Q: I was hired by a software company at an entry-level sales position. I have a four-year degree and sales experience.I was brought on board at a salary of $27,000 per year, plus a monthly bonus. After my first week on the job, I was moved from an inside sales position to a regional sales manager position with no increase in pay.I've been in this position for three months, and I have had to learn everything on the fly. I've maintained my territory with flying colors, and have increased sales from last year's numbers. Coworkers have told me the man I replaced was making $73,000, with no four-ye... view article details

Let Common Sense Dictate Your Sick Leave Policy Depending on the philosophy your company takes, the issue of sick leave can be pretty contentious. Do you keep your sick days separate from other time off? Do you hire someone specifically to track it? Or do you lump sick leave and vacation days into one big bucket labeled “paid time off?" Do you allow workers to bank sick time and get paid for it, or is it “use it or lose it?” And that’s not even considering short- and long-term disability for workers with chronic illness. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? But the good news is there’s a solu... view article details

There is, it seems, a skills gap in this country.Even as the national unemployment rate lingers above 8 percent -- 12.5 million people -- tens of thousands of jobs are going unfilled as employers contend that they just can't find qualified candidates. Applicants need to get more education, more skills, more experience, according to hiring managers.But the problem may not lay with the job-seekers alone, according to Why Good People Can't Get Jobs, a recently released book by Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the Wharton School. Companies' own expectations and practices, Cappelli argues,... view article details

You've heard of those brain teaser questions that may well come between you and a job someday. No matter how much you may prepare yourself for a job interview, you may never be completely ready when that interviewer asks you why manhole covers are round. Even that question has been asked so often by now, it's considered one of the easy ones. Microsoft is partly to blame.Ever since the Seattle-based software giant made news a few years ago for asking applicants questions like 'How many golfballs does it take to fill a 747?', more and more companies have been adding their own mindbenders to the ... view article details

Job descriptionProject management is the process of planning, organizing, staffing, and guiding the process of creating a solution or system. Project managers are responsible for providing a plan and the means on which to base management decisions throughout the life of a project. There are many scheduling software tools available to help project managers perform their job, including PERT, Microsoft Project, Scitor Project Scheduler, and many others. While such applications are usually designed for certain industries or projects, they all use Critical Path Methodology, or CPM. CPM plays a larg... view article details

Volunteering Has Many Benefits Millennials love to volunteer. Why? In short, it makes them happy. But surprisingly, college students and young professionals also lead the pack in volunteerism as a means of developing themselves professionally.In fact, an employer’s involvement in causes was cited in the 2014 Millennial Impact Report as the third most important factor when determining whether to apply for a job. And a Deloitte study found that Millennials who frequently participated in workplace volunteer activities were more likely to be proud, loyal, and satisfied employees.Millennia... view article details

The gap between the rich and the poor has been widening for the past 30 years.  The World Inequality Report uncovered that since 1980, the top 0.1 percent of wealth owners, about 7 million people, accounted for as much of the world's growth as the bottom half of the adult population — roughly 3.8 billion people. Below is a list of the top 10 richest people in the world, including their net worth for the year 2018, as well as the previous year, according to Forbes. This list makes it glaringly obvious that the gap between the rich and poor is at its highest level in decades with no signs of nar... view article details

Most people think of games as fun entertainment. But searching for a job and getting hired is a game too, and it's one that many people have been playing for far too long in these tough economic times. And one of the big problems is many of the people playing don't know the rules.So says Skip Freeman, author of Headhunter Hiring Secrets: The Rules of the Hiring Game Have Changed...Forever, who is this week's Salary Talk guest. As a professional headhunter himself and president of an executive search firm, Freeman tells Aaron and Wendy the stunning truth: that many people don't know what they'r... view article details

Q. My performance review is coming soon, and I would like to learn more about the do's and don'ts of performance reviews. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.A. The review process is normally broken down into two parts. The first is spent discussing your overall performance during a defined 'performance period.' The second part of the process is how much you will receive based on your performance.I always advise managers that employees should never be surprised by their review. The purpose of a performance review is just that: to review an employee's performance. In other words, your manag... view article details

Two of the country's premier academic institutions -- the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University -- have joined forces to launch an online education initiative that might just 'reinvent education,' according to Anant Agarwal, president of the new program.Dubbed edX, the program is based on MITx, a similar initiative launched by the science and technology school earlier this year. EdX will act as a sort of umbrella organization, allowing participating institutions to offer free, online courses from their curricula. Harvard and MIT are the initial partners in the program, b... view article details