Neil Hernandez's Blog

3 B's

When making a speech or training, remember the 3 B's: Be Brief; Be to the Point; Be Gone!

How To Make Money on SEO - the White Pages Approach

Set Godin recommends to make money on the internet via the White Pages Approach. According to Godin:

"The other way to use SEO is a bit more organic. (Let's call it the White Pages approach). It involves owning a keyword that you already own. Do a search on ShoeMoney in Google and you'll find 340,000 matches. Wanna guess who's first? ShoeMoney. Why is this surprising? After all, he invented the word and he owns the domain."

Read his blog post on this topic here.

Good People are Harder to in tough economic times

http://blog.summation.net/2009/03/why-hiring-is-paradoxically-harder-in-a-downturn.html

Liberal and Consevative Views on Inequality

Here is a great quote from Michael Medved on the difference in views from conservatives and liberals on inequality.

One of the most important distinctions between liberals and conservatives involves their contrasting explanations of the existence of inequality.

Those on the left see the disparities between rich and poor individuals, or between prosperous and impoverished societies, as automatic evidence of unfairness. They instinctively assume that some people do better than others only because they began their lives with unjust advantages, or exploited the less powerful, or benefited from random good fortune. On the other hand, the less favored members of society suffered from racism or sexism or colonialism, and progressives believe that any reference to their own dysfunctional or self-destructive behavior amounts to “blaming the victim.” Liberals want to use governmental initiatives to close all gaps and level all playing fields (to cite two of their favorite clichés), in order to make up for the unwarranted and irrational processes that created the glaring and wretched inequity in the first place.

Conservatives and libertarians, on the other hand, view success or failure as the inevitable consequence of different levels of talent, hard work and productivity. While acknowledging that a few lucky slackers may be born into fortunate circumstances that they never earned, or that some virtuous and gifted individuals can suffer reverses or tragedies that they don’t deserve, right wingers believe that worldly advancement (particularly in the USA) comes for the most part from focus, toil and smart choices. They therefore resent government redistribution programs for taking hard-earned wealth from the people who deserve it most and giving it to those who merit it least.

There is no doubt which attitude characterizes the worldview of President Barack Obama. As Charles Krauthammer recently wrote: “Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission. Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism.”

The article then explains that is why the Obama administration has given a commitment to Billions of new spending to teh International Monetary Fund. Why give to those countries who cannot help themselves?

Can you please tell it how it is!- The new war on words

The War on Terror is called an Overseas Contingency Operation.

Combatants are now called clients.

Can we get any more vauge and non meaning. Why don't we just say it as it is and stop using vauge, impressive sounding and devoid of meaning words.

For more on this check out:

http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmEzZWY3MWRhYWYyNTFjYWRjNTM1M2M0OTA5NDdjZmY=

Feast or Famine

They say it's a bad time to be a recruiter. Salaries for recruiters seem to be at an all time low. Two years ago a good contract recruiter can ask for hourly rates of $50/hour and a salaried recruiter can ask for $65,000/year. Nowadays, with the recession it seems that the going rate for a contract recruiter is about $25/hour and a salary recruiter is about $40,000/year. That is about a 40-50% drop in recruiters salaries in about 2 years.

What is going on? Market forces. You see, it's about supply and demand. The supply of candidates out there looking for a job is high so why does a company need an outside recruiting firm to look for candidates when they have so many candidates to choose from on their own. Also, the supply of available recruiters are high, so why should a company pay a lot for a good recruiter when they can get one for a whole lot less.

To me this dynamic of supply and demand is good. I've been through 3 of these cycles. It's either feast or famine for recruiters. Either there is such a demand for candidates, that it brings the price for recruiters up, or there is an over abundnace of candidates and it brings the price for recruiters down.

I actually like this dynamic and feel it is this is a great product of a market driven economy.

Now let me ask you another question, what are the only organizations supposedly "immune" to these market driven dynamics. That's right teh government. The government thinks they have unlimited amount of money to hire whoever they want. When times are bad- like it is now, when was the last time you heard of government employees getting laid off, or actually lowering their starting salaries. Never, their starting salaries are actually stay the same or even raise every year. Even in a recession.

I say "immune" because, are they really immune? Yes the government can increase taxes or print more more money to make up the deficit. Those are short term solutions that only fester anger amongst the taxpayers. I say they are not really immune, because those shot term solutions of raising taxes and printing money cannot be sustained forever.

Can a midget make the NBA better?

Can a midget make the NBA better? A midget would make the NBA different but not necessarily better. Then why do people say that differences make an organization better? What is really important is not creating a more diverse organization, rather it is to create a better organization. the focus should be on better not on different.

Be a Yes Man

The key is sales is finding out who the decision make is. Seth Godin touches on this in his blog post licensed to sell.

When trying to close the sale, there is no use asking for a sale to somebody who cannot even make a decision to say yes. Most of the people you talk to however have the decision to pass you on to the decision make or they have the power to say no. But ultimately you have to try to get to the decision maker.

In life you have a choice, to put yourself as the decision maker or to put yourself in a position to pass the decision or ask for decision. Which one do you want to be?

The End of Recruiting Agencies

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/where-have-all-the-agents-gone.html

Recruiting as we know it has been permanently altered. The era of using agencies is rapidly diminishing. The thinking is, why use a recruiting agency when you can do it in house cheaper, faster, and better.

What's better, intention or results?

I know somebody who has been out of a job for over a year and a half. He spends all of his time talking about how the economy is so bad and that is the reason why he has not been able to find a job. He blames Bush, he blames the economy, he blames, his industry, he blames everyone but himself. He could have spent the last several years of his life building a marketable skill set. But in his eyes he is a success. He tells everyone that he is persevering, that is looking for a job, despite not getting any results (getting a job). He keeps telling everyone that he will eventually find a job so he can develop seed capital to build his own business. Yet, when you look at the way he spends his time - he wastes a lot of it and does not really spend more than a couple hours a week (at the most) looking for a job.

So here is a man with great intentions of finding a job and building a business, but when you look at measurable results, he has none. So the question, I have to ask you, is this man successful, just because he has great intentions? I think not. I judge people on their results. Intentions are important, but your intentions have to produce results for it to mean anything.