I read an interesting piece here on Forbes this morning entitled “If You Want to Build a Great Team, Hire Apple Employees.” Really? If only the complexity of talent issues were as simple as raiding the employee ranks of Apple…While the author made some great points about outcomes produced by the discipline and rigor of the hiring process at Apple, making the assumption hiring Apple employees could universally solve the talent woes of other organizations is wishful thinking at best.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Here’s the thing – just because someone has succeeded at Apple doesn’t mean they’ll realize the same success in other endeavors. Likewise, just because someone has failed in a previous position doesn’t mean they might not end-up being a top performer in another company. Sure, Apple has some great talent, but it’s talent identified, recruited, hired, and developed for the vision and culture at Apple, which may not be at all compatible with those of a different organization.

Read the full article on forbes.com!

One of my colleagues used to head to the men’s room and brush his teeth every time he felt a surge of writer’s block. He swears it did the trick. Another exits the building and walks around the block to clear his head. I like to take advantage of the mid-day yoga sessions that Forbes offers in the gym on the ninth floor. When I return to my desk, my body is relaxed, my mind is clear, and I attack my work with new energy.

A growing body of research suggests that the longer you keep your rear end in your chair and your eyes glued to your screen, the less productive your may be. Getting up from your desk and moving not only heightens your powers of concentration, it enhances your health.

Read the rest on forbes.com!

Q: I sent in my résumé and cover letter for a marketing position for which I am well-qualified. I got an initial call asking for a few more details, and the HR representative seemed positive and said that she would be in touch soon. Now it has been a week and a half and I still haven’t heard anything. When I go on the company website, the position is still listed as unfilled.

What should I do? I don’t want to be a bother, but I also don’t want to sit back and miss out on the opportunity. One problem is that I didn’t get the woman’s name who called me, and I don’t have any contacts at the company. Should I call? Send an email? Stop by the office? 

– San Francisco, CA

A: It’s understandable that you don’t want to be a bother, but you also don’t want to be invisible. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. So now’s your time to squeak!

In this job market, companies are receiving thousands of applications for positions that might have garnered only a couple dozen applications a few years ago, so you’ll almost certainly miss out if you don’t follow up.

Read the rest on http://blogs.wsj.com!

Ratio Interactive is sponsoring a design competition for Windows 8 Metro style apps. Ratio has been designing and developing applications for the next generation platform and we want to see what you would create to push the boundaries of the Metro design language. To do so Ratio is offering a contest, to encourage people to design Metro Apps for the Win 8 platform and giving away $10,000 for the top 3 designs. The event will begin after the Microsoft Win 8 virtual UX training.

Registration is open until June 30th, with final designs delivered by July 30th. The Winners will be selected by August 15th, 2012.

To be contest eligible, all participants must register to attend the online Windows 8 Virtual UX Training.

Contest URL:
http://www.win8ratio.com/

If you’re currently swimming the murky waters of the job market, then you’ve probably already incorporated some social media outreach into your search. You’ve updated your resume on LinkedIn, made connections on Facebook, and tweeted about your qualifications high and low. But have you considered extending your efforts to Pinterest?

Read more here!

Our Seattle smartdept. inc. team participated in the Race for the Cure at Seattle Center yesterday! It was a great event, we wore pink super-hero-capes, and got some big cheers as the announcers called out the smartdept. inc. team as we crossed the finish line. Thanks to everyone that donated!

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The following interview nightmare comes from when I was sitting on the board of directors of a small nonprofit: We were interviewing finalists for the executive director position, and one director asked the last candidate, “Larry, what do you consider your greatest weakness?” Larry thought a minute, flushed, and then answered, “Well, some people I’ve worked with would say that I have a tendency to just talk on and on without saying anything, but I couldn’t agree. I know I like to talk, but I think that what I say has a lot of meaning. That is, while I am talking and talking, I am actually saying something…” He understood he was embarrassing himself, but he still droned on. We sat horrified. With his answer to this terrible (but oft-used) interview question, he proved his biggest weakness.

Read the full article on http://blogs.hbr.org!

The Seattle smartdept. inc. team is participating in the Race for the Cure this weekend, June 3!  If you’d like to walk/run with us, please join our team, and donations for this great cause are always appreciated!  Visit the link below to join or team or donate!

http://pugetsound.info-komen.org/site/TR/RacefortheCure/SEA_PugetSoundAffiliate?team_id=202824&pg=team&fr_id=2348 <http://pugetsound.info-komen.org/site/TR/RacefortheCure/SEA_PugetSoundAffiliate?team_id=202824&amp;pg=team&amp;fr_id=2348>

How does a customer-service expert in Seattle catch the attention of a hot San Francisco startup in San Francisco, 700 miles away? The answer these days is likely to involve networking and brand-building on social media’s “fun” sites — even the ones best known for their tweets, pokes and cat videos.

It’s been obvious since 2003, when LinkedIn was launched, that social networking could help job candidates and employers interact. LinkedIn’s commitment to this market is underscored by the 150 million career bios on its site — and the more than $260 million in revenue last year from businesses wanting extra ways of connecting with potential new hires.

But more playful sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Quora, and even Pinterest are turning out to be valuable tools for job-hunters, too. In May, I will be publishing “Becoming a Rare Find,” an e-book that explores today’s most effective new job-hunting techniques. Many involve online equivalents to networking at beach resorts or children’s soccer games. People may go online to banter. No matter; before long, they talk shop.

Read the rest on hbr.org!

Digital marketing is confusing—really confusing—as this insane graphic shows.

U.S. companies in March posted the highest number of job openings in nearly four years, a sign that hiring could strengthen in the coming months after slowing this spring.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that employers advertised 3.74 million job openings in March. That’s up from a revised 3.57 million in February. The March figure was the highest since July 2008, just before the financial crisis erupted that fall.

The increase in job openings suggests that weaker hiring gains in March and April could be temporary. It usually takes one to three months for employers to fill openings.

Even with the increase, roughly 12.7 million people were unemployed in March. That means an average of 3.4 people competed for each open job. While that’s far better than the nearly 7-to-1 ratio when the recession ended. In a healthy job market, the ratio is usually around 2 to 1.

Read the full article on www.npr.org!

Yου′ve heard thе term structural unemployment before–thе type thаt exists whеn available skill sets don’t match open jobs. Once mostly bandied аbουt wіth regard tο industries Ɩіkе farming, manufacturing аnԁ health care, increasingly thе term applies tο a range οf οthеr vocations аѕ well. One οf thеѕе іѕ advertising аnԁ marketing.

Interactive media outfit Razorfish, fοr instance, ѕауѕ іt hаѕ аbουt 200 positions open іn thе U.S. bесаυѕе іt саn’t find thе rіɡht public tο fill thеm. Agreed hοw quickly technology іѕ changing, digital agencies nowadays аrе increasingly looking fοr user experience specialists, data analysts аnԁ coders.

Thе types οf skills applicants frοm communications οr creative backgrounds аrе expected tο hаνе аrе аƖѕο changing, аѕ agencies emphasize customer engagement, social media, qυісk response times, аnԁ a passion fοr bу nеw tools аnԁ adopting a variety οf аррrοасhеѕ.

Read the full article on forextrademarketing.com!

Some organizations will excite you. They’ll stimulate your success and growth. Others will be stressful. They may lead you to quit before you’ve accomplished much or learned what you hoped to. With the pressure (or excitement) of finding a new job, it’s all too easy to pursue a job opportunity or to accept an offer with only a hazy view of how the institution really operates. The path to an institution you’ll like is to investigate the culture you’re thinking of joining before you accept the position.

Sean (name has been changed) is a master at this. He pursued a job offer at a Fortune 500 company to be the first Chief Administrative Officer (CAO). He was well-qualified, presented himself well, and got the offer. He’d been competing with capable people. He was proud he’d “won the contest.”

The next step was a return visit, after which he’d decide to accept the offer. Sean had already learned a lot about the company’s businesses and some things about the organization. His priority now was culture and how the new position might fit: “I asked people, ‘What are you excited about? What are you proud of? Who are your close friends in the company? How does the group function together?'” Sean learned things like who the heroes were, what made them successful, and what his biggest challenges and opportunities would be in the job. The different people he met with were learning from his questions. It was almost like he already worked there, and they were jointly determining how to make the new role successful.

Read the full article on hbr.org!

Boredom is an unlikely new frontier in workplace research. Commonly associated with goofing off, taking absurdly long lunch-breaks, and playing internet games on the sly, new studies suggest it’s something that affects high-performing employees as well as those in menial jobs.

Sandi Mann, a senior psychology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, in England, says boredom is the second most commonly hidden workplace emotion, after anger, and believes modern workplaces are becoming more boring.

“Changes in legislation all the time leads to bureaucratic procedures that people find boring,” she says. “We seem to be in a culture of having meetings, which a lot of people find boring. There are a lot of automated systems now, so a lot of the things we do are quite remote. We have more people working night shifts, which are more boring because you’ve got fewer people to talk to.”

In addition, Mann feels that, as a society, we’re becoming less inclined to tolerate boredom. She says: “People have more of an expectation to be fulfilled by everything they do. Compare our grandparents’ generation: there wasn’t any desire to have self-actualization and to reach their potential. They didn’t go down the coal mines in order to be fulfilled.

Read the rest on cnn.com!

Benjamin Franklin was a man of action. Over his lifetime, his curiosity and passion fueled a diverse range of interests. He was a writer (often using a pseudonym), publisher, diplomat, inventor and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

His inventions included the lightning rod, bifocals and the Franklin stove. Franklin was responsible for establishing the first public library, organizing fire fighters in Philadelphia, was one of the early supporters of mutual insurance and crossed the Atlantic eight times. Self-development was a constant endeavor throughout his incredible life.

Benjamin Franklin was clearly a man who knew how to get things done.

This week, Valve’s hipper-than-thou employee handbook was unleashed on the Internet, to much envy and amusement. Companies like Valve, Zappos, and Facebook spill on how they maintain continuity and culture using clever onboarding practices and simple reassurance.

In Douglas Adams’ famous book series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, space traveler Arthur Dent carries with him a galactic guidebook with the two words on the cover: “Don’t Panic.” Solid advice for a hapless spaceman. And perhaps for new hires, too.

On the first day of work, employees at Valve Software are handed a 56-page employee handbook (which hit the Internet this week, and where we got the illustrations in this story) and a desk with wheels. They’re then told to find something to work on. Appropriately, the handbook preface reads, “This handbook is about…how not to freak out now that you’re here.”

Read the rest on fastcompany.com!

You may think you’re getting more accomplished by working longer hours. You’re probably wrong.

There’s been a flurry of recent coverage praising Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, for leaving the office every day at 5:30 p.m. to be with her kids.  Apparently she’s been doing this for years, but only recently “came out of the closet,” as it were.

What’s insane is that Sandberg felt the need to hide the fact, since there’s a century of research establishing the undeniable fact that working more than 40 hours per week actually decreases productivity.

In the early 1900s, Ford Motor ran dozens of tests to discover the optimum work hours for worker productivity.  They discovered that the “sweet spot” is 40 hours a week–and that, while adding another 20 hours provides a minor increase in productivity, that increase only lasts for three to four weeks, and then turns negative.

Read the full article on inc.com!

Ed Trevisani hangs with his young sons when they come home from school. He volunteers as a Boy Scout leader, serves on nonprofit boards, and teaches management at Philadelphia-area universities. He’s even been known to sit on the back porch in the middle of the workday. Not bad for a guy who’s still pulling down as much as he did when he was a partner with IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Trevisani is a Wharton MBA and GE alum who now manages high-powered projects for Fortune 500 companies and advises executives on operational issues, change management, and potential mergers. He does all these assignments on a temporary basis, working as an independent contractor.

Read the full article on hbr.org!

The TV show Mad Men has won fans for breathing life — and a heavy whiff of bourbon — into the fictional advertising world of 1960s New York. But surely no American company has such a liver-pickling culture in this day and age, right?