November Jokes

Who sleeps with his shoes on?
A horse!


How do you wrap a cloud?
With a Rainbow!


What kind of music sticks with you?
Taped music!


What flower gives the best kisses?
A tulip!

When a dog goes camping what does it sleep in?
A pup tent!

Social Media Usage in 2011

I still have people that don't believe in the power of the internet and social media.
Do you know any people in your network that believe the same thing?
Maybe send them the link to this page.

Always fascinating:
Social Media in 2011
Thanks!
Ev

Happy Thanksgiving!

We have a lot of to be thankful for living in this country.
I'm thankful for my family, clients, and you for taking the time to read this blog!
Give thanks for all you have and for all the struggles that make you better.
Give Thanks for all the good people you've hired and all the good clients you've gained.
Hug someone you love.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

3 Critical Actions You MUST Take to Build Your Network

As recruiters we sometimes tend to get wrapped up trying to find sources of candidates. Don't forget to build your network of clients too! You've put on your sales hat, but how do you get started? Try more networking! Instead of a cold call, you can now make a "warm" call to someone that you've met. Even if it was only for a very short period of time it is still a great way to get the conversation going on the phone.
If you don't think of networking as a vital part of your sales strategy, here is a good article to refresh what you need to do.
Thanks!
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

3-critical-actions-you-must-take-to-build-your-business-network
By Scot Herrick

Business networking has a bad connotation — we have visions of meetings handing out business cards dancing in our heads. They remind us of being back in high school wondering if we’ll go to the prom or get picked for the team.

But having and supporting a business network is one of the keys to a successful job search. Even if you are not in a job search now, cultivating that business network is critical to your long-term employment security.
Business networks don’t magically build themselves. You have to take action to build yours and make it central to your career planning and development.

1. Actively Acquire People
This is not adding whoever to LinkedIn Google+. Nor is it having 5,000 friends on Facebook. Instead, this is deciding who is able to support your career goals and who you can help reach theirs. These people can be peers in your company or hiring managers or members of a professional organization.

Or, they can simply be people who leave your company and you, unlike everyone else, go and get their personal contact information so you can keep in touch. Fifty people leave your company you know and trust and that gives you contacts at another fifty companies where you can find out information.

Actively adding people to your network is work. Especially since this is an important, but not urgent, goal. The time to build your business network is precisely the time you don’t need one.

2. You Must Actively Manage Your Business Network
Managing your network comes in two parts. First, you need to consistently communicate. It makes no sense to capture all that great personal contact information and then not talk to people for a year. You need consistent communication with your network so that you support and build relationships.

Second, most of us quickly outgrow our ability to keep track of everyone and what they are doing, so we need a “personal” equivalent to a Customer Relationship Manager program. My favorite is Jibber Jobber because of its capabilities and consistent improvements over time.

Now, we don’t like to think that our “friends” or “co-workers” or “acquaintances” need management. But they do. It’s easy to think we’re regularly talking with these people — and then realize months have passed since we did. That’s why management is needed.

3. You Must Actively Support Your Business Network
Building and communicating with your network isn’t enough. The real strength of your network is your ability to help your contacts. Whether it is a recommendation, helping solve a problem, pointing the person to where they can find information they need, or providing your perspective on a question, supporting your business network is critical. Some day, the time will come when you need some support to solve some problem at work, get some perspective on a job, or find out information about a company. You want to have helped others so they are willing to help you.

Business Networks Are About Finding And Supporting Resources To Help Your Work.
Too many people think networks are only about finding jobs. While that’s one part of it, the better way to regard it is that networks give you resources to help to grow your job and career. If you build, manage and support your business network, well, you’ll find that people will come to you with opportunities. Not that you will have to go searching for them.

Scot Herrick is the author of “I’ve Landed My Dream Job–Now What???” and owner of Cube Rules, LLC. CubeRules.com provides online career advice and products for workers who typically work in a corporate cubicle.

November Newsletter

Many years ago, before blogs were born, I started sending a monthly email newsletter to all my clients and prospects. Nearly 12 years later that tradition continues, except now it has links to this blog. The email is sent around the first of the month. I then republish it here around the 15th of the month. If you haven't had a chance to read all my entries this is a good way to hit the highlights of the previous month.
Below is the newsletter for November:

Greetings!
Welcome to the November version of my newsletter!
Please look at the links below. If you are interested in an article click on the link and it will open for you.
Is Facebook going to allow free job postings?
http://everetsblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/is-facebook-about-to-offer-free-job.html

I wrote a bunch about the Brewers and how their playoff run related to sales and recruiting. One of them is the piece that Your staff can’t be all serious all the time:
http://everetsblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/every-team-needs-sick-individual.html

Busting 8 damaging Myths about what LinkedIn can do for Your Career:
http://everetsblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/linkedin-busting-8-damaging-myths-about.html

Puny and always clean enough jokes to tell your mother:
http://everetsblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-jokes-2011.html

There are other articles as well so please feel free to search my blog.
Thank you for everything!
Have a great November!

Everet Kamikawa
"A Heck of A Nice Guy"
http://www.linkedin.com/in/everetkamikawa

Response from a Reader

I'm always flattered and humbled when I hear that someone reads my blog much less likes something I wrote. I'm even more humbled when someone takes the time to write to me!
In this case "Gary" is responding to what I've written about resumes and agreeing with me.
Thanks Gary for taking the time to write!
Ev


Hi Everet,

I was always a firm believer that you must have a basic resume that could be adjusted to the position in which you are applying for. Now that I have been doing exclusively recruiting for almost 2 years, I am convinced more than ever.

When recruiting, positions are sent to us by the hiring manager. Ultimately he wants us to send him resumes that only match his job description 100%. If he has 5 different acronyms listed as skill sets needed, then the resume has to have those listed. Even if it is obvious that the candidate has that skill, if it is not listed, then the hiring manager may not even consider the person. We have in the past tried to explain the missing acronyms in a brief summary that we would produce after speaking with the candidate. We are now telling all of our candidate prior to submittal that they will have to revise their resume, or we will do it for them.

I think that this approach is necessary for all applicants, even programmers. If a position calls for a Oracle Systems Programmer, just saying you have 5 years Oracle Systems Programming experience is not enough. It needs to say exactly what that included.

I am also a firm believer (for IT jobs) that although years of experience always count, past work history may not be relative. I prefer a candidate to closely look at the job description and highlight all work history with those skills.

It takes a little extra work on the candidate as well as the recruiter, but number of hires speaks for itself. When a resume mirrors a job description, success is almost certain (at least for an interview).

Thanks,

Gary

Thank You Veterans!

Go For Broke!
442nd Infantry Regiment History


Thanks Dad, Uncle Joe, Uncle Jerry!

Love!

Your famlies and all of the rest of us!

Ev

No Jerks Allowed

What do you do with a person who is a jerk in the workplace? Maybe it is a co-worker or a boss.
In either case I thought this was an interesting read.
Thanks!
Ev
"A Heck of A Nice Guy"
No Jerks Allowed: How and Why GCs Can Stop Angry, Rude and Demeaning Workplace Behavior
Michael P. Maslanka

General counsel are tagged as custodians of their companies' most crucial, yet most sensitive and volatile asset: its employees. Henry Ford saw them as one big headache, immune from any analgesic's curative powers: "Why is it that I always end up with a person, when all I really want is a pair of hands?" But it's a person you get, and if you believe people are of value, then the question becomes how to go about managing, motivating and inspiring them -- and, just as important, learning how to unlock their embedded value. Here's a guide on the do's and don'ts to reach that goal.

First, the don'ts. Having practiced employment law for nearly 27 years, I can say with absolute clarity and total conviction that abrupt e-mails, rude comments and angry directives fail -- always have, always will. Confirmation of my subjective feelings comes from two business professors, Christine Porath and Amir Erez, whose revealing study of rudeness and its toxic effects is illuminating. They subjected two groups of study participants to varying degrees of rudeness, and they asked a third group to only imagine they were the object of the rudeness. All groups were then asked to perform tasks requiring cognitive functions. The result? In all three groups the ability of the participants to think was severely impaired. Why? They were unable to use their cognitive processing power to perform the tasks, wasting their brain wattage on mulling over and ruminating upon the rudeness, or parsing the comments and figuring out how they should have responded. This included the bystander group, asked only to empathize. Talk about collateral damage. Want to learn more? Check out "Rudeness and Its Noxious Effects" in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Want more empirical evidence? Robert Sutton's book, "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't," is brimming with studies and experiments. Work with a rude jerk and what happens? You become one as well. It's called emotional contagion, as Dr. Michelle Duffy demonstrated in her study -- which Sutton cites -- of hospital employees working for insensitive bosses who acted like jerks and condoned it in others. The employees morphed into their bosses. It's true: We ape others, especially those higher in the food chain.

One study Sutton discusses, by British researchers Charlotte Rayner and Loraleigh Keashly, translated the effects of such uncivil and rude behavior into cold, hard cash. Historical data show that 25 percent of those bullied at work and 20 percent of those who merely witness it leave their employment (once again, bystander damage). The researchers postulate that in a company of 1,000 employees, if 25 percent leave and if the average historical replacement cost is $20,000, then the annual cost is $750,000. Tack on two witnesses per bullied employee, 20 percent of those witnesses leave, and that adds $1.2 million for, as Sutton puts it, a TCA (total cost of assholes) of close to $2 million per year.

Here's one more study Sutton highlights: 41 employees carried a palm-sized computer for two to three weeks. Researchers prompted the employees at random intervals to answer questions about their interactions with co-workers and then to rate their resulting feelings as positive, negative or neutral. Here's the expected: 30 percent were positive interactions, 10 percent negative, the rest neutral. Here's the unexpected: The negative interactions had a fivefold stronger effect on mood than the positive ones and thus took much longer to get over. Talk about radioactive.

STOP THE MADNESS

So, what's to be done? Many companies promulgate a no-asshole rule, which is, standing alone, useless. Remember this: The fundamental attribution bias makes us all believe that we are better people than we really are, including yours truly. Most people don't know they are violating the rule, thinking of themselves as sterling folks; the most clueless are in management. A rule honored in its breach is harmful. Employees see the brass violating the rule, feel the hypocrisy and are emboldened to violate it themselves. It's better to have no rule at all. Instead, create a culture that operates on automatic pilot and perpetuates an infrastructure that makes it easier to avoid a gaggling of A-holes. Here are the do's.

Limit hierarchy. When someone thinks he is superior to others, you get -- in the memorable phrase of psychology professor Philip Zimbardo -- the Lucifer effect. The phrase comes from his famous Stanford University prison experiment in which students were divided into guards and prisoners, with the first group ending up abusing the second. Which are you? Sutton and management guru Peter Drucker say to listen to whether management says words like "we" and "us" as opposed to "I" and "them."

Curtail e-mail and calls. Instead, encourage face-to-face conversation. It is much easier to disrespect someone over e-mail or via conference call. Communicating via technology creates low trust. It breeds harshness and anger. It lets bullies be bullies. Fly above it.

Train corporate managers on interpersonal skills. This is not a soft suggestion. This skill lubricates the organization, reducing friction and accordingly raising efficiency and bolstering revenues. If people manage by e-mail, make them manage face-to-face. If that's not always possible, teach e-mail etiquette. If they have anger issues, require them to stop acting out, and give them help. If they can't stop the bad behavior, give them the boot. Make them understand that being an asshole is counterproductive. My mom told me that you can't change people, you can only help people. A manager with an inner jerk will always be a jerk, but you can ensure that it doesn't escape.

Mandate free expression. Those on the receiving end of abuse learn to avoid it by saying nothing (not what you pay them for) or to say only what the abuser wants to hear (also not what you pay them for). It's the latter that results in the business maxim that employees start to make up the numbers when there is unrelenting abuse to make the numbers.

Whenever I work with young lawyers for the first time, I tell them they only need to know the answer to one question: Why do airplanes crash? Usually, I get answers based on physics. But, no, airplanes crash because the junior co-pilot sees a blinking red light on the console, thinks if anything was wrong then surely the senior pilot would say something or act, and just as surely thinks to himself that he will not say anything that harms his career or gets him yelled at. So, the co-pilot says nothing and that's why airplanes crash.

Understand that it's about more than saying "please" and "thank you." In his book, "How Starbucks Saved My Life," Michael Gates Gill tells how he went from a high-powered ad agency exec to a probationary employee at a Starbucks store. Post-power, he realized that being polite to those behind the counter was not the same as understanding their value, appreciating their skills and recognizing their humanity. "Please" and "thank you" are good things to say -- if sincerely meant and not sprinkled about like air fresheners at the landfill -- but they do not and cannot substitute for authentic respect.

Grasp that money is often the most expensive way to motivate employees. Or so argues Dan Ariely in "Predictably Irrational." Ariely tells us that the work world is moving from "market norms" (paying X amount of dollars for Y amount of work) to "social norms" (employees are willing to make sacrifices for their employer, but they expect something similar in return, such as understanding when extra days off are needed). His extensive studies also show that employees will work harder, say, when they receive a personal gift worth $1,000 than a raise worth $1,000. His bottom line: "It's remarkable how much work companies ... can get out of people when social norms (such as the excitement of building something together) are stronger than market norms (such as salaries stepping up with each promotion)." Want an example? Take a look at the February Harvard Business Review's "Task, Not Time: Profile of a Gen Y Job," featuring Best Buy's program of paying employees for tasks and results -- not for time -- eschewing the Monday-Saturday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. baby boomer ethic.

Sutton suggests a Zen take on lifting oneself out of the swamp of assholes and jerks: Live in the present, and do the right thing in the right way to the person in front of you, right now. I like that. Here's my take, albeit worn thin from use, and repeated so often its freshness bled out: "Whatsoever you would have others do for you, do that for them, for that is the law." Try to read this passage from the Gospel of Matthew as if you've never read it before. Its karmic power may be the simplest way to reach the highest return on your largest investment with minimal effort. Who would have thunk it?

Michael P. Maslanka is the managing partner of Ford & Harrison in Dallas. He is board certified in labor and employment law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He writes the Texas Employment Law Letter.