Mardi Gras kicked off for smartdept. inc. in a chilly warehouse in SoDo. “Produce to the people,” we chanted, as we sorted cherry tomatoes and bananas. We were there because we’d committed to join the Food Lifeline team in their daily routine of receiving food donations from manufacturers, farmers, grocery stores and restaurants, and then repacking them so they could be distributed to Food Lifeline’s network of food banks, food pantries, hot meal programs, shelters and after-school programs.

Our team of three repacked 1,342 pounds of produce and worked with another volunteer team from Seattle Academy on Capitol Hill to repack another 2,340 pounds of dry products. We provided 2,318 meals to western Washington families, and had a blast doing it!

We discovered some interesting things about ourselves today – our recruiters sort tomatoes faster than our business developer, and you can’t get Mardi Gras beads for packing dry goods on Fat Tuesday!

This year, Seattle’s smartdept. inc. is partnering with Food Lifeline to donate our time and help fundraise in July. We welcome any of our awesome candidates and clients to drop us a line if you’re interested in joining us on one of our volunteer adventures.

Who knows, you might discover something interesting, too!

-This was an update from Meghann Kern, a Managing Consultant in our Seattle office!

How to Stop the Rambling, Multitasking and Zoning Out

The conference call is one of the most familiar rituals of office life—and one of the most hated.

Abuses are rife. People on the line interrupt others, zone out or multitask, forgetting to hit “mute” while talking to kids or slurping drinks.

Sales executive Erica Pearce has seen teleconferences interrupted by home FedEx deliveries, crying children and the sound of a co-worker vacuuming his house. “Nobody could hear,” she says of the cleaning. As leader of the meeting, she said into the phone, “If you’re vacuuming, I appreciate that, and you’re welcome to come to my house afterward. But you need to be on mute.”

Read the rest on wsj.com!

Like flowers in early spring, new social media job openings are sprouting across industries as companies of all sizes look to create or expand their social squads.

The undeniable success and innovation of high-profile social media campaigns — from such brands as Old Spice, Google Chrome and Starbucks — have inspired this ongoing push for companies to hire people with social media skills.

If you’re seeking a gig as a community manager, public relations representative, marketing person or any other social media position, check out these resumes for inspiration on how to stand out from the crowd. Also, let us know in the comments about any creative tactics you use to promote yourself and your skills.

Check out the rest on mashable.com!

LinkedIn updated the “who’s viewed your profile” section of its platform on Monday, adding personalized tips for how users can generate more profile views.

The new layout includes more detailed analytics about which LinkedIn members visit your profile page. Now users will be able to see which industries their viewers work in, and whether or not those who view their profile share the same job title.

Read the rest on mashable.com!

Our Seattle smartdept. inc. team is partnering with Food Lifeline to donate our time and fundraise this year.  We’ll be making blog updates to share our experience throughout the year and look forward to supporting our local community fight hunger!

With high unemployment levels and a paucity of jobs, employers often have to pick among a large number of talented applicants when trying to fill a position. Increasingly, in order to differentiate between numerous qualified candidates, these employers are putting added emphasis on the interview component and using that interview time to assess a person’s personality as well as their experiences.

Specifically, they are more and more often putting interviewees through unconventional questions or activities that seek to test how someone thinks, socializes, and acts on their feet. Here are the 12 most innovative, unconventional, and creative interview techniques:

1. Take all applicants out for a meal at a restaurant

An employer will often tell candidates to meet him at a restaurant instead of in a conference room. Sometimes this meal will quickly devolve into a standard interview; other times, however, this unconventional approach puts a considerable emphasis on courtesy and table manners.

Read the rest on 12most.com!

While Adobe Photoshop is a powerful, creative platform, using plugins can help to extend its capabilities and use it to its full potential. Using an add-on can help you perform tedious or difficult tasks in a more efficient manner, enabling you to spend more time on design.

There are thousands of plugins to choose from, but many are outdated and no longer work with updated versions of Photoshop. We’ve collected the best free plugins you can download, install and start using right away.

Check out the rest on http://mashable.com!

This past holiday season we had the chance to celebrate the holidays in unique fashion. Four members of our staff traveled from Chicago to Seattle and once again, we were accompanied by our good friend Darbie McCollian from Restore Decor. Darbie and I arrived in Seattle one day ahead of the group, grabbed a truck and started shopping. The following day, while the rest of our Chicago guests arrived, Darbie and I started “Office Crash Seattle”.

Redecorating an office from across the country is a difficult proposition. It requires planning, cooperation and good luck. Since it was nearly impossible to keep it a secret, we let our Seattle crew in on the job and benefitted when Meghann Kern volunteered her husband Steve to help us with the crash. We worked from sun up to sun down with the goal of having a newly decorated office ready to kick off our holiday party that night. It was truly a team effort with furniture being built, curtains being hung, canvases being stretched and pillows being fluffed. In the end we met our goal, celebrated the season and took Steve to see Pearl Jam at the Key Arena for his efforts.

On January 14, 2014, smartdept. inc. will celebrate 12 years as a creative staffing resource, an achievement that most would be proud to boast of. But as I think back on what we’ve all accomplished as a group, I can’t help but remember the faces on our Seattle crew as they walked in to see their new digs. Having the ability to make people happy is what I am most proud of. Please have a look at the finished Seattle office Crash.

–Eric Pairitz

Principal at smartdept. inc.

The myth of the brainstorming session

Over dinner a couple months ago, one of my friends said he needed some help coming up with a name for a new website.

He told me a bit about the site and asked if I could help think of something over dinner. He also asked my other friends to join in so we could get a whole bunch of ideas on the table and choose the best one.

From my experience working at an agency, as a designer, and at ooomf, coming up with ideas from a single brainstorming session like this one is usually not the most effective way. Many people I’ve come across, including the most creative ones, need individual time to let ideas marinate before the best concept reveals itself (even if it’s something that seems as simple as naming a website).

I encouraged my friend to take some time to do the same — to play with his concept a bit more before bringing it to anyone for more input.

After this experience, I wondered why the group brainstorming session is often the default choice when we’re pressed to find that perfect idea?

Read the rest on https://ooomf.com/blog/!

Most of us know if we’re happy or unhappy at work, but if you’d like a more precise calculation of your job satisfaction, take this quiz called the Triangle of Happiness.

It’s called that because three factors tend to influence our job satisfaction the most: how much we make, what we do, and who we work with. Rate each of these factors on a scale of 1 to 4 and get a score. You can add additional advanced factors such as flexible working options, how much personal time you have, and your work location. In addition, you can change the weight of each factor to mark the ones that matter most to you.

So, for example, with all three factors weighed equally, if you have money rated at a low of one but people and work rated a high of four, your job satisfaction rating is still pretty good, at 66.67%. If money matters more to you though (and you change the weight in the calculator), you’ll only be floating along at 53.33%—fluctuating between kind of happy and not really happy.

Read the rest on lifehacker.com!

Over dinner a couple months ago, one of my friends said he needed some help coming up with a name for a new website. He told me a bit about the site and asked if I could help think of something over dinner. He also asked my other friends to join in so we could get a whole bunch of ideas on the table and choose the best one.

From my experience working at an agency, as a designer, and at [my company] ooomf, coming up with ideas from a single brainstorming session like this one is usually not the most effective way. Many people I’ve come across, including the most creative ones, need individual time to let ideas marinate before the best concept reveals itself (even if it’s something that seems as simple as naming a website).

I encouraged my friend to take some time to do the same — to play with his concept a bit more before bringing it to anyone for more input. After this experience, I wondered why the group brainstorming session is often the default choice when we’re pressed to find that perfect idea.

Read the rest on lifehacker.com!

Almost everyone wants to be known as innovative, to be an innovator. Companies and individuals seek to demonstrate that they are capable of “out of the box” thinking, as the saying goes.

I have recently worked on some projects around innovation for companies like Verizon and Qualcomm and it got me to thinking – what about innovation tools to help my fellow small business owners to brainstorm, to create new products, to get rid of the innovation cramp and get the ideas flowing?

Below are 60 plus innovation tools and sites that today’s innovators should check out.

Read the rest on smallbiztrends.com!

Popular business author Dan Pink picks his 5 favorite TED Talks on how to find greater success at work.

Check it out on ted.com!

I´ve been intending to write today´s blog article for a long time. One reason being that over the years I´ve seen many candidates who have been very good in job interviews and who got the job they applied for. At the same time, I´ve also met and interviewed multiple people who did not make it, i.e. who did not get the job at the end.

A second reason is that I´ve arrived at the conclusion, that those who did not get the job might not have necessarily been less capable of fulfilling the role than the ones who got it. Often, they were just not able to communicate or to deliver what was expected from them in the crucial moments of the interviews. Why?

Below I´ve listed 11 interview principles in order to be successful at your next job interview and to get the job. Some of them you know. Some of them you might have forgotten about. And others, you might not have considered yet.

Read the rest on LinkedIn!

Check out this interesting infographic highlighting the best and worst careers! Via lifehacker.com.