When asked over the years what I do for a living, the answer has typically been journalist, reporter, editor, communications professional or some close variation. But when it comes to BizVoice magazine and our (joined by colleagues Rebecca, Tony, Candace, Matt and Symone) role, I think I prefer storyteller. It’s what we do in article after article, issue after issue.

At no time is that term more perfectly suited, however, than when writing for our Best Places to Work in Indiana issue. We’re "telling stories" of people that truly enjoy their time in the workplace and companies that make that possible. They are genuine and speaking from the heart when they use words and phrases like "family," "special culture," "service to each other," "close team" and more. (In 25-plus years, trust me I’ve seen and listened to many who were more auditioning than being authentic).

It’s really a privilege to be able to bring these stories to our readers. I’m sure you will enjoy the offerings this time around. Seventy companies are on the 2010 Best Places to Work list. While we can’t sit down with each and every one, we profile a variety in different locations and types of businesses, as well as gain the comments of many more in stories that focus on workplace communications, teamwork and respect.

The awards dinner is May 6. BizVoice will go in the mail that day and be available online after the event (can’t reveal those final rankings ahead of time). And if you think your company or another organization should be in the running as a leading employer, learn more about the annual program here.

Much has changed in Unemployment Compensation legislation since our last edition of the Unemployment Compensation Handbook was released in 2007. In just this past year alone, both state and federal lawmakers have impacted Indiana’s Unemployment Compensation system with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, as well as Indiana House Bill 1379, which addressed the depleted UI Trust Fund and launched both increased tax rates and stricter eligibility rules for unemployed workers applying for UI benefits; and in 2010, Senate Bill 23, which delayed the tax increases on Indiana employers for one year.

Our new book, authored once again by the law firm Ziemer, Stayman, Weitzel & Shoulders, can be your go-to reference on this complicated subject.

We do, however, have different options for you to receive the book this year. In addition to our standard hard copy for $95 , we’ll offer this book as one of our new ePubs. By ordering the ePub, not only will you get access to the book the minute it’s officially released (which should be by the end of next week), but you can buy a year of access for just $69. That means if a new edition of the guide is released during that year, you’ll automatically have access to the new guide online. And better yet, this book is part of our NEW Human Resources ePubs package, which includes a total of 15 of our popular HR-related titles for just $499 for the year (over $450 less than if you bought these books individually).

Anthony Casablanca, VP of Operations for the Batesville Casket Company and Hillenbrand, Inc., recently penned an incredibly useful column for BizVoice regarding his approach to filling positions. (Casablanca was named as the 2009 Ogletree Deakins/HR Dimensions HR Professional of the Year):

The candidate has been selected to come in for a face-to-face interview. Depending on the role, this is a one- to two-day process that includes a plant tour, customer business center tour, between two to six hours of interview time with both the hiring manager and the HR department lead, as well as several one-hour sessions with other members of the interview team (normally people who will interact with the person in this position).

During this phase, everyone has an assignment. The people conducting the tours are “soft selling” the company and helping us gauge how the candidate conducts himself or herself in a non-interview setting. You would be amazed at some of the feedback we get. The six-hour interview with the hiring manager and HR lead is conducted in a very structured way, although it is very conversational. We are looking for behavioral patterns, starting with high school and progressing through the candidate’s most recent roles.

This culminates in a detailed interview report (generally between four to eight pages long). The report is written by the hiring manager, who is expected to provide a summary of the candidate’s personal life and work history, and describes the candidate’s behavioral patterns – both strengths and weaknesses. They are also required to make a call on the candidate’s talent level, fit for the role and potential next roles. If we cannot see candidates moving to that next role, we will more often than not pass on hiring them.

How do we know this works? Our human resources team has developed metrics around our success rate of hiring “A” level talent. The HR team goes back to the hiring manager after six months and asks if the new hire is performing well, and if he or she is still considered an “A” talent. This is repeated at one year. Currently we get it right about 70% of the time.

For more on this topic, you can consult our ePub, The Interviewing Guide - 2nd Edition. Authored by attorneys from Ogletree Deakins, this online guide is now available for just $49. The book is also available in our Hiring & Firing/Leave Issues Package.

Doesn’t it make sense that we should all feel pretty good about ourselves? After all, we’ve acquired so much of what we’ve always desired:  spouses, kids, careers, friends, homes, cars, education, electronics, shoes galore, and microwave ovens with innards that twirl around and around.     

It’s scary almost, how well we’re doing, even when you factor in economic frazzles and the volatility in so many sectors of our lives. So of course, things aren’t exactly perfect, but we never counted on perfect. We did somehow expect, though, that we’d feel a little better about things. Instead, around midlife (your mileage may vary), almost without fail, burnout sets in. Maybe severely, maybe mildly. The blahs. Stagnation. Just at the point in life when we should feel proud and accomplished and something approaching happy, we begin to feel … flat.

There’s no mystery why the haunting song “Is That All There Is?” was a hit. It oozed ennui, that corrosive disillusionment so many adults experience. We feel it, most of us, but we try to deny it. And our culture offers up lots of ways to tamp it down, things that are quite contrary to Julia Child’s proper binge noted above.  “Improper binges” could include drink, drug, demon chocolate, antidepressants, shopping for more shoes, or buying microwaves that are even fancier in their ability to spin the food around yet still leave cold spots in it.

No, the problem isn’t that things aren’t perfect.The problem is that we’ve lost our ability to be seduced by the world. Children are enthralled by everything, because it’s all new. As adults, though, we believe we’ve been there, been everywhere; done that, done everything; bought the T-shirt, bought the iPod. We’ve become blasé. We’ve started to flatline. And we don’t know how to fix it.

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Ingrid Cummings, founder of Rubicon Communications LLC in Zionsville and author of The Vigorous Mind, is the keynote speaker at the Indiana Chamber’s 46th Annual HR Conference & Expo, May 5-6, 2010. Click here to register or for more info.

It sounds good on paper, but personally I’m not buying it. In this case, "it" is a New Jersey proposal that says if the state is going to give you your paycheck, you have to live within its borders.

With our capital’s geographic presence in the middle of the state, I can’t imagine too many are commuting from Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky or Michigan to Indy. But state workers are not confined to the big city. The New Jersey bill would impact teachers, police officers and firefighters as well as all city and county government employees.

There are strong Indiana connections to Cincinnati, Chicago and Louisville in addition to numerous other areas in the four neighboring locales. I grew up in Dearborn County, a lot closer to Cincy than Indy, and a tri-state ingredient seems to be active in all four corners of the state.

The full New Jersey article is here. Below is a quick summary:

State Sen. Donald Norcross (D., Camden), the sponsor of the bill, said, "It is very simple. If you want a paycheck from New Jersey taxpayers, you should have to live here, pay your taxes here and be part of your community."

Norcross, who also leads the 85,000-member South Jersey AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, said an estimated 10,000 public employees live out of state, costing the state about $22 million in income taxes.

"What really gets me is when I look at the mass exodus every night out of Trenton to Pennsylvania," Senate President Stephen Sweeney said. "If it’s good enough to work for the state, it should be good enough to live in the state of New Jersey," he added.

Public employee unions said that while relatively few of their members work out of state, they strongly oppose the measure for those who do.

"I think it’s a ridiculous proposal," said Bob Master, regional political director for the Communication Workers of America. "It will have no meaningful impact in the long run on the state’s budget problems and it will cause completely unnecessary hardship for our members."

Master said that if New Jersey’s neighboring states were to adopt similar tactics, the results would not be pretty.

Jobs are — or should be — the number one priority as economic recovery (in that sense) remains elusive. For those currently without jobs, however, how much unemployment compensation is too much? It’s a tricky question, but one that is starting to be asked by more than a few people.

The unemployment comp program, created during the Depression as a temporary aid for laid-off workers, is now termed by some as an "expensive entitlement." While those out of work once received six months of payments, that has now surged to as high as 99 weeks in some states. Half of the more than 11 million unemployed have been jobless for longer than six months.

This is a downturn unlike any other since the program was created and many of those jobs will likely not come back. And while the vast majority are very likely doing all they can to find meaningful employment in the effort to return to their previous lifestyle, nearly two years of unemployment benefits has also undoubtedly led some to adopt the option of "let the government pay the tab" for awhile.

Few seemingly agreed with Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning’s recent filibuster that delayed the latest unemployment benefits extension (he wanted Washington to find a way to pay for it), but his logic was accepted in some circles. Colleague Jon Kyle of Arizona commented that the continued benefits are a "disincentive for people to seek new work" and that no one can argue that the current system is a "job enhancer."

Employers pay the bill through taxes in nearly all states (a few require worker contributions). Benefits have been extended before, but rolled back when the unemployment rate declined. That decline is proving difficult to achieve this time around.

A Washington Post article this week included the following:

"It is appropriate and natural for Congress to extend the time limit of unemployment insurance with the job market as bad as it is," said James Sherk, a labor economist at the Heritage Foundation. "But by quadrupling it, it is no longer an unemployment insurance program but a welfare program."

Phillip L. Swagel, a former Treasury Department official who is now a business professor at Georgetown University, said that some people might take longer to find a new job as a result of unemployment insurance extensions, but that right now it’s a needed benefit.

"The reality is that it’s hard to find a job even for people who really want one," he said.

But as the job market improves, Swagel said, unemployment insurance extensions must be pared back quickly, as they have been in previous downturns. "It’s important to let the extensions lapse as the job market recovers — to avoid having disincentives to work once the job market is better," Swagel said.

Part of the question is timing. For a program that is currently costing $10 billion a month, that’s something that needs answered sooner rather than later.

We hear the unemployment rate each month, but here are a few other numbers to look at in regard to the economy and jobs:

• Bad news: 8.5 million or so jobs lost in the recession, with more than 40% of those people out of work for more than six months (in 1983 that figure only got as high as 26%)
• Better news: While January of this year saw a decline of 20,000 jobs, that paled to nearly 800,000 jobs lost in the same month a year ago
• Interesting statistic: Many people forget about the job churn that constantly takes place within companies, industries or the economy as a whole. In the second quarter of 2009, 6.4 million people found jobs, but 8 million lost their positions

They’re not all coming back, but bad and better will give way to good and great eventually.