Recruiting Animal

Social Media Is Bullshit

BJ Mendelson was my guest on Sept 19, 2012.

He wote a book called Social Media Is Bullshit. You can buy it in an instant from the Kindle Store and read it using Kindle For PC.

BJ says the power of social media marketing for small business is overblown by hucksters who make money teaching you how to do it.

He has issued The BJ Challenge: Show me the small companies that have substantially increased their revenue by means of social media.

He's not looking for the exception that proves the rule. He wants to see a number of companies that demonstrate an indisputable pattern of success for those who use social media marketing properly.

You'll find the full show and some excerpts below.

PLAY Intro - Positional Power

PLAY BJ is prophetic

PLAY Little Guys are screwed

PLAY Confused Identity

PLAY Social Media

PLAY Bad Guys

PLAY Buy some clothes

PLAY Small Business Social Media

PLAY Did I prove BJ wrong

PLAY Justin Beiber and Journalists

PLAY Success comes offline

PLAY Summarizing Main Ideas

PLAY Talent Communities

PLAY Full Show BJ Mendelson

Respect For Positional Authority

PLAY - Disrespect

The other day I was reading a discussion on Quora.

Someone asked this question: "What do foreigners find strange about the United States?"

And people were giving their answers and I noticed that some of the things they hated were the very things I liked best.

For instance, cold drinks all year round. What's wrong with that? I love cold drinks. They're halleluyah for me.

And the next thing was the lack of respect for elders and people in positions of power. And you know what? That's the greatest thing about North America for me, the lack of respect for positional power.

And it wasn't just Asians who complained about that. Some Europeans did too. And I was surprised because a huge part of the western tradition is about disrespect.

The bible is all about disrespect. A bunch of nobodies spit in the face of Pharoah, the king of Egypt, and they get away with it.

And when the Israelites want a king the bible makes it clear that kings are no good. And then the prophets keep telling the kings that they are no darn good.

And we get the same thing from the Greeks. Who is the most famous of the ancient Greeks? Socrates. And what did he do?

He was a poor man who challenged conventional ideas. And he refused to recant when the big shots went after him and they killed him for it. And he is one of the greatest heroes in history.

And science is all about testing common ideas to see if they are true. We don't take something to be the truth just because some big shot said it.

Einstein's a big shot in our culture and people are always trying to see if what he said is really true.

But you know, just last week, on Facebook, David Wolpe criticized me for calling someone by his first name instead of his title.

I was shocked. This is a guy who just spoke at the Democratic Convention. He's a rabbi and one night he gave the benediction.

But I'll tell you something. He doesnt understand America as well as I do. And he doesn't understand the bible as well as I do!

Because neither of those things is about respect for positional authority.

William Penn, he knew something about the bible. You can tell because he refused to take his hat off for the king. And where did he end up? In Pennsylvania!

 

Don't Be Superficial

Your opposite number in a negotiation might have to put on a show to look tough for his backers. It doesn't mean the deal is over. This is what he has to do to keep it on track.

Below: from: Slate (edited)

It took Morsi two days to call on Egyptians to respect the inviolability of foreign embassies.

The Muslim Brotherhood issued a mealy-mouthed statement that condemned violence, but also justified the violence as a response to the insult of the prophet, which one of the group’s administrators labeled a “red line.”

But it would be wrong to think that Morsi or the Brotherhood want these protests.

Morsi is trying to cement a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to stave off economic collapse.

The Brotherhood is trying to drum up investment in Egypt (lest it be held accountable at the polls for a collapse).

Attacks on the U.S. embassy do not help their cause.

These protests, like all protests, are organized by political actors with agendas.

First, and most obviously, are other Islamists.

Staging protests against the United States is a way of showing up the Brotherhood, of saying that the group is too weak or corrupted by power to do anything to protect Islam’s honor.

If Morsi condemns the protests, he can be portrayed as a hypocrite who talks tough about the West but in reality is willing to make himself its lackey in order to hang onto power.

 

Let Us Not Praise Famous Men

It's not good to exaggerate the significance of a title because titles often hide the real person behind them.

Below: from Slate (edited)

President Morsi has famously been known to intimate that 9/11 was an inside job, but the closest Americans have ever come to mass protests against this denial of one of our greatest national tragedies was an indignant op-ed by a pair of excitable Egypt-watchers.

Back in 2005, when Morsi was running for re-election to parliament, I often heard him talk about how American women routinely don’t know who their babies’ fathers are, and how hospitals have accommodated this sad fact of American life by simply registering newborns under their mothers’ names.

This little bit of color merited an amused footnote in my thesis, and I thought nothing of it for half a decade until I saw that, according to a writer for Foreign Policy, Morsi was still saying the same thing in 2011.

When Morsi became president, he used the occasion of his first big public address to promise to work for the release of a man convicted of trying to blow up the World Trade Center.

How did the United States respond? It sent its secretary of state to Egypt to cheerlead for Arab democracy and open a new consulate, where she was pelted with tomatoes. She did not demand, nor did she receive, a public apology.

 

Dedication

What does it take to pursue a goal against opposition?

From: Belmont Club (edited)

The street level of the revolution was dominated by the Islamists and young toughs, high school and technical school students who hang out around Tahrir Square.

They like fights, they like to storm buildings, some, if not most, are addicted to Tramadol.

It’s a great anti-police drug. You don’t feel pain. They can beat you to death and you won’t feel a thing.

They’re calling it the Zombie drug. Tramadol was a big part of the revolution.

The point is that for the ideological revolution to have succeeded you needed these toughs because you had to win on the street level.

To take on the entire police force of a dictatorship like Mubarak’s you needed to bring them down on the street through force.

That’s who these kids are. They took on the Mubarak regime alongside the Islamists, whose willingness to die for their cause cannot be underestimated.”

Comment: Note that these tough young men already like to fight before they take the Tramadol. It just helps them do what they are already doing.

 

On Feeling Dumb

From: Who Killed The Liberal Arts (edited)

A great many of my fellow students in the College at the University of Chicago seemed to come from New York City, several others from academic families.

They appeared to have been reading the Nation and the New Republic from the age of 11.

One morning in Elder Olson’s class in modern poetry, Olson began quoting Baudelaire and a student next to me, named Martha Silverman, joined him, in French, and together, in unison, the two of them chanted the poem to its conclusion.

This was one of those moments when I thought it perhaps a good time to look into career opportunities at Jiffy Lube.

“I invariably took the first rank in all discussions and exercises, whether public or private, as not only my teachers testified, but also the printed congratulations and carmina of my classmates.”

So wrote Leibniz about his own classroom performance.

Reverse everything Leibniz wrote and you have a fairly accurate picture of my classroom performance.

None among my teachers there ever suggested that I had intellectual promise. Nor should they have done, for I didn’t show any, not even to myself. I made no “A”s. I wrote no brilliant papers. I didn’t do especially well on exams. I was not quick in response in the classroom.

 

The Tough Communicator

From: The Story of Steve Jobs (edited)

Apple employees rarely quit when Jobs called them shitheads, or even when he took credit for their ideas.

An early manager on the Mac team told Isaacson about the abuses Jobs heaped on employees.

But she said, “I consider myself the absolute luckiest person in the world to have worked with him.”

These testimonials are proof, for many, that strong leadership and impressive results will lead employees to tolerate, even embrace, unpleasant work conditions.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, practices radical forthrightness in all his personal relationships.

All Bridgewater employees are expected to clash with one another, to speak without filters or concerns about sensitivities.

Dalio shares Jobs’ belief in the benefits of a tough, brutally candid office environment, though he requires his employees to dish it out to him just as much as they take it.

He likens the mode of dialog he practices to twisting one’s limbs into a difficult yoga position or training as a Navy SEAL.

“Pretty soon the pain becomes pleasure and you can’t live without it.”

 

Interview Tips of Eddie Gaydos

Based on: Eddie Gaydos: Hiring Secrets (but includes my views)

1. Two people can be on the same rung of the ladder but one is going up and one is coming down.

To gauge a candidate’s potential, don’t just look at her position. Look at what she had to do to get there and where's she's headed.

2. While conducting an interview, ask: “If you wasn’t interviewing with me right now, where would yous be? 

”Would you be at home working on the stuff my business specializes in? Is it, like, your hobby? Or would you be talking to a company in a totally different field.” 

You want someone who has a sincere passion for your industry and your company. You want to hire a fan, not someone who just wants a job.

Unfortunately, fans who can do what you need done and want to work for you are few and far between.

3. Actions speak louder than words, so give the candidate a test project.

4. Dig, dig, dig to get the candidate to tell you about her failures and how she handled them. 

She'll come in with a prepared story about a goof that doesn't make her look bad because all of the career coaches tell her to do that.

But once she is finished with that story ask for another and another and another. If she says there are none you say, "So you've only had 3 things go wrong in your 10 year career?" If she says, "Yes," say, "I don't believe you," and end the interview.

5. Before a candidate meets a number of people in your company, agree among yourselves about the things you are looking for. 

Create a checklist and during the interview take detailed notes about issues that suggest that the candidate would or would not bring what you want.

6. Ask how the candidate manages conflict.

Ask about conflicts they have had with their managers, subordinates and peers. Don't ask for one example; ask for example after example until they run dry.

7. You want someone who wants more than a paycheque.

Look for a candidate who’s deeply interested in the work, a person who has been a lifetime supporter or your brand or industry, an applicant who views his job as a calling instead of just a meal ticket.

Good luck finding that guy, Eddie. "I've always dreamed of being an internal auditor at a cork company. Especially your cork company."

8. Try to discover the candidate’s values, interests and pet peeves. 

What questions are going to tell you that? Eddie doesn't say.

9. His #9 was uninteresting

10. To make sure you don’t hire a “yes person,” ask what they don’t like about your company and what they’d change if they were in charge. And keep asking until they run dry.

 

Nature vs Nurture

From: David Hawkes via Normblog (edited)

Anyone following the career of Noam Chomsky is soon confronted with a problem.

Chomsky has achieved eminence in theoretical linguistics and political commentary.

The "Chomsky problem" is that his approaches to these fields appear to contradict each other.

In politics Chomsky is a radical, but in linguistics he takes positions that can easily be characterized as reactionary.

He traces language to a "Universal Grammar" resident in the physical brain.

He believes that our linguistic nature is hard-wired into our genes.

Because they diminish the influence of environment on human behaviour, such claims can be used to suggest that certain modes of social organization are natural and immutable.

As a result, they have often been associated with conservative politics.

Comment: Can the same be said of success?

 

Accents

This is a comment I left on InterviewIQ

My father is an immigrant. His accent isn’t bad because he married a Canadian and had to speak English-only at home. His relatives didn’t marry Canadians and they mostly sound like Dracula.

And this seems to be the general rule about accents. No one works to change his or her accent. But if you have to speak English at home it will, to some extent fade. But, then, nobody speaks English at home unless they have to.

I have friends from India who only speak English at home when they speak to me. My friend’s wife is smart and energetic but although she came here when she was 17, she sounds like a new immigrant speaking broken English and this has certainly limited her job potential. She’s a data entry clerk in the back office of a bank.

I have recruited many accountants from other countries who complain about requirements for Canadian experience but I have met very few people who recognize that if you sound like a Canadian people will automatically assume that you do have Canadian experience or at least understand the environment.

I used to get lots of emails that addressed me as “My dear”. Does that tell me that this person is going to be easy to communicate with or that he might not understand me?

Look at what the writer said above: “I realised that the incorrect using of some English vocabulary ruined my chances…” “Incorrect using” is itself incorrect.

However, in my experience, no one ever gets ruled out because of a mere accent. Skills always come first. They are the deciding factor. I believe that accent does make an impression and could enhance rapport but I do not believe that it is a major factor in a hiring decision.

Oddly enough, people with strong accents and imperfect comprehension even get hired for jobs that require constant communication like reception. Perhaps because the office requires people who are bilingual.

As for sounding bubbly. I’m more impressed by people who sound energetic than dull. I dislike forced cheer but I want to get the feeling that they are alert and awake.