Friday Funny

Someone reading this owns a CD of Andrea Rue or John Farnham. Shame on you…

Mycareer – Playing Games

Okay, so MyCareer has this new promotion for Headhunter. Deal is, you set up a store and earn money for the business by “recruiting” employees to your store – kinda like a virtual popularity contest. The shopkeeper earning the most money at the end of the day gets “a trophy of the character”. Woot. Woot. I think, and I’m not really certain although I’ve read the competition outline a coupla times now, that when you register you go into the draw to win fifty grand.

Considering the hiding I’ve given MyCareer lately, I reckon if they pull my name out of the barrel, they’ll look around to see who was watching, pretend to cough, and poke the bit of paper with my name on it into their mouth. Then they’ll redraw.

The prospect of devoting a good part of my day setting up my shop, and sending pathetic emails to my friends and family, asking for virtual support in this enterprise isn’t exactly compensated by the prospect of winning a trophy of my avatar (check him out, he’s the cruddy old guy behind the counter in my “shop” – the one who looks a bit bored, kinda like he’d rather shoot himself then deal with yet another complaint about the economic crisis). And it’s not as though I’m beyond having a muck around in my virtual universe. It’s just, well, if I’m gonna enter a competition, I don’t want it to be like some kinda high maintenance friend who’s just, like, take, take, take – and very little give-back.

And isn’t it slightly ironic that the results for this are published in The Australian – a News publication? I’m not holding my breath about winning…

CareerTweeter

Honestly, if I were a chic, I think I’d have a major creepy crush on Charles Darwin. Forget Freud & Einstein & the woman with the short hair from The New Inventors. These are all low-hanging fruit compared to CD. The man challenged the way we view the world. And all because he left us with a little idea called evolution.

Ask my kids, I’m an evolution freak. I reckon I can put just about any aspect of animal behaviour and experience in terms of their lowest common denominator – the need to survive through reproduction and adaptation.

And I can feel another such analogy coming on. Every aspect of my life is so ensconced in the web, that it’s difficult for me to view it in terms other than organic. Before my very eyes, over the past decade, it has morphed from a black hole for porn, into an integral aspect of how we conduct ourselves professionally, personally and emotionally. In evolutionary terms, it has responded to its need to survive by adapting, and it has successfully reproduced. Think about the forefathers of the net we know today, fax, email, that funny ‘You’ve Got Mail’ messaging you see in movies from the late nineties, where the fonts are big and colorful, and everyone has a weird user name. Back then, we would never have considered using the functions of the net for anything other than basic communication.

If it had remained at that, the net would have been torn to shreds by some other highly evolved predator.

But it didn’t, it adapted to society’s need to have information faster, and deeper. By deeper, I’m referring to hypertext. It also responded to the growing requirement to control and interact. New Age spiritualism has a lot to answer for in this regard. Just visit any second-hand bookstore and you’ll see the copies of self-help manuals from the nineties, screaming out that you ARE in charge of your destiny, you are not a victim and you create what you harvest.

So, this brings me to my rant about social media. It’s a term that virtually didn’t exist a decade ago. This decade, these are the most important two words in recruitment.

Word-of-mouth is the old-fashioned way of talking about the kind of phenomenon where folks tell each other about stuff and the info passes down the line. And this used to work in small communities where people had limited choices about where to shop, what to think etc.

But we’re in the grip of globilisation, baby. To operate in 2009, we need an informed opinion on a myriad of topics and issues. We can shop for products anywhere in the world, and have them on our doorstep within a week or two. Our businesses, they don’t just service the people in the local community, or our own country, for that matter. The tentacles of the web are far reaching. And they’re continuing to evolve in order to reach further.

In the face of such rapid changes to the way we operate in the commercial and private sphere, the net has responded through the evolution of social media.

And I’ve adopted this new species with fervor. Yes, @geoffjennings has the twitterbug. And I can’t imagine recruiting without it. It provides an immediate stream of up-to-date content, unlike job boards that sometimes take waaaaay too long to update. It’s interactive; jobs can be clicked on, RT’d (retweeted) to others and commented on in real time. And, finally, it’s a hot place to promote the recruitment industry and thereby become a source of info for the job seeker. It’s hard to go back to regular surfing after this. The content of the web can be infuriatingly outdated. Job seekers are too time-pressed to know anything but what’s current. (Hint. Download TweetDeck and have all your content streamed in through this desktop application.)

Twitter is the new Google – the new and improved spawn of the original search engine.

Here are five ways Twitter will help the way we find jobs:

1. TweetFeeds
Jobs will be RSS fed into Twitter profiles. Twitters can then choose which job content they will follow based on location, industry type etc. Example: @GamerJobs

2. TwitterSearch.
All Twitter content is searchable here. Tweets use # tags for keywords. Search the latest jobs content as it happens.

3. TweetSmart.
Employers/Recruiters will have an opportunity to tweet their industry knowledge. Jobseekers have the ability to research who they follow.

4. TweetStream.
Jobseekers can have a drip attached to the latest job content. Example @ITJobsMelbourne
Currently they trawl job boards once or twice a day.

5. TwitterOutplacement.
These services are well suited to Twitter. Experts can tweet their wares to the needy en masse (and aren’t we seeing that masse growing. In fact, yesterday in the States it grew by 75000)

Just as it would be ridiculous for us to imagine dinosaurs being fully functional in the world as we know it, so too it is difficult to find validity in the old ways of the net. The new breed is here.

Social media.

Friday Funny Job Interview

JobX – I’m Just Not That Into You.

Ever had to can a relationship? Pretty tough, huh? Personally, I’m never sure of what angle to take. I mean, who wants to tell someone you don’t want to see them anymore because you don’t like the noises they make when they eat, or you’re not a big fan of the size of their calves (butt, tits – you get the drift).

I’m sensitive enough to know that this is one of life’s trickier situations. And I also know what a pain in the cods it is when you tell that person that you’d no longer wish to be in their acquaintance, and they refuse to let you go. Some call this stalking. Well, the law does, anyway.

Seems JobX have got some, let’s call them…”emotional issues”.

I tried recently to unsubscribe to their newsletters. I’ve written before about how these consist of a form of propaganda sprouting directly from the Goebbels School of Singing Your Own Praises (Special Offer Or Spam). I wanted out. The relationship wasn’t working for me anymore. So I pressed “unsubscribe”. I was redirected to a message from JobX.com.au confirming this action. I shed a tear, “We’re done”, I whispered quietly to myself.

And just when I felt as though I was in a good place and I had finally moved on, JobX came knocking on my door in the quiet hours of the morning with, “JOBX – AAA – Free Career Assessment!” I clicked the unsubscribe button once more. But I’m sensing there’s no way out of this relationship. I feel like I do when I walk into Ikea and decide half-way through that I’m done but can’t find a shortcut to the exit.

Really, JobX. Don’t you think it’s time you found someone else? I’m just not that into you.

Spam Act 2003

Note: the maximum daily penalty is $1.1million.for companies, and $220,000 for individuals, and anybody knowingly concerned in a violation is liable.

Careless Whispers…

Okay.  Looks as though I owe the folks at CareerOne an apology.  Thing is, I totally misinterpreted figures in the article “Careerone Delivers Christmas Price Rise“  This resulted from the fact that the rates I read from were job packs.  Of course, these are higher than contract rates.  The contract rates are not publicly displayed.  However, after communication directly with CareerOne, I need to state this:

CareerOne contract rates are where they should be – lower than Seek’s.

Trumps to CareerOne for alerting me to this error in a very reasonable manner.  I leave the final word to my mate George.  This one goes out to you CareerOne:

CareerOne Job Ads – On Seek

Would you have ever seen a promo for a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on channel 7?  No.

Would you ever see a CareerOne job ad. on Seek?  Oh hang on.  Yes.

This totally weirds me out – in the same way that the contemplation of incest does.  News Digital has decided to whack a few jobs up on Seek.  Ashamedly.  What, is their job board not up to scratch?  Are they having such a hard time luring job seekers that they have to use the competition to find candidates?

More importantly, what message does this send to recruiters?  Should we be prepared to pay bigger fees to the number two player in the job board stakes who, by voice of their actions, is publicly announcing that their opposition is better suited to the purpose of finding candidates?

I’d also be interested in knowing how Seek feels about C1 pitching a tent in their backyard.  Chances are, I don’t need to phone a friend to know the answer.  Does the $180 odd bucks Seek yields to advertise a C1 job negate the loss of good candidates to their competition?  I doubt it.  They’re so market leader, they don’t need to play butt-boy to their competitor.

By the way, I’m running a tab on how long it takes for these ads. to get pulled…

Correction from Friday 16th Jan

In the blog article from Friday 16th Jan “CareerOne Delivers Christmas Price Rise, I stated that the price increase for the 20-job package was up 32%. This was an error. Prices at CareerOne have escalated considerably, but it is the 25-job package that increased to $2,250 which makes it up 20%. It still remains more expensive than Seek.

CareerOne Delivers Christmas Price Rise

Any shenanigans reminding me (even remotely) of our elected w*nkers in Canberra leaves me with a taste in my mouth akin to the tempting flavors of a post-NYE binge.

So you’ll have to excuse me for a moment, while I go rinse, ‘cos CareerOne have been up to some no good that should set the folks there up for fabulous post-corporate careers in gummintal politics.

In true, “kick ‘em while they’re down” form, while recruiters (whose nuts and ovaries are already slightly shriveled due to the impending gloom bought on by lower rates of employment blah blah) folks at C1 got together under the mistletoe and, in between kissing each others’ asses, decided some price hikes were in order.

Merry Bloody Ho Ho.

And if this isn’t bad enough, those that they decided to hit the hardest, were the recruiters on smaller packages.  Folks on a 20-ads a month package will now pay a whopping 32% more than they did pre-Festivus.  What are larger recruiters on 50-ads-a month paying extra?  Not a penny.

There’s equity for ya.

A comparable 20-ads package on Seek is now 35% less expensive than the CareerOne option.  Tell me again why I should shift my business to the distant second-placer in the job board egg and spoon?

Print Classifieds – A Case for Euthanasia

When I was a kid, I had a dog. Dog’s name was Jimmy. Each afternoon, he’d hear me coming up the driveway home from school, and he’d race out the front to meet me, scraping his wet old tongue all over my face. Sniffing my crotch. Some days, that old guy’d get so excited on account of me being home, he’d pee all over the exposed aggregate driveway.

One afternoon, Jimmy wasn’t in the driveway to meet me. Mum and I, we ran all over the goddam house, looking for him. Was me who found Jimmy, rolled on his back in the garden, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, phlegm and blood pouring from his nose and eyes.

Jimmy had eaten rat poison some bright nut of a neighbor had decided to put out a little too close to our fence line.

The vet tugged up the legs of his flared trousers and bent down to talk to me, so as we were on eye level. “Jimmy’s got some problems with his brain, Geoffrey, and even if we can save his life, the hopes of him ever being like the Jimmy you love are slim. Probably best, son, if we stop Jimmy’s struggle and let him rest peacefully.”

My little guy fists were red raw that night because I banged them so hard on the lino floor of the surgery. I never saw Jimmy again.

And it’s funny how things that happen to you when you’re a kid can fashion the way you view all sorts of things when you’re a man.

While I was eating my Coco Pops this morning, something I read on Crikey, Fairfax classifieds in freefall. What next? reminded me of old Jimmy. Like Jimmy, print is dying. It’s put its curious, whiskered snout too far under the fence and sucked back a truckload of rat poison. And it’s never going to be the same:  “media analysts Goldman Sachs JB Were claiming dramatic falls in classified advertising in Fairfax’s traditional metro papers for December.” Falls were reported in all of Fairfax’s classifieds including motor, real estate and employment.

Problem is, unlike my sage and compassionate vet with the flares and lino, those with the say-so in media empires like Fairfax are not prepared to put print gently to sleep. They’ve whacked it on a respirator, and pumped a bunch of chemicals in its bloodstream in the hope of its survival.  Problem is, even if it manages to live, it’s gonna have major spasticity in its arms and legs and it won’t be able to control its need to defecate. It’ll never be like the print we once loved.

It should be laid to rest peacefully.

Moral of the story is that, a few months after Jimmy passed away, Mum and Dad bought me a new dog. Name was Taffy. Truth is, I actually liked Taffy a bit more than Jimmy. Taffy was energetic, and a bit brighter. I taught him to beg and sit and he even managed to catch the mice that came into our kitchen through a crack in the wall in winter. Plus, Taffy still met me in the driveway each arvo – but he never once sniffed my crotch or pissed on the exposed aggregate.

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