Your CV

November 29, 2010 - 1:42 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, education, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

If you’re looking for a job in Israel, you might want to include a headshot with your CV, aka resume. True, it may hurt your chances of getting the job according to two BGU researchers, but then again, this is the country where you routinely get asked if you’re married, expecting to have more children and other personal questions.

But back to the headshot. If you’re a guy, make sure you’re good looking. That’s the guiding result of BGU’s (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) recent working paper, “Are Good-Looking People More Employable?”, by two BGU economics researchers who have proved that there is a double standard for good looks in men vs. women.

They sent 5,312 resumes to 2,656 advertised job openings in Israel. Each resume was sent twice (for a total of 5,312), once without a picture while the second, almost identical resume contained a picture of either an attractive male/female or a plain-looking male/female. The quest was to see whether the employer emailed or called back the candidate for an interview.

According to Dr. Bradley Ruffle, a researcher and professor in BGU’s Department of Economics, the resumes of attractive males received a 19.9 percent response rate, nearly 50 percent higher than the 13.7 percent response rate for the ‘plain’ males and more than twice the 9.2 percent response rate of no-picture males. So an attractive male needs to send five resumes to obtain one response, while a plain-looking male needs to send 11 for a single response.

Among women, however, contrary to what you’d think, particularly if you watch “Mad Men” on a regular basis, ‘attractive’ women are called back for a position LESS often than ‘plain’ or ‘unattractive’ women as well as women who had no picture on their resume. No-picture females had the highest response rate, 22 percent higher than plain females and 30 percent higher than ‘attractive’ females.

So attractive and plain women are better off skipping the step of adding a photo to a resume since it decreases their chances of a callback by 20 to 30 percent.

Yet the number of attractive women who were subjected to discrimination depended on who was hiring them,. When employment agencies received resume, attractive female candidates were no worse off than plain candidates and only modestly affected compared to no-picture females. But if an organization directly recruited someone, attractive women received half the responses received by plain and no-picture women. The researchers explained that with the large number of women in human resources staffs.

You see, they conducted a post-experiment survey in which they spoke with the person at the company who screens candidates. Most of those staffers were young (23-34) and single (67 percent) and seemingly more jealous of a young, good-looking possible co-worker.

Maybe your best bet is to skip the pic.

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A butter famine

November 25, 2010 - 10:54 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, Environment, Food, General, Israeliness 

It’s a butter famine, says one friend of mine. A butter shortage, say the experts. Call it what you will, but it is nearly impossible to find blocks of the yellow stuff in recent weeks. It started with a a dearth of the 200 gram Tnuva blocks, and you could only find 100 gram blocks. Then, last week, the husband came home from the grocery store with imported butter, for double the price. Double the price! From Holland, of course.

Anyway, given that it’s Thanksgiving weekend, we’re cooking turkey and the associated dishes this weekend, and not needing much butter. But still. muffins, eggs, toast — all the usual butter requirements are still out there. I’m starting to ration the stuff. And so, I needed to know why it is that there is no butter.

First off, it’s the worst butter shortage in the country’s history. And the weather is to blame; but not the long summer, rather the long autumn in which the cows have yet to produce their usual surplus that helps produce the 9,000 tons of butter that Israelis generally produce.

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Circling Jerusalem

November 22, 2010 - 10:30 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, News, Travel 

'Natbag' runways

I spend a lot of time at home. It’s quiet here. I get work done, but I hear things. People walking down the simta, the path outside my house that leads to Hebron Road, a major thoroughfare. Cats in the backyard. Doors slamming next door. And airplanes flying overhead.

It wasn’t so long ago that you rarely heard or saw airplanes in the Jerusalem sky. If you did, your first thought was, “Is there a war starting up?” Because that’s what airplanes signified. But now there are many planes flying overhead every day, and it’s hard to ignore them.

I grew up in Long Island, near JFK and the school I attended was in a traffic pattern, so much so that teachers would have to stop talking a few times a day and wait for the plane to fly by. In fact, when our senior class lobbied to hold our graduation on the lawn in front of our school — rather than another school’s auditorium — we had to call up JFK and ask them to not use that particular traffic route for several hours on our graduation day. They complied.

Anyway, what with my noticing the increase in air traffic, and the constant updates from my two-year-old companions, “Mommy! Airplane!” and “Mommy! Airplane!”, I asked my air traffic expert, nephew Benjy Goldberg who is currently working for El Al as a flight attendant.

And the answer was mine in just a few short days. It seems that ‘Natbag’, the acronymal nickname for Ben Gurion Int’l Airport, is undergoing a major runway expansion that will create a new approach pattern, more simultaneous takeoffs and landings and more than doubling the number of aircrafts that can handled at peak times. The $1 billion project is scheduled to be completed in 2014, and has necessitated several runway machinations in the meantime, including having planes circle above Israel while waiting to land, and that circling encompasses Jerusalem.

Benjy assured me that it’ll be about a year of serious air traffic noise, but should be over some time in 2011. It pays to have friends in high places. Guffaw.

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Changing views

November 21, 2010 - 12:40 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: education, Environment, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

What’s great about hanging out with kids, toddlers in my case, is how they look at the world and get you to do the same. Since I spend a lot of time with twin two-year-old boys, there’s a lot of talk about trucks, cars, the moon, the sun, the stars and the sky, and, animals. That’s not to say that there isn’t interest in other subjects, but those tend to be the main topics.

So much so, that when I’m on my own, in the car, let’s say, and spot a really spectacular tractor-trailer, cement mixer or front-end loader, I remark on it to myself and experience a certain amount of disappointment that the boys aren’t around to see it for themselves.

Or take this morning, when we were reading Eric Carle’s The Mixed-Up Chameleon, about a chameleon who is suffering from a lack of self-confidence and decides to take on the physical characteristics of a host of zoo animals before realizing that it’s worth just being himself.

Anyway. Wouldn’t you know it, but just after we finished reading it, a Mediterranean gecko or possibly a Lebanon lizard — as one local naturalist, Leiah Elbaum, describes it — snuck by us, possibly in pursuit of the moth that had been flitting around the house last night. The boys and I took after it, running around the living room in search of it along the seams and edges of the floor and walls, but no luck after that first glimpse.

Still, there was an element of instant education and gratification. And while it wasn’t exactly a chameleon, it was close enough. Particularly as it was easily blending into the stone-colored tiles of our floors.

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Leo buying Israeli property

November 17, 2010 - 9:34 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Business, General, Israeliness, News, Pop Culture 

Hunkering down at a cafe in Hod Hasharon

Still wondering why property prices are so high in Israel? Wonder no longer. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, boyfriend to Israeli model Bar Rafaeli, doesn’t want to stay at his girlfriend’s parents house in Israel during their frequent visits, so he’s considering building, but not near the in-laws in Hod Hasharon. Nope, DiCaprio’s gotta do things his own way, so he’s thinking the Negev or the North.

In Israel this week to celebrate his birthday along with his mother and actor friend Kevin Connolly (did you know they were friends?), they started their trip in Egypt and are now staying at the Dan Tel Aviv presidential suite.

This is all according to the Israel Hayom paper, which yesterday reported DiCaprio’s property plot plans. One thing is for sure, DiCaprio is not considering building a home in the mercaz, or Israel’s center, where the Rafaelis live. Guess he doesn’t want to rely on them for the proverbial cup of neighborly sugar. Or doesn’t want to run into the paparazzi again…

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