………. on an online employment site.
Last week, we had the case of the stupid employee and Facebook, but now we have a candidate for the ‘Best, and Most Motivating Job Ad Award’ – and the role is for a ‘Skilled Part-Time Office Administrator’
Originally spotted and tweeted by @MrsLPikon, it has now been highly re-tweeted around NZ in the last couple of days.
This is a genuine advertisement on Seek New Zealand (and just in case the job ad is removed by the time you read this), here are some motivational excerpts from advertisement, written by the MD of the Accounting firm that’s searching for the perfect job applicant:
‘Personality Wise I’m looking for; Someone who loves details. i.e charging clients the right amount, entering addresses into the database correctly, having the right name on a letter. You want make basic mistakes because you’ll do a quality job.’ Hmmmm…….. ‘you want make basic mistakes’ – a test for an applicant perhaps?
‘Someone who can take a project and just “get it done”. I don’t want to hear about the problems and issues and reasons that come up. I simply want the results agreed upon to be completed on schedule and to spec, no excuses. Let me repeat that point – no excuses. Either something is done or it isn’t, there is no “I tried”, “I’m waiting to hear back from someone”, “I sent them an e-mail…”, or “I don’t think it’s possible.” Either it’s done or it isn’t.’
Aha……. He wants a graduate of the world famous ‘No mistakes, No excuses, No tolerance’ School of Management
‘Someone who always say “Good Morning!” and leaves their personal life at home. When you’re here, you’re here and no matter what happened before you walked in the door you’re “present” when you’re in the office. Upbeat personality is key.’
What this means is ‘Only Happy Robots Need Apply’
A dynamic person who can switch projects and focus with ease, and can easily multi-task between various projects. Things change (including my mind at times!) and this should be both expected and anticipated!
What do you mean, you’re not clairvoyant?!
This guy is extremely precise because he goes on to say:
I am NOT looking for: – A 9-3 punch card “Hey, I got done what I could today but I gotta jet” kind of person
– Someone who comes in and thinks “Hmmm… what should I do today?” (Hint before you leave you should already know what you’re doing the next day)
– Someone who likes to yap with co-workers while or instead of working
– A deadpan personality
The last 2 comments are a bit of an oxymoron, as he wants a person who doesn’t talk to other staff members, but they must have an outgoing personality.
OK, any takers? Is this the best part-time role you’ve ever seen?
Go on, you know you want to work there really, don’t you?
On a more serious note, and to give the writer of this ad the benefit of the doubt, we are in the middle of a recession, and there are far too many applicants out there for every role – perhaps he has written this as a ‘filter’ so only the keenest candidates will apply. The trouble is, he may only be left with the most desperate ones – not the best criteria by which to employ someone!Read the rest of this entry »
We all hate examples of poor customer service, whether before, during or after we’ve made a purchase.
Who can blame us for being intolerant of service failures – I mean, if we pay good money for something, it should work shouldn’t it?
But here’s the thing – what about those services that have become like oxygen for our digital lives?
Twitter, Facebook, Skype, WordPress and any other number of free online tools, communities and services fuel our insatiable thirst to stay connected, and they’re free. Surely as reasonable human beings, we make allowances for service failures from these suppliers, because we don’t even pay to use them?
Wrong – it’s counter intuitive, but we’re so addicted to our minute-by-minute, social networking ‘fix’, we seem less tolerant when these services fail, than when a paid for product or service lets us down. You don’t agree?
Well, just look at the backlash and outrage after a Twitter failure, or Facebook outages – what about your reaction to the poor quality video call the time you Skyped an overseas friend? Our intolerance goes beyond our reaction to service failure, it extends to our reaction when these providers to attempt to monetise the environments they provide through other means, like advertising – how dare they?
What does all this mean? Have we forgotten that these services are free, or have we moved into a new societal model where ‘users’ have the same expectations as paying customers, and we expect the things we choose to ‘use’ to work as well, if not better than those we buy? Are we all just becoming unreasonable or is it that we believe that the time we invest using these tools is payment enough?
What if Twitter charged everyone with an account, a nominal fee of say, $2.00 per month?
They’d certainly receive a direct income from us allowing them to upgrade and maintain their online service.
We’d also be legitimate customers, so would that make us even more demanding and intolerant, or would we all just leave in droves and find a new free thing?
I’ve just been emailed this Facebook item, and by now it’s probably bouncing around all corners of our networked world.
Is it genuine? Who knows, but either way it’s another timely reminder to those people who seem to use their social media accounts as a broadcast ‘Dear Diary’.
Firstly, employment agencies and potential employers now routinely search online to find out more about a prospective employee – they can gain some great insights from various social media streams into the person behind his or her glowing CV.
Next, once you’ve acquired ‘friends’, at least make sure you’re aware of the potential consequences of your actions if you say something negative about them in your ‘stream of consciousness’, especially if those ‘friends’ you’ve accepted into your social networking life also happen to be your your boss or superiors.
Thirdly – even if those you insult are not signed up as your friends and you think you’re telling others behind their back, remember that things can have a funny way of getting back to those you don’t want to know – especially with so many readily available ‘cut & paste’ tools around.
Finally, use some common sense, and if you aren’t willing to say something to someone’s face – don’t say it online, well at least not if your name and account clearly identifies you. That applies equally to divulging that you’re a stoner, regularly drink and drive, covet somebody else’s partner, or have questionable exotic sexual preferences etc.
We may live in a world where we like to think our privacy is protected, but all of that stands for nothing if you choose to advertise all your innermost needs, wants, desires and other secrets to the wwworld!
For what it’s worth, in this example, I thought her boss was very clear in his reply, and showed remarkable restraint 🙂
This is the greatest recession in most of our working population’s living memory – and the casualties are mounting. Globally, unemployment continues to rise, and even for those of us safe (for now), it may seem like the ‘End of Days’.
However, we humans are adaptive creatures,adjusting to change pretty well – in no time at all, there’s no stigma attached to being laid off – other than the impotent embarrassment and sympathy oozing out of your family and friend’s pores when they meet you.
A good friend of mine, Simon, is a self-made, independently wealthy businessman. As my lovely wife has recently joined the ranks of the unemployed, we were talking together the other day and Simon made the point that the best time to start a new business or follow your dream is when you’ve lost your job.
Easy for him to say, I hear you cry, but his rationale is that many people are trapped in jobs they are not passionate about, but the income provides the financial buffer they need to pay for their ‘over-compensating life styles’. From time to time, they may daydream of doing what really pushes their hot buttons but won’t make the leap because it’s too scary to voluntarily give up a good income and lifestyle.
However, when laid off and facing the prospect of zero income – motivated people can prove to be extremely creative and resourceful – plus a business start-up that produces a positive net income of any description is better than nothing at all, and before long the adaptive person stops making comparisons with their high salaried life, and instead sees the improvement from their ‘no income’ period.
OK, enough waffle, what’s the real point of this post?
Well, I came across ‘Please Feed The Animals‘, a blog for the recently unemployed advertising professional – set up by a smart guy, Erik Proulx – an ECD / Copwriter who has, in his words “discovered the power of unemployment”. In his blog was a trailer for a new movie project called Lemonade. It’s about how recently laid off advertising creatives have coped, and are even thriving in new ways by following their own dreams. It looks like it’ll be an inspirational documentary film.
As for my wife? Well, she’s just embarking on a course of study to follow her own dream – hopefully supplemented with secondary sources of income.
In September last year I put a link to a terrific presentation called “What the f**k is social media” and I made the point that while a great ‘primer’ for social media, with the speed things are changing, it would soon be out of date.
Well, the authors of that presentation, Espresso, obviously agreed, and have released “What the f**k is social media: one year later”. Excellent, and just take a look at some of the updated statistics!
My good mate Hemi, the owner of Wakefield Hotel, a cool clothing and footwear shop in Cuba Street, Wellington NZ takes his camera everywhere with him for business and culture inspiration.
Last week he spotted this just around the corner from his own store.
Yes, it’s for real – and a sign of the times maybe?
You just have to admire the operators of this ‘Gentleman’s Club’, don’t you? We’re all living in a retail hard sell “Sale, Sale, Sale” economy now – at least they weren’t advertising an “All you can eat” offer!
For those of you who may be interested in investigating this ‘Sale’ a little further, check out Il Bordello
For the rest of you who want to check out the best range of sneakers and urban threads in Wellington, go and see Hemi at Wakefield Hotel on Cuba!
Following on from my last post, here’s a look at what the 1999 kitchen of the future was going to look like from a 1967 perspective. Again, I have no idea where this clip came from but if anyone can tell me, I’d be grateful – IBM, Honeywell, some science show or something completely different?
I have no idea where this clip originally came from but it’s an interesting look at what we thought 1999 was going to look like. This clip shows how we were all going to be doing ‘fingertip shopping’ from the home.
While some of the thinking was spot on – e-commerce and shopping sites; what’s really funny looking at this clip from 1967 is the chauvinistic view of the world and women’s role in it, and how the guy pays and reviews his bills for payment!
Anyway, enjoy and if anyone can tell me where this clip came from, I’d be grateful – IBM, Honeywell, some science show or something completely different?
A few months old now, but Seth Godin‘s terrific video presentation from Ted Talks explains how the power of tribes and the Internet change everything we know about advertising, media and “one to many” communications.
The Genie is out of the bottle and it’s too late to try and put it back again.
It’s getting colder now, so the other morning, while waiting at the airport for yet another delayed flight I went online to look for a warm, mid-weight jacket / coat.
About 3 years ago I’d brought a couple of long sleeve Tees from a cool NZ clothing brand called Doosh (Yes I know, their name is a bit suspect, but their clothes are cool), and I remembered that their jackets were pretty good as well. So I checked out their website and saw a jacket I liked the look of, the Arctic Coat (no, this not me modeling it!).
Although Doosh has an e-commerce store, and I am happy to risk buying tee shirts etc online, I’m not going to buy a coat that way as I want to be able to try it on and check out the quality.
Unfortunately, their site didn’t say which retailers stocked their lines and so I clicked through to ‘Contact Us’ and at 8.43 am, sent an email to Jacob Dodds (Doosh’s Account Manager), to ask whether was anywhere in Wellington that I could check out the Arctic Coat.
At 9.08 am, just 25 minutes later, I got a friendly email reply from Dana Foster, their Warehouse Manager, giving me the details of Doosh’s Wellington stockist – Marvel Menswear – excellent! I went round to Marvel Menswear later that day, tried on the Arctic coat, and brought it on the spot.
It may be a sad reflection of our times, but nowadays an incredibly prompt and friendly reply to a web site inquiry stands out as amazing customer service to me. Simply by responding to me as they did, I was already predisposed to buying their product, and the only thing that could have ruined it was if there had been a product quality issue (there wasn’t), or poor service in-store (the service in the store was excellent).
This is a genuine advertisement on Seek New Zealand (and just in case the job ad is removed by the time you read this), here are some motivational excerpts from advertisement, written by the MD of the Accounting firm that’s searching for the perfect job applicant:
We all hate examples of poor customer service, whether before, during or after we’ve made a purchase.
I’ve just been emailed this Facebook item, and by now it’s probably bouncing around all corners of our networked world.
Last week he spotted this just around the corner from his own store.
DigiEx 