they notice one way or the other,” he says. The only time he got a reaction, he says, was when an accountant called to say he wouldn’t be reimbursed for dryer sheets and other laundry-related expenses. When he explained, he says the accountant relented.

For frugal employees, spending can provoke what some economists call “pain of paying,” a psychic discomfort every time their cash or credit card leaves their wallets. “It’s such a well-learned response that it’s hard to shut off” even on an expense account, says Scott Rick, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

But some say the impulse can go too far.

In his autobiography, “The Mind of Wall Street,” the renowned, late investor Leon Levy recounted a time he and a colleague were driving to a crucial meeting with a California regulator. Mr. Levy noticed their car was low on gas, but his co-worker insisted on driving another 30 miles to reach a discount station. “Of course, we ran out of gas,” he wrote.

Tim Gardner, director of operations at Vancouver, Wash.-based Bergstrom Nutrition, skips convention-sponsored hotels for trade shows, instead searching Priceline for lodgings at “half the price.” On a recent customer visit to Boca Raton, Fla., he asked his employer to reimburse him for only half of his airfare to Florida—because he tacked on a pleasure trip to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, where a friend was stationed.

When he drives to meetings, Mr. Gardner, 55, calculates the better value: using his car and requesting the federally determined reimbursement of 55 cents per mile, or renting a car with mileage included. If he uses his car, he subtracts the 16 miles round-trip from his home to his office.

Asked about Mr. Gardner’s thrifty ways, Bergstrom President Jim Hughes, said, “Sometimes you worry until you get to know someone and understand their habits. It’s just who he is as an individual. He’s responsible and he takes good care of company funds.”

Sometimes it’s the boss pushing extreme measures. When Jeff Yeager was executive director of the American Canoe Association from 1991 until 2002, he “endlessly lectured” his staff about staying with the group’s volunteers and board members when they traveled. “They hated it, but the volunteers were thrilled,” he says.

Mr. Yeager, who now writes books about low-cost living, observed the policy himself. “I can’t tell you how many board members I convinced to vote my way because I was sleeping in their spare bedroom.”

A version of this article appeared March 30, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Expense-Account Tightwads Take the Road Less Expensive.

By SIOBHAN GORMAN

Out of work for six months, Mary Long spent hours each day surfing the Web. She found a job listing this fall for a logistics manager that paid $65,000 a year and fired off her resume.

But the company, Advanta Transportation Network LLC, appears to be part of an increasingly common scam that has snared Ms. Long and many others, according to cybercrime experts.

As U.S. job seekers grow more desperate, criminals are using the Internet to con participants into so-called mule operations.

These operations generally follow a formula, say security experts: Cybercriminals post an ad on a job board. Successful job applicants are “hired” or asked to complete a trial project. Scam operators wire stolen money to the applicant’s credit card and applicants are asked to purchase such goods as expensive electronics. The applicant ships the goods, often to Eastern Europe, where scam operators sell them. Applicants end up with neither a job nor a paycheck.

Advanta used this approach, according to cyber experts who have reviewed the company’s activities. Several attempts to reach Advanta for comment were unsuccessful.

“In the last couple of years, [the growth in mule schemes] has been tremendous,” said Uri Rivner, chief of cybercrime technologies at RSA, the security division of EMC Corp., an information-technology company. “The bad economy has a lot to do with pushing this type of thing.”

There are few statistics on this underground economy. But federal law enforcement has started to track such scams in the past couple of years and they now number in the hundreds, one federal law-enforcement official said.

The number of active scams tracked by the leading Web site that monitors them, bobbear.co.uk, grew from 34 in December 2007 to 591 in December 2009. This Web site has become a leading source of data on mule schemes since it began tracking them in 2006 to draw the attention of authorities. U.S. law enforcement frequently turns to the site’s proprietor, a private cyber-fraud investigator in the U.K., for data.

These operations are recruiting large numbers of Americans, experts say, and often go to great lengths to appear legitimate. Advanta’s Web site, for example, showed it used some of the same language as a legitimate Japanese transport company, according to bobbear, and listed offices in Copenhagen, New York, London, and Hong Kong. The networking site Linked-In had a profile of David A. Maeweather, who is listed as the company’s special projects supervisor.

Advanta’s Web site is no longer functioning, and emails sent to several Advanta managers, including Mr. Maeweather, were returned undeliverable. The toll-free phone number for the New York office led to a marketing firm based in Texas that said it was recently assigned the number but has no affiliation with Advanta. The four company offices had no address listings in city business directories.

Advanta appears to have been succeeded by an outfit, likely run by the same criminal group, according to bobbearco.uk, called A-Cape Transportation LLC. A-Cape’s Web site bears a resemblance to Advanta’s, including the same addresses for its four global offices and lists a similar set of transport services. Phone and email messages to the numbers listed for A-Cape weren’t returned.

A federal law-enforcement official said he couldn’t speak about Advanta specifically, but said authorities have seen these types of fraudulent transactions fueling other cybercrime operations.

Federal authorities don’t often target specific mule Web site operations because the same criminal group can launch 50 or more such sites a year. Instead of engaging in a whack-a-mole effort to shutter each Web operation, they collect intelligence to figure out what group is behind a collection of sites and go after the group, cybersecurity specialists said.

Ms. Long said that about a month after sending her resume to Advanta, she received an email from a human-resources officer at the company, outlining a long screening process. The screening required weeks of online tests, in-person training, and a “credit score over 600 and NO criminal background.”

“I was desperate for a job,” said Ms. Long, a 50-year-old former executive training coordinator for AT&T, who lives in a suburb of Dallas. “I was more hopeful than I was skeptical.”

Ms. Long conducted online searches for Advanta before starting the company’s training process in October. She said she found only the company’s Web site and the job listing posted on Careerbuilder.com, but decided to give it a try.

A Careerbuilder spokeswoman said the company takes a number of measures to fight ads that appear to be scams, but declined to provide details to avoid tipping off scammers.

Ms. Long said she thought her job would entail customer support for a shipping company. “I thought it was legit,” she said.

After some early tests, Ms. Long’s contact at Advanta, Mr. Maeweather, asked her to help with a trial project, she said. Advanta would transfer money to her credit card so she could purchase two Apple MacBook laptops and then ship them to an Advanta contact using prepaid labels. She would earn $350 in commission, he told her in an email.

Ms. Long went to purchase the MacBooks at her local Apple Store and discovered that her credit-card company blocked the $5,000 Advanta transfer. Ms. Long’s boyfriend, Graham Shevlin, paid for it with his credit card instead, she said.

“Even when we were buying the laptops, I was still thinking this is fine,” Ms. Long said. “Bells were not going off.”

Ms. Long planned to mail the laptops the next day. But when she and Mr. Shevlin looked at the shipping labels closely that day, the mailing address in Ukraine raised their suspicions.

Mr. Shevlin did some research online that evening and alerted her the next morning that Advanta had recently been listed on bobbear.co.uk as a fraudulent shipping operation for cybercriminals. She didn’t ship the computers, she said, and returned them to the store.

Ms. Long alerted the FBI, but hasn’t heard back. An FBI spokeswoman said she couldn’t speak about specific complaints.

In a phone conversation with a fraud officer at her credit-card company, Capital One Financial Corp., Ms. Long said she was told that the money transfer to her Capital One card had been flagged as fraudulent. The transfer was being made with a stolen Bank of America credit card.

A Capital One spokeswoman, Pam Girardo, confirmed Ms. Long’s account. “Anybody who says they want to pay you by putting a transfer on your credit card, that’s a big flag,” Ms. Girardo said.

Write to Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN

WSJ’s Rachel Silverman makes a stop on Mean Street to take a look at a new kind of internal stock market that some companies have started using as a way to invest in co-workers’ job performance. Photo: Getty Images.

Who’s really effective at the office?

To get a handle on that question, a handful of bosses are taking decision-making power out of the executive suite and asking employees to help identify—and reward—talent by experimenting with internal markets in which workers “invest” in co-workers’ performance and ideas.

Coffee & Power, a San Francisco odd-jobs start-up, granted each of its 15 full- and part-time employees 1,200 stock options this past January, to distribute among co-workers in whatever way they chose. A worker can plunk all his options onto one colleague or split them among the group, so individual bonuses are tied to how co-workers perceive each other’s work.

“It lets me reward people that management may not always recognize,” says Becky Neil, who works in marketing and product management. “This person who has a big title—maybe he didn’t actually contribute that much.”

Exchanges like those at Coffee & Power make the labor market of an individual office fluid, crowd-sourced and open to constant feedback. Allowing employees to vote on one another’s performances also holds workers accountable and raises the stakes for those who don’t contribute, managers say. On the flip side, there is a chance these markets could devolve into popularity contests, or lead to hard feelings among those who aren’t recognized by the group.

Rank-and-file workers often have the best information about how others really perform, says Denise Rousseau, a management professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

“Who knows better than employees themselves who the contributors are or [who is] the go-to person with a technical problem?” she says.

Philip Rosedale, an entrepreneur who co-founded Coffee & Power last year, developed the market-style bonus system, using both cash and stock options, at his previous firm, Linden Lab, creators of “Second Life,” an online game. He says he wanted to let that company’s 200 employees anonymously vote on who they found most effective, regardless of title or seniority.

At Coffee & Power, options vest immediately, but since the company is still private, they have only paper value—at least for now. Mr. Rosedale plans to repeat the experiment quarterly.

Some rules apply: Workers cannot reward themselves, nor can they give options to company founders, who already have sizable shares. (The money or shares allocated to employees each quarter varies depending on company performance.) Employees only know what bonuses they receive, but don’t learn who allocated what. The company makes public a distribution curve of all the bonus grants, with no names attached, so workers can see what the highest and lowest bonuses were.

The largest bonus was 2,530 and smallest was 855 shares. The biggest surprise: the third-largest allocation went to the ninth-highest-paid person in the firm, a remote developer who handles small tasks and spends a lot of time helping others.

“Even with a really small team, I learned about a great person that I knew little about,” Mr. Rosedale says. Since then, he says he’s sent larger projects her way.

Waiting to see if others would recognize her was nerve-racking, says Ms. Neil, adding, “you don’t always know what other people think of you.” She declined to say how many options she received, but says she was “psyched to see [others] had the same opinion of me that I thought of myself.”

Mr. Rosedale also has created a system, called SendLove, in which employees can send one-line notes of praise to their colleagues; feedback is made public on a scrolling feed at the office. Managers use those notes when compiling quarterly performance reviews, he says.

The system, developed internally at Linden Lab, has been adopted by online review site Yelp, event-planning site Eventbrite and digital-marketing agency Organic.

But not every company may be ready—or willing—to give workers such direct, public input. Linden Lab, for one, discontinued its bonus exchange after Mr. Rosedale left the company. (He remains chairman of their board.)

“You need management that is comfortable giving up some say, and let’s face it, human nature isn’t all programmed that way,” says Ed Lawler, a management professor and director of the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

At HCL Technologies, an India-based IT services firm with 88,000 workers, chief executive Vineet Nayar recently launched an experiment in which he gave a group of 100 employees 1,000 virtual currency units to use in an online exchange. Employees were instructed to spend the imaginary currency on the group members who they thought brought the most value to the company. (Each had to distribute the currency to at least two other people, or risk losing points from their own totals.)

The monthlong exchange resulted in a worker’s-eye view of talent in the company, says Mr. Nayar, the author of “Employees First, Customers Second,” a book about his firm’s people-driven philosophy. The company published the results internally, but has so far used them only to recognize, not reward, staff.

While these internal markets are rare, a growing body of research suggests that giving employees a voice in decision-making, from performance assessment to idea generation, tends to result in higher employee satisfaction—even, in some cases, greater profitability and productivity, according to USC’s Mr. Lawler.

Rite-Solutions, a Middletown, R.I., systems-engineering and software firm, has for several years used a mock exchange to give its 200 employees a voice in choosing projects and strategic initiatives, using its engineering talent to design an elaborate stock-market simulation game called “Mutual Fun.”

In the online exchange, each employee receives 10,000 virtual dollars to invest in an online portfolio of ideas generated by employees. Each idea is referred to as a stock, and those mock securities are classified as “Savings Bonds,” which focus on cost-cutting, “Bow Jones,” which build on existing technologies, and “Spazdaq,” which describes ideas using entirely new technology.

The value of the virtual portfolios fluctuates as employees comment, debate and try promising ideas. There are currently about 120 securities, or ideas, in the system.

Among the ideas that have become reality: A product that helps remotely track the safety of school buses, improvements to the internal phone system and cost-cutting measures, such as reducing the use of overnight delivery for packages.

Rite-Solutions now licenses Mutual Fun to about a half-dozen other companies and academic institutions.

“More and more companies are searching for better ways to harvest the organization’s total intellectual bandwidth,” says Jim Lavoie, the firm’s chief executive.

—Nikki Waller contributed to this article.

Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared April 4, 2012, on page B1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: My Colleague, My Paymaster.

By MIRIAM JORDAN

A group of Silicon Valley technology leaders, impatient with attempts to rewrite immigration laws, is funding efforts to help undocumented youths attend college, find jobs and stay in the country despite their illegal status.

The group includes Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot; and the family foundations of Andrew Grove, co-founder of Intel

Corp.; and Mark Leslie, founder of the former Veritas Software Corp. Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple Inc.

co-founder Steve Jobs, has for years supported undocumented students through her organizations that help low-income high-school students.

The Silicon Valley money is part of a broader response by individuals and states to Congress, which hasn’t passed the Dream Act. That federal legislation would offer a path to legalization for illegal immigrants who graduate from a U.S. high school and attend college or join the military.

“We think Congress’s inaction…is devastating for these students and tragic for the country,” said Ms. Powell Jobs, who was one of the first in the tech community to champion the Dream Act by lobbying her congresswoman and writing an op-ed piece supporting the legislation.

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The focus of the Silicon Valley philanthropists is Educators for Fair Consideration, or E4FC, a nonprofit that gives scholarships, career advice and legal services to students brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants can face civil and criminal penalties. Among other ideas, the Silicon Valley donors are studying the possibility of using unpaid internships as way for students to come to the attention of employers who might later sponsor them for a legal work visa.

After helping a few dozen students through college with small donations, the San Francisco-based organization expanded with money from the tech leaders. It now has enlisted immigration attorneys to offer legal advice to hundreds of undocumented students.

“We used to think, ‘Let’s just get them through college’” with scholarships, said Katharine Gin, a teacher who founded E4FC along with a college counselor. “We thought the federal Dream Act would pass and we would be helping these students in the interim period only.”

Several of the Silicon Valley supporters became aware of the issue close up: Mr. Hawkins got to know an undocumented student at his daughters’ high school. Liz Simons, daughter of the founder of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, mentored an undocumented honor student in high school who was struggling to raise funds for college because of his illegal status. Seth Leslie, son of Veritas’s founder, had encountered undocumented students in his work as a schoolteacher and principal.

Bloomberg News

Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, is backing efforts to aid undocumented students.

The money involved is relatively small: The tech philanthropists and others gave hundreds of thousands dollars in the last year to the group, whose 2012 operating budget is $600,000.

“I have chosen to make this one of my philanthropic areas,” said Mr. Hawkins, who disclosed his giving for the first time in an interview but declined to state the amount. “It’s still at an embryonic stage; I’m willing to crank it up as we find solutions.”

California, Illinois and New York in recent months passed bills that enable undocumented students to receive financial aid for college. Thirteen states allow illegal immigrants who reside in their borders to pay in-state fees at public universities.

Despite bipartisan support in the past, the Dream Act never passed Congress after it became caught up in the broader debate over reshaping the nation’s immigration system, including what to do with the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally. The latest version of the Dream Act was passed by the House in December 2010 but failed in the Senate, after it was tacked onto a defense-spending bill.

To opponents, the bill is tantamount to an amnesty program for children whose parents broke U.S. immigration laws; they argue it would entice more people to sneak into the country. President Barack Obama supports the Dream Act; Republican Mitt Romney has said he would veto the measure if elected president.

On hearing of the efforts by the group, Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national group that lobbies against legalization, said: “You’d think they would help people in the country legally who face difficult times getting a start.”

About 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools each year, according to experts who follow the issue. The Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional to deny a K-12 public education to children who are in the country illegally.

But after that, their future is uncertain because they can’t qualify for federal grants, work-study programs or bank loans to finance college nor can they obtain work legally.

U.S. tech companies have long backed raising the number of visas the government issues for skilled immigrants such as software engineers, and argue the country is losing its competitive edge as other economies attract skilled labor forces.

At a recent gathering in Los Altos, Calif., an undocumented 23-year-old with a degree in civil engineering, which he obtained on a scholarship, told funders of E4FC that he had five job offers in the last two months, only to have them revoked because of his immigration status. He said he has been willing to work for no pay to accrue experience required for a professional engineering license. Even that has proved challenging.

The U.S. has “put a lot of money into [undocumented students] already,” said Eva Grove, wife of Intel’s co-founder, whose family foundation gave $1 million to immigration-related groups last year. “It makes no sense to dead-end them after they are educated.”

Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared March 6, 2012, on page A1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Tech Titans FundStudents.

By DENNIS NISHI

As vice president of a Los Angeles film-production company in the 1980s, Ronald Kaufman had nearly everything that he’d ever wanted in a job — great pay, friendly co-workers and interesting work coordinating product placements in films. Unfortunately, he hated the job.

“The owner of the company was a master at intimidation and would scream at everybody. An hour later, he would be a great guy. It made everybody unhappy to be there,” says Mr. Kaufman, now an executive coach.

Dennis Nishi

But he knew he wouldn’t earn the same salary elsewhere, so Mr. Kaufman committed himself to making his situation work. “You can’t really change people’s nature, so I changed how I responded to him. I learned to align with his demands, instead of questioning them, and that made my 8½ years at the company so much easier.”

Toxic workplace relationships, failing company fortunes and limited advancement opportunities are just a few compelling reasons to quit a job. But career experts say many workplace problems that employees may think are irreconcilable can be improved or even resolved with some action and a change of attitude.

First, find out if your problems are unique. Reach out to co-workers in other departments, peers through industry associations or even call colleagues at other companies to compare notes.

“It’s a very individual perception that leads to people believing that others are receiving better treatment,” says Christopher McCarthy, professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who researches workplace stress.

Separate the demands of work from your own expectations of yourself. If you’re unhappy about falling short of your own personal career goals, try breaking your big goals into smaller, more realistically achievable ones. This can improve your morale by reinforcing small successes.

Pitch your boss on a less formal and more goal-oriented workplace. And offer improved results in exchange for more autonomy. “Most people are generally happier at work when given more creative freedom to do their jobs,” says Mr. McCarthy.

If the operational processes of your job are leading to failure, alter your approach, if you can. Spencer Belkofer was an account representative for a telecom firm in Montgomery, Ala., and he didn’t like the way the company trained him to sell phone services. Unhappy customers frequently complained about bad contracts. So Mr. Belkofer decided to go off script and spell out every detail of the services offered, and he frequently sided with customers to resolve problems.

The extra effort didn’t improve his sales, but Mr. Belkofer felt better about the work and customers thanked him for being forthright.

—Email: sjdnishi@gmail.com

By JANE HODGES

Telecommuters, entrepreneurs, and the self-employed all grapple with the logistical challenges of working alone. At home, workers face isolation and domestic distraction. At the corner coffee shop offering free Wi-Fi, there’s insufficient privacy, too few electrical outlets and the nuisance of latte orders shouted out through the day.

A growing number of workers face these hassles every day. As of November 2009, there were nine million self-employed workers in the U.S., according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Meanwhile, the volume of workers telecommuting at least once a month for employers grew 17% between 2006 and 2008, to 33.7 million workers, according to WorldatWork, a human-resources research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Telecommuting has grown more widespread among full-time workers due to technology advances and corporate efforts to drive down overhead by lowering real-estate costs, says Cindy Auten, general manager of Telework Exchange, a telecommuting research organization in Alexandria, Va. “Organizations are starting to see the benefits of telecommuting for the bottom line,” Ms. Auten says. “The ability to work offsite is even a recruitment tool.”

For those who lack a conventional office, shared, or “coworking,” spaces promise to solve some of the dilemmas of working alone. These facilities provide environments where professional nomads can work in relative quiet and even socialize around the coffee pot, or copier.

Just how well could we “cowork”? To find out, we took laptop and cellphone to four facilities in four cities, Office Nomads in Seattle; Souk in Portland, Ore.; The Coop in Chicago; and New Work City in Manhattan. All four are located in popular neighborhoods near public transit.

The facilities offered a variety of pricing plans ranging from day rates for the noncommittal to full-time 24-hour access memberships. Aside from solo workstations, they all also offered free high-speed Internet connections, free coffee, whiteboards and areas (with beanbag chairs) for small group brainstorming sessions, restrooms, lockers or storage, and light office amenities such as copiers.

Reservations weren’t required at any of the spaces, but were available at Souk and are forthcoming at New Work City.

All the facilities belonged to the “Coworking Visa” program, which lets members in participating coworking spaces use partner spaces elsewhere when traveling.

All also offered first-come/first-serve use of conference rooms for quick private chats or calls. At Souk, you could pay to reserve conference rooms for formal meetings or longer uses.

The Coop, located in Chicago’s West Loop area, was the smallest space we tested, with desk-top spaces pushed up against one another without dividers.

We visited twice during the week—on a Wednesday and Thursday—and appreciated that a few workers—an accountant and a consultant—greeted us. Working in a formal office motivated us more to work and we appreciated the comfy black leather chairs and good lighting. But the lack of barriers between desks meant we could see coworkers’ computer screens, and vice versa.

We were unsure of phone etiquette, but learned it was acceptable to make calls in the open when coworkers conducted job interviews and client meetings over the phone. While slightly distracting, the open-air calls were no worse than in a conventional office.

Manhattan’s New Work City, on the edge of SoHo, was on the compact side. The space had a 20-worker capacity and didn’t take reservations when we called, but the owner said a reservation systems is in the works. After check-in, we snagged one of the few remaining spots. We appreciated that our work space was spacious and that coworkers seemed industrious. Some of the office denizens appeared familiar with one another and a bulletin board posted community news, but we didn’t feel pressured to socialize.

Both coworking spaces we tried in the techie Northwest were bigger. Seattle’s Office Nomads, located in youthful and artistic Capitol Hill, can accommodate several dozen workers with its mix of closed-door offices, open desks and lounge areas. Office Nomads didn’t require a reservation and won’t charge for the first visit. Office Nomads was well-lit, with abundant plugs and desk options.

Coworkers—as well as the site’s founders—introduced themselves and offered help. We weren’t sure if we visited on a particularly friendly day or if this was the norm. Office Nomads appeared to place an emphasis on creating a community for its members; there was a “State of the Nomads” monthly meeting at midday. A bulletin board listed in-house social options as well as visiting speakers slated to appear, and also featured quirky photos and fun facts about members. Office Nomads also offered the most extensive weekday hours, from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

We made a reservation to use Souk, on the edge of Portland’s Pearl District and Chinatown, for a Thursday. We were surprised at how quiet the space was, with less than 15 workers inhabiting a space sufficient for several dozen more. The friendly office manager checked us in, gave us a tour, and even made us an Americano coffee from the office cappuccino maker.

Souk offered the widest variety of work-space configurations. Full-time members could use enclosed offices, but less-frequent coworkers could choose from rolling desks in a large open room, a communal work table, or first-come/first-serve semi-private rooms with walls and sliding doors. We liked that rolling desks in the open room could be moved at coworkers’ discretion—toward a wall for privacy, near a partner for collaboration. The open room also offered lightweight partitions for makeshift privacy. We chose a semi-private room. Noise was minimal, but we overheard some consultants and nonprofit sector types talking about work projects. Abstract art adorned the brick walls and furnishings included Herman Miller chairs and modern desks.

All in all, we liked coworking spaces. There were a few hitches, however. We needed to spend considerable time on the phone and felt uncomfortable discussing confidential matters publicly or hogging conference rooms. The other complication is that while coworking spaces guarantee and deliver a baseline of services, they also offer lots of extras based on loose rules. For instance, sometimes the facilities stay open later than posted hours and sometimes they don’t, or conference rooms aren’t always available.

For those of us with tight deadlines or plan-ahead mentalities, this can be stressful. But considering how cheap and flexible coworking is relative to a full-time lease—and the social perks—we don’t have problems with this unpredictability.

—Lori Barrett in Chicago and Shivani Vora in New York contributed to this article.

By DENNIS NISHI

Becoming a full-time employee after a career of freelance and contract work isn’t always an easy transition. Some employers view career freelancers as a flight risk or as lone wolves not suited to working in collaborative environments. How to prove you’re ready to join a staff.

• Tap your networks. Connect with past and present clients. They’re already familiar with your work, so may be receptive to taking you on or even creating a new role for you. Try getting a referral from an employee or trusted third party. This can include vendors, former employees or even trade-group contacts.

• Show commitment. “Clearly articulate why you’re at this place in your life and career that you want to make this transition from [being] independent,” says Diane Adams, vice president of human resources at Chicago-based Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions Inc.,

creators of software for the healthcare industry. She says it’s important to hear that you want to contribute in specific ways and can learn something by being on staff, too.

• Be specific about your experience.It’s important you portray what you’ve done “in a results-oriented way,” says Brian Drum, president of Drum & Associates, a New York-based executive-search firm. “Companies will look at that more favorably because it’s hard to decipher when you just say you’re an accountant.” Mr. Drum adds, “What did you do? What did you accomplish? Show them.”

• Target your résumé. Use the job description of the position you want to apply for to prioritize your résumé. “Usually, the skills and qualifications are listed in the order of their needs,” says Mr. Drum. Your résumé should be tailored to reflect that. “If you don’t have the right key words for that specific job, you might get bypassed, regardless of the experience you have,” he says. “Most résumés are not only scanned electronically, they’re read electronically.”

• Show team spirit. Employers will want to know that you can work well with others. Be prepared to provide examples of collaboration, including how you’ve worked with clients, vendors and other third parties. “Working as an independent contractor and working inside are two different kinds of collaboration,” says Ms. Adams. You can go outside of your profession to show you can handle the latter. Doing community work with a group like the Rotary Club or serving on a nonprofit board can be useful examples.

• Promote your freelance experience. Successful freelancers are typically driven, hard working and independent, which are qualities that you’ll want to emphasize. But you don’t want to seem as if you’re intent on changing things within the company—unless that’s what you’d be hired to do. Use your ability to handle many assignments or contracts as a way to show you are adaptable.

• Do the math. Research what the bottom line costs amount to for both choices. Typically, you’ll earn less as a full-time employee, especially when considering the tax benefits of being self-employed, but you’ll get health and retirement benefits as well as paid vacations, sick leave and workman’s compensation coverage.

Write to Dennis Nishi at cjeditor@dowjones.com

By ALEXANDRA LEVIT

Penelope Trunk knows something about risk. A nationally syndicated columnist, Ms. Trunk shocked the business community when she revealed intimate details of her personal life on her blog. At the time, many weren’t sure this was the right move, but the blog shot up in popularity and eventually garnered over 30,000 subscribers.

If not for that loyal following, Ms. Trunk might not have been able to make a case for her current venture, Brazen Careerist (BrazenCareerist.com), an online professional network for Generation Y.

Courtesy Alexandra Levit

Alexandra Levit

Launching a new company is a perilous endeavor, but Ms. Trunk thought the risk was worth it. “This world isn’t set up for writers to get anywhere,” she says. “Although I went into massive debt and ended up sacrificing my marriage, it was essential that I take my career into my own hands.”

As a result, she is no longer dependent on publications for her livelihood and has achieved one of her lifetime goals — to serve as a mentor to twenty-something employees.

Big Risks, Big Rewards

If you think about it, most accomplished people in our culture are entrepreneurs who have taken big risks to net proportionally high rewards.

Tough as it is for cautious people like me to accept, if you don’t occasionally take calculated gambles, you won’t get ahead as quickly as those who do. You will also never get over your fear of the unknown, and life will be predictable and dull.

How do you go about deciding if a career risk is necessary and will bear fruit?

First, it helps to think long term. Where do you want your career to be in five years, and what actions will you have to take to make sure you get there? Next, clearly define the challenge and the opportunity — or the upside if the risk goes well.

Then, consider the downside. Will the worst-case scenario be career-ending, or something that can be overcome?

What’s Your Backup Plan?

Finally, what are some clues to assess if the risk is going bad, and what is your backup plan if your risk isn’t successful?

In thinking through these questions, you might determine, for example, that quitting your well-paying job and spending your savings to pursue an invention idea isn’t a risk you find tolerable.

The smartest risks have a limited downside and a huge upside. They involve research and the counsel of experienced people — but also the willingness to step back and let the cards fall where they may.

Believe that you’ve made the right choice, and have faith that everything will turn out all right in the end. Insecurity and negativity won’t serve you well, because you’ll be constantly holding your breath, waiting for things to fall apart.

Speaking of which, if a risk doesn’t work out, don’t let it stop you from taking similar actions in the future. It’s normal to feel disappointment and even embarrassment. But it’s essential that you pick yourself up and move on.

Take stock of what went wrong and make a note to do it differently next time. There is no shorter path to career fulfillment.

Write to Alexandra Levit at reinvent@wsj.com

By TODDI GUTNER

Q:
I am 55 and was laid off from a 28-year corporate communications career a little over a year ago. Since then I’ve answered ads for more than 400 open positions in my field, attended networking meetings, job fairs, and in general, done what I can to find a new position. I’m even willing to relocate. I’ve only been invited for face-to-face interviews six times. Most openings I see seek employees with only three to five years of experience, occasionally seven to 10 years, and few with 10-plus years. With my experience, employers do the math and figure I’m too old or expensive. What do you suggest I do?

A: As you well know, you’re not alone. The market is flooded with senior professionals just like yourself. But there are ways you can stand out and increase your odds of success.

First, you need to develop a strategic plan for your job search. It doesn’t sound like you’ve got one at this point. Indiscriminately sending out resumes, like the 400 ads you answered, means you’re likely going after a lot of low-level positions.

Start by identifying employers that value your particular background and skills, advises Sheryl Spanier, an executive career management consultant at Spanier & Co. in New York City. “You need to be clear about what you have to offer and who might be interested,” she says.

Think broadly. “Instead of seeking to replace your lost position, consider seeking work that can be project related, outside your industry or an adaptation of your expertise to an allied field,” says Ms. Spanier.

Next, search for networking connections who can recommend your candidacy before you send your resume to the firms you’re targeting, says Doug Matthews, president and chief operating officer of Right Management, an outplacement firm based in Philadelphia. If you suspect that your age may be hurting your chances, trim the length of your resume, suggests Alane Baranello, managing director of Eileen Finn & Associates Inc., an executive recruiter in New York. “Make sure it only highlights the last 15 years of experience,” she says. “There is no need to advertise 28 years of experience, as employers don’t require it.”

But don’t make too many drastic changes. While you may be desperate for a job, you don’t want to put yourself in a position where you’ll be miserable. It may be helpful to trim your resume for a short-term assignment, but keep it longer for the job that you really want.

Another strategy is to recast your resume to illustrate how you’ve developed and mentored people over your tenure. “Many companies may see your talents as an opportunity to create a transition position to help develop less-experienced people,” says John Heins, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Spherion Corp., a staffing firm based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Consider marketing yourself as someone skilled in nurturing young talent if this is the case.

As for the perception that you’re too expensive, you may need to re-examine what you’re worth. Right now, companies across several industries are resorting to salary reductions instead of layoffs, says Spanier. Talk to people in your field and find out what the going salary is for someone at your experience level. It could be up to 20% below what you were making two years ago.

Meanwhile, do an assessment of what happened in those six interviews. Many professionals don’t know how to effectively interview for a new position and that hurts their chances far more than age, compensation or experience, says Mr. Matthews. For example, a common mistake is for laid-off workers is to give the impression that they’ve been victimized by their former employers. Others err by asking about compensation and benefits too early in the interview process. To find out what you might be doing wrong, ask a friend at your experience level or above to conduct mock interviews with you, says Mr. Matthews. And be sure to request honest feedback.

Write to Ms. Gutner at cjeditor@dowjones.com. If you have a question for the careers columnists, be sure to put Career Q&A in your subject line.