VIDEO - Whatchoo Talking About Willis?
Saturday, June 30th, 2007Willis explains Unemployment Insurance to Arnold in this classic Different Strokes video.
Archive for June, 2007
VERY creative business card designs!
Saturday, June 30th, 2007I guess after my last post on innovation, I felt like I had to come back to you with more. So check this out. I came across a site of innovative business cards and was DELIGHTED to see that a Recruiter’s card was among them. Gives me hope that there are LOTS of Recruiters willing to innovate whenever and wherever they can. See below…
Want more? Check out: Collection of Creative Business Card Design Ideas
Prince continues to innovate!
Saturday, June 30th, 2007Okay, so its not REALLY recruiting related, but hopefully it will spark some ideas. What is the craziest, most daring stunt you can think of (and pull of) to meet your hiring goals. Check out what Prince (his purple badness) is up to these days. (I love his daring!)
-snip-snip-
Prince is launching his new Planet Earth album as a free giveaway with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread condemnation from music retailers.
The 10-track CD will be available free with an “imminent” edition of the newspaper. Planet Earth will then go on sale on July 24.
“It’s all about giving music for the masses and he believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible,” said Mail on Sunday managing director Stephen Miron.
“This is the biggest innovation in newspaper promotions in recent times.”
The paper will be ramping up its print run in anticipation of a huge spike in circulation but would not reveal how much the deal with Prince would cost.
One music store executive described the plan as “madness” while others said it was a huge insult to an industry battling fierce competition from supermarkets and online stores.
Prince’s label broke off ties in the UK with the album in a bid to appease music stores.
The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) said the giveaway “beggars belief”.
“It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career,” ERA co-chairman Paul Quirk told a music conference.
“It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.
“The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores.
“And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.” High street music giant HMV was similarly scathing about the plans. Speaking before rumours of a giveaway were confirmed, HMV chief executive Simon Fox said: “I think it would be absolutely nuts.”
“I can’t believe the music industry would do it to itself. I simply can’t believe it would happen, it would be absolute madness.”
Prince, whose Purple Rain sold more than 11m copies, also plans to give away a free copy of his latest album with each ticket sold for his upcoming string of concerts in London.
The singer had signed a global deal as well for the promotion and distribution of Planet Earth in partnership with Columbia Records, a division of music company Sony BMG.
A spokesman for the group said tonight that the UK arm of Sony BMG had withdrawn from Prince’s global deal and would not be distributing the album to UK stores.
“We think it is the right thing to do in the difficult retail market,” he said. “We are delighted Prince has come back to a major label but this makes sense for the UK.”
Student Gets Law Passed for State to Pay Off College Debts
Saturday, June 30th, 2007Now this is innovative thinking! I wonder how many recruiters have recognized his talent and given him a call already?
-snip-snip-
When nonvoters are asked why they don’t participate in politics, the most common answer they give is that they don’t think they can have any impact. The system’s gamed, they say, broken, and lawmakers are only concerned about the interests of their cronies.
Thankfully, Andrew Bossie, a young grass-roots organizer, never came to believe that ordinary people are powerless. In 2005, Bossie, then a student at the University of Southern Maine, looked around and noticed that a generation of young people was having real problems affording the kind of education that most people see as vital to having a shot at the American dream. “The skyrocketing costs of tuition, books and living expenses was taking its toll not only on me, but also on my siblings, friends and peers,” Bossie wrote in an e-mail exchange. “It was not uncommon to see a college dorm vacated mid-semester because a tuition bill couldn’t be paid, or to find a seat once occupied by an eager student empty, because they simply could not afford to continue.”
Nobody told Andrew Bossie that he couldn’t do anything about the bleak post-graduation prospects so many of his fellow students faced, so he decided he would. “I had a crazy, hare-brained idea,” Bossie told me in a phone interview. “And I started to have conversations with people who were politically active, and when I did that I saw that it generated a lot of excitement.”
The idea was fairly simple: help students pay off their debts if they stay in Maine. Last week, two years later, Bossie’s work, along with those of other activists and groups, including the League of Independent Voters, bore fruit when Maine legislators passed the Opportunity Maine Initiative. The measure will give tax credits to help Maine residents pay off their student debt as long as they stay in the state. “Nontraditional” students returning to get their degrees would also be eligible for the credits, as would employers who pay off their workers’ student loans as a benefit.
After a two-year campaign, the measure had been on its way to voters in the form of a statewide referendum this November when Maine’s legislature stepped in and passed the bill by wide margins — 142-0 in the State House and 27-8 in the Senate.
READ: One Student Does the Incredible: Gets Law Passed for State to Pay Off College Debts
Will the next Google please stand up?
Friday, June 29th, 2007
Some big names in search met Thursday at the Red Herring East conference and allowed their brains to be picked by venture capitalists eager to find the next good idea.
A panel consisting of Ask.com, Answers.com, Truveo/AOL and Microsoft search gurus deflected a slew of questions.
Who do you think are the next big search companies to watch? Who’s going to go public? How are we going to monetize video search? Is it better to be a video search engine, or allow people to watch the video on your site once they find it?
Similar to what industry experts said of mobile video earlier in the week, it’s not the technology holding things up. It’s figuring out how to monetize all these new things, said the panelists.
The panelists said they were impressed with search engines like ZoomInfo.com, the job candidate search engine, and Mahalo, the search engine started by publishing entrepreneur Jason Calacanis that uses human-created results for the most popular searches.
While Mahalo is considered unique, none of the panelists sees it, or any other significant breakthrough on the horizon, as changing the definition of search.
The big money, some said, is in an area the general media just isn’t paying attention to: enterprise search engines.
Endeca, a company that offers customized search engines for the enterprise, among other services, will do about $100 million in revenue this year, according to Don Dodge, a manager of search and the director of business development for Microsoft’s emerging business team.
“Endeca is going to be the next billion-dollar company in Boston. They are focusing on enterprise search, which very few people pay attention to because it’s not sexy like Web search…And I think they will go public soon,” said Dodge.
No H1-B Visa? There are other options available… (SKIL)
Friday, June 29th, 2007The demise of the U.S. Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform legislation is a setback for the technology industry’s push to increase the annual cap on H-1B visas. But count on a Plan B from H-1B proponents.
The Senate bill was the primary vehicle for efforts to raise the H-1B cap from its current limit of 65,000 visas per year, plus another 20,000 visas that are set aside for foreign workers who have advanced degrees from U.S. universities.
But the proposed legislation, which also would have mandated the development of a national electronic employment verification system, died an early death on Thursday after its sponsors failed to garner enough support for a procedural motion that sought to end debate on the bill and bring it to a vote. The motion got only 46 of the 60 “yes” votes that it needed in order to be approved.
However, the high-tech industry has other options for pursuing an increase in the visa cap, according to various policy analysts within the IT industry.
“There are several options — it’s just a matter of making the case,” said Robert Hoffman, vice president of government and public affairs at Oracle Corp. and co-chair of Compete America, a Washington-based lobbying group that today vowed to continue its efforts to increase the H-1B cap.
The H-1B cap for the federal government’s next fiscal year, which starts in October, was exhausted on the first day that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting visa applications in April. The USCIS received about 150,000 applications that day, and Hoffman said he thinks the strong demand for visas makes a compelling case for why an increase in the cap is urgently needed.
Option one for H-1B proponents: stand-alone legislation such as the so-called SKIL bill, which was reintroduced in both the House and Senate in April after failing to win approval last year. The bill — officially called the Securing Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership Act — would raise the cap to 115,000 visas and provide market-based mechanisms for further hikes. But a separate measure may be the least attractive option for H-1B backers because it could become a magnet for all sorts of bill-killing amendments related to immigration reform.
Read: Immigration bill’s defeat will prompt ‘Plan B’ from H-1B proponents
VIDEO - How to use Google to find free music
Friday, June 29th, 2007When I saw this video it was not news to me, but I thought it might be something you would find interesting. I wonder how many ways you can apply this technique to find resumes online? (Hmm…) By tweaking the strings, you can do the same things on Live and Yahoo as well. Just fyi…
Cool Google Search Trick - Watch more free videos
In this battle of the sexes, the men are losing…
Thursday, June 28th, 2007A few eye-opening stats…
For every 100 women enrolled in college there are 77 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.htmlFor every 100 women enrolled in the first year of college there are 79 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.htmlFor every 100 women enrolled in the second year of college there are 71 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.htmlFor every 100 women enrolled in the third year of college there are 75 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.htmlFor every 100 women enrolled in the fourth year of college there are 94 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.htmlFor every 100 women enrolled in the fifth year of college there are 65 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.htmlFor every 100 women enrolled in the sixth year or more of college there are 78 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.htmlFor every 100 women living in college dormitories there are 87 men living in college dorms.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t26.htmlFor every 100 American women who earn an associateís degree from college 67 American men earn the same degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_262.aspFor every 100 American women who earn a bachelorís degree from college 73 American men earn a bachelorís degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_262.aspFor every 100 American women who earn a masterís degree from college 62 American men earn the same degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_265.aspFor every 100 American women who earn a first-professional degree 107 American men earn a first-professional degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_271.aspFor every 100 American women who earn a doctor’s degree from college 92 American men earn the same degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_268.asp
Want more? Read: For every 100 girls
Google vs Microsoft: Who would you rather work for?
Thursday, June 28th, 2007I stumbled across this blog post from some anonymous person online and thought it was too interesting not to share. As someone who has played in both camps, I found the observations pretty profound. I think it would be very eye-opening to a lot of folks.
Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective
Excerpts…
Q: What are the office arrangements like? Do you have an office or cube space?
A: Google doesn’t seem to think that private offices are valuable for technical staff. They’re wrong.
Q: Do they actually have plans for career development?
A: Not really. There is no career development plan from individual contributor to manager. Basically if you get good reviews, you get more money and a fancier title (“Senior Software Engineer II”) but that’s about it.
Q: Who would you recommend Google to? Is it for the college kid or family type, worker bee or innovator?
A: College kids tend to like it because it’s just like college – all of their basic needs are taken care of. In fact, even most of your personal-life can get tied up in Google benefits. Google provides free or subsidized broadband to every employee. Google runs its own, private, bus lines in the Bay Area for employees. Google provides free or subsidized mobile phones. A college kid can literally join Google and, like they did as freshman at university, let Google take care of everything. Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it’s hard to think about leaving because of all the “stuff” you’ll need to transition and then manage for yourself.
Mid-timers, people who’ve worked at other places for a few years tend to be a mixed bag. For some, this is the first stability they’ve seen after a few failed startups. For others, this is the company that represents a “better” way to run a company than the company they worked at before. Either way, for these folks to succeed at Google they have to drink the cool-aid and duke it out with the college kids because Google doesn’t place any value on previous industry experience. (It puts tremendous value on degrees, especially Stanford ones).
“Old-timers” tend to like Google because they’re the ones who know to take the most advantage of the perks. These are the people who religiously take their 20% time, use as many of the services as possible, and focus on having a “peaceful” experience. They’re here to do a job, enjoy the perks, and that’s about it. They still put in a lot of hours, but the passion of the college kids isn’t there.
OTHER KEY INSIGHTS
-
Google actually pays less salary than Microsoft.
-
Google’s health insurance is actually not nearly as good as Microsoft’s.
Curious? Read more: Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective
Its good to be a Computer Science student
Thursday, June 28th, 2007It’s recruiting season and the forecast looks sunny for job seekers, so long as they’re talented and willing to work at landing employment.
That’s the consensus among analysts, students and big company recruiters who are struggling to find enough qualified applicants to fill their posts.
The overall unemployment rate for the computer industry at the end of last quarter was 2.1 percent, which is even lower than the 2.3 percent rate during the same quarter in 2000, the peak of the dot-com boom. Things are particularly bright for software engineers, whose unemployment rate was down to 0.9 percent last quarter, compared to 1.9 percent during the same period in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Jobs openings have peaked in the last nine months, said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, whose placement firm crunches job market data. “In total of tech jobs, we’re probably in a better position than we’ve ever been.”
This year’s batch of students with degrees in engineering and computer science can take advantage of a job market that’s grown steadily over the last four year years. Challenger cited Labor Department statistics showing unemployment for recent tech grads down to 2 percent.
“In the tight labor market there are many companies which are eagerly awaiting the new graduates,” Challenger said. “They bring in new skills and expertise and they are not as high priced.”
Silicon Valley, a bellwether for the overall tech industry, has also seen this steady growth, said Sean Norris, branch manager for Sapphire Technologies’ San Francisco Bay Area IT recruiting office.
“From being an employers’ market four years ago, it’s now an employee-driven market,” Norris said.
