Recruiting Animal

Jerry The Recruiter June 2011

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Once again - the only thing Twitter did for me was help add a few names to my list of people that really bug me. See you tomorrow! Thu Jun 09 21:17:56 +0000 2011 via web Jerry Albright
@Jerry_Albright

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How Does A Hero Think

From: The man who fought Vancouver’s mob - Toronto Star, Sat Jun 18 2011, Joanna Smith (edited)

You can see him on video starting at the 2.50 minute mark

"It was more of a reaction than thinking. I just walked up there and saw people gutting the store and they needed help,” the 36-year-old chef said of his ultimately unsuccessful efforts to keep an angry mob from further smashing the windows of the flagship Bay store on Granville St. in downtown Vancouver after the Stanley Cup final game.

“I just felt it was the right thing to do. It was something I saw happening and I just wanted to stop it. I was pretty angry at that point.”

“Some guy prodded me or tried to lunge at me with a pole. I grabbed onto the pole and I just started pushing the crowd back and that is when I was surrounded and then taken down.  After I was down on the ground, some guy came up and bear-sprayed my face.”

Two more guys came to his aid. One spread his arms to protect him and placed his hand on his shoulder, the other joining him despite having his shirt tugged by a young woman who wanted him to leave.

“I couldn’t even open my eyes at that point,” he said. They brought him to police at Howe and W. Georgia Sts.

“I was sitting on the curb,” MacKay said. “People walking by gave me their water bottles so I could rinse off my head. And then my girlfriend picked me up and then we walked home.”

She was worried. She told him to never do that again.

Video of heroes who tried to stop the vandals

Astounding pictures of the Riot

 

Interviews, Image and Reality

PLAY - Image v Reality 11 06 15

A few weeks ago I announced on Twitter that I love Gwyneth Paltrow. Naturally, someone challenged me and this time it was - no surprise - @ResumeStrategy. She said something like: "That's an odd thing to say. Not many men I know  would say that they love some celebrity."

Of course she meant not many real men -- but that's only because most guys are too smart to admit it. Is some guy going to go a movie and on the way home turn to his wife and say, "You know, honey, I really love Gwyneth Paltrow."? Not if he's smart

But social media is authentic and if millions of dollars were spent on Shakespeare In Love to make Gwyneth Paltrow seem totally loveable I'm not ashamed to say that it worked on me. In fact, listen to this: after I saw There's Something About Mary I was in love with Cameron Diaz and that was a low budget film.

And a few years ago I had a crush on Amy Winehouse. I liked her music and she looked good in her videos. But I guess that was shallow because my good friend, Maureen Sharib, the Tiger Mom of Telephone Sourcing took it upon herself to explain to me the meaning of the word skank.

Of course she's someone who always complains about women stabbing eachother in the back but I guess they don't like it when shallow guys like me get taken in by the media. But I'm not the only one. I read an article a few years ago by a guy who went to a wedding and who was there but Gwyneth Paltrow

So he wrote an article about it. He said she looked lovely and she sang a song and then she danced with him  And at the end of the article he said, "Imagine that, I danced with Gwyneth Paltrow!".

Now, I have to admit something. I saw Gwyneth Paltrow on TV recently and she wasn't like she was in Shakespeare In Love. In fact, I've seen her in a couple of other movies and she was never the same as she was in Shakespeare in Love.

That's true with Cameron Diaz, as well. I've seen her in other movies but it was never the same as There's Something About Mary. And, of course, poor Amy Winehouse is a drug addict and when you see a picture of her, now, it's hard to feel anything but sorry.

So, now I know you're thinking, "He's going to try to swing this around to recruiting. He's going to say, 'Don't be taken in by shallow images that were crafted to impress you'." But that's not what I'm going to say. I'm going to say the exact opposite.

I'm going to say that you can get your resume written by a pro and you can have a career counselor train   you to interview and you're still never going to make the kind of impression you want because you're not in a movie in which every word is written out in advance and if a scene doesn't go well they simply reshoot  -- 50 times if they have to.

Have you ever seen those politicians who all of a sudden in the middle of a speech start gesturing mechanically? That's what you get from coaching. You say to yourself, "I have to move my arms now to let everyone know I'm still alive." But if you have to tell yourself when to move you're just going to look like a robot and convince everyone that you don't have any life in you at all.

I'll bet Tony Blair doesn't have to do that because he's a naturally good speaker. Barack Obama is a good speaker too and, apparently, President Kennedy was very good in interviews. He knew how to lay on the charm and you didn't have to teach him how to do it.

So my advice on interviews is: don't worry about being a charmer. Focus on your professional knowledge. And if you suffer from stage fright, well, I've read about musicians who use beta blockers to deal with that but I'm not a doctor so don't go out and take them on my say-so.

Update for my critics:  I'm not saying that it's worthless to go to a resume writer or an interview coach. I just said that your goals have to be limited. When the interviewer says, "Tell me about yourself," she doesn't want you to hear your personal history starting at kindergarten and a coach can warn you against doing that. But if you're a drip before an interview you're not likely to change much overnight.

And, yes, you can grow as you get used to presenting yourself. But how many people grow very much? Even people with potential, get a job and put their presentation skills firmly on the shelf.

 

Hypocrisy

From: Ron Radosh, Delusional Believers, June 11, 2011

Others invited who refused to come include the noted Columbia University historian Eric Foner, who although he has written about the case many times and even wrote an introduction to the Meeropol’s own book, said he would not attend because he doesn’t consider himself an expert on the case.

That did not stop him in the past from writing that they were innocent victims of a frame-up, and in particular regularly attacking my own book, The Rosenberg File, as a fraud.

Old-Fashioned Respect

From: Comments, Margaret Wente, We’ve institutionalized teacher abuse, Globe and Mail, May. 26, 2011

Where I am from, if you disrespect the teacher, you get whipped; and parents are not even allowed to enter the school.

I'm from South of Russia, from a Cossack community. In our lands, you walk through a school, all you hear are sounds of pens and pencils writing, teachers talking, and children only speaking up if asked something by the teacher.

All adults in our society, teachers included, carry a nagaika and do not hesitate to use it on a insolent youth. It happened to me a few times, and it hurts like hell itself. Very, very effective.

No, where I am from, you do not see drunk, disrespectful, rude, arrogant youth. When a elder walks into a room, if any young ones are there, they stand up, remove their hats, and bow.

In the street, you do not pass an elder who is walking before you without asking permission, it is rude.

On public transport, you would see, an elder comes in, on a bus, or a commuter train, even if it is not full, young ones right away jump up to yield their seats.

Discipline, respect, culture, it is beaten into you from a young age where I come from. And we are proud of that. The rest of Russia envies us for our ways.

Blogging is a guy thang

From: Why are bloggers male? - Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, March 17, 2010 (edited)

Guys want lots of action and instant gratification. That's why guys like blogging – instant opinions, and lots of them.

Men clearly have an urge to blog that women lack. Not many women are interested enough in spitting out an opinion on current events every 20 minutes.

“Do you think men are more opinionated than women are?” I asked my friend Sarah. “No,” she said. “They just don't feel the need to think before they open their mouths.”

The urge to blog is closely related to the sex-linked compulsion known as male answer syndrome. MAS is the reason why guys shoot up their hands first in math class. MAS also explains why men are so quick to have opinions on subjects they know little or nothing about.

Do you ever wonder why the talk shows and opinion pages are still dominated by male voices? That's why.

Opinionizing in public is a form of mental jousting, where the aim is to out-reason, out-argue or out-yell your opponent. Women are just as good at this but are not as interested in doing it.

From: Female bloggers take on Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, Thurs Mar. 18, 2010

Annie Urban: "I certainly don't think women are lacking in opinions or in a willingness to share them. I have been opinionated all of my life and have been sharing that opinion with the world on my blog for two years."

Tamara Plant blasted Ms. Wente's assertion that women are too demure to blog: "Nine times out of 10 I don't think before I talk. It's called having an attitude and I'm OK with it."

 

Body Chemistry and Personality

From: Why are bloggers male? - Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, March 17, 2010

For most of my adult life, I was almost struck dumb in the presence of strangers. I managed to complete five years of university without raising my hand, and the idea of a dinner party used to make me faint.

Several of my female friends tell similar stories. No matter how brilliant they were, they lacked the confidence to express themselves in public.

Fortunately, something happens to women in midlife that disinhibits them. It is the same thing (in reverse) that turns bold, extroverted little girls into painfully self-conscious adolescents: a drastic change in hormones.

These days, I no longer care when someone calls me an idiot, and my husband often has to drag me home from dinner parties.

 

Real Leaders Do Unpopular Things

Billy Christian has an interesting posting about leadership called McGuinty’s Bold Plan

In it, he congratulates the premier of Ontario for harmonizing the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) with the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

The message is that a real leader will do unpopular things.

"Thursday’s budget," Christian says, "showed that he is a genuine leader." Why? "He has the courage to take a big political hit."

The Globe and Mail highlighted the fact that common consumer purchases like coffee, muffins, gym memberships, golf and Internet fees and vitamins would become more expensive. McGuinty knew that this kind of attack was coming but it didn't stop him.

Ironically, in spite of his praise for bold public action, Christian also implies that sometimes a leader should be deceptive.

He claims that Brian Mulroney slit his own throat when he made the GST a visible rather than a hidden tax. "The visible tax irritated people" and "it destroyed his popularity forever."

Instead of billing the public directly at the point of purchase he could have imposed the tax on the producer or importer who would have added it to the price and passed it onto the consumer. This would have achieved the same effect without damaging the leader's relationship with a short-sighted public.

Inotherwords, if you're dealing with ignorant, prejudiced, narrow-minded people it's unwise to give them information that will only inflame them because it's more than they can understand.

This is a conservative idea of leadership. I'm thinking here of conservatism as a political and social idea that manifests itself in a structured society in which the leading roles are reserved for people who deserve them by virtue of their knowledge and character.

Since the leaders have greater understanding than the popular masses they are not obliged to be fully transparent with the lower orders or to deal with them as equals. The common people govern themselves  more by emotion than deep thought and so, like children, don't have to know everything.

 

 

 

Internet or Not Students Are The Same

From: Facing down a Wiki World by William Christian April 6, 2009

I once sat towards the back of a large class during a guest lecture and I estimate that one-third of the class had Facebook on their screen. Others were accessing their Gmail accounts. A couple were playing solitaire.

In olden days I would have been forced to pay attention, faute de mieux, or perhaps clandestinely read a newspaper, but now I play Scrabble or do little quizzes to see which car I’m most like.

Working With Women

From: Margaret Wente, Just bar men from politics, Globe and Mail, Thursday, Jun. 09, 2011
Comment: R Rowat June 9, 2011

I have had the experience of working in two or three environments in which the vast majority of employees were women, including management. In each case, the atmosphere became poisonous with the all the behind-the-back whispering, back-stabbing and general character assassination. The workplace was dysfunctional and remained so until the gender balance was righted.