• TAKE CAUTION WITH MILLENNIAL RESUMES – WHICH HAVE A GOOD CHANCE OF BEING SKEWED since Gen Yers “guard their professional and personal images online, covering up anything bad that’s ever happened… While notorious for oversharing, their resumes are carefully curated for potential employers…so you don’t see them posting negative status updates.” According to a Linked-In survey of a thousand Americans aged 25 to 34, 70% said they’d “go out of their way to bury having been let go from a prior job…and nearly a third said they’d make it look like they’d left on their own accord – based on a lack of ‘fit’ so that they’d have quit soon anyway.” [BUSINESS INSIDER – June 8, 15]
  • THE RECENT HACK OF FEDERAL PERSONNEL RECORDS FOR 14 MILLION EMPLOYEES from OPM (Office of Personnel Management) was “unprecedented in its breadth & scope, the worst security-wise breach of personally identifying information ever… attributable to one of the dumbest security moves possible.” OPM “conducts more than 90% of all federal background investigations (including Dep’t of Defense and a hundred other agencies) involving every aspect of employee lives via a 120-page questionnaire, then stored on an unencrypted database… where two-thirds lacked proper security certification – meaning the data was vulnerable to far more people than just those with root access & log-in credentials… (a posture akin to leaving all doors & windows unlocked and hoping nobody walks in and takes stuff… Moreover, the system’s co-administrators responsible for handling records were physically located in China and Argentina…  Experts fear the stolen info could be used by the Chinese government to blackmail, exploit or recruit military personnel or intelligence officers, compromising the success & safety of agents operating at home and abroad.” Another salute to big government.  [BUSINESS INSIDER.COM – June 18, 15]
  • “SCREEN ADDICTION IS TAKING A TOLL ON CHILDREN: Excessive use of computer games among young people in China appears to be taking an alarming turn, and may have particular relevance for American parents whose children spend many hours a day focused on electronic screens. The PBS documentary “Web Junkie” highlights the tragic effects on teenagers who become hooked on video games, playing for dozens of hours at a time often without breaks to eat, sleep or even use the bathroom. Many come to view the real world as fake. Chinese doctors consider this phenomenon a clinical disorder and have established rehabilitation centers where afflicted youngsters are confined for months of sometimes draconian therapy, completely isolated from all media, the effectiveness of which remains to be demonstrated.” [LEVINE BREAKING NEWS – July 6,15]
  • “PRIVACY IN TODAY’S WORKPLACE IS LARGELY ILLUSIVE… and most employee contracts give management free rein to do what it wants with data gathered from office-issued equipment.” Two-thirds of companies now use technology to monitor employee internet use and around 45% monitor emails, phone calls and movements; some search for “evidence that employees might be thinking about quitting.” An American Management Ass’n survey found that a quarter of mid-size & large firms have fired employees for misusing email or the internet. Additionally, some companies now use I.D. badges “fitted with microphone, location sensor & accelerometer to measure how employee interactions affect performance.” Now Amazon workers carry tablets that record speed and efficiency in the warehouses; UPS drivers are tracked for driving speed and stop times; McDonald’s measures server interactions with customers; and hospital nurses wear badges that track their hand-washing habits. [THE WEEK – July 10. 15]
  • THE PROBLEM WITH GOVERNMENT SPENDING: “If you spend money on yourself, you are very concerned about how much is spent and how it is spent. If it’s your money on someone else, you are still very much concerned about how much, but somewhat less on what it’s for. Spending someone else’s money on yourself, you’re not too concerned about how much but very concerned about how it is spent. However, if spending someone else’s money on someone else, you are not concerned about either how much or how it gets spent.” – Milton Friedman, Economist
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:  A 24-foot bridge is underway in Amsterdam, being “3D-printed in midair by a robot which extrudes cords of molten steel in a pattern and waiting for them to cool before moving ahead – like a train making its own tracks.”

     The U.S. now has some 53 million Spanish speakers – more than Spain or Columbia (reports THE GUARDIAN);  at the age of 9,  82% of Hispanic boys (along with 86% of black boys) cannot read proficiently (reports THE ECONOMIST).

     “I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it…  If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it!”  – Jonathan Winters

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE FOR OPTIMAL STRATEGIC & FINANCIAL PLANNING, OPERATIONS, MANAGEMENT & MEDIATION