Dennis R. Laker

The Five-Year Resume: A Career Planning Exercise

For most college students, lack of career planning wastes time and resources and may result in years of “career drift.” Lack of planning can also lead to deception once students begin seeking career-related employment. Faced with a competitive job market, some students inflate and exaggerate their resumes. The five-year resume exercise helps students avoid these difficulties by developing a future orientation toward their career goals. Students create the resumes they would like to have in five years. This exercise encourages both self-management and proactiveness. The exercise, sample questions, and a template are provided. Illustrations of student feedback, benefits, and suggestions for faculty are presented.

Attraction and Influence On the Employment Decision of the Recent Hotel and Restaurant Graduate

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate, identify, and analyze what influences and/or attracts graduating seniors to their choice of employment. Two majorsources of information on potential employers: personnel recruiters and hotel and restaurant school faculty were highlighted in this study. Forty-seven graduating seniors, from five different hotel and restaurant programs, were surveyed at two points in time concerning the perceived influence of various aspects of a job, the organization and the sources of influence on their employment decision. Twenty- seven faculty, from the five institutions were also surveyed. Three sets of compari sons were made. The first set of comparisons was between students before and after their employment decision. The second set of comparisons contrasted faculty and students perceptions of the sources of influence on the students employment decision; the job and organizational aspects that did or would influence the students choice of employment; and their impression of recruiters and the campus interview. A third set of comparisons contrasted the factors that influence who seniors would interview with vs. what position they would accept.

Controlling the Turnover Problem: The Use of the Realistic Job Preview “Experience”

Faced with the paradoxical relationship between a tight labor market and a high turnover rate, one potential solution is the realistic job preview (RJP). The RJP occurs when an organization makes sure that a potential employee receives a total picture of what is involved once hired by the organization. Although many organizations use what might be considered realistic job previews, they all do not go by the name RJP. The RJP usually involves presenting an overview of the job. Such an overview is usually conveyed by way of a third party, through a verbal presentation, an audio or video tape, or described in print. This paper focuses on a hybrid of the RJP where the applicants are asked to a sample of the job they will perform if hired. This variation of the RJP might be considered a realistic job preview experience (RJPE). Where as the RJP has been frequently discussed, there is very little known concerning the RJPE. Unlike the RJP, the RJPE, first, provides an opportunity for the organization to assess the Individuals potential or aptitude for the position. Second, it provides the applicant with a realistic preview of the job, first hand. The present paper will provide a survey of various organizational efforts at creating RJPEs and the development of a framework for the analysis of these various approaches. Recommendations will be made to organizations interested in creating such a preview.

The impact of household economy on stress reactions among professional women

The impact on felt stress and and stress-related behaviors of household composition and proportion of pay utilized to sustain the household economy was evaluated using a homogenous group of female professionals. After controlling for individual-difference and work-load influences, the impact of household variables was found to be weak and inconsistent. While living alone with a child and having a larger proportion of ones salary allocated to sustaining the household economy was associated with psychosomatic distress, household factors did not predict sickdays, medication usage and alcohol consumption. The reasons for these weak and inconsistent findings were explored.

The Road Less Traveled... Alternative Solutions To the Labor Shortage

The shortage of labor has created tremendous problems for the service sector. These problems have been well documented in both the academic literature and in the popular press. Organizations have become extremely aggressive in their recruitment efforts to attractpersonnel. Wages have increaseddramaticallyin some areas; hours have been made more flexible; additional benefits have been provided. Most organizations have tended to focus and concentrate on the attraction and recruitment of personnel, to the exclusion of other approaches to this problem. Continued emphasis solely on the identification of non-traditional sources of recruit ing, although necessary in the short-run, must be supplemented initially and may eventuallybe replaced with other alternatives to the laborshortage. The alternatives must provide a more efficient use of employees, new technological processes of providing service, changes in the nature of the product/service, and better ways to structure and organize the service organization. A review of the literature, interviews with industry executives, and a more integrated approach to the labor problem will be presented.