The 18 Hole Interview

Today, Seth Godin writes about Google's "memory" and the affect it has on personal branding. Long story short, don't do anything on the web that might come back to haunt you later. Google can be an effective applicant screening tool.

Nowadays, recruiters and hiring managers use it all the time.

Images, blogs, tweets, recommendations, business, personal and social connections all provide insights into the type of person you are (versus the type of person you claim to be, in your resume).

I'm currently enjoying a couple of days golfing in southern Florida. I love golf. (In my case it is an unrequited love.)

Somewhere on the back nine, it struck me that a round of golf might be another great filter. Imagine taking three equally qualified finalists golfing, to help determine who to hire.

How people play the game provides valuable insights into a person's character.

1. Are they risk takers or do they play it safe?
2. How well to they manage the course? Adjusting for pin placement, wind, undulations of the green..
3. Do they take the opportunity to "improve their lie" - change the rules of the game to accommodate their situation?
4. Are they honest? Do they count all their strokes and assess the correct penalties?
5. Are they easily frustrated?
6. How well to they socialize with the other players (after a good shot, after a bad shot?)
7. How do they handle adversity?
8. How do they perform under pressure?
9. Do they listen to (or ask for ) advice from other players or their caddy?
10. Did they have fun? Were they relaxed?
11. Would you want to golf with them again?

My advice: Once you've used Google to cull down candidates for that important senior position, and conducted the interviews, book a tee time before making an offer.

Image credit: www.pro.corbis.com

Webcrumbs

One of my favorite blogs is Seth Godin's. He's a permission marketing evangelist and long time blogger.

At 3,000 posts, he's the Hank Aaron of blogging.

And I'm sure he's not on performance enhancing steroids.

Think of the number of webcrumbs his posting legacy has created. 3,000 thoughts, ideas, inspirations, all search engine indexed, all leading back to Seth.

Makes one wonder why businesses have been so slow to take it up. Discipline? Effort? No immediate payback? Or worse yet... nothing to say?

WTV - Video Sampler

Earlier this week I wrote a blog called WTV the New RTFM, which promoted the use of video instruction vs. providing the old boring manual.

While I was suggesting that your company create it's own video content, for training, promotion, etc, let's not forget the video content that's easily culled from the Web.

Here's a collection of interesting video clips put together by Seth Godin and some of his readers.

They're terrific.

Enjoy.

What's the Blogging Equivalent of "Phoning It In?"

As regular readers of this blog know, I'm a big fan of Seth Godin. His ideas about Permission Marketing are tremendous. I have an RSS subscription to his blog. I eagerly await his next postings.

Recently I've been a little disappointed. Today's topic talks about the two best ways to make money blogging.

In short, the answers are:
1. Develop a readership (which doesn't really make you money, although you could use AdSense to make marginal revenue through ad views).
2. Sell something.

He then links to a blog that details how combining your blog with e-commerce makes good sense.

Am I missing something?

The combination of competence, consistency, expertise, credibility, trust and a product/service offering that fulfills a demand has been the foundation of great business since the beginning of time. Whether you "lead" with expertise or "lead" with a great product/service is irrelevant.

It's like debating whether to start a long walk with your right leg or your left leg. It doesn't matter. You need them both. (Unless you plan to hop!)

You know what I call an e-commerce site without the requisite "company personality", credibility, industry expertise, customer relationships and additional product/service information?

I call it a vending machine.

You know what I call someone who builds up a level of trust, credibility and rapport with his/her audience, then delivers no goods or services whatsoever?

I call them politicians.

I know it's tough sitting in front of a blank screen, thinking about your next blog topic. But I'd rather not post, than be lame. Hopefully, I'm just missing the point of Seth's post.

The Bizdev Rule that Every CIO Must Know

Seth Godin made an interesting point today in his blog about the Verizon COO who turned down the iPhone.

The words that jumped off the (web)page at me were: "The iPhone/AT&T deal is almost certainly the exception that proves Godin's law of bizdev: No is the default answer. The spreadsheets and the marketing team and the CFO and the lawyers have no trouble at all defending the status quo, because, it's their status quo. They created it and they like it that way."

No truer words have ever been spoken.

And Godin's law of bizdev is the same reason that CIOs face such an uphill battle when it comes to making step-level changes within I.T.

To affect change, you have to convince business leaders that their status quo, is wrong or defective or deficient. You have to convince them, they're wrong.

If you can get by that hurdle, you next have to convince all their people of the same.

And finally, you need to overcome people's natural resistance to ANY change.

I'm willing to bet that an inverse correlation exists between the amount of I.T. change at an organization and the lifespan of a typical CIO.

From Email to (M)email

What's the biggest problem with email?

SPAM. Or to put it more positively, relevancy. Don't you find that the majority of the emails you receive, don't really matter to you?

I bet that 50% or more of the email you receive is either highly irrelevant or completely irrelevant to you, your job and your well being. At work, we're overwhelmed with email - to the point where we have to set aside time to "do our emails".

Industries have sprung up around spam control.

In a perfect world, we'd only want to see emails that we want to see! It's all about ME, ME ME.
Hence the term (M)email. I can't take credit for this term. I just heard it on a Seth Godin video. But the term really struck home.

So why is it that our inboxes are littered with messages we don't care about? Why has the practice of ccing the world on emails become so prolific? Why don't we respect each other's time a little more?

That's easy. There are no consequences for internal "spammers".

You know the type - send a message and cc everyone in the department and their bosses - just to cover all the bases. It's just too damn easy. But it's a tremendous time waster. Imagine each recipient, looking at the email, reading it, and then deleting it. Hours, upon hours, of wasted time over the course of a year.

There are loads of email etiquette suggestions out there, but they can't be enforced. It's like posting a suggested speed limit on a highway that's never patrolled. You get the idea. No enforcement=No rules.

So here's my suggestion. A Sender Rating.




For every email we receive, we need the option of rating the message relevancy (and therefore the sender), in the same way that Amazon buyers can rate the service of the sellers. A completely irrelevant email gets 0 stars. A highly relevant (or especially well written one) gets 5 stars. Obviously this would only work for everyone in your company's email directory (i.e. no outside senders) but it might make for an interesting experiment.

The sender rating could be displayed in your inbox along with the email subject line and could (over time) help you prioritize what you look at without having to read each message!

How careful might we be if there were (evaluation) consequences to every email we sent? Would we think twice before sending out those mass emails? Would we establish a CYA "penalty" for sending irrelevant (as determined by the recipient) emails?

What then, if as part of the annual performance review process, this rating figured in your annual raise? Could we change behavior to the point where Emails might become (M)emails?

It's an experiment I'd love to try.

Web 2.0 - Now on Sale for $1.99

I just finished reading Seth Godin's recent blog on initiating an Internet presence for cheap.

Despite the fact that I work with a team who designs and develops websites for paying customers, I think Seth makes a LOT of great points. It doesn't cost much to get started. You don't need a lot of professional help to publish, or get noticed on the Web.

In fact, a renowned SEO (Search Engine Optimization) firm we know, uses WordPress (a blogging service, similar to TypePad) for their website. And they're in the business of designing, delivering and optimizing website visibility for some VERY recognizable clients!

Small businesses CAN be found on the web - as I described in my recent post Dave's Blog: Getting to Fourth Base about a small local bar I found using Google Earth!

If you have the time (and it really doesn't take too much) this approach should work for you. The only two pieces of advice I would add to Seth's is to; a)be interesting and b)be real.

Talk to your web audience the way you'd speak to a customer in person. If you're quirky, show off your quirky side. If you're fun loving, let it show through in your blog posts.

Remember too, that writing for an Internet audience is a little different than "traditional" writing. Chunk your message into bite sized pieces. Don't try to tell your story in one large post. And once your site is up and running, make sure you keep the content fresh. Continue to tell your story on at least a weekly basis. Your website - just like that fern in your living room, will die without occasional attention.

Even though I work with people who build websites for a living, I'm a firm believer that "an educated consumer is our best customer". I'd much rather improve a web presence for someone who's already tried a few tools, than for someone who simply wants to delegate their web marketing efforts to a 3rd party.