In an effort to stay on top of the hippest trends, I give you this: The top 10 most annoying buzzwords or phrases in the creative industry today: * Outside the box* Synergy* The big idea* ROI* Paradigm shift* Strategy* Integrated solution* CRM* Customer-centric* Voice of the consumer From ManageSmarter.com’s Office Lingo: Buzzwords That Are Losing Their Buzz. The bolded entries are ones I have used in the past 7 days. I will make the proper adjustments to my lexicon, but “ROI” is too important to abandon.
Continue ReadingA Brief History Of Email
We’ve discussed no email Fridays here before and now this morning I kick up this CareerJournal.com article regarding the use of other communication channels. Instant messaging is popular here at Select Metrix and does work well as a companion tool to email. In case you didn’t know the history of email: Electronic mail was invented in 1971, but wasn’t widely adopted by businesses until the late 1980s, with the arrival of Lotus Notes and other programs. Since then, its use in the corporate world has exploded: Research firm Radicati Group Inc. estimates the average corporate email user sent and received about 171 messages a day last year, a number expected to… Read More
Continue ReadingWhy Gen Y Job Hops
Steve Rothberg over at collegerecruiter.com provides one of the clearest posts I have read regarding Gen Y and their job-hopping ways. This is Steve’s area of expertise and this post lays it out in simple terms. An excerpt (emphasis mine): Gen X’ers like me who attended college two decades ago received our education for far less money than Gen Y’ers are paying. I paid $3,500 for tuition my last year in school. If the cost of that tuition were to double every seven years, that means that today’s student in that same program would pay $28,000. That’s disgusting. I graduated with about $20,000 in student loan debt. A Gen Y’er… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat Gen Y Wants
SHRM’s recent newsletter (membership required) contains an article discussing what Gen Y’ers are looking for in their lives. In a recent survey conducted by Pew Research Center here is a wish list of what the Gen Y’ers want. Life goals are geared strongly toward getting rich (81 percent) and famous (51 percent). Their Generation X predecessors, by comparison, place less importance on these goals, with 62 percent seeking riches and just 29 percent seeking fame. Thirty percent of respondents indicated that finances and debt were the most important personal problems they were facing. Education was a distant second at 18 percent, followed closely by career and job concerns at 16… Read More
Continue ReadingShow Me The Time Compensation
In the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise made the phrase “Show me the money” famous. In fact, the phrase has become an American icon in several ways. Eleven years later, it appears candidates are saying “Show me the time.” Time off for family, friends and fun. According to a recent survey by the Association of Executive Search Consultants, 85% of recruiters have seen candidates reject a job offer because it wouldn’t include enough work-life balance. And 90% of recruiters say work-life balance considerations are more important now than they were five years ago. Information from other levels of employment – not just the executive levels – suggest exactly the… Read More
Continue ReadingCoffee Snobbery
From CareerJournal.com comes an important article revealing a new trend – Gourmet Coffee Becomes An Unwelcome Office Perk: Of people who drink coffee at work, the percentage that drink the in-house brew dropped to 52% last year from 64% in 2003, according to the National Coffee Association, an industry group. I love that they have surveys for coffee consumption at the office. Is there any topic that isn’t subject to a survey? Nonetheless, I take my coffee seriously and am heartened by this new trend: Many employers are also investing in single-serve machines that make everything from coffee and specialty espresso drinks to hot chocolate and allow employees to brew… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Sales Diploma
From Selling Power’s Daddy, I Want to Be in Sales When I Grow Up: Imagine a world in which sales was regarded on a professional level with engineering and medicine; a world in which your five-year-old said, €œDaddy, I want to be a salesman when I grow up.€ Sound like a dream? It is. This topic has long been of interest to me. Sales is often considered a lesser profession due mainly to the fact that there is a low barrier to entry. If you have a smart phone and a briefcase you can be in sales. The gentleman in this article, Howard Stevens, is out to change that fact. Consider… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Job Search Equation
From the StarTribune’s Beyond The Basic Job Search Rules: His company (Jericho Communications) has conducted research that shows on average it takes one month for every $10,000 in salary in order to find a new job. So, if you’re looking for a $50,000 per year position, it could take up to five months €” if you work at it daily. I haven’t heard of that equation before reading this article. We work on the company side of hiring, but I suspect this equation holds water for candidates? My initial take on sales positions is that candidates find opportunities faster than this rate. Of course, a strong salesperson can find a… Read More
Continue ReadingEspresso U
We are coffee house aficionados as I have mentioned in previous posts. One of my goals is to be a barista some day. Now a Pioneer Press article describes a coffee university – Enrollment grows at Espresso U. I now have a new motivator! In case you doubted the appeal of coffee: Nationally, the number of coffee houses has nearly doubled in the past six years. According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, there are almost 24,000 coffee houses in the U.S., up from 13,800 in 2001. The addition of wireless internet has made them a business hot spot. Yesterday the Rock Star and myself were working at Panera… Read More
Continue ReadingResearching A Candidate Online
CNNMoney.com offers a fairly innocuous story: Survey: CEOs bullish on better economy. That is always good news and I am bullish along with them. Small and mid-sized companies are optimistic about the U.S. economy’s prospects in 2007 on the back of brisk first-quarter sales and increased revenue, according to a survey released Tuesday. But catch this little throw-away line from later in the article: Twenty-one percent of all executives surveyed report having conducted Internet searches via News Corporation-owned MySpace, Facebook or Google when researching job candidates, the survey showed. I found that number staggering – almost 1 in 4 executives are using social networking sites or search engines to research… Read More
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