Recruiting Animal

Swearing Is Good For You

On The Recruiting Animal Show, guest, Chris Schwacofer, came under fire for his salty tongue. So, here's an article about that:

"For as long as I can remember, I’ve been unable to convincingly curse.... If I’m chatting with a colleague and they start dropping F-bombs, I freeze up ...

"Am I paying a price for talking like Ned Flanders?

"In her new book Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language, author Emma Byrne makes a strong case that the answer is yes.

"Swearing is “socially and emotionally essential” and “beneficial to us.”

"Swearing is so fundamental to human expression, that people with neurological conditions that cause them to lose the ability to speak regular words are still able to swear.

"Swearing can offer emotional catharsis and improve productivity. Her hope, she writes, is that we “might give it the respect it fucking deserves.”

Programmers Have to Communicate Well

From a recruiter (edited):

Social media folks, web developers and UX designers don't just sit in front of the computer. They need to be able to sit down at a meeting and advise senior leaders on protocol for a new project.

Or they need to be able to pick up the phone and firmly and tactfully chew-out a vendor partner who's not delivering.

They might have the best portfolio or coding ability on the planet but if they can't interact with others, they aren't a fit for my clients.

So I'm not going waste my time emailing someone who isn't interested in talking with me on the phone. Maybe they're afraid to talk or they're just not used to it but no chat, no opportunity.

 

Is Voicemail Dead?

Sandra Mccartt via Sourcers Unleashed

What I'm seeing reported is that employees [at Coke] were given the option to keep or cut voice mail. Only 6% of employees opted to keep it. Those under 30 prefer text messages or emails.

I find this to be true in my office. They hate leaving voice mails, waiting to hear back, missing the call and playing "phone tag" when a text to a candidate seems to be responded to with more detail quicker.

While I prefer voice mail or the phone, listening to long winded voice mail from people who are not clear with their name or number is a button pressing time waster.

One of my pet peeves is sending an email request to a candidate on file to determine availability or update on salary only to have them call and bleat in my ear for 15 minutes or leave 5 voice messages in a row if I don't answer.

For background see: Coke Disconnects Voicemail at Headquarters.

 

People Make Shoddy Arguments

From: Russell Brand: Revolution -- A Review by Jamie Bartlett (edited)

He cites an experiment, conducted in the 1990s in Washington, DC, where thousands of people meditated together and tested the impact on the area.

Brand notes excitedly that over the two months of the experiment, crime fell by 23 per cent...

I looked into that study as it seems like quite a claim. Turns out it’s never been replicated.

Those who reviewed it were all adherents of Transcendental Meditation.

It also turns out that the murder rate in Washington hit its highest ever level during the experiment.

What’s more, the drop was not an actual measurable drop in recorded crime, it was a drop from what a computer model created by one of the experimenters predicted would have been the crime level had these people not been meditating and levitating and what not. 

 

VOICE TIP - From Gary Sauble

To sound more appealing on the phone, drop your intonation at the end of each sentence.

You know how a voice rises at the end of a question? Just repeat the last sentence and hear your voice rise up at the end. Then do the opposite to receive a charisma boost at any time.

Imagine a judge delivering a verdict; "This case is closed". Feel how the intonation of the word "closed" drops.

Lowering the intonation of your voice at the end of a sentence broadcasts power and makes you sound more credible.

COMMENTS:

• Martin Snyder these tips are all such BS...like explaining to people that if only they had a prettier face, people would do more for them....sure you can adjust around the edges, and experience helps a ton, but peoplez talk the way they talk.....

   

  Michael Kelemen: Martin I tend to agree with you that most of this advice is dumb because it takes so much work to change habits that no one is going to do it. That said, a mutual friend of ours tells me that he deliberately speaks differently when he makes a business call and believes it works.

   

  Sandra Mccartt voices can be trained to get rid of nasal twangs, high pitch and diction. Ask anybody from Texas who has ever recorded and listened to their voice. I worked in television in another life and we all had to be trained in the announce booth until we didn't sound like hicks and learned to put the "g" on the end of the word.

Oprah's Rules For Interview Success

From: Oprah's So-Called Experts, Anne Kingston

The Winfrey TV gospel:

1. Don’t let the conversation lull for even a second

2. Be perky

3. Know your subject. Be well informed

4. Speak to the crowd as if you're talking to the only person in the world

5. Talk in sound bites and know when to shut up.

 

People Who Hate Criticism Want To Hide Errors

From: Camus Centenniel

Camus was hired in 1938 as a reporter for a new daily newspaper, the Alger Républicain, covering everything from murder trials to a famine in the mountain region of Kabylia, 50 miles east of Algiers.

That exposé of government neglect infuriated colonial authorities. They shut down the paper and blacklisted Camus, making him unemployable as a journalist.

 

 

On Being Very Frank

Steve Fry via Peter Hitchens:

I could see Peter Hitchens in the doorway of the Waverly Inn, standing utterly alone ... and, taking pity, I just came up to chat. He responded so rudely, so vilely and with such lack of human decency, that I couldn’t but tweet at the extreme difference between two products of the same parents.

Probably a misjudgement on my part. I make many. But then Peter Hitchens is proportionately as joyless and unlovable a person as his so deeply missed brother was joyful and loveable and I was upset at such charmless rudeness. And I was, I freely admit, a little drunk.

How To Plan For a Show

On May 22, 2013, The Recruiting Animal Show was pretty good. At least I think so. Listen yourself here.

Why was it good? Because the guest, Steve Nehez, took the time to plan what he wanted to say in advance. Here's the plan he sent me. It structured the whole show.

Hi Animal… Here's what I put together as sort of a roadmap for the show.  Hopefully this will make sense and transmit our differences (our structure and style of recruiting) through your format.

The Sex Test For Recruiters

On April 10, 2013, Marty Snyder was the guest on The Recruiting Animal Show.

He had a test for recruiting excellence that proved to be the most controversial part of the show.

Part 2 is Mike Astringer and Amy Ala hashing it over on the Aftershow

PLAY - The Sex Test For Recruiters

PLAY - Sex Test 4 Recruiters Part 2