A Boston Technical Recruiters Blog

Do you think that your business idea is unique? Do you want to patent it? Do you think that if there was no patent law people would just stop coming up with ideas? That’s absurd.No idea is truly a new idea, since every thought in the human collective is a thought that is build in the prism of our civilization. Every idea has been thought of, every thought has been thought by someone else.

How can you prove that no one has ever come up with your idea? How can you be certain that the brilliant design you concocted is not sitting in someone else’s mind? You can’t. Your idea is build on the foundations laid by the ideas of millions that have come before.

I find it amusing every time I visit the Monster.com site that they actually patented their site. Wonderful! Did they really think that no one else had though of this before them? Intellectual property is a construct of our capitalist system created as a barrier to entry and a monopolistic barrier to fair trade and competition.

Sometimes I have this paranoid feeling that if I write something, someone else may steal my ideas. New business owners often have this fear. This is a ridiculous though that has no merit. If someone takes my ideas and builds something with them, I’ll be honored. Ideas are great, but like the IBM commercials suggest, ideas are worthless without proper action to execute them. If you can’t build around your idea, just keep “ideating”.

So go ahead, keep hoarding your patents, someone smarter will figure out a better way around you while you are sitting on your antiquated thoughts.

 Share

Wonderful! I love the troops and the army and they have my full support since they did not land themselves in Iraq. Having served a short time in the Army Reserves, I happen to know the people who are over there; they are loyal, passionate, dedicated, and they will lay down everything to defend the home country.

So when I hear people asking me for donations to support the troops, a quite rage begins to simmer in me.

Why does it upset me so much that the richest nation in the world with a $400 billion defense budget needs to appeal to the public to support the troops on the ground?

Why does it upset me that the best trained and equipped military in the world sent troops into combat without body armor or properly armored vehicles?

Why does it upset me when I see mothers asking for cell phones to be donated so that the boys and girls of the richest nation on earth can call home?

Because it’s an absurd farce.

The entire “Support the Troops!” slogan is nothing more than propaganda aimed at the middle class and working class to bolster support for the war. These people put the most on the line; their sons and daughters.

For what? Another jargon “Homeland Security”? How about just calling it the Ministry of Peace?

This is no longer a Democrat vs. Republican issue. Neither side can end this war without more loss. And the good idealistic American kids are stuck in the cross hairs of terrorists instead of putting their hearts and minds into the fabric of the American Dream.

 Share

A few days ago I heard that the agricultural community is having some very serious issues with bees. Bees are very useful partners in cross pollinating crops and lately they have been falling ill and dying in alarming numbers. This change is attributed to increasing stress levels and new pesticides that are destroying the organic environment of the bee hives. What are we going to do when there are not enough bees to cross pollinate all the crops?

 This problem with the bees struck me as an excellent analogy to what recruiters do everyday. Recruiters essentially cross pollinate the industry taking talent from one company and bringing it to another. The skills and knowledge from one company may help another grow and develop new products and services, while the old company does the same in an ever perpetuating cycle of cross pollination.

It’s not a surprise that cross pollination is a favorite managerial jargon. What happens when small groups of individuals communicate effectively transfers directly into what happens when a recruiter pulls a worker from one company to another: competitive advantage.

 This is why I am always fascinated and appalled by people who are rude to recruiters and who leave messages on their resumes:” Recruiters do not call”. These people are blindly shutting themselves out of the ecosystem of opportunities whether because of hubris, annoyance, or arrogance. The opportunities you can get on your own pale in comparison to those you can get with an effective network of recruiting bees that are building the hive of opportunities every day.  

 Share

E-commerce is a relatively new invention as far as commerce is concerned and therefore has not completely stabilized. There is a vast amount that people do not know about e-commerce; it’s possibilities and it’s risks.  There are also a large number of people that do not know about e-commerce at all.

The internet has grown by 215% in the last 7 years and even this growth through out the world encompasses only 17% of the total population.[Int] Considering the figures from [Int] the opportunity for e-commerce is astounding and at the same time the risks and destabilization factors are just as great.

Simply because we can cite a couple of companies that have survived the .com bust and prospered such as Yahoo, Google, and Amazon.com, we cannot say that e-commerce has stabilized. There is no way of knowing whether it has stabilized or not.

[Lev99] illustrates that it was the human interaction that drove the rise of civilization and eventually the internet and it is this very same force that will keep e-commerce from stabilizing completely. Some businesses will never be able to transfer all operation to e-commerce simply because of the human interaction factor that humans desire. You can send an email, but it will never be as effective as a phone conversation; while a video conference will never replace throwing back a few cold ones during a business deal. As long as every business is not able to completely operate on the internet without the bricks, e-commerce cannot be considered to be a stable operating medium for a business.

Nevertheless, e-commerce is essential for the success of modern businesses because of the pervasiveness of technology and the current drive toward automation. The internet enables e-commerce to span the globe and to give companies reach into corners of the world where access was impossible previously. To leave out e-commerce form a business model could be a devastating mistake.

E-commerce security also has a long way to go before it stabilizes. Firewalls and even biometrics can be defeated with clever exploits and social engineering opening the way for significant destabilization within e-commerce. There is nothing in ecommerce resembling the vault at Ft. Knox. Even NSA computers have been hacked and White House websites defaced. Until security on the internet is stabilized e-commerce can hardly be said to have stabilized.

[Int] internet World Stats

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

[Lev99]Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger, “the cluetrain manifesto”, 1999, http://www.cluetrain.com/

 Share

Last night I heard a discussion on WBZ about gun violence. The discussion was sparked by the recent college violence on the Northern Illinois University campus. There was a proponent to regulate gun violence as well as the host Dan Rae. While the conversation was more or less balanced, I am shocked at some of the callers.

The conversation focused around how the NRA goes to extreme lengths to defeat any and all regulation pertaining to guns in America. They claim that the right to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment and that citizens need to have guns to defend themselves against a rogue government. As the guest pointed out, good luck defending against nuclear weapons, M1 Abrams, and an unbelievable arsenal of automatic and assault rifles in the possession of the US government. This argument is illogical and frankly ridiculous.

The Second Amendment should not be interpreted absolutely. It states “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The key phrase here is “well regulated militia” i.e. the National Guard. Individuals who do not belong to a well regulated militia must not have the right to bear arms. Just like I can’t drive a tank down the street or take a F22 for a spin, a regular citizen should not have the right to carry or own weapons.

I turned off the discussion with a profound sense of outrage directed at the NRA and an even firmer believer that these people would have no problem supplying various organizations around the world regardless of their intent. Guns should not define the freedoms protected by the constitution. And college campuses should not turn into kill zones because we cannot define our gun laws.

 Share

How many connections do you have on Facebook? Oh like 400… How many do you have on MySpace? Another 500… How about LinkedIn? Huh? What’s that?

LinkedIn is the most important networking tool every college student must have. Why? Because on no other social network will you encounter the number of professionals and hiring managers who are open to having conversations and networking with you.

Myspace has long been seen as the popular network and while networking for job opportunities is possible, you don’t always want your employer to see your profile. In fact, you most defiantly do not what that to happen. How about Facebook? Same story. It’s too personal, too college oriented. Networking and keeping in touch with college friends is nice, but where will that get you after graduation?

LinkedIn is a professional career fair with experts willing and ready to answer any question you may have, recruiters trying to access your college networks, and managers looking out for fresh talent.

You will not find a better pale to search for internships during school. Every single Fortune 500 company is represented on LinkedIn. So why do so few college student know about LinkedIn? Perhaps, because LinkedIn originated as a tightly knit professional network with little concern for the younger people.

Check your Facebook profile, but build your LinkedIn page, you will not regret it!

 Share

Following the recent Blackberry blackout, I was amazed at the potential security implications that this blackout illustrated. Even a 3 hour glitch in email communications produced some outraged responses from users around the world. A web service that has an uptime of some 99.9999% get hammered for a tiny outage as addicted users frantically pace back and forth screaming obscenities at RIM’s apparent incompetence.

Recruiters tend to use blackberries more than is probably good for them. I have found in over two years that I don’t need one as my phone is enough. If someone has something urgent to say they can call me or wait till morning. It really is unreasonable to wake up in the middle of the night to email someone or to do it form the ski slopes. Having an actual conversation is more effective recruiting technique then email, especially in urgent situations. There is less room for misunderstandings and more can be said verbally then in writing.

I don’t have a blackberry, and I’m not planning on getting one anytime soon. However, I think it is disturbing that this one company can create such chaos with a tiny outage. If something more significant than a botched software update were to happen to the server rooms at RIM, it is conceivable that the national security of the US could be compromised. This is intolerable.

We have become so used to technology that many people would simply shut down if their “Crackberry” went out of services. It’s pretty ludicrous how much people depend on this sophisticated yet nascent technology. Users should hold the horrific thought of losing their tool at any time and should always have a backup ready. Having a backup will ensure that if something happens to RIM, nothing happens to our business.

 Share

About two days ago, I stumbled on something that made me cringe at the thought of having missed a technological opportunity. Virtual world recruiting is something fairly new to the industry, yet many major companies such as IBM, GE, and Accenture are utilizing a new environment called Second Life for recruiting and marketing.

Second Life is a virtual world that is fully customizable and allows complete control of the environment down to creating gravity defying floating houses to weapons of mass destruction.  By writing scripts or using thousands of written scripts, you can modify your character and environment in a thousand different ways. From combat to running your own advertising agencies to recruiting real world candidates, Second Life is a dreamscape with some serious potential. Second Life even has a currency which can be exchanged into real life money at a 1RLD to 278SLD ratio. In other words, everything you may need to live it up.

From the perspective of business communications, Second Life is being used as a training ground, conference room, or company propaganda platform. Cannon, Routers, L word are all advertising inside the game. The opportunity to market to over a million individuals with limited competition is nearly irresistible. I considered marketing my own blog before thinking better of it and exploring the world further.

But how viable is second life in terms of creating a viable recruiting business model? I considered leasing 100 square meter office and advertising my open real world opportunities in game. At the same time I ran across an article which clearly demonstrated that many people in SL would not take kindly to RL intrusions into their fantasy world. Would it make sense to offer recruiting services within Second Life to Second Lifers? How about advertise real life jobs to Second Lifers. It is clear that the latter is already being done and is something that I will probably engage in as well.  One of the secrets within the game is that everything is based on your position in search results. If you can figure out a way come up to the top of search results in ingame searches, your traffic can potentially explode. May SL gamers will find good real life opportunities marked ingame hard to resist.

Second life is an interesting new medium that is largely underutilized by small recruiters. But as technology advances and virtual reality becomes more commonplace, have a virtual store in a virtual environment will not seem so far fetches. I’ve always wanted my own island, even if it is inside a server.

 Share