Archive for the ‘Careers’ Category

By MELISSA KORN

Masters of business administration are still vying to become masters of the universe.

Financial-services industry hiring at the big Master of Business Administration programs hit a post financial-crisis high this year. Employers such as banks, hedge funds, investment managers, private equity and venture capital firms hired 39% of job-seeking 2011 graduates at Harvard Business School and the Yale School of Management, 36% at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and 51% at Columbia Business School.

Even in an age of heavy layoffs, shrinking bonus pools and noisy antibank protests, it is no mystery why M.B.A. students keep entering the revolving door that is Wall Street. It pays well and carries considerable prestige.

Feyisayo Oshinkanlu, a second-year student at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, accepted an offer from Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York after working in its sales and trading department there over the summer. Getting a job on the Street means “there’s definitely a weight taken off my shoulders, definitely a little swagger in my step,” said Mr. Oshinkanlu, who is due to start after his scheduled graduation in June 2012.

But those getting jobs in finance will be entering an industry undergoing a massive belt-tightening, as investors flee banks hammered by a weak economy, tumultuous markets and tightening regulation. The crunch could dim hiring prospects for the next wave of M.B.A. graduates—and crimp promotion opportunities down the road.

Even in an age of heavy layoffs, shrinking bonus pools and noisy anti-bank protests, it is no mystery why M.B.A. students keep entering the revolving door that is Wall Street, Melissa Korn reports on Markets Hub. Photo: AP.

“You’re vulnerable if you’re in that five-, seven- or nine-year range,” said Alan Johnson, managing director of compensation-consulting firm Johnson Associates Inc. “You’re expensive and you don’t have clients.”

Investment bankers with about five years of experience can command compensation of close to $400,000, Mr. Johnson said. New hires from business schools can expect about one-third as much, he said.

That math helps to explain why banks and other big firms continue to hire even as they try to squeeze costs. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.,

which this week reported its second quarterly loss in a dozen years, has said it may cut 1,000 jobs or more. Bank of America Corp.

has said it plans 30,000 job cuts over the next few years. New York City’s securities industry faces the loss of nearly 10,000 jobs by the end of 2012, New York state’s comptroller has predicted, a blow to the area’s economy and government budgets.

Trimming the existing work force doesn’t preclude companies from hiring new talent, but some schools say they’re seeing at least the beginnings of a pullback.

Jack Oakes, assistant dean for career development at University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, said companies’ intentions have become much less clear in recent weeks. This fall, investment-banking hiring “is clearly not as buoyant as it was last year,” Mr. Oakes said.

Yale School of Management also is seeing a shift in investment-banking firms looking to hire this fall. “There’s activity, but there’s a palpable sense of uncertainty,” said Ivan Kerbel, director of career services at the business school. While banks aren’t saying outright that they’re not hiring, he said, “There’s a sense of conservatism among employers.”

“We continue to hire top talent in areas of our business where we have identified growth opportunities and require additional staff to support customers and clients,” said a representative from Bank of America. A Goldman Sachs spokesman said the company sees “similar” M.B.A. hiring for investment banking, and an increase in investment management.

Wall Street could pull back considerably and remain a major draw for those with an M.B.A. Even at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where Wall Street hiring fell this year, “financial services was still our largest industry for placement,” said Maryellen Lamb, the school’s interim director of M.B.A. career management.

But career-services officers say students are gaining interest in a more diverse range of companies, including smaller outfits.

Jana Kierstead, managing director of M.B.A. career and professional development at Harvard Business School, said that students in the latest class, and even more so the class of 2012, have been attracted to boutique firms or start-ups and are less excited about attending presentations from large companies.

John Tough, a second-year student at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, interned at venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers over the summer and said he plans to look for openings at other venture-capital companies. But Mr. Tough said he is seeing many of his friends aim for finance jobs in the corporate sector, rather than at Wall Street firms.

“In the finance market, you have so little control over what’s going on,” said Mr. Tough.

Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com

By DANA MATTIOLI

(See Corrections & Amplification item below.)

With unemployment at 9.4% and rising, it’s a buyer’s market for employers that are hiring. But many employers are bypassing the jobless to target those still working, reasoning that these survivors are the top performers.

“If they’re employed in today’s economy, they have to be first string,” says Ryan Ross, a partner with Kaye/Bassman International Corp., an executive recruiting firm in Dallas. Mr. Ross says more clients recently have indicated that they would prefer to fill positions with “passive candidates” who are working elsewhere and not actively seeking a job.

The bias extends from front-line workers to senior managers. Charlie Wilgus, managing partner of executive search for Lucas Group, based in Atlanta, says a manufacturing client looking for a division president recently refused to consider a former divisional president at Newell Rubbermaid Inc. whose department had been eliminated. The client doesn’t want candidates who have been laid off, Mr. Wilgus says.

Employers’ preference for the employed adds another hurdle for those who have been laid off. Job seekers frequently are competing with dozens of other applicants for the few available positions.

Bobby Fitzgerald, a partner in five restaurants in three states, says these days he gets two dozen or more unsolicited résumés each day at one of his Phoenix restaurants, the White Chocolate Grill. But Mr. Fitzgerald says his top candidates, for jobs ranging from servers to management, usually are people who are employed elsewhere. He currently has 50 openings across his five restaurants and has told recruiters to bring in only people who are working.

Mr. Fitzgerald has long practiced “guerrilla recruiting.” Even with so many applicants available, he still sends managers to other restaurants with instructions to approach staffers who seem to be strong performers.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s preference for the employed can be time-consuming and expensive. He recently spent three weeks courting a restaurant manager in Birmingham, Ala., for a management post. Mr. Fitzgerald flew the candidate to Phoenix for an interview and a “realistic job preview,” but the candidate chose not to relocate and declined the job offer. “There are a lot of applicants between Phoenix and Birmingham who would have gladly taken the job,” says Mr. Fitzgerald.

While the tactic doesn’t work very often, Mr. Fitzgerald says it lets people know he is hiring. “We are always looking for the very best of the industry, which happens to be people who are still employed,” he says. “The overflow of applicants hasn’t made it easier to hire at all.”

Even when employers are successful, recruiting the employed can cost money. Tim Donohue, senior account manager of Infinity Consulting Solutions, an executive-search firm specializing in finance-related industries, based in New York, says candidates who are wooed away from other jobs typically demand a higher salary than the unemployed, who tend to be more open to negotiation.

Nonetheless, many employers consider the employed more valuable and worth the extra effort. Health-care management-consulting firm Beacon Partners Inc., Weymouth, Mass., has openings for 10 technology-consulting and senior project-management positions. Chief Executive Ralph Fargnoli is looking first for people who are still working. “If they’re still employed that means they have some significant value,” Mr. Fargnoli says.

Beacon, with about 145 employees, targets candidates at conferences, presentations and other gatherings. “We attend industry events and approach the speaker or attendees to see if they’re happy at their job and whether they see a career path at their current employer,” says Mr. Fargnoli. Recently, Mr. Fargnoli successfully recruited a chief information officer of a hospital health system for a vice president role at Beacon after meeting the person at conferences.

The targets aren’t always eager to jump ship. “We’re seeing candidates afraid to move because they don’t want to be the last one in, first one out,” says Jaimie Lynn Craig, an executive recruiter with Premier Staffing in San Francisco. She says many executive-level candidates are seeking guarantees and severance provisions in case their new jobs fall through. Messrs. Fargnoli and Fitzgerald say the employees they approach are more risk-averse, given the shaky economy.

When employers post jobs, they often are flooded with applicants, many of whom aren’t good matches for the position. Kristi Robinson, vice president of talent acquisition at Express Scripts Inc., says applications at the St. Louis pharmacy-benefit manager are up 80% from last year, but many candidates are either over- or underqualified. By targeting people who are currently employed in comparable positions, the firm can bypass candidates who aren’t perfect matches.

Ms. Robinson is looking to fill more than 100 positions, from operations and sales to finance. She says Express Scripts is targeting passive candidates through networking and referrals, and expects them to account for about half of new hires this year, similar to last year.

Job seekers sense the trend. A recent online survey conducted by Infinity Consulting Solutions of 417 job hunters in the New York area found that 59% agreed or strongly agreed that employers gave preference to candidates that are currently employed.

However, there are still jobs to be had if you can calm an employer’s biggest worry about out-of-work applicants: that your termination was the result of poor performance.

Arming yourself with strong letters of recommendation from your previous employer, stating that you were laid off for economic reasons and that you are “eligible for rehire,” can help your case, says Mr. Ross of Kaye/Bassman. If you can’t obtain formal letters, get references from senior-level employees at your prior company, he says.

Being flexible on your salary or title also goes a long way, says Mr. Donohue of Infinity Consulting.

And if you lost your job when your department was eliminated, make sure to tell prospective employers; that will be considered more benign than selective layoffs, says Mr. Donohue. “If they got rid of half the team and you’re on the losing half, their antennas are up,” he says.

Corrections & Amplifications

Restaurant operator Bobby Fitzgerald of The White Chocolate Grill only uses recruiters for management positions and says he accepts applications from everybody. This article incorrectly said Mr. Fitzgerald had instructed recruiters to only bring in people who are working for openings at his five restaurants.

Write to
Dana Mattioli at
Dana.Mattioli@wsj.com

By DIONNE SEARCEY

By now, many employees are uncomfortably aware that their every keystroke at work, from email on office computers to text messages on company phones, can be monitored legally by their employers.

What employees typically don’t expect is for the company to spy on them while on password-protected sites using nonwork computers. But even that privacy could be in jeopardy.

A case brewing in federal court in New Jersey pits bosses against two employees who were complaining about their workplace on an invite-only discussion group on MySpace.com, a social-networking site owned by News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The case tests whether a supervisor who managed to log into the forum — and then fired employees who badmouthed supervisors and customers there — had the right to do so.

Photo Illustration by The Wall Street Journal

The case has some legal and privacy experts concerned that companies are intruding into areas that their employees had considered off limits.

“The question is whether employees have a right to privacy in their non-work-created communications with each other. And I would think the answer is that they do,” said Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment expert and partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York.

The legal landscape is murky. For the most part, employers don’t need a reason to fire nonunion workers. But state laws in California, New York and Connecticut protect employees who engage in lawful, off-duty activities from being fired or disciplined, according to a report prepared by attorneys at the firm Proskauer Rose LLP. While private conversations might be covered under those laws, none of the statutes specifically addresses social networking or blogging. Thus, privacy advocates expect to see more of these legal challenges.

In February, three police officers in Harrison, N.Y., were suspended after they allegedly made lewd remarks about the town mayor on a Facebook account. The officers mistakenly thought the remarks were protected with a password, but city officials viewed the page, said Harrison police chief David Hall. The remarks about Mayor Joan Walsh might have violated the officer’s code of conduct, he said.

Mr. Hall said the town board was considering firing the officers. The policemen have asked a federal judge in White Plains, N.Y., to limit the town of Harrison’s inquiry into the online postings, citing privacy concerns, said Donald Feerick, the officers’ attorney. Calls to Ms. Walsh weren’t returned.

The case in New Jersey centers on two employees of Houston’s restaurant in Hackensack, bartender Brian Pietrylo and waitress Doreen Marino, who in 2006 created and contributed to a forum about their workplace on MySpace.com. Mr. Pietrylo emailed invitations to co-workers, who then had to log in using a personal email address and a password.

“I just thought this would be a nice way to vent…without any eyes outside spying in on us. This group is entirely private,” Mr. Pietrylo wrote in his introduction to the forum, according to court filings.

On the forum, Mr. Pietrylo and Ms. Marino, who was his girlfriend, made fun of Houston’s decor and patrons, and made sexual jokes. They also made negative comments about their supervisors.

The supervisors were tipped off to the forum by Karen St. Jean, a restaurant hostess, who logged into her account at an after-hours gathering with a Houston’s manager to show him the site. They all had a laugh, Ms. St. Jean said in a court deposition, and she didn’t think any more about it.

But later, another supervisor called Ms. St. Jean into his office and asked her for her email and password to the forum. The login information was passed up the supervisory chain, where restaurant managers viewed the comments.

The following week, Mr. Pietrylo and Ms. Marino were fired. Houston’s managers have said in court filings that the pair’s online posts violated policies set out in an employee handbook, which include professionalism and a positive attitude. A lawyer for Hillstone Restaurant Group, which owns Houston’s, declined to comment.

In their lawsuit, Ms. Marino and Mr. Pietrylo claim that their managers illegally accessed their online communications in violation of federal wiretapping statutes and that the managers also violated their privacy under New Jersey law.

But the courts might not view online musings as private communication. “You can’t post something on the Internet and claim breach of privacy when someone sees it,” said Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J.

Ms. St. Jean said in a deposition she feared she would be fired if she didn’t give up her password, a twist in the case that Mr. Maltby says could sway a jury against the company.

Labor and legal experts say the outcome of many employee privacy cases hinges on workers’ expectations of their privacy rights — particularly whether they have been given notice that they are subject to monitoring. In the Houston’s case, the workers had no idea their online activities outside of work could be monitored, says their attorney, Fred J. Pisani. A trial is set for June 9.

Write to Dionne Searcey at dionne.searcey@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A13

By JOE LIGHT

Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal

Christopher Santini has spent months trying to collect $35,000 he says he is owed for freelance work.

As more people turn to freelance and independent consulting work, they’re taking on an unexpected role: bill collector.

For New York business consultant Christopher Santini, the pursuit for payment from one client has practically become a second job. Last May, a small business he consulted for went through a merger, and the new company fell behind on payments to him. Now, Mr. Santini, who’s been a freelance consultant since 2008, says he is owed about $35,000, which would have accounted for almost 40% of his annual income last year.

“I started to get the standard run around,” says Mr. Santini. “The secretary would tell me the person I needed to speak to was out. Finally [they] started to ignore me and not return emails or calls.”

Mr. Santini says he has spent 80 hours calling and emailing company officials. He discussed the case with a lawyer, but decided not to bring it to court. Instead, he is still working to get the client to pay up on his own.

About 40% of freelancers had trouble getting paid in 2009, according to a survey released in mid-April by the New York-based Freelancers Union, a 135,000-member organization for independent contractors across the country in fields such as media, technology, and advertising. It was the first year the group asked the question on its member survey. And more than three out of four freelancers said they’ve had trouble getting paid over the course of their careers, according to organization.

The problem could become more acute as independent contractors emerge as a more central piece of the work force. The financial crisis and the resulting high unemployment thrust many professionals into the ranks of freelance workers, which may continue to grow despite signs of an economic recovery.

Littler Mendelson, a San Francisco-based employment law firm with 49 offices nationwide, predicts that in 2010 half of previously eliminated positions filled will be filled by contingent workers—such as independent contractors, freelancers, and temp workers—accounting for as much as 25% of the work force nationwide— based on client interviews and a survey conducted by a staffing analysis firm.

Since independent contractors aren’t covered by most federal employment laws, they don’t enjoy the same legal protections on wages as permanent employees, says a spokesman for the Department of Labor. If a permanent employee doesn’t get paid, federal or state labor departments can fine companies and even prosecute company executives. But independent contractors often have to turn to the court system, in most cases small claims, if they go unpaid.

To some, small-claims court can be more trouble than it’s worth, says Sara Horowitz, executive director of the Freelancers Union. Depending on the state, it will cost about $50 to file a claim and it can take months for a case to be heard. Even if a freelancer wins, small-claims judgments must be collected by the plaintiff.

Even before going to court, freelancers can spend significant time building their case. In January, Medford, Mass., artist Charles Leo sued a California-based coffee shop and kiosk manufacturer for $1,150, the agreed-upon fee of architectural renderings of a coffee shop he was never paid for. Mr. Leo says he spent more than 60 hours creating the renderings—and 40 hours trying to collect payment, gathering evidence and spending time in small-claims court. The judge ruled in Mr. Leo’s favor and ordered the company to pay the fee, but didn’t grant the $850 or so in punitive damages Mr. Leo requested for his time spent on the case. (The maximum judgment for small claims in Massachusetts is $2,000.)

“It was a piddling amount compared to the time I had to spend pursuing it,” he says.

How can a freelancer avoid problems? Before accepting a job, freelancers can search consumer complaint Web sites like RipoffReport.com and industry discussion boards to make sure the company they’re contracting with doesn’t have a history of late payments, says Kate Lister, a former small-business consultant, and co-author of “Undress for Success: The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home.”

Make sure to have the terms of payment and penalties for being late built into a written contract. Should a firm run into financial trouble, company officials typically give priority to the contractors who have spelled out fee-based consequences for a late payment, says Michelle Goodman, author of “My So-Called Freelance Life.”

After a payment deadline has passed, immediately try to connect with the person responsible for payment by phone. If they don’t respond, send a revised invoice with the agreed-upon fees or interest charges added on.

Where contractors go wrong is when they don’t act fast at the first sign of a late payment. Freelancers “don’t want to look like a jerk, but that’s silly. This isn’t getting a prom date. It’s business,” Ms. Goodman says.

Filing a complaint in small-claims court should be a last resort. As a last step before heading to small-claims court, send a simple letter with the amount, how long it’s overdue and your intention to take it to court, Ms. Lister says, and copy your lawyer, a company board member and any relevant regulatory agencies. A complaint about a broadcast company, for example, could be copied to the Federal Communications Commission, which considers how a broadcaster treats its local community when granting certain permits, Ms. Lister says.

“You have to find those pressure points that will make someone really pay attention to your letter,” she says.

If you get a judgment in your favor and the company doesn’t send a check, you’ll probably have to pay other fees to file liens, garnish the company’s earnings, or hire a police officer to seize cash from the business, depending on the state. Keep in mind, if a company hasn’t paid because it’s under bankruptcy-court protection or doesn’t have the money, you likely won’t be able to collect.

For its part, the Freelancers Union launched an advertising and lobbying campaign urging employers to make good on unpaid freelance wages in early April. Ms. Horowitz says her organization is working on potential legislation to pass on to state lawmakers in New York to give free-lancers more legal recourse and create penalties for companies that don’t pay.

As for Mr. Santini, he’s now working out a payment plan with the firm’s chief executive. “I don’t know how many times I’ve been told ‘The check is in the mail’ or ‘Your invoice went to my junk email inbox,’” he says.

By PATRICK G. LEE

Looking to attract employers’ attention, some law schools are throwing out decades of tradition by replacing textbook courses with classes that teach more practical skills.

Indiana University Maurer School of Law started teaching project management this year and also offers a course on so-called emotional intelligence. The class has no textbook and instead uses personality assessments and peer reviews to develop students’ interpersonal skills.

New York Law School hired 15 new faculty members over the past two years, many directly from the ranks of working lawyers, to teach skills in negotiation, counseling and fact investigation. The school says it normally hires one or two new faculty a year, and usually those focused on legal research.

And Washington and Lee University School of Law completely rebuilt its third-year curriculum in 2009, swapping out lectures and Socratic-style seminars for case-based simulations run by practicing lawyers.

A few elite players also are making adjustments. Harvard Law School last year launched a problem-solving class for first-year students, and Stanford Law School is considering making a full-time clinical course—which entails several 40-hour plus weeks of actual case work—a graduation requirement.

“Law firms are saying, ‘You’re sending us people who are not in a position to do anything useful for clients.’ This is a first effort to try and fix that,” says Larry Kramer, the law dean at Stanford.

The moves come amid a prolonged downturn in the legal job market. Only about one-quarter of last year’s graduating law-school classes—down from 33% in 2009—snagged positions with big law firms, according to the National Association for Law Placement, an organization that collects employment data.

In past years, a law firm could bill clients for a new lawyer’s work, even if that time were spent getting the novice up to speed. During the recession, corporate clients started limiting the number of hours a firm could charge and made it a policy not to pay for first-year associates, explains Don Liu, general counsel for Xerox Corp.

“This is a push from clients saying, ‘Why are we going to pay this kind of money? We don’t want to train the new lawyers,’” says Jennifer Queen, head of recruiting for McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP.

There are also fewer jobs to go around at a time when lawyers are in excess. In 2010, there were more than twice as many people—about 54,000—who passed the bar exam than there were legal job openings in the U.S., according to an analysis by consultants at Economic Modeling Specialists Inc.

Most law schools’ offerings cover a wide range of topics, but clinical placements—often students’ first chance for a taste of real law work—are usually optional and far fewer in number than theory-based courses.

“Medical students learn from real doctors in a real hospital during their education. In law, we’re learning from a bunch of academics who have deliberately elected not to pursue law as a profession…there’s such a disconnect,” says BeiBei Que, a 2007 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law. Ms. Que, who runs a boutique law firm that helps tech start-ups navigate legal issues, says she had to pick up practical skills—networking, soliciting clients, forming a business plan—on her own.

Law schools have generally lagged behind other, more real-world oriented institutions like business schools in piloting practical improvements, as law professors tend to focus on scholarly work, says Bill Henderson, a professor at Maurer. And curriculum change tends to “move like a glacier,” he adds.

But many remain skeptical that new approaches to education will have a meaningful impact on the ability of lawyers to land jobs. “It could enhance the reputation of the law school…as places that will produce new lawyers who have practical skills,” says Timothy Lloyd, a partner at Hogan Lovells and chair of its recruiting committee. “As to the particular student when I’m interviewing them? It doesn’t make much of a difference.”

Other recruiters say schools that have overhauled programs need to do a better job of promoting the changes to employers in order to see an impact. Until then, law school prestige will remain a big factor, says Bruce MacEwen, a law firm consultant and blogger who tracks the legal industry.

“Firms are very obsessed with prestige,” he says. “That’s just a fact of life.”

When I was a child and my parents told me we were moving, I was terrified. I worried that I’d be an outcast at my new school, that the kids on the block would be brats and—worst of all—that I’d never see my best friend again.

That’s understandable when you’re 10. But what about when you’re an adult?

I felt the same way all over again recently, when The Wall Street Journal moved to a different part of town.

It’s an old saw that moving is among life’s most stressful experiences. I’d always thought it was because of the mad rush to stuff everything into boxes before the movers arrived. But as my colleagues and I have learned, moves are tough even if you’re packing little more than the contents of a desk. Indeed, moving offices can be as disorienting as moving homes.

First, the decision to go is not ours. And where we work affects almost every part of the day, from our commute to what we eat. Most important, the office layout shapes some of the most significant bonds in our lives: our work relationships.

Over and over, as my Journal colleagues arrived at our new office, I heard the same themes. “I feel like a junior-high kid coming into work every day, going in the wrong direction, ending up on the wrong floor, and just generally being such a total dork,” explains one reporter.

“It felt like we were the new kids at school—the new people we saw in the café looked like the girls you disliked in high school,” says another.

“It was literally that feeling of being lost in the hall. Where’s the bathroom? Who are all these people? Did I just turn a corner and stumble into a space where I don’t belong, like where the cool kids hang out?” says an editor.

It seemed that moving our office just a few miles had hurled us back into adolescence. We wandered around in search of our friends, whined that others had nicer desks
and flocked to lunch in droves, seeking safety in numbers.

Our ’tween behavior went on for weeks. One editor admits that at the elevator banks, she still keeps her head down and moves quickly, out of fear she will run into an ex-friend who works in our new building.

It’s no coincidence that my colleagues kept referencing junior high. “That’s a big period of insecurity in our lives,” says Rudy Nydegger, professor of management and psychology at Union Graduate College in Schenectady, N.Y. “It’s halfway between being a child and being an adult.”

Tell me about it. We’re all happy to have our jobs. And our new offices are spiffy—a vast improvement over our dumpy old space. But to the child within us, the angst feels instinctive.

Humans are creatures of habit—we have favorite chairs, coffee vendors and watering holes. If we change where we work, we may have to change all our haunts. This can take us far out of our comfort zone.

That explains one reporter’s reaction: “I felt like a cat whose owners had moved to a new house,” she says. “I was sort of sniffing around, looking for comfy corners.”

Of course, a move can really shake up an office’s social structure. It rearranges the company’s informal pecking order—the one based on who has the biggest office, the choicest view, the best desk.

“In their minds, a lot of people sort out the winners and the losers,” says Mitchell Marks, a psychologist and a professor of management at San Francisco State University. “Who is closer to the action, who is farther away, and where am I in all of this?”

People are jockeying for position. “We have come up with rules on physical boundaries,” reports one of my co-workers. “My colleague and I have decided that her space includes the little two-foot counter between us. So whenever my Rolodex or my tape recorder impinges on the edge of it … I pull them back. Otherwise I would be a ‘colonizer.’ ”

Even more significantly, the move upends our support network. Research shows we form the tightest workplace bonds with people who are near us. A change in the seating chart can rearrange friendships.

Sadly, my colleagues confirm this. One says she feels her buddies have forgotten her. Another explains that he no longer knows where to find certain people, so he doesn’t think about them as often.

One reporter feels like he’s been through a divorce. He says of colleagues he once sat near: “Now, I occasionally swing by their desks and wave or say hi, but it’s not the same. I’m not privy to all the jokes or burdens people share.”

But give us time. Just like junior-high-schoolers, we are slowly making new friends.

“I seem to laugh much more in this place,” says a graphic artist, citing the new office’s open layout, which has allowed her to get to know the “outrageously funny” guy across the aisle. “My ear will seize upon phrases like ‘I don’t even have time to have sex anymore.’ It can be a welcome respite in an otherwise stressful day.”

Write to
Elizabeth Bernstein at Bonds@wsj.com

By ALINA DIZIK

Selcuk Demirel

Even after spending hours behind a computer screen, we’re often surprised by how little we get done during a workday.

Indeed, frittering time away is epidemic in the office: A 2007 survey of 2,000 workers from
Salary.com
Inc.,

a Web site that provides compensation data, found that Americans waste about 20% of their time at work; with 34.7% of those surveyed saying surfing the Internet is the biggest distraction.

An emerging crop of software now aims to make individuals more conscious of how they spend their screen time. Previously meant for free-lancers looking to keep track of billable hours, software developers are realizing that time-management applications are useful for anyone who wants to track which Web sites they visit and how much of their day is spent on certain work tasks or computer applications.

Some services record and categorize users’ computer activities—often allowing workers to classify chunks of time as either productive or unproductive. Other services operate by having users set goals for how much they’ll get done in a set period of time.

While it is easy to see how hours spent on YouTube or Facebook can crush your productivity, time-management experts say one of the biggest culprits is the constant transitioning from one computer-based task to another.

“Multi-tasking is a complete myth,” says Peter Bregman, a time-management expert and chief executive of Bregman Partners Inc., a management-consulting company. “We lose time in the switch from one task to another,” since it takes time for the brain to adjust to each project.

Tony Wright co-founder of Seattle-based RescueTime Inc., a time-tracking software company, agrees. In an October data audit, Mr. Wright found that RescueTime users switch to an instant message window 71 times per day, which means every 5.2 minutes or 11.5 times per hour. Users to the site visit an average of 57 Web sites or applications per day, he says.

To track our productivity, we tested four online services for a week each: RescueTime, Slife, Klok and ManicTime. Each site provided an eye-opening look at our workday without too much of a hassle. We also found that just knowing our activities were being watched made us a bit less likely to dawdle on non-work-related sites. But the services themselves required some upkeep—which, ironically, took time away from our work.

After signing up for a free two-week trial of RescueTime Pro (usually $5.30 per month), the software downloaded quickly and showed up on our task bar. The site recorded our activities accurately, assigned them to categories and put them into graphs. Some of the findings were surprising: When looking at the day’s graph on a random Friday, for example, we realized we spent about 10 minutes of every hour reading the news.

But we thought some of the category titles—such as “Business”—were a bit vague. “We’re still chipping away to distill this stuff into something actionable,” says RescueTime’s Mr. Wright. We liked the feature that let us designate individual sites and applications as productive or unproductive. Additionally, each time our computer was idle and we returned to our desk we were prompted to say whether our task away from the computer was work related, like a phone call, or something that shouldn’t be recorded, like a trip to the fridge for a snack.

Klok doesn’t automatically track what you do on the computer (so no Internet connection is required). Instead, it asks users to set tasks for themselves throughout the day to help manage projects. Then users note when they start and stop each project, making it easy to compare your goals to reality. One morning, for example, we saw that a writing assignment took 3½-hours instead of the two we thought it should. We also realized we did far fewer tasks than anticipated each day.

Overall, the service helped us get more tasks done because setting goals required us to think through how we would build our days’ work. Tasks can be broken up into subcategories, making larger projects seem more manageable. But it was a bit of a pain to remember to notify the service every time we stopped and started a task. And even when we did make sure to mark our stop time, the service sometimes didn’t register it, making our data inaccurate. Rob McKeown, co-founder of Mcgraphix Inc., which developed Klok, says this issue will be resolved in the next version.

Next up was Slife. The service costs $5 per month, but a 30-day trial is free. To sign up for the trial, however, we had to provide a credit-card number. (A redesign will soon enable users to log on without one, says Edison Thomaz founder of Atlanta-based Slife Labs LLC.) After a quick download, we could see an icon on our task bar. Clicking on the icon took us to various time-management graphs, which were easy to read. The software lets users customize their own categories, such as news or research. You can also add labels to specify your activity even further, such as detailing what kind of research is being done.

During one particularly unproductive day, the service showed us that we spent 22 minutes on Twitter, 40 minutes on Facebook and almost three hours on email. There was also a “private” mode that turned the tracking function off, allowing us to browse frivolous stuff guilt-free.

One big headache was that we were often randomly bounced off the Slife service, causing it to miss some of our activities and requiring us to repeatedly log in. (Mr. Thomaz says Slife is working on fixing the problem.)

ManicTime, a desktop program that only runs on Windows systems, was next. Our computer usage was tracked with line and bar graphs; we could color code activities and tags to better understand how we spent our time. That made it clear that email was our biggest time waster. (Though the service doesn’t distinguish between work and non-work related emails.)

One nice feature: The service spit out a summary showing what percentage of our total time was spent with each application (like a Microsoft Word document) or Web site. The graphs also showed when our computer was idle, which helped us see how many little breaks we tend to take throughout the day.

All in all, the services really helped us get a handle on how we spend our work time. And having a written account of where our minutes went pushed us to modify our work habits—and get more done. The guilt element was motivating, too: Just knowing that the length of our Facebook session was going to be recorded made us think twice about lingering

Write to Alina Dizik at alina.dizik@dowjones.com

By ALEXANDRA LEVIT

Q: I am driven, hard working and smart, but I lack the self-discipline to look for a job. I have hired a career counselor, but I still can’t muster the motivation I need and am always procrastinating. Do you have any advice for being a more effective job seeker?

A: Acknowledging the fact that you have a problem with self-discipline is half the battle. Next, you need to employ some strategies to conquer your natural tendency toward procrastination. Create a calendar of job search-related tasks that you will do each day and concentrate on checking as many of them off the list as you can. When the urge comes to do something else instead, force yourself to think about whether a momentary reprieve is worth having to overhaul the whole calendar to reschedule a particular task. You should also think about the big picture. Sometimes the most effective job hunting activities require the most effort and, in turn, produce the greatest rewards — like a job that is satisfying and pays well. A final trick I use for procrastination is to start with the least complicated part of a particular task. Once I’ve finished one component, I gain momentum and it’s a lot easier to keep moving.

Q: I’ve worked at a series of small companies where I’ve mostly done in-house computer programming. The projects were designed by me, built by me and serviced by me. However, my methods have since been replaced and I have no intention of learning new ones. I’m not sure what to do next. I’m nervous about entrepreneurship or working for a large company.

A: Here’s the thing that stood out to me in your e-mail: “I have no intention of learning new methods.” In order to stay marketable in any field, you have to keep your skills current. This is especially true in information technology, where technologies change rapidly. I know that it can be frustrating to be at a certain level in your career and still need to pursue education or certification, but to refuse to do so simply isn’t practical. It seems to me that starting your own business or making the transition to a different type of organization won’t solve your problem and will probably result in more work than revisiting your programming methods and determining what you need to learn to develop these home-grown applications in a twenty-first century small to medium-sized business.

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Get motivated to hunt for a job.

Q: For 20 years, I ran an enormously successful business in Massachusetts, raised and educated three children, and kept a nice home. I retired, moved to California, began teaching, and pursued graduate education. Along the way I noticed gaping holes in knowledge among the students, so I wrote a book comparing those who succeed to those who fail. Now, I’m running up against brick walls promoting the book. What can I do to get my work reviewed?

A: Many people believe that the hardest part about writing a book is coming up with 60,000 words worth of material, but this is not the case. Promotion, which these days is moreand more the responsibility of the author, is far more difficult. Now that more than 300,000 new titles are published every year, even with an established platform in a particular industry it’s hard to get noticed amidst all the noise. So don’t be too hard on yourself. That said, there is one major thing that you can do to increase the likelihood that your book will get real or virtual ink. First, get to know the editors at the education trades and the writers of related blogs; volunteer to write expert guest pieces for them (instead of asking them outright for reviews). You’ll be providing valuable content to their readers and your book will be promoted indirectly through the byline you’ll get at the end of each piece.

Write to Alexandra Levit at reinvent@wsj.com

By DIANA MIDDLETON

Despite having similar educational backgrounds and experience, female M.B.A.-holders are still not getting the same pay, positions, or promotions as their male colleagues, according to a study released Thursday by Catalyst, a New York City-based nonprofit focused on women in the workplace.

The study, which had more than 9,000 respondents who graduated from 26 M.B.A. programs between 1996 and 2007, found that starting from the first job post-M.B.A. women lagged behind male respondents. For example, 60% of women respondents reported that their first job was at an entry level position, as opposed to 46% of male respondents.

Women also earned an average $4,600 less than men in their first job, even if they had the same amount of previous work experience, the study found.

Ilene Lang, president and chief executive officer of Catalyst, attributes the disparity to something she calls “bad first boss syndrome.” The experience sours the potential for raises and promotions later on, Ms. Lang says.

Of those surveyed, about 40% were still in their first post-M.B.A.. More than 30% had changed jobs once, and 14% had worked with four or more employers.

“From the start, women start in lower positions, and they aren’t getting the right support from their management,” the study results indicate, she says.

Ann Bartel, an economics professor at Columbia Business School who studies labor economics and human resource management, says women may lag behind men for two reasons. In some cases, companies anticipate female employees will have children and do not include them in succession planning. The other reason is not driven by corporations, but rather by women themselves, who, anticipating the time commitment of a potential family do not lobby hard for plum positions.

“I think companies want equality, but they will have to redesign jobs so flex-time and working from home aren’t negatives for the fast track,” says Ms. Bartel, who has also conducted research on women’s presence in senior executive positions–such as chief executive or chief operating officer. “I don’t think we’ve had that cultural revolution yet.”

Despite potential bias toward working mothers, Ms. Lang says the results showed no real difference for women without children. The study also found that men were twice as likely to be a CEO or senior executive in their current job.

The study is part of an extensive career analysis project Catalyst is conducting, says Nancy Carter, vice president of research.

Write to Diana Middleton at diana.middleton@wsj.com

By JO PIAZZA

Economists are convinced that height confers a natural advantage in the workplace, but some of the tallest New Yorkers still turn to each other to get a leg up in their careers.

Local talls, as they call themselves, use monthly meetings of the Tall Club of New York City as a networking venue. Members must meet minimum height requirements—5-foot-10 for women and 6-foot-2 for men, as measured without shoes—but otherwise they have little in common and hail from an array of industries.

Like-heighted comrades came to the aid of Mary Sue Lundy (5-foot-11), who saw her prospects as a mortgage-consulting instructor decline in the wake of the recession. Club members circulated her resume and coached her through an interview at Bloomberg LP, where other talls already worked.

She got the job. “It was a huge networking opportunity for me,” said Ms. Lundy, 47 years old.

Tall Club President Barry Hanold (6-foot-3) believes the economic research into the so-called height premium, in which tall people rise faster and earn more than their shorter peers, fails to capture the full picture. Sure, there are some perks with an above-average height—but there are challenges as well.

“Height is not a disability,” Mr. Hanold said. “But it is less understood in the workplace.”

The academic consensus offers a rosier view. In a 2004 paper, three social scientists argued that the link between higher heights and higher wages can be traced to adolescence, leading to speculation that taller youngsters develop self-confidence they carry into their careers.

“It has been known for a while that taller people earn more. We are talking about roughly 3% higher wages per inch, on average,” said Nicola Persico, one of the study’s authors and a professor at Northwestern University.

But Mr. Hanold, 47, points to drawbacks outside the office that might even the ledger.

“All talls quickly learn that all things cost more, so earning more money is a must,” he said. “Car size cannot be too small. Airlines always charge more for the extra room. Clothing must be custom-made or -sewn.”

Even low-ceilinged restaurants can be prohibitive, leading to careful scrutiny of the club’s meeting venues. “If I don’t have at least a foot of ceiling clearance I know my members won’t be comfortable,” Mr. Hanold said.

When the Tall Club gathers on the first Friday of every month at Pranna, a cavernous restaurant on Madison Avenue, all manner of height-related issues are discussed. For business suits, members tend to frequent the same three tailors. They trade information about ergonomic chairs and computer accessories designed for the tall.

The talk often circles around work-related topics. At a recent meeting, one tall woman revealed a tactic she had used: sitting during encounters with her shorter boss, to avoid creating a feeling of intimidation.

Mr. Hanold owes his current job in computer operations to a colleague with a link to the Tall Club, and he now repays his good fortune by contacting members when he learns of openings in his industry. “I don’t give them preferential treatment but I do throw it out to them first,” Mr. Hanold said.

Annie Watt, a 5-foot-10 photographer and the Tall Club’s founder, set out to create the group nearly two decades ago with more personal priorities in mind.

“My motivation was to date someone tall,” she said. “It worked the first night.”

Ms. Watt, 59, used her own money to place an advertisement in New York magazine: “Hi, We’re a Tall Club,” it read. Fifteen people showed up at the first meeting, and twice that number at the second. The Tall Club now counts about 100 members.

For Ms. Watt, the professional boost came from the high ratio of models and actors in the club, who often turn to her for headshots and suggest her services to other long-limbed performers.

“Annie knows how to make sure we don’t look like an all-neck giraffe in pictures,” said Kim Blacklock, a stand-up comedian who bills herself as one of tallest women on the planet.

She is a legacy member of height-oriented social groups. Her parents, both over 6-feet tall, met at a 1952 gathering of the Tall Timers in Syracuse, N.Y. Ms. Blacklock credits the New York City club with helping her stand proud after a childhood of mockery. (She reached 6-foot-5 by age 15.)

“My mother spent a lot of time crying because of how kids treated me,” Ms. Blacklock said. “But I go to the Tall Club, and they tell you that you are beautiful and wonderful. That helps when you go out into a world filled with boneheads.”

A version of this article appeared Mar. 19, 2012, on page A19 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: At Tall Club, Members’ Careers Get an Extra Lift.