I remember having a sales job (pre-computer days) where I was expected to wear a suit every day.  One day I showed up with a navy sportcoat, tie and khakis and I actually was a bit nervous about what my boss might say.  I didn’t get in trouble, but I didn’t wear a sportcoat again.

Suffice to say, the average office has become extremely casual over the past 20 years.  We get the opportunity to see many different office environments and I am beginning to think that they are evolving into even more casualness.  Jeans are becoming more common in the middle of the week, not just on Fridays.

I think this is a bit of a trap for a candidate, younger candidates especially.  Take this article from the Wall Street Journal that details young candidates using text message lingo in their job search correspondence:

After interviewing a college student in June, Tory Johnson thought she had found the qualified and enthusiastic intern she craved for her small recruiting firm. Then she received the candidate’s thank-you note, laced with words like “hiya” and “thanx,” along with three exclamation points and a smiley-face emoticon.

I hate emoticons.  The thought of including them in a thank-you note is baffling to me.  Here is where the casualness is creeping in:

Job hunters may be more inclined to use their cellphones and text lingo when thanking interviewers because the medium is gaining acceptance in a growing number of workplaces. “I definitely text my managers if I am running late,” says Jennifer Nedeau, 23, a project manager at New Media Strategies Inc., a marketing firm in Arlington, Va. “I know I’m not bothering them with a phone call, but they’re still getting the message.”

I have no doubt text messaging will become more common over the next couple years.  However, it has its place and candidate correspondence is not one of them.  I would have serious reservations if I received an email or worse a letter, that incorporated text message shorthand.  In sales this would be high risk, even in technology sales.

Far better for the candidate to display their proper writing skills in the formal setting of an interview process.

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The economy is slow right now, but to call it a recession at this point is hyperbole.  Inc.com has a quick story on a survey of small-business owners.  The survey sample is small, but the results are encouraging.

Though many in the small-business sector remain concerned with broad economy conditions, a growing number of owners and employees are upbeat about activity in their own market, a new survey finds.

Of 500 small-business owners and employees recently polled by Opinion Research Corporation, a Princeton, N.J-based database firm, 65 percent rated their firm’s business conditions as good, while less than a third described them as poor. Though 71 percent said the U.S economy was struggling, 50 percent expect it to recover in a year.

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