Just over a year ago I spoke at the Human Resource Professionals of Ontario annual conference in Toronto and was subseqently profiled in the following weeks Globe & Mail. The title of my talk was "The Resume is Dead – Long Live the Reference" and was stimulated by an article by Seth Godin in Fast Company about his sister job hunting with her reference list, and not sending a… Read More »The Resume is Dead
The latest figures for camera sales are out in Canada and to noone's surprise the onslaught of digital continues – technology improves almost daily, prices drop and sales continue to rise. Could you have forseen this 5 or 10 years ago? Certainly the likes of Kodak and even Fuji did not – the latter just announcing a further 5,000 job cuts globally as the demand for traditional film and camaeras… Read More »Are You Ready For Change?
If you don't have a blog yet, you are really getting left behind – a flock of pigeons is getting in to blogging accoriding to an article in todays Globe & Mail How do they type with those claws? It sometimes seems as though everyone has a blog — after all, Technorati.com tracks more than 20 million of them. And now the blogosphere isn't even restricted to humanoids any more:… Read More »Catch That Pigeon
I am currently working on a search for a mid-level sales role and have been spending the whole day screening candidates who on paper had appeared a possible match for the role. Except now I have a gap in the day, not of my own choosing. Having spent over 12 years in recruitment in both Canada and the UK I found that getting candidates to book telephone screening appointments and… Read More »How inconsiderate can you be?
You enter a new year full of hope that change will happen, new procedures, new approaches that will improve, fantastic new customer service experiences – until you come across Bell Canada – aaaggghhhh! I have already spent 25 minutes on the phone with 4 different people, been cut off once and now continue to hold – just to reconnect some of their anti-virus software that I am paying them for… Read More »2006 – Time for Bell to Change
I have recently received 2 e-mails from this blog supplier – Typepad – about recent problems they were having with their service – which may have interupted my ability to use the product or my readers to access my positings. Interestingly I have not been blogging recently – as you may have noticed – so I did not really experience any problems and my readership is not so large that… Read More »Did we give good service or not?
The two Apprentice programs took an interesting twist this week. Firstly on Martha she asked the ineffective project leader of the losing team to leave and kept the disruptive loud mouth – makes for good TV? It probably did not help that the project manager was a District Attorney – not a group of people that Martha is likely to entertain for dinner any time soon! The next night Donald… Read More »What is worse for a team?
Tomorrow night sees the third episode of the original Apprentice and I think so far that Donald's version is winning out – but you might expect him to do that, especially as he is the executive producer on Martha's version. Last week saw Chris get fired for being a poor leader and bringing in the wrong guy to the boardroom face off – Marcus may not survive much longer but… Read More »The Donald Still Rules
This was the comment made by one of the contestants on The Apprentice – Martha tonight – what a great line to give to one of Martha's people during what is a 15 week interview. Needless to say this comment came back to haunt the girl, her team lost and she was ultimately let go. Never forget that when you are interviewing for a position the interview starts the minute… Read More »If We Don’t Win This Task You Can Fire Me!
"She then took the opportunity to apprise prospective new employers of her job skills. If any of you know of a good opening out there, let me know. I am smart, hard working, concientous and friendly." This seems like an innocent enough statement made by someone who is keeping her options open regarding new employment opportunities. Except it was a press conference held by the recently suspended Director of Municipal… Read More »Would You Buy A Used Car From This Person?