Recruiting Animal

Demolishing a Weak Argument

Joanna Bourke writes:

For many feminists, veiling is synonymous with the oppression of women.

What women in Muslim societies need are American liberties, the story goes.

If they don't willingly embrace “bikinis and boobs”, they can be bombed into submission.

Mick Hartley attacks her yadda yadda yadda style of argumentation by asking for details.

The story goes? Which story goes? Is it a common view among feminists that if Muslim women don't want American liberties... they should be bombed into submission?

And what liberties, he asks, are we talking about?

being able to walk around with their faces uncovered, or being able to go out without the permission of their male guardians, or, God forbid, even being able to get a job or be financially independent

Then he chides Bourke for dismissing these everyday freedoms under the heading "bikinis and boobs" and concludes:

It's not a view I've come across, and I very much doubt that it's a view that Joanna Bourke has come across, but it sets the rhetorical tone.

Effectively and Efficiently

Why do people still use that stupid, unnecessary phrase?

Subject: execSearches.com

"Hi, Today we launched our Facebook page to compliment the work we do helping non-profits recruit effectively and efficiently online.

More features will be coming soon. Please share this page with others and give us your feedback. Best regards, Jay"

Jay has shared a Page with you. To view the Page or to reply to the message, follow this link to facebook:

You could argue that Jay doesn't merely help non-profits recruit online in a humdrum way. He helps them recruit online using the best techniques. But I think he just wrote that way to fluff up his line.

Come on, dear, you know this isn't true

I silently pity the blog trolls. Not just mine, but blog trolls everywhere. First of all, I have a thick skin.

How To Be A Successful Blogger

Read it below or listen here.

I got a letter this week from a fairly junior blogger. And he said.

"Dear Recruiting Animal, I listen to your show because you're the Mighty Quinn and I'm hoping I can learn some secrets from you. I've been blogging for six months now and I cover the same territory as everyone else but I just don't seem able to get the hits. Nobody's visiting me. What can I do?"

Well, little buddy. I checked out your blog and the problem is very simple. It's as plain as day to me. You don't know how to be an expert. That's your problem. So I'm going to give you some clues.

Here's Number one. Don't think too much. If you see a study that says short men get better jobs don't ask if it's really true. You're not a scientist! You grab that topic and talk about it as much as you can. Think of all the short guys that's going to please.

People who know better are going to grumble but who cares? Most people don't know anything. That's why they come to you. They want simple ideas and absolute certainty. So they can sleep at night. So you want to make them feel good but you also want them to have fun.

Here's something to think about. How many magazines put out lists? The best movies of 2007. The best hundred rock songs of all time.

How do they know what they're saying is true? Of course they don't! But that doesn't mean the list isn't fun. Or that it doesn't make you think. Or that it doesn't give you something to talk about with your friends. And your blog should be written the exact same way

And it doesn't hurt to be a bit sexy sometimes and break the rules a little. Let's say someone writes to you and says: "Should I sleep with my recruiter? I think she likes me." Well that's a no brainer. The answer is: Of course you should! That will give her a reason to help you.

Of course, there's a lot more that I could say but let me wrap it up with this:You can always jazz things up a bit. Tell some stories from your personal life that never really happened. Who's going to know that you weren't a jockey. Who's going to know that you didn't go skydiving? Or that you didn't tell your boss where he can get off?

You don't have to feel guilty about fibbing. What are you doing? You're just helping people. And as long as the basic idea is true who cares what examples you use?

Are you starting to get the picture? Good. I hope I've helped. Good luck and regards.

Marketing on Social Media

1. The Personal is Professional
You create an online presence in microblogging (eg Twitter) by sharing mundane personal information with your "followers". Inotherwords, you promote yourself in the guise of chatting with "friends".

2. Overshare
Tell your audience what you are doing all day long. This means endless messages about where you are, what you're eating, who you're meeting, plus photos and videos (if you have them).

3. Enhance Your Image
It's easy to make yourself seem like someone special by publishing bits and pieces of made up life. The aura of success you create can be used to attract business.

Take a look at these Twitter postings:

Animal: Had dinner with the Assistant Deputy Minister last week. He said some very interesting things

Animal: Invited to my friend's island this weekend. Couldn't be bothered.

Both of them are true. I know a guy who's been with the government a long time and is now a senior manager. Once a month, I eat at a Chinese buffet with the same bunch of guys and he's part of the dinner crew.

Another friend comes from a wealthy family. They own a small island with a fancy cottage. He wanted me to drive some of his daughter's friends up to the lake because he's busy racing his car.

You might think that this kind of crap isn't worth posting but if you want to be a somebody online, think again.

Unpopular Bloggers Should Stick Together

Says the Branding Guru for The Little Guy.

Kids, you want to be one of the popular bloggers, don't you? But, face it, you can't. You're just not interesting. And you know it. But, you haven't read your Neitzche lately, have you? The losers can succeed by banding together and, essentially, boycotting the people who are interesting.

I'll write about you and your 10-hit-per-day blog and you write about mine and before you know it we'll have a self-sustaining community. And community is everything, isn't it, when you're down and out?

This really works. At its last convention, the Liberal Party of Canada (our equivalent of the Democratic Party) had two front runners, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae. But candidates number four and five, Gerard Kennedy and Stephane Dion, made a deal to support eachother and by combining their delegates Dion was able to triumph over the the leaders who, individually, were much more popular than him.

Slave morality does not aim at exerting one's will by strength but by careful subversion. The essence of slave morality is utility: the good is what is most useful for the whole community against the particular interests of the strong.

But how could there be a common good? The term itself is a self-contradiction for what is common has always been of little value.

Twitter Tools

A thorough guide. Hat Tip Social Median

The Best Twit In Town

This show needs a name.

Do I hate Twitter? Kind of. My account lay dormant for a year. Then all of a sudden people started linking to me. I thought, "Wow, I must have been wrong; something is going on here." No, it wasn't.

I read an interesting article by Jerry O and a few by Dan Schwabel because they link to their blogs. And I found out that BL Offman has planters wart and now I know every day when Michael Specht is going to bed. But, nothing else was quite as exciting and I started to think that I'd had enough and then, today, the comic opera started.

Family dinner. My husband feeds the kids while a NYT photographer takes a photo of me for an article about my blog posts about our divorce.

New York Times front-page article: I look fat in the photo. No wait, it's worse. I look structurally ugly. Crap.

Stressed. But I want to look fun, laid back and breezy. So I take orders for lunch. Then go to the wrong place. And come back with nothing.

Panic at my divorce lawyer's office. He says not to worry, he represents top entrepreneurs. I ask him to set me up with one on a blind date.

Buying NoDoze at Walgreens; I don't want to interrupt work later to get coffee. Good time manager, yes? But I feel like a drug addict.

Prayer of the novice twitterer: Please god, let this not suck.

Don't worry, it doesn't. (But everything else does).

Blogging Postings

How Many Blogs?
Are recruiting blogs powerful?
Should They Be Bland?
How To Get Even
Microsoft Blog Culture
Corporate Recruitment Blogging
How to be Persuasive
Business Blogging
Recruiting Blogs
Cynics on Blogging
Drop Your Defences
Jerry Owyang's Overview
Google AdWords
Thought Leadership
Blogging and Google Ranking
Blog Good Marketing Tool
Blogs Improve Bottom Line
Ledgard on Blogging
The Out There Person
Jobster Under Fire
Whackiness Wins
Lousy Corporate Blogs
Social Media Leaders
Domains
New Media Douchebags

Why Long Headlines Work

Short headlines are easy to scan and 60% of the most effective headlines used in the direct mail industry are eight words or less. But these figures mean that longer headlines work, too.

Web pages are scanned in a “F” pattern, moving across the headline then back across the subheadline, then down the left hand side of the page to see if there is anything of interest.

So you might want to include more than 8 words in your headline to provide something of interest as the reader scans the page.

Source Copyblogger