Talent 911

Volt of Reality

I love the concept of the Volt so I want to see that type of vehicle succeed.  Having said that, from the beginning when I saw the sticker price on it I knew it would not fly.  Today I saw a headline that they are temporarily shutting production down because of low demand and laying off 1200 workers.  You did not have to be Nostradamus to predict this.  

Here is some basic math to see the problem.  The volt costs $40,000.  It is a fairly small car.  I compare this from a cost standpoint to the $11,000 Hyundai accent I drive.  It gets about 34 miles to the gallon.  I drive 15,000 miles a year.  That means I use about 450 gallons of fuel a year.  So in a $4/gallon era that is about $1800/year I spend on gas.  To justify the $29,000 difference that is a lot of years.  Assume I never went over the 35 mile electric only range of the volt so I never used a drop of gas.  Even with that unrealistic assumption that would mean it would take me over 16 years to cost justify the difference in initial cost.  Not to mention the fact my car hasn’t been in for a single repair since I have owned it, with new technology there are bound to be maintenance issues as well.  

The only people who are buying the Volt are those trying to make a statement and ignoring the math.  Until there is a more reasonably priced alternative this type of vehicle will not be widely accepted by the consumers.  Maybe if fuel costs shoots up to $8 or $10 a gallon it will start to make sense but for now I think these are basically prototypes and GM is trying to find that next breakthrough technology.  I just think it needs to not be packaged as a production vehicle if it is not ready for prime time yet from a market standpoint.  I love the idea of taking chances and trying to think outside the box but at the end of the day there needs to be a product that you can price competitively and something that makes some sense for the consumer from a cost standpoint, at least for most consumers as we are seeing with the low demand for these vehicles.  Can’t we just skip to the Jetson style hovercrafts already?  Who is working on that?!

Wall Street

 

It has been interesting to watch this whole occupy Wallstreet movement take shape.  The protestors have some valid points about corporate greed and the influence on government policies.  But I have been floored by many of the interviews with protestors at some of their “demands” and complaints.  One of the biggest themes I have heard repeated have come from unemployed college graduates who have mountains of debt from their schooling and no job prospects.  My question to them is what did they go to school for?  I know the job market is tough but there are many sectors hiring and struggling to find people who have the right backgrounds.  If I am going to spend ungodly amounts of money to go to college, especially an Ivy League or private school that costs way more than a community college or state school, I am going to be damn sure I go into a field that is going to give me a good chance at a job and career when I get it out.  You need to look at the types of salaries that are in your chosen profession and find a college or program that makes sense from  a cost perspective.  If I want to be an assistant night manager at a McDonalds that I know pays $12/hr, it probably doesn’t make sense to go to U of M and spend $100,000 to get a four year degree in hamburger management when you can probably get the same job with a much cheaper educational alternative such as community college.  If you plan on becoming a brain surgeon who is going to pull in 400K a year, that $100,000 investment in your bachelors degree probably makes a lot of sense.  I think this situation is illustrative of how this country has ended up where we are.  If I am making minimum wage and a bank tells me I qualify for $300,000 house does not mean I should buy that house.  It might be a little tough to continue to afford that house when other expenses come up like food.   Just because you CAN buy something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD buy it.  You see people do it with cars, electronics, educational expenses.  Why is there no consideration of long term consequences of our actions anymore?  Paid too much for a useless degree?  Don’t get out there and do whatever you can to work your way up out of the mess you created yourself with your decisions, no, instead go camp out in a park in NY city and demand that the government forgive all student loans.  We have free will and we need to be responsible for our own lives.  That is what has made this country great.   If you don’t like the way things are run, consider carefully who you put in office and the companies you choose to support. More importantly, quit whining and get back to moving forward and contributing something to society. 

Justin Himebaugh leads the accounting department at HRU, (or The Necessary Evil Group as he calls it).  A Graduate of the Haworth school of business at Western Michigan University, Justin has specialized in systems implementations and streamlining the accounting function for the companies he has worked with.  Besides having a well rounded skill set when it comes to accounting he has an unblockable fade away jump shot and mad skills in the low post on the basketball court. You can follow him on Twitter, @necssryevil

Is your product unique?

I was recently in Mexico in a few resort towns that our cruise ship stopped at along the way.  At each stop I was hounded non-stop by various street merchants selling cheesy trinkets, cheap T-shirts, and other assorted junk.  In fact some of the vendors had adopted the popular phrase of TSA fame “Hey meester, want to see my Junk?”,  a little unsettling to say the least.  As we waded through markets and shops I noticed every 6ft by 6ft shop had almost the exact same selection of merchandise, T-shirts with all the same inappropriate sayings, the same fake rolex watches, etc, it seemed like they were all getting their goods from the same distributor.  No one had anything unique or truly different than any of the other vendors.  So we would low ball on an item at one shop and they would refuse our price so we would move on to the next one and eventually we would find someone who would take our lowball offer for their “junk”.  This reminds me of a lot of companies in various industries back here in the states.  Companies that don’t have a unique or distinct product or service end up being just another pesty guy selling “junk” on the beach to unwilling buyers.  The only advantage they can gain is by lowering their price.  The other thing we heard a lot was “It’s practically free”.  If it is practically free then why would you be selling it?  Shouldn’t you come up with another business strategy?  Whether it is engineering services, Software development or staffing if you are going to rely on your only strength being the lowest price you should probably rethink your plan.  You need to focus on providing better service than the other guy, or solve that customer’s biggest problem in a different way than others would.  If you are truly focusing on your core competency and what you do best, then you should be able to provide the value that people can’t get somewhere else and therefore you should be able to charge a price that includes a fair profit in it.   If not you could end up like those merchants sitting in a hot market waiting for the next Gringo to come along and offer you a rock bottom offer for your merchandise before their ship sails away.   Don’t be a commodity, be unique, be a valued partner to your customers.

 

Justin Himebaugh leads the accounting department at HRU, (or The Necessary Evil Group as he calls it).  A Graduate of the Haworth school of business at Western Michigan University, Justin has specialized in systems implementations and streamlining the accounting function for the companies he has worked with.  Besides having a well rounded skill set when it comes to accounting he can still hold his own in the pool if a game of water polo breaks out. You can follow him on Twitter, @necssryevil

 

Where are the Real Leaders?

 

Someone posted something about the redundancies in economic development and politics on facebook that triggered this blog.  We see it a lot today.  One organization is not getting the results some want to see so they go and start a competing non profit to try and do the same thing better.  The problem with bureaucracies is they are never built with an expiration date.  They each become their own entity that fights for it’s own survival over it’s original mission.  I think this starts with leadership.  We need some courageous leaders who are willing to work themselves out of a job once in a while for the greater good.  What I witnessed in the non profit world during my 3 year run in a non profit organization was endless jockeying and politicking for self preservation instead of truly working towards achieving the stated mission.  Some good things came about, but the amount of resources (time and money) that it took to accomplish small steps was very inefficient.  This left a bad taste in my mouth.  My experience in the private sector has given me a weak stomach when it comes to inefficiency and wasteful spending.  The profit motive in the private sector naturally tends to minimize both of those behaviors.  This is a flaw in the non profit system, there is no incentive to overcome human nature.

I look at our political landscape and would love to see for example, a Michigan legislator who would run on the platform that Michigan should have a part time legislature.  This would take someone with the courage to realize that if he could get elected and get that passed that he would be demoting himself to a part time role.  I would argue that if that person was valuable and had marketable skills that they would have their pick of positions in the private sector and be fine.  We have a legislature that already  behaves as if they are part time but this would formalize it and force them to focus their efforts on only the really truly important legislative matters.  The other advantage is it would require them to keep one foot in the “real world” so that they would bring this experience with them to their service to the state.  Imagine a state run by people with real knowledge and skill instead of mainly by career politicians who in many cases may not have ever run a company or faced the pressures of the private sector that they are in charge of regulating.

Leadership is critical whether it is in the private sector or in the public arena. In the private sector the best leaders I have worked with put the overall mission of the company in the forefront of all decisions they make with regards to steering the business through tough times.  It might not always be the most popular decision, and it might not even be the most profitable thing for themselves in the short term, but if it guides the company towards the mission the company is always better served by their leadership.  I hope we can see some new blood rise to leadership positions in both sectors that can put the goals of the organizations and their constituents ahead of self preservation.  We are operating in a time with very limited resources.  Collaboration and efficiency need to be looked at in ways that probably have never been considered in the past, but it is going to take some innovative leadership to make some of the hard choices if we are going to come out the other side of these hard times as a stronger community.

 Justin Himebaugh leads the accounting department at HRU, (or The Necessary Evil Group as he calls it).  A Graduate of the Haworth school of business at Western Michigan University, Justin has specialized in systems implementations and streamlining the accounting function for the companies he has worked with.  Besides having a well rounded skill set when it comes to accounting he can still hold his own in the pool if a game of water polo breaks out. You can follow him on Twitter, @necssryevil

Job Hopping Bad?

 

Back in the day many of our parents and grandparents got a job with a solid company and worked there until the day they got their gold watch and sailed off into retirement.  Those days are, for the most part, over.  Most of my friends and associates are closing in on double digits as far as the number of companies they have worked for.  I graduated from college 18 years ago and I am currently working for my 7^th company (not including a few extras I have done consulting work for).  Compared to the previous generations this varied job history may be viewed as a negative thing.  I would argue the opposite.  I think if done right, switching companies can make you a more valuable employee for the next company you work with. 

Throughout my career I have changed jobs to take on greater challenges.  My first accounting job I worked under a great guy who was the CFO, after 6 years though, I was ready to take on leading the accounting department of a company on my own, so I had to move on.  That move turned out to be a so-so fit for me personally but I gained some great experience and after a couple years I was able to land with a great company in the same area where I was able to even have a small ownership stake.  Then life happened and the economy forced me to seek greener pastures outside of the Accounting field with a couple years in economic development.  Seemingly off course it ended up being a great experience, starting up a company from scratch and I was able to meet with many CEOs and leaders from all over the region to learn about their companies.  It was a great outside perspective on what people were dealing with and it rounded out my skill set a lot and made me a better employee for when I moved on to my current position.  My main point here is if I had stayed with my first employer for the last 17 years I don’t feel I would have near the depth of knowledge and experience that I now have because of my career moves. 

Great for me right, but what about the employers I worked with?  Did they train me and spend money developing me only to have me leave?  Is that a raw deal for them?  I would disagree with that.  I think if you can make a difference in the company that you work for and leave them better off than you found them, then they have benefitted from your association with them.  By bringing a well rounded skill set to each company you can provide as much benefit as you receive from them as a result of your experience there.  

I think if the employee can bring their experience and value to a company and the company provides a challenging work environment and competitive compensation then both parties benefit which is the ideal scenario.   There is a cost to employee turnover that all companies have to manage, so the more things you can do to reduce it the better, but when considering an employee who has multiple stops along their career paths you may want treat that as a positive instead of a negative.  From the employee side, make sure when you make a move that it is a positive step that will enhance your marketability, changing jobs every 6 months just to change jobs probably will not help you or the companies you are working for.

Justin Himebaugh leads the accounting department at HRU, (or The Necessary Evil Group as he calls it).  A Graduate of the Haworth school of business at Western Michigan University, Justin has specialized in systems implementations and streamlining the accounting function for the companies he has worked with.  Besides having a well rounded skill set when it comes to accounting he can still hold his own in the pool if a game of water polo breaks out. You can follow him on Twitter, @necssryevil

Complacency Kills

 

Closing in on my 2^nd anniversary in the staffing industry I am reminded again that complacency can be a killer.  This doesn’t just apply to the staffing industry, but we are reminded of this in our industry several times a year it seems.  As we deal with customer staffing level ebbs and flows we are in a constant state of rebuilding.  During the good times when everyone is hiring tons of people, it is easy to think that level of activity with each customer will continue on forever (I wish!).  The reality is in just about any industry you are susceptible to losing revenue in bunches all at once.  

How do you protect yourself from this fluctuation?  Diversity.  Customer and industry diversity is critical in almost every business.  If you put all your eggs in one customer or industry basket you are at risk.  The more you can diversify your customer base and your industry segments that you serve, the more prepared you will be to weather a downturn. 

The challenge is diversifying these markets takes time and you can’t just flip a switch overnight when things turn bad in one area.  So even while you are busy satisfying your customers during the up times, make sure you keep an eye to the future and lay the groundwork for diversification.  This applies to communities (Michigan relying solely on automotive didn’t work out so hot, but we are getting better right?), individuals, as well as companies. 

From a company perspective I think those companies that take a little time at least once a year to focus on the overall vision and direction of where the organization is going are doing them a favor.  It helps to step away from the day to day and refocus everyone to make sure the direction you are heading is the in the best interest of the company.  Sometimes the adjustments in course may be minor but it helps to take that time out to look out on the horizon for what is coming your way and maybe throw some out of the ordinary ideas on the table to be kicked around and evaluated.

 As you look at your career, yes you may have a great job with a great company but are you diversifying your skills and continually learning what is coming around the corner in your field?  Remember that as soon as you get complacent and stop adding value to the organization you work for, you become replaceable.  Don’t let it happen to you!

Lowering the bar again?

 
I have seen it in a lot of areas in today’s society, if people are struggling let’s just lower the bar instead of overcoming adversity.  Nationalized healthcare to me is another example of the government lowering the bar to protect the lowest common denominator.  Remember the days when if you wanted a job that paid well and had good benefits you studied hard in school and worked hard to set yourself up as an attractive candidate for getting hired by a great company?  It seems like one by one a lot of the incentives to do just that are being removed to level the playing field for everyone.  Nationalizing the health care system is going to make it very difficult for companies to maintain their own private health plan.  If you are following along with this legislation and run the numbers you will see that companies will have to pay a big premium to keep their plans versus if they just stop providing coverage and let their employees go into the exchanges and buy it through the government.  Now I think the smart companies will see this as a way to separate themselves from their competition and use it as a tool to attract top talent.  However, the majority of smaller companies and a lot of very large companies will be priced out of that option and end up not providing insurance to their employees.  This removes one of their potential tools of differentiation.  It goes along with the trend of protecting the least productive members of society and helps remove another carrot that in the past drove people to push themselves to be better.  Are we moving towards a work environment where we commoditize our small businesses?   

 

Trust me I am in agreement that our health care system is not even close to perfect but nationalizing anything takes the competitiveness out of the equation (anyone been to post office lately versus using fedex or UPS?  Secretary of State office?).  I would like to see them reform health care in a way that allows small companies to continue to provide health insurance for their employees at whatever level they deem necessary to keep their employees happy.  Open up state borders and allow the providers to compete nationally, reform the malpractice laws to limit the size of awards to bring down costs for Doctors to practice, bring consumerism into the mix with HSA plans and other similar products.  A huge step would be to require everyone who has a job to carry at least some sort of major medical plan (similar to PLPD in auto insurance) no matter what your age.  This would greatly increase the pool of contributors to spread the risk, this alone would bring down rates significantly.  Those are a few of my ideas to reform the health care system rather than moving towards socialized medical coverage which has been show not to work well in other countries already.  What do you think?

 

Justin Himebaugh leads the accounting department at HRU, (or The Necessary Evil Group as he calls it).  A Graduate of the Haworth school of business at Western Michigan University, Justin has specialized in systems implementations and streamlining the accounting function for the companies he has worked with.  Besides having a well rounded skill set when it comes to accounting he can still hold his own in the pool if a game of water polo breaks out. You can follow him on Twitter, @necssryevil

Unemployment-How long is too long?

   

Michigan’s unemployment is one of the highest in the nation right now.  Yet I hear business owners say all the time that they have jobs that they can’t find employees for.  Some of them are high skill/high educated jobs where they have trouble finding people with the right training and education in this area to fill those jobs.  But I also hear a lot from employers who have manufacturing type jobs that are also unfilled because they are not getting the quality applicants (I see many workers who have trouble passing the initial drug test, but that is a topic for another blog).  When I hear these stories I contrast those with the conversations I hear all over the place from workers who are waiting to take jobs until their unemployment benefits run out. 

 Currently states provide 26 weeks of unemployment benefits and then the federal government kicks in with 73 weeks after that.  That is a total of 99 weeks, almost 2 years that someone can collect unemployment and not go to work. 

I completely understand the need for a safety net to help someone get along if something unexpected happens with their job.  Usually it is no fault of their own and beyond their control when they find themselves without a job.  The problem I have is when I hear someone not taking advantage of a job opportunity because they choose to max out their unemployment benefits first and then worry about finding a job.  This may be a rare situation but I have come across it quite a few times.  I wonder if the benefits ran out in 1 year, would these people then go out and find a job at that point? It might not be their dream job, but if there are no alternatives then I would think that most people are going to whatever they need to do to provide for themselves or their family.  I am in favor of having a safety net to give people time to find something else in their area, relocate to find a job in another area, or take some training courses to make themselves more marketable.  I think the longer people use that net the more they cross over into dependence or worse, entitlement.  I have sympathy for those who are out of work, I have been there myself, but in my personal experience I didn’t rest until I found another job.  I realize I am fortunate to have an education, a degree, and a marketable background but I also have put a lot of work in to get to that position.  I worry that as a country if we provide an alternative to working for too long that we will see people’s drive to better themselves disappear.  If the cave man didn’t get out and hunt, they didn’t eat.  I hope we aren’t softening up people’s survival instincts with our current and future policies.  Agree?  Disagree?  I am curious what others feel about this subject?

 

Justin Himebaugh leads the accounting department at HRU, (or The Necessary Evil Group as he calls it).  A Graduate of the Haworth school of business at Western Michigan University, Justin has specialized in systems implementations and streamlining the accounting function for the companies he has worked with.  Besides having a well rounded skill set when it comes to accounting he can still hold his own in the pool if a game of water polo breaks out. You can follow him on Twitter, @necssryevil

Lotterization of Society

 

 

In the interest of full disclosure before I get into it, I love buying lottery tickets before a long car trip. It keeps my mind busy during the hours on the road thinking about how I would spend the giant pile of cash if I won. The problem with this is the concept of getting a giant payday that you really did nothing to earn or deserve. This desire to get something for nothing has become widespread in our short attention span, ADD, instant gratification society.

Where I see it in the workplace a lot is in the up and coming workforce (Although by no means is it exclusive to that age group). I see a lot of people about to graduate or recent grads that want to own their own businesses and many want to be in a consulting type role even though they have no real experience to speak of. Almost like signing up for a high level math course and volunteering to teach it after the first couple days. These people don’t want to “pay their dues”, something I know I hated to hear when I first joined the workforce and was stuck at the bottom with no perks and low pay. But now after working my way up and gaining valuable experience along the way I realize that I didn’t know what I didn’t know back when I was first starting out.

Ambition is great and wanting to get to the top right away is an admirable goal, but the problem with it is there are quite a few people that only swing for the fences and don’t go for the singles and doubles to get where they ultimately want to go. I see skilled trades businesses with only grey haired people working there and wonder where are the young apprentices that can someday take over and run those businesses? The thing keeping people away is there is a lot of training and education involved in getting to that journeyman status or to become a master electrician. If you want that upper management corporate job, you need to get through a four year degree and work your way up. There are a large number of people that are sitting and waiting for those numbers to hit as if that were the only way to get to the top and then complain that they never get anywhere. A few people do, but the odds are not in your favor if you are trying to go this route. Unfortunately, sometimes this behavior is reinforced. Remember when you used to land a good job in order to have health insurance provided to you? Not anymore, just wait for Obamacare to come through then you don’t have to work and will still be covered in case anything happens. Not that there shouldn’t be a safety net, but it bothers me that so many people work hard to have these protections while others do so little for the same result.

I don’t think the Lottery has caused these problems, it is just a symptom. So if you play the lottery, great, good luck, I hope you win….but I would keep showing up for work just in case that plan A doesn’t work out for you. There are no shortcuts or substitutes for hardwork and experience if you want to bring real value to the job market.

Justin Himebaugh leads the accounting department at HRU, (or The Necessary Evil Group as he calls it). A Graduate of the Haworth school of business at Western Michigan University, Justin has specialized in systems implementations and streamlining the accounting function for the companies he has worked with. Besides having a well rounded skill set when it comes to accounting he can still hold his own in the pool if a game of water polo breaks out. You can follow him on Twitter, @necssryevil

 

The value of peer networking

 

I just returned from a users conference for our enterprise software system.  I have been to many of these conferences in the past with other companies and always get a lot out of them.  I think more than the information on the software itself and the shameless self promotion by the vendor, the main benefit I gain from these conferences is the establishment of a network of peers in our particular industry.  There is a lot to be said to sit in meetings and around the lunch table with other people who are struggling with the same problems in the same industry as you.  There are a lot of solutions and tips that get shared which more than cover the price of admission.  More than that, you establish contacts around the country with people that hold the same position as you and they become a network you can tap when future issues may come up.  Having some go to people to use as a sounding board, or people you can share information with is very valuable.  Just keep in mind this is a two way street just like any other networking situation.  If you are able to provide some value or help to someone in the network you are much more likely to be on the receiving end of the relationship later.  A very practical example I can give is that I write a lot of custom reports using Crystal Reports, so do most of the peers I met at the conference (same at a lower level and some at a higher level than those I have created).  We can now share these reports among ourselves rather than each of us individually paying the software vendor to create the reports.  There is no cost for me to share a report I have written in the past but there is a tangible value (hundreds of dollars) to someone in my network who may have use for this report.  So my point here today is to take advantage of building up that peer network with others in other companies in your industry (probably best to not do so with a direct competitor, not a good career move).  Remember that in these situations you will only get out of your network what you put into it, so be generous with your network and contribute early and often if you can.

Justin Himebaugh has been in Management accounting for 17 years.  A Graduate from the Haworth school of business at Western Michigan University, Justin has specialized in systems implementations and streamlining the accounting function with the companies he has worked with.  Outside of work Justin enjoys the outdoors, fishing, backpacking, biking and still tries to get in the pool to swim a few days a week to remind him of the glory days when he actually fit in a speedo (Don’t try to picture him in one now though, trust me).