Why we need Rhett Butler as a hiring authority

Image by Khinson

Hiring authorities are taking longer than ever to fill vacancies, the New York Times recently reported.  Candidates interview five or six times and leave empty-handed. Sometimes the jobs never seem to get filled. I know that on LinkedIn I have seen a number of  ads for the same journalism jobs  pop up again and again — for more than year. In case you haven’t heard, there are plenty of unemployed journos dying for full-time work. What’s up with that?

Blame it on the glut of candidates. The more choices we have in life, the harder it is to choose. “We don’t know our preferences that well, says behavioral economist Dan Ariely in a TED Talk back in 2009. This is why we need Rhett Butler. He’s a guy who finally figures out what he wants and acts  on it. Ariely explains:

We have an irrational compulsion to keep doors open. It’s just the way we’re wired. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to close them. Think about a fictional episode: Rhett Butler leaving Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, in the scene when Scarlett clings to him and begs him, “Where shall I go? What shall I do?” Rhett, after enduring too much from Scarlett, and finally having his fill of it, says, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” It’s not by chance that this line has been voted the most memorable in cinematographic history. It’s the emphatic closing of a door that gives it widespread appeal. And it should be a reminder to all of us that we have doors—little and big ones—which we ought to shut.

Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational

So, dear, Hiring Authorities, choose a candidate. Close the door on the others.

Just for fun, here’s Ariel’s hilarious TED talk on how we let outside forces control our decision-making, largely because we just don’t know what we want or we get too vermischt when presented with more than two choices. Word to the wise: Before agreeing to surgery, demand your doctor present all the other choices he is rejecting!

 

Stocks average 24% gain for year when they finish Jan and Feb higher

2013 is shaping up to be a great year for stocks — if history is any guide. I found this in my inbox, courtesy of  David Lutz, managing director at Stifel Nicolaus.

Sam Stovall of S&P Capital IQ reports that there have been 26 times since 1945 that the S&P 500 scored gains in both January and February – In all 26 instances, Stovall says the “500″ recorded a positive calendar year total return, averaging an advance—including dividends—of 24 percent and posting full-year results that were in the single digits just twice: 1987 and 2011.

The S&P 500 ended February up 1.1% — it’s fourth consecutive monthly jump.

A tax benefit that you shouldn’t miss out on

Tax time. Wish you had a few more deductions? I hope you didn’t miss out on maxing out on your flexible spending account (FSA), if your employer offers it. Most people are afraid to take advantage of the benefit, which enables workers to save up to $2,500 pre-tax to pay for medical costs. 

The catch (at least for now): If you don’t use the entire amount you save, you lose it at the end of the plan year. That’s no reason to be shy about maxing out on the FSA, as I explain in a recent post for Women and Co.:

BenefitsPro, a site that follows the employee benefits business, reports that on average workers took advantage of only $1,400 of the credit, leaving a lot of money on the table they had meant to claim. “The ’use-it-or-lose-it’ structure is the No. 1 reason that employees haven’t used the FSA benefit more aggressively,” says Jody Dietel, chief compliance officer of WageWorks in San Mateo, California. “They are afraid to lose money,” she says. WageWorks manages tax-advantaged programs for corporations.

That’s a major strategic error. Depending on their tax brackets, FSA participants save 25 cents to 40 cents per dollar put in the fund. So even if some cash gets left behind in an FSA account, the odds are good that aggressive FSA users will still come out ahead. “Give yourself a raise,” Dietel urges, and take full advantage of the FSA tax deduction.

Are you making the most of your flex-spend accounts?

FSAs used to allow you to save up to $5,000 per person. But the IRS lowered the amount to 2013 and is now taking comments on whether it should drop the “use-it-or-lose-it” rule, which would make many more workers likely to take advantage of the benefit.

Move over VIX, Apple is the new fear gauge

Meet the new fear gauge: Apple. It’s accessible. Everyone knows it and probably owns more than they ever knew. It’s everywhere — in ETFs and mutual funds and discretionary stock accounts. Its products are in your office, your back pocket, or favorite reading chair. And it can generate more emotion than the Volatility Index because of it.

So it may feel surprising that over the past two months, the price performance on the VIX and Apple are nearly mirror images (see here): Apple has lopped off more than one-quarter of its market value while the VIX has zigged and zagged its way higher, dipping earlier this week as the market unraveled.

Yet action in the VIX  (which has been setting new trading volume records) seems ho-hum and Apple is the bone-shaker.  On StockTwits, the VIX might get the hashtag #wakeup — in tune with a WSJ blog: Vix hits the snooze button again. But the stock-no-one-could-stop has gone from #AppleOnFire to #AppleUnderFire.

There’s a lot of head-scratching on action on both the VIX and Apple. “Why won’t the VIX go higher,” asks Adam Warner in his blog. Steven Place asks on his options blog ”Is the VIX too complacent?” From a technical viewpoint, the answer is no, he says. If you look at the VIX going out 90 days, you’ll see a lot more anxiety in the market, he writes. But the current index — which factors in expectations for the next 30 days — is pretty tame. And that is what you would might expect during the upcoming holiday season.

Apple is just as puzzling. Paul R. La Monica from The Buzz @CNNMoney.com, tweeted yesterday in disbelief: “AAPL now down 25% from its all-time high. But forward P/E just 10.5. And it has dividend yielding 2%. When will the pain stop?”  Scott Murray tries to put the plunge in context, saying that now Apple is in the right volatility zone; its run-up was actually the anomaly.

To me, Apple is feeling like the crucible for all investor fears — both professional and small. Taxes on both capital gains and dividends are likely to go up — by how much? On a practical matter, best to lock in gains now. It’s not just that. The world is changing in so many unpredictable ways, both globally and at Apple. Through these past years of turmoil and triumph, Apple has been steady, creating products that consumers love because they make users feel special when doing something quite ordinary — like sending a text or listening to a song. Steve Jobs understood that if you infuse the humdrum with a beautiful aesthetic, life would be a little sweeter. But with Jobs gone, the temple to beauty doesn’t seem inviolate. Even Apple is now offering perks to keep its staff; working there doesn’t seem like a privilege. In a larger sense, Apple was a symbol of the prowess of American enterprise. And now all of that seems in doubt yet again. The election, rather than settling things, has heightened everyone’s sense of just how difficult the road ahead is and how serious the task. And so as our confidence gets sapped, Apple takes a bruising. It’s the more perfect proxy for what many investors are feeling now.

Correction of the day: Was that red ants or black?

When I was growing up my mother would often tell the story of those competitive 1960s  women who would — oops — omit the most important ingredient in a shared recipe. Somehow Marge’s dish just never came out right. Gosh. Wonder why.

Now the Wall Street Journal would have us believe a recipe shared in last weekend’s paper accidentally messed up critical ingredients:

The chef Wylie Dufresne’s version of eggs Benedict doesn’t include egg-yolk foam… Also, MAD attendees were served ants in bee-larvae mayonnaise. In some editions, the article incorrectly said they were served ants in buttermilk.

Inside the Madhouse