2011 November

Transitioning to Digital

Lisa Schneider on November 30, 2011

We’d like to welcome to the blog Lisa Schneider, who works in the digital part of her organization but who brings to it knowledge honed from a past working in print. She’ll be writing about just that sort of move, whether it’s about how to transfer current skills to a digital area, manage digital employees, or get a purely digital career off the ground in organizations that might not be completely up to speed themselves. She’s here to help you keep up, so that you and your career stay relevant. And in such a rapidly changing field, we suspect that you’re likely to have your own questions. Please feel to either put them in the comments below or to ask them via Twitter.

Having successfully made the transition from print to digital over a decade ago, I’m sometimes approached for advice on how to make that leap today. People who’ve been happy to leave it to the tech department until now are realizing that they ignore digital platforms at their own peril, since even non-techs must show an understanding of and facility in this area just to keep up: editors are creating or optimizing content for multiple platforms, marketers must master getting their message out via number of channels to show a reasonable return on investment, salespeople are asked to sell multimedia packages, and the list goes on. Read More →

There’s Still Time to Get that Raise for Next Year — If You Hurry

Jim Hopkinson on November 29, 2011

You’ve finally finished off the last of the leftovers from Thanksgiving, and now December is staring you in the face, another year gone by. Your wallet is also feeling the effects of those “doorbuster” specials from Black Friday. With the rest of the holiday activities looming, it sure would be nice to have some extra cash.

However, many people are nervous about approaching their boss to talk about their performance. They have questions. Is now a good time to ask? How should I approach the topic? Will I seem greedy? To make things easier, it helps to have a plan. Let’s call it

The Past, Present, and Future Plan

An All-in-One Public Speaking Tip: Pump Up the Volume

Joel Schwartzberg on November 28, 2011

This Wednesday, November 30, the top public speaking coach and presentation expert Joel Schwartzberg will teach a Hired Guns Academy class on how to add strength to your professional talks, appearances, and job interviews. Below, he gives a quick tip to ensure that your messages come through loud and clear.

Many public speakers present too softly, but I’ve rarely met one who’s too loud. Even when I implore students to speak “too loudly,” almost all of them end up speaking with perfect or near-perfect volume.

Now that we know there’s little risk of being too loud, consider what increased volume will do for you as a speaker: it prevents you from speaking too quickly, from mumbling, and from meandering off point. It gives you time to think and create thoughts. It grabs audience attention and holds it. And it increases the likelihood you’ll end your sentences with periods instead of question marks — a strong indication of a confident speaker. If you’re on a microphone, make sure it’s adjusted to your “loud” public speaking level, not your “soft” talking level.

All this, from one little tip of turning up the volume — why not give it a try? A lot of voice goes a long way.

More presentation advice from Joel:

Bullet Points: Talking Tech Turkey

The Hired Guns on November 23, 2011

A cool chart breaking down the internet users around the world: less the 5% have access to broadband, although 30% have access to the internet in some form. [via Alltop]
Does someone in your family have a wonky computer full of dusty software and an operating system that’s on life support? Lifehacker has a gameplan for using Thanksgiving’s downtime to make things better . . . . See also The Atlantic’s Forget Shopping, Friday Is Update Your Parents’ Browser Day!
The Times tackles Google X, the secret labs where it dreams up some of its craziest ideas (yes, there are lots of robots).
NPR on how technology can kill the white-collar jobs that were immune from earlier structural changes. Legal discovery was one of the earliest of the low-hanging fruit. As one researcher says, “… by one estimate, it lets one lawyer do the work of 500.”

Bullet Points: White Lies, Stress Interviews, and Other Job-Hunt Dangers

The Hired Guns on November 22, 2011

We already covered what speakers can learn from Gov. Rick Perry’s recent flub. Brazen Careerist has more on what political debates in general can teach about successful job interviews.
Don’t be the first interview of the day and other tips on selling yourself effectively to potential employers. [USA Today]
It has to be said: a hat reading “Take this job and shove it” should never be part of your job-interview wardrobe (yes, that really happened). [Thomas.net]
Daniel Bukszpan of CNBC takes on a touchy issue: telling white lies during interviews.
Dealing with so-called “stress interviews,” during which candidates face a panel of interviewers. [Post and Courier]

De Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”: A Powerful Visual Thinking Method That Will Forever Change the Way You Think

Todd Cherches on November 21, 2011

Of all the different management, leadership, communication, innovation, and thinking tools, tips and techniques that I’ve learned over the years, nothing has affected me more, or has had more practical applications, than Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats” model.

De Bono, the guru of “thinking about thinking,” originated this framework that I now use, either consciously or unconsciously, literally every single day. It’s one of the best examples of how we can use visual and metaphorical thinking and communicating to solve real-world challenges. Read More →

Stop Worrying: Why “Holiday Weight Gain” Is (Mostly) a Myth

Brooke Alpert on November 17, 2011

Every year around this time, my clients start stressing about the holidays and the weight gain that supposedly always happens. People always quote the statistic that the average American inevitably gains at least five pounds during the holiday season, but I have some good news here folks, it hasn’t been proven.

There have only been a few studies that even examine holiday weight gain in Americans. The most well-known one, which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that most people only gained a single pound during the holiday season. One pound, not so bad, right? The problem with this single pound is that the study also found that this weight gain wasn’t corrected for afterwards, leading to adults gaining at least one pound each year. After 10 years, that weight is more than just a little issue. Read More →

Bullet Points: When Twitter’s More Trouble Than It’s Worth

The Hired Guns on November 16, 2011

“[My] habit started to feel less like a rush and more like a burden. Instead of tweeting to reflect on my life, tweeting had become my life. I began to think seriously about giving it up.”
Could a company force a departing employee to hand over the personal Twitter account he used on the job? Probably not, but it’s a grey area….
A survey of 72,000 people, conducted by TNS Digital Life, found that consumers’ feelings about interacting with company brands on social networks varied widely by country. Those in developed markets, including North America and Europe, had the most “resistance to both buying and engaging with brands” on Twitter, Facebook, and the like. You can find out more tidbits from the survey in The Next Web and in the teaser video below.

How a Bunch of Links Might Change the Direction of Online Advertising

The Hired Guns on November 15, 2011

Online display ads are most likely here to stay, but that doesn’t mean they are the only way to get the word out. In a recent talk at the Appnexus Summit, Reuters reporter Felix Salmon floated one idea for a different kind of ad — basically it would be an aggregated set of links to targeted content from all over. The selection would provide what’s often missing in current advertising: “a reason to want to look at your ad.” It may not end up being the future of online advertising, as Salmon claims, but it’s intriguing idea, given the many sites that have succeeded through various kinds of aggregation. Readers continue to want and need help finding the good stuff.

It’s no coincidence that the Counterparties blog, which Salmon runs, is modeled along the same link-heavy lines. Reuters’s home page runs a distinct Counterparties box at the bottom of its home page, and it’s easy to imagine this becoming its own sponsored ad unit in the future.

Why Great References Are the Gift That Keeps on Giving

Allison Hemming on November 14, 2011

References are gold. You can expect to hold ten or more jobs between college graduation and retirement, and that means that you’re likely to be asking references to vouch for you a lot over the duration of your career. Keeping track of your references and staying in a relationship with them for the long haul isn’t just good networking, it’s just about a necessity for getting hired in the future. Read More →

How to Survive a “Perry” Bad Public Speaking Misstep

Joel Schwartzberg on November 11, 2011

Rick Perry’s debate “oops” on Wednesday night deserves sympathy, even if you’re no fan of his politics. Who hasn’t lost a thought before? And the painful truth is that the more pressure you put on yourself to remember a forgotten point, the less likely it will be to come. Anxiety is a mortal enemy to thinking calmly, or even coherently. By the time Perry relaxed and remembered “Department of Energy,” the damage was done.

This wouldn’t have happened had Perry been allowed to use notes. Where’s Sarah Palin’s palm when you need it? If you know you have trouble remembering a key phrase or point, write it down. The purpose of notes is to help you remember your key points, nothing more.

But the biggest “oops” actually has nothing to do with Perry’s memory; it has to do with how he handled — or in this case, mishandled — the embarrassing moment. Instead of distancing himself from his mental hiccup immediately, he allowed it to linger for nearly a minute. If that seemed like a long time to you, imagine how it felt to him! Read More →

Cutting the Email Cord, One Day at a Time

The Hired Guns on November 10, 2011

Tomorrow, it turns out, isn’t just Veterans Day — it also happens to be the inaugural No Email Day.

The group’s founder, a British project manager named Paul Lancaster, encourages all of us to “stop using email completely for 24 hrs” in order to “do something more productive with the time saved.” Read More →

The (Slightly) Frothier Job Market

The Hired Guns on November 8, 2011

“Job churn” was up in September, and this is an encouraging sign of life for the job market and the economy in general. As Economix reports, when companies feel comfortable hiring as well as firing, then it’s a good sign that we might be pulling away from the death spiral of having workers leave without being replaced.

September’s number of “quitters” (i.e. those who left their job voluntarily), was also relatively strong — at over two million, it’s the highest number it’s been since November 2008.

Cut Through the Dithering and Pick Up That Phone!

The Hired Guns on November 7, 2011

These days, it’s much more normal to start a “conversation” with colleagues and clients or to bring up an issue with them through an email rather than a phone call. Emails are great for creating a paper trail, and their convenience is hard to beat, but their drawbacks are often overlooked. And good old phone calls have a lot going for them.

Writing for the Harvard Business Review, the venture capitalist Anthony Tjan makes a good case for using the phone and face-to-face meetings much more frequently, especially “when people are trying to resolve a conflict or communicate an important business decision.” Read More →

Ad Agencies Hunting High and Low for Tech Know-How

The Hired Guns on November 4, 2011

If you’ve got a head for marketing and your skills extend beyond pretty words and images to include being savvy with numbers, stats, and analyzing data of all sorts, then your career prospects ought to be very bright right now.

Ad and marketing agencies want people like you, and there just aren’t enough of you. As John Ebbert, the managing editor for a Web site devoted to ad technology, told the New York Times, “There is pain for hiring in digital at all levels.” Read More →

Will Future Grads Need Standardized Tests to Get Hired?

The Hired Guns on November 3, 2011

Hiring methods continue to evolve, but it’s safe to say that at most companies, their success rates are inconsistent and hard to predict. But if one startup’s product gains traction, getting entry-level talent in place just might become less painful, and a lot more reliable. The Certified Baccalaureate Test (aka “The Business Test”) is designed to give companies consistent metrics for measuring candidates’ skills in basic accounting, general marketing, finance, business writing, and other corporate-America staples — including excellence in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The questions were devised with input from business-school professors — no word on what input (if any) corporations may have had in determining what went on the test.

The startup that launched the test last year, GF Education, is marketing the test scores as a good way for job candidates to set themselves apart. GF Education’s founder, Guy Friedman, told Forbes that he hopes to bring “meritocracy” to the market, since the scores will apply to grads from all sizes and types of schools. The test will cost $500 in the future, but it’s currently $199. One nice touch: candidates who manage to score in the top 30% but fail to get a job in six months can get their exam fee refunded. In addition, high scorers’ details are passed along to a gaggle of recruiters and to companies who ask to see this list. It’ll be interesting to see if this idea catches on, and how it changes the way companies staff up.

How Not to Succeed: 5 Fun Ways to Make a Meeting Last 2 Hours

Todd Tarpley on November 1, 2011

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a manager is the power to waste other people’s time. A great way to do this is by transforming short meetings into endless morale-sucks in which nothing is accomplished and big chunks of the work day are blown.

Here are some helpful hints for pulling this off effectively:

1. Do it on short notice! Impromptu meetings disrupt whatever work people were already doing. Everyone loves a surprise, especially in the middle of a busy day. An unplanned two-hour meeting not only shakes up the same old boring routine, it teaches patience, discipline, and time-management skills. Your employees will thank you a thousand times over. Read More →

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The Hired Guns Blog

Topics

Authors

Archive

Transitioning to Digital

There’s Still Time to Get that Raise for Next Year — If You Hurry

The Past, Present, and Future Plan

An All-in-One Public Speaking Tip: Pump Up the Volume

Bullet Points: Talking Tech Turkey

Bullet Points: White Lies, Stress Interviews, and Other Job-Hunt Dangers

De Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”: A Powerful Visual Thinking Method That Will Forever Change the Way You Think

Stop Worrying: Why “Holiday Weight Gain” Is (Mostly) a Myth

Bullet Points: When Twitter’s More Trouble Than It’s Worth

How a Bunch of Links Might Change the Direction of Online Advertising

Why Great References Are the Gift That Keeps on Giving

How to Survive a “Perry” Bad Public Speaking Misstep

Cutting the Email Cord, One Day at a Time

The (Slightly) Frothier Job Market

Cut Through the Dithering and Pick Up That Phone!

Ad Agencies Hunting High and Low for Tech Know-How

Will Future Grads Need Standardized Tests to Get Hired?

How Not to Succeed: 5 Fun Ways to Make a Meeting Last 2 Hours

Gunsworthy

**Lewis Schiff, author of Business Brilliant, on career security in the new economy**
by The Hired Guns

The Secret to Happiness
by The Hired Guns

Five Skills I Use Every Day: Tammy Sachs, Strategic UX Research Consultant
by The Hired Guns

How Innumeracy Can Destroy Your Career
by Lisa Schneider

How to Regain Your Confidence and Recapture Your Mojo After a Layoff
by Todd Cherches

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