alstin communications

As VP of Client Development for Alstin, I (happily) find myself on the road a lot, talking to clients, prospects, people in the media, etc.–and I attend numerous industry functions each month. On Alstin’s blog, I’ll let you know where I am and what I’m hearing in the wonderful world of recruiting.

For much of the Mid-Atlantic, this has been a historic winter. We’ve already crushed the snowfall record for one year and we still have a bit more of February and all of March to go. While I am definitely a warm weather person, (I promise I will never again complain about the heat) I actually do like snow days: the kids off from school, sledding, a roaring fire all day, meals in the crockpot, etc. But enough already with this winter! That one two punch in early February (in my area we got 27″ one day and 17″ just a few days later) really knocked the wind out of my sails. My snow shovel is still leaning against my front door and I give it a dirty look each time I pass by.

Of course, this has led to many wisely postponed meetings (I think I’m up to 6 that have been delayed or canceled) so this edition will be a bit shorter!

Mt. Holly, NJ: At the February meeting of Tri-State HRMA, the speaker was none other than Gerry Crispin, one of the most respected names in the recruitment industry. Gerry’s topic? “Engage Them or Enrage Them: You Have A Choice: Designing Corporate Staffing Pages to Enhance Your Candidates’ Experience…or Not.” So great to see that our agency’s philosophy matched so well with Gerry’s. As recruiters, we spend so much time, money and energy driving people to the career portion of our website, but what happens once they get there? Can they find the information they need? Are they engaged? Are you selling yourself positively as an employer? How is the application process? At Alstin, we have designed several services around optimizing and measuring the candidate experience on your career site, including one of our most popular and affordable products, webglass.

Elk Ridge, MD: A potential heavy snowfall held off so the monthly MAHCR (Maryland Area Healthcare Recruiters) could go on. As I’ve said before, this is a really great group and this meeting featured a wonderful presentation by past president Nick Piazza on certain portions of the recruiter’s handbook. I certainly learned a lot, and I think even seasoned recruiters received a lot of great info from Nick’s presentation.

Philadelphia, PA: Back after a winter break with PAAHCR, the Philadelphia Area Association of Healthcare Recruiters. We met in the beautiful JeffStat training room at Jefferson University Hospital. Our speaker was Joe Stubblebine, founder of JobCircle and longtime friend of Alstin. Joe spoke on Social Networking for healthcare recruiting, and his presentation was full of good information and tips for using social media to recruit healthcare workers. Of special interest was the surveys that JobCircle had done on how (and if) recruiters are using social media to recruit.

Until next time, see you on the road!

Illustrating the state of U.S. unemployment in pictures today.

First up, labor writer and American University grad student, LaToya Egwuekwe, created this animated graphic which shows the progression of unemployment levels across the U.S. from January 2007 – about one year prior to the start of “The Great Recession” – to January 2010.

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words right? Well, I can sum this one up with one. Ugly.

Egwuekwe plans to update the graphic each month. Hopefully we will start to see a more sun shiny yellow breaking up the purple cloud of unemployment blanketing the country in the months to come.

That’s what the Obama administration is hoping for too. Here’s their visual take on the state of things:

Regarding the graphic, the Obama administration also noted the following:

“One year in, the evidence is clear – and growing by the day – that the Recovery Act is working to cushion the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and lay a new foundation for economic growth.

• According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Recovery Act is already responsible for as many as 2.4 million jobs through the end of 2009
• As a result, job losses are a fraction of what they were a year ago, before the Recovery Act began” 

Talk to anyone in HR and fellow Americans that are unemployed (and OK, most Republicans) and you might not get such a rosy picture quite yet.

An increase in temporary workers, the first glimmer that companies are thinking of hiring, is another stat that I’ve been hoping to see for some time now. Last month’s stats delivered. The labor market showed an increase of more than 50,000 temporary workers in January 2010.

There are signs of growth in other sectors and markets too. And a hefty Job Stimulus bill may help small businesses make much needed hires. Let’s hope that the next pictures we paint (in 2010, or maybe not till 2011 and – gulp – into 2012) can be be summed up with some other words: It’s finally happening, we’ve turned the corner.

After completing the metrics reports for two Social Media Recruitment Strategies that were launched in January and ‘completed’ just last week (well, actually ‘paused’ by the client), I started to think about how I wanted to present and promote my data and samples. These (very successful, might I add) two campaigns had lots of great metrics, graphs and creative that were developed. After compiling the PDF reports and laying out all the visual examples for each of these campaigns, I really wanted to display the information I was reporting within an interesting and visually stimulating format. The campaigns themselves were very fluid and utilized the ever-changing vehicle of social media and I felt my PDF format was falling flat. So, I thought of Prezi.

Techcrunch described Prezi as “just plain awesome. It’s entirely Flash-based app that lets you break away from the slide-by-slide approach of most presentations. Instead, it allows you to create non-linear presentations where you can zoom in and out of a visual map containing words, links, images, videos, etc.” (If you want to read the rest of the review, click here.)

So, I’ll be building my two Prezi’s today, you’ll see the results in my next week’s blog post – I’m using their canvas, zoom, zebra, frames, rotation and storyline tools. Prezi’s can be viewed in a web browser, freestanding or embedded within a blog for presentation/sharing purposes. Stay tuned for my next Tuesday blog with my two Prezi’s!! I can’t wait! I love learning new tools! Seriously. I do.

If you’ve had experience or have developed Prezi’s for your own needs, feel free to share them! Comment and post your links.

And, here’s a link to some cool Prezi’s that others have created. http://prezi.com/showcase/

Now more than ever, companies are implementing “new and improved” approaches to gather quantitative metrics of their recruitment processes. Often times, numbers are the best way for HR to convey to senior management what’s working and what’s not. With the right tools in place, proper metrics can be determined, giving your organization a clear picture of the validity of your recruiting strategy and the ability to make the recruitment process more efficient.

When it comes to the use of metrics in tracking recruiting effectiveness, I’ve found that there’s a key to success – use your tools and use them consistently! Many companies are putting forth efforts and resources to capture data, but if these tools are being utilized only part of the time, accurate measurements are not possible, and will undermine the results. Incredibly valuable information to encourage improvements, metrics are worthless unless the results have the real potential to incite positive changes in recruiting and sourcing habits.

If you decide to implement a means to measure the response of your print ads, web ads, email blasts, landing pages, SEO tools, etc., it is imperative that this tool be utilized in every application.

In reality, I know that as recruiters this approach may not always seem ideal. I have seen recruiters change the contact mechanism for response in a recruiting ad or posting for a select position based on the urgency to fill the opening, the type of candidates they are targeting, or the ease of response retrieval. But the truth of it is, what used to work years ago, doesn’t cut it anymore especially when your overall investment and goal is to gather good metrics!

The purpose of the development of the many approaches to building metrics, is to answer the demands of organizations for proof of the overall success of HR’s recruiting efforts and what can be done better – more quickly, more efficiently, more cost effectively. However, if tracking methods are only used once in a while, when the head honchos ask for recommendations during budget evaluation time – how will you be able to truly identify what you can capitalize on, and what you need to do different?

In the current state of our economy, there is no doubt in my mind that organizations cannot afford spending to track costs for skewed evidence and base their budgets on ambivalent reporting. Take my word for it, if you heed this advice to properly make use of these valuable tracking tools, the metrics will help you determine:

• What was the success of your recruitment sources?
• Which sources provided the most candidates?
• Where did the more qualified candidates come from?
• Which sources provided the least qualified candidates?

I think we can all agree that conducting an evaluation of your recruiting costs with solid metrics can provide you with the information needed to support change and improvements for sourcing and hiring processes and for reducing costs. The bottom line: Don’t sabotage your efforts. Maintain consistent use of your measurement tools and you will have the most accurate metrics at your disposal.

Having trouble figuring out the best solution for gathering metrics for your organization? Need an assessment of your applicant tracking systems’s capabilities? Send me an email – blog@alstin.com - I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further with you!

One of the biggest and most exciting topics surrounding the new Apple iPad is the effect it may have on newspapers. Apple is obviously aware of this–in fact, as I write this blog the apple.com homepage shows an iPad with the New York Times featured prominently on its screen.

Is this the breakthrough newspapers have been waiting for? Are we about to usher in a new phase of digital journalism? Remarkably, the answer to both questions might be yes!

I’ve always thought that the survival of newspapers would come not from new technology, but from an industry-wide movement toward charging for content. My premise is that newspapers offer undeniable value, value that (before 10 years ago) we never thought twice about paying for.

Well, it looks like technology in the form of the iPad might usher in that switch to charging for online content. Because of its design, the iPad may revive the type of reading we know from print–multiple articles on one “page,” a better ability to “skim” the newspaper, different size fonts, layouts, etc. Of course, we’ll have to see wait and see what The New York Times and other newspapers’ apps look like and how they function, but the buzz is definitely there.

Of course, that potential change from charging for content, not charging and then asking readers to go back and pay again won’t be easy. The newspapers will have to weigh the possibility of losing readers and advertisers vs. the potential increased revenue. The stakes for this one are high, and I’ll certainly be watching to see what the introduction of the iPad means to the newspaper industry.

I came away from Jen Hitchen’s great overview of Google Buzz this week with a couple of key findings. Number one (and I really mean #1), I will be making a beeline for Philly Cupcake. Number two, with all of the privacy concerns buzzing about Google’s latest social media offering I’m likely to set up a unique Gmail account for my Buzz test runs before I dive in whole hog.

Privacy concerns aside, as Jen noted, another big question is – will we flock to yet another social media tool? With new technology coming at us in rapid fire, the way I look at is if it’s genuinely useful (and easy to use!) people will.

This month I thought it was about time that I added to the flock of 5 million plus users who find Delicious, a social bookmarking web service that’s powered by Yahoo!, very useful.

My bookmarks were starting to get a little out of control. Twitter will do that to you. Every time I stumbled upon (that might be another post!) a great link, I’d click “Bookmark this Page” in my Firefox browser and well, those bookmarks have really added up.

Do I eventually go back to each and every bookmark I make? Find my bookmarks again with ease? Delete old bookmarks that have no relevance? Do I even remember half the stuff I bookmark? Ummm, that’s a negative.

So Delicious, a free service that’s been around since 2005, seemed right up my alley. Here are a few of the main reasons:

Access – Between work and home, I’m likely to use a PC, two laptops and my iPhone to go online during any given day. I’ll now have access to my favorite links no matter how I log on. Plus if I want to limit the access to some of my bookmarks to the general public, all I have to do is check off the “Do Not Share” option and that keeps them private.

It Really is Easy – It’s easy to register and get up and running. You can also quickly import your current bookmarks with a couple of clicks. Me? I’m starting with a clean slate for the time being. I followed the instructions and added a Delicious Toolbar to my browser. Now all I have to do is click the Tag button when I come across something I like and viola, I’ve added it to my account.

Organization – As my list of bookmarks grew to an unwieldy level, the ability to tag my bookmarks with key words of my own making and combinations is a great feature. Plus, I can add notes about why I bookmarked the link in the first place. Also a great feature for when memory, alas, fails.

To Do List – My wheels are always turning. I’m forever inspired by what I experience, see and do each day. When I come across something that I think is good for me, someone I know, my clients, for Alstin while browsing the web I can create tagged bookmarks that I can (and will!) go back to that won’t get lost in the mix.

Sharing – Delicious provides me with an ideal way to share information with anyone, particularly clients. Rather than sending (cut, paste, cut, paste …) a long list of posts/articles that someone I know should check out for any given reason, I can now send one link that has all of my tagged bookmarks on the subject grouped together. (Recruiters, if you regularly send links to prospective candidates about your organization, good press, etc. this is a great one-stop/one click tool!)

Subscribe, Discover & Network – Another great way to take advantage of RSS feeds, you can subscribe to specific tags and users that interest you. Want to discover the hottest topics on the site and/or the most popular links for specific tags? Yep, you can do that too. Plus, and this is where the social part of the service comes into play, when you add a bookmark you can see other Delicious members who decided to bookmark the same link. So in addition to connecting with those you happen to know that are also using Delicious, this nice feature can also help you connect and share with people interested in the same subjects by adding them to your network.

As it stands now, after an hour tops on the site, I only have a handful of untagged bookmarks in my Delicious account, but realizing its potential I already know is not going to take me very long. Anything that helps me stay better organized, speed up research and connect with great people all while being incredibly intuitive to use (Who likes having to use an instruction manual to master something that’s supposed to make your life easier, right?!) is worth flocking to.

I last blogged about the US Department of Labor’s “Tools for America’s Job Seekers Challenge”.  In an effort to learn more about — and then publicize — the best FREE online tools for a variety of job-search related research, the government called on the public to check out more than 600 sites and then vote on them. Vote they* did! Nearly 16,000 registered to rank the submitted sites over a two week period in January. Said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis, “My thanks go out to the businesses and organizations that submitted their tools for evaluation, and to the members of the public who offered their input. We called on the public to let us know what they want out of online job tools, and they have responded in great numbers. In the process, we also created a great resource for job seekers.” The votes have been tallied and the top-ranking tools are now posted.

Highlights:

* Do you guru? Since most of Alstin’s clients are Human Resources professionals, we’re curious to see if you like http://http://www.careeronestop.org/jobseekertools/as much as the respondents did.

* Eyeing up your boss’ office? Human Capital Institute  offers those interested in the Talent Management arena a “think tank” of free webcasts and alternative educational programs and certifications to upgrade HR skill sets in the Talent Acquisition, Management and Leadership competencies.

* An out-of-office escort is a lousy way to end a relationship. Monster Evolutions offers outplacement services for Employers and Employees with one goal: getting former workers rehired into prosperous new positions or new careers.

* What the military lacks in website naming creativity, it makes up for in preparedness. Current members of the armed forces and veterans can check out www.military.com to get connected to all the benefits of services, great stories of military life or missions, and career and educational opportunities.

* Giddyup! Job seekers nationwide may want to look beyond the usual sites to www.careerstallion.com

* And, last but not least, for the ex-offender nearest and dearest to your heart, there are three (!) sites recommended by the DOL. One, The Next Step/WOTC Solutions is a program that provides services to both offenders and businesses by preparing offenders for the workplace while assisting businesses with a $2,400 tax credit to help hire ex-offenders.

Those are just a few parts of the Challenge that caught my eye (along with the slightly incongruous photo of three co-workers huddled together at work while surfing for new jobs). Dig in and reap the rewards of a government project that was much more worthwhile than the one that studied cow emissions. From resume writing sites to those that help students looking for grant money and retirees who want back in the game, there’s something for just about everyone at www.careeronestop.org (click on Job Seeker Tools at the top of the page).

* Gary Zukowski, founder of TweetMyJOBS noted one alarming problem with the Challenge: “First, there’s no validation of the votes. A person or company can cast unlimited votes with ficticious names and email addresses and dramatically skew the results,” says Zukowski. “For example, we were able to vote using a non-working email with the name ‘Barack Obama.’ Five days later the name ‘Barack Obama’ was still listed under ‘user activity’—a fact that should raise red flags. In addition to no validation on the votes, there is nothing preventing people in other countries from participating. The outcome could be determined by people who are not even citizens of the United States.”

Ah well, you can’t blame a government agency for trying!

Being a social media enthusiast, I’ve been curious about all of the ‘buzz’ surrounding Google’s Buzz launch on February 9th. I finally witnessed the ‘Buzz’ yesterday (it was rolled out in waves­­—pun intended) when logging in my iGoogle (here in Philly we’ve been battling ‘Snowmageddon 2010’ since last Wednesday so, I’ve been a little busy shoveling out). Apparently, I missed a lot over the weekend!

Turns out there was a lot of ‘buzz’ over the weekend with the ‘auto-follow’ feature which is now disabled (when originally launched, Buzz automatically would have ‘followed’ my most frequently emailed or chatted contacts in Gmail – something I definitely wouldn’t want made public!!)

As I was looking at it yesterday, I was thinking, “What’s the big deal?” Yeah, sure, I use Google Reader daily (hourly, more like it) to stay on top of all the news that interests me (or stuff I find funny – btw I’ve been following *%$# My Dad Says waaaaayyy before he got that sitcom deal – he’s still funny as *%$#). And, sure I’ve use Google Docs to share work projects, I literally can’t live without Google Maps and I’ve had my Gmail account for a while now…but, what’s all the Buzz?

The interface seems pretty basic and right now I have two followers (one I don’t even know??) and I searched and am following four people (a.ka. random friends). Buzz didn’t recommend anyone to follow like Google stated it would, but I don’t really keep my Gmail contacts up-to-date. So far…little activity…little “buzz” on my end, but it’s only been about twelve hours since I started poking around, so I’m not bashing the Buzz. Just trying to figure out (like many of you) another tool in my social media arsenal. What I’ve researched and learned is boiled down to:

• Buzz links all the people who use Gmail (which is at 176 millions users according to comScore‑so there’s a built-in audience already)
• Google stated there has been over 9 million posts and comments in its first 56 hours of launching
• There have been over 200 mobile check-ins per minute (that’s nearly 300,000 mobile check-ins per day).

Speaking of mobile…so Buzz is available on the iPhone and Droid 2.0 (rolling out to other Mdevices shortly) – and what can you do with that?

• You can look up who is buzzing ‘nearby’ and share info about where you are/what you’re doing (ie. “I’m at Philly Cupcake!!!” My friend’s ‘buzz’ to me: “Oh grab me a strawberry shortcake one!!” (Ed Note: If you’re in Philly and haven’t had the deliciousness of Philly Cupcake, you’re seriously missing out on one of life’s great pleasures…but, I digress.)
• You can post Buzz tagged items with your location so that people know where you frequent and why.
• Keep up with who you’re following (and who is following you) through the mobile Buzz interface.
• Comment or ‘like’ other people’s Buzz.
• There’s a Buzz layer on Google Maps so you can view what’s going on in a glance.
• Read Buzz about places you’re interested in.
• Click the Buzz icon on the top of the Google navigation bar to open up the posting box.
• Say ‘post buzz’ to your iPhone (still not sure what this accomplishes).

Areas I see that are of concern to me (and lots of others):

• Privacy (big concept within all the social media sharing technology) – of course Google is already responding to many concerns and is making ‘private’ and ‘public’ features already. Time will tell (and I’m talking social media time = minutes vs. days) with this area. See BusinessWeek article.
• Getting people to use another social media tool. (Although I tend to agree that since it’s interwoven with Gmail, people are going to test it out, especially us technerds…early adopters.)

Areas I see as huge potential for advertising initiatives:

• Gmail advertising is already so prevalent it only makes sense that “buzz” advertising would take off.
• Since it’s an open platform, I’m expecting a tidal wave of new apps being developed.
• I really like Ben Parr’s idea of an ad revenue share for Buzz apps and its own app store to monetize this platform would be a win-win.

Only two things I’m wondering right now…is it “buzz” or “Buzz?” And is Todd Jackson getting any sleep? Poor guy. I don’t think this past weekends’ buzz was what he’d anticipated. Stay positive, Todd! Everything new always needs tweaking!

I went to see the movie “The Hangover” before all of the hubbub. Before it became the highest grossing comedy of all time. Before people said it was the funniest movie ever. My expectations weren’t high, in fact, they weren’t even established. I hadn’t heard much about it. During the movie I remember laughing out loud in the theater – something I rarely do. I left thinking that it was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen. A very pleasant surprise. My friend, on the other hand, didn’t get to see the movie early on. She saw it several months into its run – after all of the buzz, kudos, and word-of-mouth. She liked it well enough. She just didn’t get what all of the fuss was about. The difference? Expectations.

We’ve all had similar experiences. While personal tastes largely determine our likes and dislikes, expectations can also play a tremendous role in our reactions and responses. The implications for branding, and especially for employment branding, are far-reaching. The disappointment of a brand underperforming is likely to result in a more negative response than a brand fulfilling even low expectations. The trick with branding is promising something that you can actually deliver.

As Walter Landor, the oft-quoted father of branding, said “Simply put, a brand is a promise . . . ” If your brand doesn’t match what you deliver, you’re breaking that implied promise.

When we work with a client to help shape their employment brand, we’re looking to discover their UVP – or Unique Value Proposition. What makes them special? What can they offer that no one else can? If we are successful, the employment brand we develop will accurately reflect the environment, culture, and opportunities that they offer. This doesn’t just result in more appealing and effective ads – although that’s a nice byproduct. More importantly, it results in better suited hires. The candidates that they attract are the individuals who are actually looking for what they have to offer. It’s a win win. An employment brand isn’t about inflating who you are as an employer, it’s about accurately reflecting it. And that’s a promise you can keep.

There’s another 20+” of snow falling on Philadelphia today. As we all went for a second cup of coffee this morning in Philly, it was good to see on the local news that Mayor Nutter  confirmed that none of it will wind up in our rivers this time around – remember that debacle?

Happily, we all live and learn!

When Washington D.C. had to essentially shut down from the last big East Coast storm, the stats were staggering- $100 million in lost productivity and opportunity costs per day.

With Philly also experiencing the economic impact of record-breaking snow this season, we’ve learned first-hand here at Alstin that having remote access to work is a great advantage for remaining productive – at least as productive as you can be between the shoveling, sledding, snowman making and cocoa drinking.

Cicso found that providing the ability to telecommute for their employees increased productivity, work-life flexibility and overall job satisfaction. Telecommuting also generated about $277 million in annual savings for the company – a nice contrast to that $100 million D.C. lost in one day due to all that snow.

If you’ve been affected by the snow, were you able to telecommute? Do you wish you were able to?

Alstin has debated the telecommuting option and while we’ve found that it may not be ideal for each and every work day, on mega-snowy days like these, it is (almost) as good as owning a snowblower.

Sunday’s Super Bowl was prime time for advertisers looking to launch new campaigns and get their products noticed. In the fragmented demographics of today’s TV viewership, it’s also an increasingly rare opportunity to have your message seen by the majority of the country. Combine that with a hefty price tag (estimated cost this year for a 30 second spot was $2.6 million) and you can see that the stakes are very high.

Of course, two of the biggest players in our industry are Monster and CareerBuilder, and both ran new spots during the Super Bowl.

The ads are below. Judge for yourself who you think took home the trophy. Or better yet, let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. Were they worth the money? Which one did you find funnier? More memorable? Does either ad change your opinion about the advertiser?

By the looks of this blog, you might think we over here at Alstin eat, breathe and sleep all that is recruitment and retention. Every so often we’ll stray from the HR talk and bring you more on some of our favorite things, places and activities that also populate our daily lives.

As readers of my blogs know, I’m a big fan of great fiction (click here to read my link to my favorite novels of 2009). Certainly, one of the seminal novels of this century has been J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, first published in 1951. While popularity and critical acclaim of the novel seem to rise and fall with each generation, it’s generally regarded as a true masterwork and an American original. J.D. Salinger died last week at the age of 91.

Like many young readers, I first came across The Catcher in the Rye in high school. On the surface, I didn’t have a lot in common with Holden Caulfield, but at the time I, like many of the novel’s teenage readers, felt it was the first book that was truly about us. I know the novel’s theme is sometimes reduced to as “teen angst”–but I think there’s much more there, from Holden’s sardonic view of the world and adults, his desire to protect innocence, and his feelings of despair and detachment.

As famous as he was for The Catcher in the Rye and other works (including Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction), Salinger was even more renown for his desire to hide from the world.

Salinger said that he loved everything about writing but hated everything about publishing. He retreated to his home outside Cornish, NH where he was barely seen for half a century, shunning the attention so many people today would kill for.

While I can be as nosy and voyeuristic as the next guy, I always found this obsession with Salinger’s private life distasteful. Through the years, so many people in the media, as well as his fans, have found it necessary to question or ignore his simple, basic request to be left alone. It must seem even stranger to us today, as we live in an age where people will do literally anything (including humiliating themselves) to get noticed and “famous.” Reality TV, Facebook, YouTube: what would Salinger have made of all this? My feeling is that our obsession with penetrating Salinger’s privacy says more about us than it does about him.

In 1988 Ian Hamilton tried to write a biography of Salinger that would include previously unpublished letters. Salinger sued, and the quasi-book that remained after the whole mess is In Search of J.D.Salinger. It’s really a book about failing to write a book, and I think that overall, it’s a disappointment. I can’t imagine anyone reading it without thinking, “Just let the poor guy alone already.” Not much is revealed about Salinger we didn’t already know, including the old salacious rumors that had been circulating for decades, many of which don’t seem credible. Ironically, I read an interview in Time with Hamilton (who seems like a nice enough guy), and even he seemed strongly reluctant about exposing someone who just wanted to be left in peace.

So now Salinger is gone, but the obvious questions remain: Did he leave us scores of unpublished work stashed away somewhere? Did he write multiple novels, edit them to perfection and then burn them? Will we see in an upcoming New Yorker (where Salinger published nearly all his stories–including the classics “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “For Esme–with Love and Squalor”) a new work by Salinger?

Maybe we will, but I doubt it, and I think once the tributes, rumors and remembrances die down, we won’t hear much more about J.D. Salinger, except through the short but remarkable body of work he left us–which is probably the way he would have wanted it.

Penny’s get pinched when the economy is tight, by individuals and companies alike. Why pay a designer to put together a new ad campaign or design your logo when you already have an employee who likes using different fonts in Word and has access to a large library of clip art? The utility of the job will get through and you’ll save money. Besides, who cares if it’s clever or looks good? Nobody has time to pay attention to that kind of stuff anyways!

Your iPod begs to differ.

From cell-phones to cars, disposable razors to televisions, cameras to coffee-grinders, good design is making its mark. It’s not that your music sounds better coming from an iPod instead of an iRiver or SanDisk, but that an aesthetic and tactile experience ends up making the usage of the device all that more pleasurable. People like that, and if Apple’s stock is any indication, people are willing to pay for that.

Graphic design works the same way. When you have an idea or design that brings it all together, creating something both clever and memorable, the attitude towards the design is transferred to the client. You make that jump from “Hey, that Volkswagen ad was great” to “Volkswagen’s pretty cool for making such a clever ad”. Sure, Volkswagen’s still got to make the sale with the car, but they got you in the door. That’s half (and a necessary half) of the battle right there.

The choice is yours to make. Put the time and money into crafting an image that will attract the best of people, people that actually want to be with you, or toss a worm on your line and see what bites.

What do you think? - j

I’m always on the quest for discovering (and downloading) new and useful apps for my iPhone. News apps, career apps, social media apps, cooking tips apps, music apps, stopwatch apps for timing my mile pace, etc. I swear I even downloaded that level app and actually used it—seriously! I don’t think my weekends would be complete without checking Yelp or letting Google Maps navigate me through road trips.

And, as Alstin is developing an app of our own (coming soon to the App Store!), I started to wonder—there must be a huge demand for developers to create customized apps? I’ve talked with vendors and web sites about rolling out apps of their own in addition to providing customized app creation services for clients. And I was curious about the market, statistics and the potential revenue stream I could create for this type of product.

And, I discovered, I’m not alone. App stores have had more than $4.2 billion in revenue last year, according to Gartner Inc., which tracks information technology worldwide. Analysts expect that to increase to $29.5 billion by 2013. (And, no there aren’t any typos in that sentence—$29.5 billion!).

As mobile technology continues to advance (and become more accessible and less expensive) and innovations like the Apple iPad (a 10-in touch screen computer sized somewhere between a laptop and an iPhone) are created, you can be sure that this will help generate the demand and interest for more apps. From a Feb 1^st, 2010 Philadelphia Inquirer article, “A bonanza for app developers.” (written by Carolyn Davis) she quotes Lisa Allen, a board director for Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic,  the local chapter of a global group that aims to foster education and networking among the mobile-development crowd. “Today’s mobile phones are as powerful as many desktop PCs—more so, if you consider that they’re also location-aware and have a built-in billing and payment system…We’re seeing people run their entire lives, even their entire businesses, from their mobile phone.”

Apple announced in January that billion apps had been downloaded from its App Store from among more than 100,000 titles in categories such as games, business, new, sports and health. Blackberry App World has 4,000 titles and Google’s Android Market has 20,000.

From a recruiting, hiring, retention and online application perspective apps really have unlimited potential for opening up the communication process. Making it more direct, more efficient, more targeted, more everything. (Can you tell I’m really liking mobile technology??) Create an app so potential applicants can download employment-focused videos or podcasts interviewing a Hiring Manager. Or, create your app with the functionality to enable job seekers viewing your jobs (through your own app or through a job board/job aggregator site app) to easily download their resume and apply right from their mobile device. Or, develop an app function to stay in touch with prior applicants, send out newsfeeds about your company, update them on the hiring process—the ideas really are limitless. Does your company have multiple retail locations? Imagine being able to identify a smart phone user with your app and send them targeted career opportunities based upon where they are standing! Develop app for internal purposes and marketing…perhaps an “HR Welcome App” to stay in touch with recently on-boarded candidates (remind them to fill out specific forms, reiterate the rewards for your existing employee referral program) or create a retention-focused app to update employees of awards earned, milestone achievements or other positive news. And, one thing I love about apps is the metrics and measurability they provide—love my numbers!

So, when someone asks you, “Do you have an app for that?” You can say, “Yes! There’s an app for that!”

The latest ad from Monster shows that even the Boogey Man can land his dream job in today’s economy. (Besides checking out the latest job postings, he might also want to take a peek at the 25 Next Recovering Job Markets in the U.S. from Business Week.)