Sirona Says

Europe beckons....

Tomorrow starts my summer break from my laptop and blogging - they are meant to refresh your brain, aren't they? Maybe it will be the beer and wine that will do that instead!!

It will no doubt be all over before I know it.

Now you can tell people what you think anonymously!!

Who said the art of communication is dead?

Here is a website that can help you through some of the more difficult issues when working with other colleagues......and it is also some fun!

NiceCritic is a simple and clever website that allows you to send an anonymous helpful message to someone. Some examples are:

• A firmer handshake would project more confidence.
• Allowing others to speak would help the sharing of ideas.
• It would help you to be more of a team player.
• Please be courteous of others during a meeting.
• Please be more prepared at future meetings.
• Please let others talk during a meeting. (my favourite!!)

All you do is simply choose the message you want and enter your 'target's' email address. Great fun with a useful side to it as well!

Have they got a clue what they want?

I saw this on Seth Godin's blog, and thought that you would also find this amusing. This is for all you recruiters / consultants / people that have been to see a client and come away asking yourself one simple question......."do they actually know what they want?"

Just out of interest, at what stage would you have embedded an axe in her head??

Knol - Google's unit of knowledge

  Google are never one to miss an opportunity are they? Wikipedia is a very successful example of a web 2.0 website, allowing readers to add to and update information on its vast array of web pages.
Google have obviously felt a bit left out - so they have created their own! They have called it Knol, which stands for a unit of knowledge.  Google defines a Knol as "an authoritative articles on a specific topic."

Essentially Knol is a platform for sharing your content, on which other authors can comment, review, and contribute to your content, like Wikipedia.  But you control the contributions if you wish. You can set up your articles so any contributions are moderated.

I am not sure why Google has done this, other than online global domination. I am sure that they also have other new beta's up their sleeve!!

Are you stuck for something to write on your corporate blog?

Blogs now seem to so prevalent, that they could (and should) be considered a normal part of the internet. But still there is a reluctance with companies to write their own corporate blog. How else are companies going to engage with web savvy potential job seekers - especially the generation Y'ers? A blog is a great example of web 2.0 and fosters two way communication so well.

But many companies panic when it comes to writing content for their blogs.
Well, Chris Brogan, the social media guru, has helped solve the problem with a recent post, 50 Blog Topics Marketers could write for their Companies. 

I have included his top 20 below, but if you are a company and you are considering writing a blog, or you are just stuck for content at the moment, there are some great ideas here.

1. How to get the most from our customer service department.
2. The best way to recommend an improvement to our product or service.
3. Podcast - complete installation instructions in audio and video.
4. What would you like to see in next year’s catalog?
5. Our favorite projects over the coming months.
6. Some tricks that might keep you from needing support.
7. Upcoming coupons and offers for the next two weeks.
8. We want to talk. How should we contact you? Where?
9. Choose our product’s price.
10. Five tips for getting more from your ______ .
11. A little bit about us.
12. A walk in our neighborhood.
13. Photos from our community meet up.
14. What goes into our decision process.
15. Video - a tour of the plant, and a day in the life of your product.
16. What it’s like to work for our company.
17. We support these causes, and here’s why.
18. The next two years: how we grow with you.
19. We want to come to work with you (and learn how we can help)!
20. Giving back to the community: our plan.

If you are still stuck then check out rest of Chris Brogan's list. 

Social Networks battle each other for your attention

For all of you that have multiple accounts on different social networking sites, and worry about why you do all of them, or why you have stopped using MySpace so much lately, then here is a video that will make you smile. It is a very clever take on making the choice of using one social network over another.
If you are not into social networking, don't bother watching it as it will mean absolutely nothing to you!!

Teach your children to speak chinese!

If you think we have got talent issues in the UK, then think again! China, now one of the new superpowers of the world, is needing to feed it's exponential growth with talent. Therein lies the problem. One, there isn't enough skilled people to meet the huge demand and two, one of their biggest problems is retaining employees, particularly Management.
Competition is stiff for Managers in China and high turnover just compounds the issue. Management-level attrition rates in China are more than 25 percent greater than the global average, and replacing a high-performing manager can cost 300% to 2,000% of that individual’s salary.

Jonas Prising, President of Manpower North America, says,“The United States is the biggest investor country in China, yet many of its companies are struggling to generate the growth they want because of people issues. Recruiting the right people, retaining the best staff and developing leaders of the future are difficult tasks in any market. For foreign companies operating in China, there is the added difficulty of understanding how to adapt talent management strategies to the country’s unique business culture and values.”

The rapid economic and social change that has already impacted China in a big way in the past few years has spurred a skills shortage that is expected to be massive in the next few years. The labour shortage in China is even more problematic than in other nations because it is most severe among managers. 40% of companies find it difficult to fill senior management positions.  Mid-level managers are also in short supply, particularly those who are Chinese nationals and can interact with local people.

So is it any wonder that search for talent in China has gone online, in this extreme example of a candidate driven market. The job board stats would be a dream for online companies in the UK, with the Chinese employments sites such as Zhaopin.com and 51job.com having daily hits in excess 4 million. But when you realise that China’s population is well be over 1.3 billion people you realise that it is just a drop in the ocean.

So if you are advising your children which GSCE's to study, or you really do want to give you little generation Z'ers a leg up into the global workplace, then start them studying mandarin or cantonese!!

No jobs for the Grim Reaper then.....

On the way to a meeting today, I had the displeasure of having a tyre blowout on the M4 motorway. While changing the front drivers side tyre on the hard shoulder, it did occur to me on many occasions (mainly when those big trucks went past at 700 miles an hour), that it was a bad place to be!! So it is maybe poetic timing that I came across this funny video of the Grim Reaper job hunting.
What I like is how the real companies he visits, seem to be taking it very seriously........

With all the bad bress around in the job market, maybe this is a very apt video!!

Microsoft's attempt to go after the gen Y'ers with weirdness!!

Gen Y'ers beware, Microsoft are going straight for you. They know that they have an 'issue' over coolness with the gen Y'ers (particularly the younger end of that generation), so their designers have been a little busy. They have created a new career site, specifically aimed at appealing to the gen Y'ers, and when you see the screen shots below, I think you will agree - only the gen Y'ers will even be vaguely interested in this approach!! Kris Dunn over on Fistful of Talent thinks the site is aimed at Apple converts.

The main menu page does look like a grungy strange hand drawn graphic, but

will it appeal to a gen Y'er thinking of looking at Microsoft as an employer? 

And then you get lucky, as you can get your self into the Genius Lounge...Wow!!   But that music.....................ouch!

The only shame about this innovative site (and others like it) is that at some stage it takes you back into the main Microsoft careers site, and normality....

So for all the ingenuity and clever design they end up here.

I applaud Microsoft, as one of their other career sites, is the one of the best out there. But will this really have the desired effect and help them recruit gen Y'ers - I hope for their sake it does, but I don't think it will!!

Equal opportunities gone absolutely mad!!

Something I read over the weekend really, does highlight how completely stupid some of the employment guidelines are in the equal opportunity rules.
Firstly take one airport - St Mary's on the Scilly Isles. Not a major one, but it still has 120 flights a day flying to and from the airport. So a busy provincial airport.
Then the job vacancy - Air Traffic Controller. Simple enough you would think - must have experience of air traffic control, reading all the inbound and outbound flights and controlling the airspace.
Enter equal opportunities.......
This latest job application has to be sent out in Braille as well as paper form!!! So, an airport which revolves around computer screens, and up to the minute online readings, has to be prepared to consider blind people for the role of an Air Traffic Controller!!!  You couldn't make that up if you tried!!

While I applaud companies for integrating blind individuals into the workplace with some creativeness, I am sorry, but has anyone in the equal opportunities even thought of the possible implications here??

When will these idiots who write these equal opportunity guidelines actually get a life and get out into the real world? Then, and only then, will they realise that the tosh they write has no sense of reality in the workplace!

If you know any other stupid examples, then of course please do share them.