ALUMRISE

Blog readers: I wanted to share the news that in case you aren’t already a member, we recently launched our Facebook Fan Page and our ALUMRISE Twitter presence. I’m sharing below the note I authored to thank our growing fan base, because it tells a story about where we are and where we are going that you may enjoy reading, and that I hope you take the time to react to it, by leaving us a comment.

This was published to our Fans Friday June 12, 2009 … July and our full media launch are just around the corner. These are exciting times for me personally, and for our dedicated team.

Facebook Note: June 12, Authored by Aassia Haq, CEO & President - ALUMRISE Inc. “Thank you for taking the time to join ALUMRISE’s Facebook Fan Page. We’re happy to welcome you to a space where you can learn about upcoming benefits and changes to our application and come along with us on an exciting journey. We’re excited to see our membership grow with every passing day.

When ALUMRISE first began evangelizing its vision and predictions for the workforce — we privately shared with key leaders at major Fortune 500 entities, organizations and partner firms, the thought that the workforce was on the verge of an elemental shift. The shift was to be driven by changes in demography – growing workforce populations either entering a new post-corporate, retirement lifestage, taking time off in the middle to raise children or care for aging parents, or the plethora of new workers who would believe that work and life should somehow more flexibly, fluidly fit better together. We also shared the view that organizations would radically change how they hire and find professionals to get work done. We got a lot of attention and some raised eyebrows.

Fast forward to today. Even to our prescient team and focused application developers, the reality of the vision surprises us. Work contracts are every day shifting from fixed to flexible. Organizations are hiring in a variety of ways, from a variety of professional and lifestage backgrounds, to fill an ever-changing set of business goals. They seek functional competency, flexibility, and more simple real-time access to the professional marketplace. The full time job is changing into jobs of all shapes and sizes.

And, instead of the 15 million we estimated initially for our ALUMRISER population of professionals outside the workforce in the U.S., today the actual number is closer to 30 million not formally employed, but still seeking opportunity and projects or jobs that fit.

We are here to serve each and every one of you better and look forward to sharing some big and exciting news and key application updates as we complete a full splashy media launch this summer.

Is the summer of 2009 the end of work as we know it? Or the beginning of a process that takes each of us – employer and professional - one step closer to a work life that works?

Whether you’re hiring or seeking, we hope that you find that our unique ALUMRISE profile, our fitting search that matches on a variety of important criteria in a simpler way, and our two-way marketplace connectivity, deliver on our simple vision that when jobs fit better, life just works better.

If you could be served by joining ALUMRISE (it’s free), or know someone else who could benefit from our platform or many private organizational offerings, please do share us on – email, Tweet, share our blog, or send an ALUMVITE from our marketplace itself – because every little bit helps our company. Our team (do check out our new digs in the Photo section!) comprises members of the workforce we seek to serve – experienced executives who have moved beyond traditional corporate roles; young mothers juggling work and family; midcareer flexers seeking a new balance; and professionals coming back on track after a circumstantial exit beyond their control. That is what makes us authentic and what will make us succeed in helping each and every one of you.”
- Aassia

Ps: We’d love to grab our vanity URL for Facebook, so please do help us reach 1,000 members so that we can be www.facebook.com/ALUMRISE to each of you. Invite or spread the word on your page – if each of you invites 10 friends, we’ll get there before we know it. (And yes, we already submitted our “hold” on our handle and have heard back from the Facebook team).

Thank you to those who have followed our blog, noted and commented on our vision or shared a unique perspective. We value you and will continue to blog to provoke your thoughts and comments. Perhaps you’d like to be a guest blogger too, like our friend Libby Sartain? If so, please send a note to us we’ll work to make it happen.

Dodging taxes has been in the news since the Daschle debacle.  Unfortunately, little missteps can hurt a big career.

The biggest misstep of course is a working family hiring help – or “Nannygate,” quoting a funny comment from a friend and colleague that I came across on Facebook the other day.

It’s common knowledge that despite “knowing better” many public officials do hire off-the-books household or childcare help and suffer the consequences when it comes time to take public office. So why do they do it? Surely they “know” better, right?

Let’s face it - Nannygate is the dirty little secret that many working families today could not survive without, whether or not they are public officials.

The math on child support and working families decrees that the trued-up cost of even average help can keep a productive contributor at home. In many cities, women must earn up to $15/hour (before taxes), simply to cover the cost of hourly help with family needs. Many bright and talented contributors decide it’s better to cease to work and stay home. If they find a more cost effective solution that creates some support and residual income – such as a fixed-price childcare helper - many take it and worry later about any consequences.

In our society today, mothers and fathers alike are forced to develop their own creative solutions to step the gap created between longer commuting and work day schedules and the shorter school day. These range from the “live-in” invisible housekeeper/nanny, to the paid or unpaid grandma or grandpa, to hiring some college kid to drive kids between school and afterschool programs to keep kids occupied until the family can get home. The horror of latchkey households and child predators has made it harder to allow families to send even older kids home alone after school.

So why can’t we find better solutions as a society and government to support our families and help keep the economy on track? ALUMRISE believes we must band together as a society to find better ways to support working families, either by improving childcare math and/or creating social systems to help such as better subsidized, safe, after-school care. (Let’s think about elder care, here, too).

We also believe that promoting natural, logical private sector solutions — such as creating opportunities that better tie to real family days and family lives, via more flexible arrangements — is a pure and noble goal to strive towards.

Companies also are wising up to this approach, based on a combination of skills shortages and cost needs and starting to realize the “ALUMRISER” is not a second-choice solution, but instead a viable and powerful flexible resource in a changing economic landscape.

If nothing at all is done, frankly, we’ll all cease wanting to aspire to goals such as Public Office and Becoming the Next President and instead be quite content with being the next victim of “Nannygate.” What a crying shame.

I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about a coming year of global gloom and doom.

Certainly, the business environment is sobering. Whether it’s unexpected loss of wealth due to greedy Madoff-style swindling, or a growing mistrust of the large and amorphous corporate bureaucracy with its many heads — or just the general steep decline in net worth, there’s cause for concern.

But in this post, I’m offering a personal point of view, with no certainty that this resonates for others, but a hope that it does. For me, 2009 is a year of opportunity. It’s the beginning of the rest of my life.

Probably because I’m somewhat familiar with adversity (who doesn’t fight at some point or another to achieve a goal), I believe that in times of struggle, it’s actually easier to define your own goals and desires and be more succinct, and more creative in how you realize them.

I’ve been thinking about what the word “opportunity” itself means. Does opportunity mean wealth, a new car, a private school? Or does it mean the right to do what one loves, on one’s own terms, at a fair trade-off price? Does opportunity mean a 9-to-9 job with a large corporation and a pension check? Or does it mean exciting, challenging assignments or positions that fit a changing personal lifestyle?

Does opportunity mean doing something completely irrational but wholly satisfying that ordinarily would be considered difficult and impractical, like starting a new venture? Or offering one’s services to unpaid goals like charitable or social projects just because of the deeper and more important satisfaction of the soul?

This year, I am excited by achieving goals that are personal and specific, not broad and social. And I wish the same for every ALUMRISER.

My advice when an opportunity knocks? Be specific in stating what you want. Be open to opportunities that fit your needs, even if they don’t seem like poster-board examples of success. And every day, do believe there’s new opportunity around the corner.

While all this is easier said than done if the worry is a paycheck or a mortgage payment, I believe 2009 offers the opportunity for all of us to be a year not of gloom and doom, but instead a year to grow personally and professionally in some new and exciting, unknown direction.

I hope this for all past, present and future ALUMRISERS. It’s 2009: Opportunity knocks.