How often does anyone go through a life-changing experience? I suppose it depends on who you ask and what their particular circumstances are. I’m about to go through one, one that’s a forced change due to changing work circumstances. It’s a situation that’s familiar to more people these days – I will soon be on […]
Category: Career
LinkedIn looks promising
About a month ago, I joined LinkedIn, the latest service to hit the web to offer a way of networking together people who know each other. Unlike those networks which offer a social-only structure – almost a kind of online speed dating system – LinkedIn is geared to business networking. Recently, I seem to be […]
Online job boards and spam
One thing I’m pretty convinced about as I embark on my quest for a new career opportunity is that online job boards like Monster or TotalJobs are unlikely to be the route through which I find the next opportunity. My view is validated by an article I saw recently on the Wall Street Journal’s career […]
JOTW gives a helping hand
Great to see a big public accolade in the Wall Street Journal to Ned Lundquist, a fellow professional business communicator and publisher of the Job of The Week (JOTW) email newsletter for communicators looking for new career opportunities. JOTW is much more than just a job-search newsletter with job listings, though. There’s a real community […]
Blogs make firing a public issue
A story that’s been posted on a couple of blogs today concerns an engineer at Friendster who comments on her blog that she was fired yesterday because she blogs. In her post, Troutgirl (Joyce Parks) says “I worked really hard for that company, and I don’t think I have anything to be ashamed of.” Reading […]
No Friendster comment as fired employee speaks out
When the story of Joyce Parks (aka Troutgirl) and her being fired by Friendster for blogging blew up late last month, it became a popular posting topic by many business bloggers (including me: see post) as well as mainstream media. Last week, Joyce told her tale to Red Herring, going into some detail on her […]
Blogs catching on for recruiters and job seekers
According to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday, some career experts now predict that blogs could become the next wave in electronic recruiting, following job boards and corporate career sites. In short, blogs could become a new way for recruiters to identify candidates and for job seekers to gain a clearer picture of a company’s […]
Blogs as part of job search strategies
A number of media articles and blog posts in recent weeks have been discussing the role blogs can play in the job search process, both from the recruiter’s and seeker’s points of view. Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article on how blogs are catching on for recruiters and job seekers (see my […]
Spill your secrets at Workdirt
Loosely continuing today’s theme of blogs and careers, here’s a blog that has a lighter (no, darker) side about the workplace: Workdirt. Self description: We’re here to make it all better because our jobs suck either sometimes or always, or when you-know-who is around. We like to break the rules and share dirty little secrets […]
Imaginative HR at Genencor
Great story in Fast Company on a biotech company in the US which nurtures its people with imaginative benefits, keeping them happy, loyal and productive. Genencor International‘s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, are the physical manifestation of what happens when you effectively transform employees into designers of their own work environment. The 1,260-employee, $380 million […]
Seeking the next challenge
Well, it’s official. I’m openly on the job search market. I’ve now completed my exit from my employer, Scala Business Solutions, a Tier 2 enterprise software vendor headquartered in Amsterdam. For the past five years, I’ve been VP Corporate Communication here. Five challenging and great years. Scala was acquired in June by Epicor Software Corporation […]
Community editing your CV with a wiki
As everyone knows, having an effective CV (résumé, in American) is a prerequisite when you embark on a new career search. Yet it’s not always easy to produce a good CV, in spite of great inputs from friends, colleagues and others who willingly give of their time and experiences to help. Today I found out […]
Using a public blog as part of the hiring process
Via A Penny For… comes an extremely interesting story of how Bzzagent, a word-of-mouth marketing network in North America, proactively used their public blog to discuss their needs for hiring a particular new senior employee, and then posted commentary about the two short-listed candidates asking for comment and opinion on which one to hire. A […]
True value in IABC accreditation
I had an email last week from my professional association, IABC (International Association of Business Communicators), with an update on what’s happening with the association’s accreditation programme. A great deal, actually, which has given me cause to reflect on what a superb professional development opportunity accreditation is. The formal description of the programme says accreditation […]
A conversation with Ned Lundquist on IABC accreditation
For business communicators, IABC accreditation is an effective way to benchmark yourself against a set of proven standards. I wrote a commentary in this blog a few weeks ago on my own beliefs in the value of this excellent professional development programme. My blog post is just one particular message, though. What do you really […]
More Ned’s tips on IABC accreditation
We had a few emails following this blog’s conversation with Ned Lundquist about IABC accreditation earlier this month. Most of them were wondering what warm beer and a vintage MGB had to do with it. So Ned and I got together again in cyberspace to demonstrate how effective we are at clear communication. Ned, I […]
Thinking time for PeopleSoft employees over Christmas
It’s time for PeopleSoft customers and employees to start thinking about the future and about protecting their own interests, because nobody else is going to be watching out for them, says an eWeek report. Benevolent or paternalistic aren’t words that have ever been seriously associated with Oracle or with its founder and CEO, Larry Ellison. […]
PeopleSoft job seekers try eBay
After a team of in-house creatives was displaced following Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft, the group turned to eBay to try and find work, a report by Fast Company says. Not as individual job seekers, however, but as a complete team. According to a post on AdFreak, AdWeek’s blog, the team wanted to continue working together, […]
The Hobson & Holtz Report – Jeremy Wright Interview – January 27, 2005
Welcome to a the second Special Edition of the Hobson & Holtz Report, a 30-minute conversation with Jeremy Wright recorded live at the New Communications Forum 2005 in Napa, California, USA, on January 27, 2005. A high-profile business blogger, Jeremy authors the Ensight blog and is now focused on building his new venture, Inside Blogging. […]
Google blogger firing highlights again why guidelines are essential
News yesterday that Mark Jen, a Google employee, had been fired for blogging serves to add yet more focus to a matter that has become increasingly important to companies and employees alike – establishing clear guidelines on blogging in the workplace. This subject is beginning to sound like an auto-repeat CD (yes, I have moved […]