Job Search Expense Tax Deductibility: Is Uncle Sam in Tune with the Times?

by Anneli C. Olila
Principal, Olila Documents & Communication Strategies
Editor-in-Chief, Boston GreenScene

Job search expenses such as resume services, placement agency fees, and travel costs are tax-deductible–for some, and sometimes. Here are Uncle Sam’s criteria:

• You have to be looking for a job in your current occupation
• Any travel you itemize has to be primarily related to looking for a job
• You can’t be looking for your first job
• There can’t have been a ‘substantial break’ between the end of your last job and when you started looking for a new job.

For those fitting these criteria, the deductibility of job search expenses will offer some small relief and help offset unavoidable costs in a tight and competitive labor market. But, what about those who do not fit the criteria? Some exclusions make sense, of course.  Why, for example,  would Uncle Sam reimburse you for your vacation to Hawaii or, in the case of the first-time job seeker, allow you to deduct from taxes you haven’t yet paid? In these greening times, however, and in a world in which career outlooks change as rapidly as technology, does it make sense to restrict allowable deductions to non-career changers? Is ‘career change’ even a definable parameter? The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) doesn’t think so:

How to Create a Sustainable … Green … HR Function

by Lizz Pellet, Fellow Johns Hopkins University and CEO of EMERGE International

We’ve all heard that green is quickly becoming the new black. Everyone seems to be jumping on the sustainability wagon. What does that mean for HR? In December 2008, Green Tech Media offered their list of the top ten green jobs of the future. Number two on their list was Sustainability Officer. They say that this is a newly created corporate position. Companies will need to make choices about how to reduce their carbon footprint as well as make their products and services more green.

So, what is a Sustainability Officer? Here is my first pass at what an HR sustainability role would look like and the process HR would undertake in order to “greenify” their company.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs)

Once the organization establishes that social responsibility and sustainability is important to their business strategy, they must define what this will mean to the company. Once this is defined, it will need to be incorporated into the company’s vision, mission, values as well as touted in their marketing materials, website, and all communication vehicles. No easy task here, but assigning the deliverable to one job function actually makes quite a bit of sense.

The role would be highly visible and would have to form strong communication channels, both internally and externally, so some good PR and platform delivery skills would be required. The person filling the role will need to be a team player with an exceptional attention to detail. Dealing with all the related functions to get the messages created and delivered will be challenging enough, so a good team approach and an ability to influence others will be a must.

The Top Three Elements Missing From Resumes

Over the course of working with hundreds of job seekers, I’ve found that even the most sophisticated among them often fail to address the following three elements in their resumes:

Scope

Think about it this way: If you say you managed Bob’s Market, it makes a big difference to me as hiring manager if Bob’s Market is a local store serving 30 customers a day or a national chain serving millions. Quantification is one key way of conveying scope, but it’s not the only one. If you don’t have metrics, you may have to think of other, more qualitative ways to convey scope. If you start to think about each section of your resume this way, however, your document will be that much more effective.

Impact

Let’s say one of your responsibilities as Manager of Bob’s was handling key accounts. Because you understand that conveying scope is important, you’ve correctly pointed out that there were 50 key accounts at any given time. Great! But—what tells me, the hiring manager, that you handled them well? Maybe you lost each and every one! If you indicate, however, that you increased the amount each of those key accounts spent at Bob’s by 60%, that tells me you are highly effective—that your efforts had a positive impact! There are many ways to convey impact. It just takes a little brainstorming.

5 Reasons to Kick Your Search into High Gear in December

by Kevin Kernes

Every year I hear countless job seekers say the same thing, “I am going to put my job search on hold until after the Holidays.”  Unfortunately, this is yet another example of conventional wisdom misfiring.  Here are some of the reasons that “suspending” your search in December will do more damage than good:

• I have never seen a December in the search business that wasn’t extremely busy – good economy or bad.  Many companies are trying to get positions filled before year’s end because of budgets or potentially losing the headcount.  The latter is of particular concern right now, given the state of the economy and new job creation.
• During December, there are multiple opportunities to network through holiday parties.  The amount of people you can reach out and touch is two to three times that of any other time of the year.  Why wouldn’t you take advantage of it?

Green Job Growth: What is it? Where is it?

by Anneli C. Olila, Principal of Olila Documents & Communication Strategies / Editor-in-Chief of Boston GreenScene

In my recent discussion of green job hunting myths, I argued against the mystique surrounding the green job industry and the psychological and other barriers this presents to those hoping to transition into a green career.  Responses from readers ranged from disbelief, to hesitant hope, to specific questions regarding qualifications and resources. In this article, I start to provide some data that may be useful to readers in understanding the projected growth of the green job market and where they might fit in.

What Do We Mean by ‘the Green Job Market is Growing’?

According to the United States President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), green jobs are everywhere, and the growth of the green job market is anticipated to continue to outstrip the growth of other markets. In its July 2009 report, the CEA cited data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showing projected growth in environmentally-related occupations to be 38% more than all other occupations combined by 2016. This is depicted in the following figure, reproduced from page 8 of their report:

To put this into perspective, it is worth noting that the occupations they considered were actually in a fairly limited range.  Specifically, the BLS projections drawn from in the CEA report are based on data for the following occupations only:

• environmental engineering technicians
• environmental engineers
• environmental scientists and specialists (including health)
• environmental science and protection technicians (including health)

Squashing Some Green Job Hunting Myths

by Anneli C. Olila, Principal of Olila Documents & Communication Strategies / Editor-in-Chief of Boston GreenScene

Each week, I spend hours talking to job seekers of all levels—from those just graduating from school to highly-experienced C-level executives. Many are contemplating a green career, either out of their passion for the environment or simply because other markets are tight and the green market shows promise. Often, what I hear is a fatigued and resigned voice on the other end of the phone saying, “I’d love to join a green company, but they all want you to already have vast experience in the green industry.”

When anyone, let alone a top-level, international, well-accomplished executive, says this to me in the midst of cataloging his or her milestone achievements—such as dramatically increasing revenue, efficiency, and organizational prestige; adeptly handling countless mergers and acquisitions; building exceptional cross-cultural and cross-functional teams; applying proven project management and Six Sigma skills; and achieving numerous patented inventions across regulatory environments—I am astonished. I am astonished as editor-in-chief of a green information portal, and I am astonished as a communications specialist who works closely with companies, schools, recruiters, and job seekers. I am also astonished just as a thinking person. There is an apparent and unfortunate mystique built around the green industry—and, frankly, around the job search industry itself—that is completely unwarranted.

Fact 1:

For many functions, changing to a green career is no more complex or mysterious than making any other career change. There are fundamental, logical steps that go into the process that are applicable to any shift in professional direction. Usually, making a career change involves leveraging the skills you have gained and how you have applied them in other arenas, identifying and articulating these transferable skills, and making a coherent argument as to why these are transferable and applicable. This is not mysterious; it just requires thought, logic, and some well-developed writing and argumentation skills.

Fact 2:

Green companies are still companies. As far as I know, companies typically have at least some common elements and functions. Commensurate with their size, most companies across industries still need accountants, purchasers, managers, leaders, coordinators, assistants, trainers, researchers, and so forth. Any company worth its salt that is seeking, for example, an effective project manager is going to want you to have a proven history as a project manager and is going to expect that you have the ability to apply your project management skills to different types of projects. You can be as green as you like, but if you do not possess the required project management skills, you will most likely not get that particular job.