For my blog post this week I wanted to include an infographic (what did we ever do before them?) on the state of recruiting that was done by Talent Technology. The good news is that economic and job growth is expected as well as an expectation for increased competition for the best talent. To see the complete study and survey results, go to www.talenttech.com/

If you really want to see a VP of HR get nervous, ask him or her about the candidate experience at their organization. Like profanity-laced tirades and red faces? Ask a job seeker what happened the last time they applied for a position through an ATS. Of course, there are some wonderful exceptions out there, and I am so proud that many of our clients have made the candidate experience a goal in 2012, but I think we all know that for the most part the CE is still pretty lousy. From my vantage point, it’s one of the biggest topics facing HR, and now that the job market is beginning to improve I expect a harsh spotlight to be shining on this issue.

In most circles outside of our industry, the popular thing to do is to bash HR and recruiters as nasty, unfeeling cretins who purposely design byzantine application processes and cackle malevolently each time a candidate leaves a voice mail about a job they interviewed for two months ago. I’ve written about the candidate experience a lot over the last few years, and my opinion really hasn’t changed: it’s a simple numbers game that HR is on the wrong side of. In an interview I did with recruiting guru Peter Weddle, he put it all into perspective:

You cannot recruit more talent with less recruiting resources. It defies the laws of human nature. If you want to hire talent, you have to use the talent of the recruiting team, and that means giving them the time and support they need to do their best work. Frankly, I don’t get it. Companies spend hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars on their ATS and then let the vendor off the hook. Not only are the vast majority of these systems abusive to candidates, they’re abusive to recruiters, as well. In addition, they’re costing employers a fortune by giving them inaccurate data on the source of candidates (causing them to misspend both their recruitment advertising dollars and the time of their recruiters).

Me? I’ve been waiting for top management to see the cost of a bad candidate experience and—well, I think they need help. If you’re a recruiter, show them the revenue potential you lost when that great salesperson walked out the door because no one called her after the interview. Tell them about the time, resources and impact on care and morale that will result from fumbling the Respiratory Care Manager you wanted so badly.

Fortunately, there are some great resources out there to help. Experts on both www.ere.net and www.shrm.org are telling their success stories and showing blueprints and examples of the steps they are taking to fix the candidate experience. It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s going to be a process filled with setbacks, but I believe those that truly want to fix it—and the CEO’s who have their backs–will prevail, and win the battle of not only common courtesy, but the war for the best talent.

With the very notable exception of working with a great group of talented people, I think my favorite part about working at Alstin is the presentations we do. Perhaps I was denied attention as a child, or I’m just a ham, but I love getting in front of people and telling them about Alstin. As someone who’s always out and about, meeting people and learning about our industry, I also attend a lot of presentations. Most are great, but some…

I think this video is funny because so much of it rings true. My personal favorite is the forgotten fourth bullet and the appearance of the smug IT guy. Enjoy.

As our blog readers know, I prefer to keep my reading in the land of fiction (to see my top fiction picks of 2011, click here). However, every once in awhile a non-fiction book comes along that changes the way we think about our world. For me, I always find Malcolm Gladwell’s books thought-provoking (read my blog on Outliers here), and a few years ago Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle changed the way we think about our food supply.

At the end of last year, I began hearing good things about a new book on self-control and willpower. While I’m always wary of books that get fawning praise (I especially bristle when I read things like “A Revelation,” “This Changes Everything We Know About [insert subject here],” “Masterful”), sometimes a book lives up to the hype, and I really found a lot of great information in Willpower: Rediscovering the World’s Greatest Human Strength by researcher Roy F. Baumeister and New York Times science writer John Tierney.

I’d hate to give too much away because I think this is a book everyone should read, but the crux of their findings is that willpower acts like a muscle: it can be depleted and fatigued, but also strengthened with practice. You’ll also learn that, as unsexy as it sounds, what fuels willpower is not determination, your grandfather’s pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps philosophy or the harsh Minnesota winters of your youth. Nope, it’s just glucose, and it can be bolstered simply by replenishing the brain’s store of fuel. That’s why eating and sleeping have such a profound impact on our self-control, and why it’s almost impossible for traditional dieters to resist temptations.

You’ll also learn that:

• People around the world rank a lack of self-control as their biggest weakness.
• We typically spend four hours every day resisting temptations.
• We have “one” willpower; in other words, our willpower to eat healthier, our willpower not to yell at our kids, to exercise, to be a better husband, to keep a clean kitchen, etc.–all tap the same source. That’s why trying to change too many habits at once (stop smoking, lose weight, go to church more) is almost impossible.
• How even a super-motivated, hyper-successful person like Oprah Winfrey–who built and runs an empire–can still struggle with her weight.
• How to really make a New Year’s resolution (John Tierney, one of the authors of Willpower, had a nice piece on this in Sunday’s New York Times
• How with the Internet age, we face a whole new level of temptations to overcome.
• Why almost every diet is doomed to fail.

Willpower showcases a lot of studies, but in an informative, entertaining way, and the authors do a good job of summarizing their findings, including being honest about results they have difficulty explaining.

Perhaps the best news in the book is that once you learn to master these techniques and establish better habits, willpower gets easier and requires less mental energy to gain self-control.

For example, the authors studied people who seemed very disciplined, whether it be in their eating habits, exercise, career, home life, etc. When they looked closer to see what made them tick, they found that these go-getters weren’t necessarily more motivated or possessed more willpower than the average person. So how did they do it? By consistently placing themselves in situations where they had to use that willpower less often. That’s why good habits like having only healthy snacks in the kitchen, packing a gym bag before you go to bed, scheduling a set hour each day to read to your children, etc. can make a real difference.

To learn more about Willpower, check out this review here.

So, we’re almost a week in 2012 already. How are those resolutions holding up? Hopefully, you’re staying the course and will be meeting the personal goals you’ve set for yourself. I often feel like we get a very unique perspective here at Alstin, because we work with so many recruiters in so many different industries. With that in mind, I wanted to list five resolutions for recruiters to consider taking on in 2012.

• Go Big Picture

Take a deep breath, step back and take a big-picture look at your recruiting function. Think about the people on your recruiting team and how they spend their time; the hiring managers you work with; business conditions in your industry; and even the leadership at your organization.  What impact do they all have on your ability to recruit the best talent? What are you doing well and what needs to be improved upon? Chances are, your answers haven’t changed much in the last few years. If that’s the case, go directly to #2.

• Challenge Existing Processes

So much has changed in technology, business and communications in the last 5 years. Has your recruiting function kept up? Are you still spending your day running through a maze of outdated methodologies and old processes just because “that’s how we’ve always done it here?” What time-consuming tasks or those with little value to recruiting can be eliminated or automated? Better yet, what are some new workflow patterns that you can put in place that will make a real difference? How will you measure it?

• Use Social Media (already!) and Get Mobile

Social media for recruiting has some definite pitfalls and downsides, but those that keep ignoring it will continue to miss out (more and more) on a great recruiting tool that your competitors are tapping into. Get a social media policy in place and get moving. Consider trying a Facebook pay-per-click campaign as a start (you don’t even need a Facebook careers page to do a PPC campaign). Again, measure the “before” and “after” for both candidate volume and quality.

I’ve read more than one recruiting website proclaim that 2012 will be the year of mobile. Is your career site mobile ready? Do you know the best tools to leverage mobile recruiting? If not, I know a pretty good recruitment ad agency that can help.

• Work on the Candidate Experience.

I don’t think I attended one meeting in 2011 where the topic of the candidate experience didn’t come up (and it wasn’t to discuss how great it was). This is probably the most difficult, pressing topic in recruiting, and one that nearly every organization struggles with (I’m very proud that we have many clients that are making a real effort to tackle it in 2012–they will be the ones capturing the best talent). You’re not expected to solve the entire dilemma for the recruiting industry, but what changes, no matter how small, can be made at your organization to be more personable, responsive, engaging and polite to candidates?

•  Take Care of Yourself.

Many of us resolve each year to be more productive and grow in our jobs. I believe that to really reach that goal, we need to take better care of ourselves. Put away the smart phone and laptop for a little bit now and then, eat better, exercise, spend more time with family or friends, and do whatever else it is that lets you unwind and gives you happiness. Also, resolve to learn something new in 2012, as our brains need to be challenged and stretched to stay strong.

On behalf of all of us at Alstin, a happy and healthy 2012!

As we wind down 2011, this December I am taking a second look at some of my favorite blogs. In case you missed it the first go-around, here’s my favorite – enjoy!

The blog post I wanted to highlight this year was “So What Did You Learn This Week?” To be honest, I’m not even sure this is my favorite—there were just so many interesting topics to blog about this year including the idea of Information Sickness, the passing of Steve Jobs, stereotypes of the millennial workforce, the candidate experience (again), outliers, Black Hat SEO and so much more. However, I’m choosing this post because I think that the drive to always be learning and embracing new ideas and concepts will be a key differentiator for recruiters–and all employees–over the next few years. Some will welcome these new strategies and concepts, and the rest will be left behind. My feeling is that it simply doesn’t matter who you are or what you do—your job is changing.

In Part I of my blog on my Favorite Fiction from 2011, I talked about some great reads by Chad Harbach, Adam Ross and Emma Donahue. There’s always so many great ones I miss (sorry to Eleanor Henderson, Karen Russell and others—but I did just start Tea Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, which The New York Times named one of the top 5 fiction books of the year). Let’s continue with Part II of my list of the year’s best in fiction.

The Anthologist
Nicholson Baker
Paul Chowder has been asked to write an introduction to a new poetry anthology—and he can’t do it. He misses his girlfriend Roz (who left him because of his procrastinating, among other reasons), his house is falling apart, and his poems aren’t really being published anymore. Haverford College grad Nicholson Baker is a writer wonderfully out of the mainstream who writes slim novels with the pleasing contradiction of being very entertaining despite not a whole lot happening. In his novel Room Temperature, the entire novel takes place during the bottle feeding of an infant, Vox is a phone-sex conversation, U and I, a fan-like appreciation of John Updike, and The Fermata is about a man who can stop time and chooses to use that amazing ability to undress women. The Anthologist features what I thought was Baker’s most likeable protagonist yet, and it really is a love letter to poetry. I think The Anthologist also serves a lesson on why we like rhyme and poetry, the great poets in history, and a thoughtful meditation on how poetry affects our life.

Jo Nesbo
The Snowman
What is with these Scandinavian writers and the great mysteries they write? Publication of The Snowman set off a fun, silly debate over who’s better, the late Stieg Larsson or Jo Nesbo. Both are excellent. In The Snowman, Detective Harry Hole is drawn into a complex and grisly murder that looks like it might match a series of unsolved murders. Norway has never had a serial killer, so many around Hole are suspicious when he starts to link the crimes together. In so many murder mysteries, every character seems like a cut-out caricature, but not in this gritty and creepy thriller. I don’t read many mysteries, but I really enjoyed this one.

John Casey
Compass Rose
John Casey is best known for his wonderful novel Spartina which none other than the New York Times called “possibly the best American novel . . . since The Old Man and the Sea.”). In this follow-up, the focus is less on Dick Pierce (the main character in Spartina) and more on his daughter from his affair with Elsie, Rose. Casey’s novels (including the also-excellent The Half-Life of Happiness) have more to do with people than plot, and there sure isn’t much to criticize in the natural, estuary Rhode Island world Casey creates, or his lyrical writing. For me however, the characters that were so compelling in Spartina are a lot less interesting—and likeable–in Compass Rose. Still, I’m glad for Compass Rose, not just because we get to revisit the lives of these characters, but because it gives me an opportunity to recommend a truly great and unfairly underrated novel. Read Spartina today!

Tom Rachman
The Imperfectionists
Another great first novel. The Imperfectionists follows the writers, editors and publishers of an international English language newspaper in Rome. Each of the main characters gets a chance to tell his or her story from their own point of view—I know that sounds like a bit of a gimmick, but it really works here. This novel is very funny and very sad, and the characters seem both crazy and completely real. The novel also deals with the chaos in trying to put out a paper, and how the Internet has changed newspapers forever. Fiction is so subjective, but I’ve yet to meet someone who read The Imperfectionists who hasn’t really liked it. One of my favorites of the year.

A Sense of an Ending
Julian Barnes
Fantastic. This is one of those slim, literary novels that packs more depth and narrative punch between its cover than a ponderous 800 page epic. Tony Webster and his school friends welcome the brilliant Adrian into their pseudo-cool group where they talk philosophy, smoke cigarettes, drink and vow to be friends forever–until things take a tragic change. The novel then picks up 40 years later with Tony, alone and living a quiet life of humdrum routines. A lot of wisdom and insight is squeezed into this novel, especially on the subject of the everyday, and how we all have our own version of the past that we can’t help but constantly edit and embellish. I’ve heard this novel accurately described as a “mystery of memory.” Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize and, along with Skippy Dies, my favorite novel of the year.

 
Skippy Dies
Paul Murray
Want to read a 672 page novel about boys at a catholic prep school in Ireland? If you said no, you’re really going to miss out. The pacing is great, it’s both hilarious and heartbreaking, and it captures adolescence in all its wincing, cringing glory. Even though yes, Skippy dies (he’s actually a goner on the first few pages), the way the novel unfolds and builds back to that moment—especially once we learn about all the pain and drama surrounding his demise–makes his death all the more heartbreaking. This novel also smartly captures what it means to be a teenager today, where everything is available on the Internet, friends text instead of talk, etc. What I think I liked best about Skippy Dies is how Murray takes what seem like the most obvious stereotypes (the smart, fat kid; the pretty, rich girl; the shy student, the nerdy teacher; the psychotic bully;) and makes them into fully rounded, sympathetic characters without resorting to clichés or epiphanies. Skippy Dies isn’t the type of novel that gets the snooty literary awards and fawning press, but for pure storytelling and reading entertainment this was my favorite novel of the year.

That’s it for me, but please help add to this list. I’d love to hear what novels made your best-of list in 2011!

Can we really be in December already? This month not only means the holidays, overeating and the end of the year, but also the time for my annual wrap-up of the best fiction I read in 2011. To see my picks from previous years, click here. Like last year, I read so many worth talking about that I’m going to need two blog posts to fit them all in.

My biggest lament, as always, are all the great ones I didn’t get to. I hope our readers will help add to this list by posting comments at the bottom. Okay, on to Part I of my favorites from 2011!

The Art of Fielding
Chad Harbach
There was so much buzz around the publication of this excellent first novel, and when I learned that the novel revolves around both literature and baseball, I knew this one was for me. The Art of Fielding follows Henry Skrimshander, an incredibly talented shortstop at small Westish College in Wisconsin. Henry, with the coaxing and coaching of his pal Mike Schwartz  (my favorite character in the novel), blossoms even further, and by his junior year major league scouts are showing up as he nears Luis Aparicio’s amateur record of consecutive games without an error. It’s hard to tell much more without giving away the plot, but all is not smooth sailing for Henry as he has a Steve Sax/Chuck Knoblauch type meltdown (baseball fans will know what this means, and it’s absolutely excruciating to read). While the novel has some of the best writing about baseball I’ve read, especially on the artistry and grace of fielding, this is much more than a “sports” novel, as there’s complicated relationships, romances, and heartbreak exploding all around. If I’m being cranky, my one complaint would be that some of the narrative twists felt a bit forced (especially near the end), but this was easily one of my top books of the year and I heartily recommend it.

PS: On Wednesday, the New York Times named The Art of Fielding one of the top 5 fiction books of the year.

The Lonely Polygamist
Brady Udall
Golden Richards has four wives, twenty-eight children and some serious despair in his heart. He spends a lot of his time in a near-impossible quest for some peace, and his increasingly frigid relationship with his wives, kids and a super-stressful, failing business venture are killing him. Needless to say, all is not well on the home front, with one wife ready to leave him and one son plotting revenge. Richards is building a brothel in Nevada, and there he falls in love with a woman he sees walking near the construction site. There’s something really winning about the hapless, pitiable Richards, but I can’t say I loved this book. Perhaps it was just me, but I found the pacing slow (most reviewers felt otherwise) and long stretches uninvolving. Finally, the concept of the polygamist life not being all it’s cracked up to be didn’t really strike me as revelatory.

Mr. Peanut
Adam Ross
The first two sentences of this novel let you know what you’re in for: “When David Pepin first dreamed of killing his wife, he didn’t kill her himself. He dreamed convenient acts of God.”

Actually, David loves his obese wife Alice, but not her dread, mannerisms or obsessions, and he dreams of endless ways of killing her. Once she’s dead, the detectives Hastroll and Sheppard step in and (initially at least) it seems the novel will loop back solely to the story of David and Alice’s marriage. However, things take a very unexpected turn, both in subject matter and style, and that risky move seems to divide people’s opinion of the book. Personally, I really liked Mr. Peanut, both for the admirable intricacy of the plotting as well as its focus and ruminations on relationships and marriage. I’ve read that this book is becoming something of a quick cult classic, and I bet most people will tell you they either love it or hate it. Give it a try and see what you think.

Sunset Park and Invisible
Paul Auster
I’ve read most of Paul Auster’s novels, and we’re so lucky to have a novelist who never stops redefining and pushing the boundaries of storytelling. Auster is always playing with structure, voice, point of view, meta-fiction and postmodernism; and Sunset Park and Invisible are his two most recent novels. I really liked Sunset Park and really hated Invisible, and a lot of Auster fans will tell you that dichotomy is completely normal. In the case of Sunset Park, a story about Miles and his friends squatting in foreclosed houses in Florida, his unusual approach really works. I found that Sunset Park hit squarely on the feelings of despair and hopelessness many in our country have experienced over the last few years. In Invisible, young and eccentric Adam Walker meets the enigmatic Rudolf Born and his lover, the beautiful Margot, while at Columbia University. This one was not for me, but the New York Times loved it, so what do I know?  If you’re interested in Auster, some of my favorites are The Book of Illusions, Man in the Dark, Oracle Night, Travels in the Scriptorium, The Brooklyn Follies and his famous New York Trilogy.

The Ask
Sam Lipsyte
Another novel that reflects these tough economic times, and this one really pulls no punches. Sad-sack Milo Burke is not only a failure at bringing in donors at the small university he works for, but in life. His chance at redemption is hauling in a large fish: “The Ask,” represented by Purdy Stuart, a former classmate who has hit it big. This darkly comic novel is not for those looking to be inspired or uplifted, as you can feel the sting in Milo’s acidic comments and dim view of the world. I know this type of cynical, bleak novel is not for everyone, but even if it’s not always enjoyable, I thought this funny, biting satire of our society was very well done. Still, not a holiday gift for Grandma.

Room
Emma Donahue
Wow, wow and wow. Along with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Room might be one of the most unnerving novels I’ve ever read. The story is told from the point of view of Jack, a boy to whom Room is the whole world. To his mother (Ma) Room is the prison where she has been kept for seven years. Ma has done her best to try to create a life for her and Jack in Room, but things have to change, and she has a plan for her and Jack to escape Room and Old Nick. I found Room harrowing and impossible to put down. I hate when reviewers over-gush about books, but even if you don’t love this one, it truly is unforgettable.

I’ll be back in the next week or so with Part II of my list, which will include my two favorite novels of 2011. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from our readers on their best fiction reads!

If you read our blog (or ever see me out at a meeting) you know how obsessed I am with iced tea. That’s why I’m so sad to report on the demise of the TBar, formerly at 12th and Sansom.

The TBar was located just a few blocks from our office. I would often sneak out around lunch to get one of their delicious iced bubble teas and take a deep breath. Tastefully decorated and with super-nice people working there, it was a welcome oasis from the din and hustle of Center City. In fact, its closing reminded how upset I was when another great tea shop closed, Great Tea International at 17th and Sansom (hmm, it’s starting to dawn on me that selling $2-3 teas and then having customers stay for an hour–all while you’re paying Center City rent–may not be the most profitable business plan).

Anyway, I’m sorry to see them go but happy to report that you can find them online at www.tbarteas.com/tbar/ Please visit the website and give them a try. They have over 70 types of loose teas, as well as teaware and accessories. Tea makes a great holiday gift.

You may think all I do is dream about iced tea and carp about the darker side of today’s technology. However, I do know the secret to saving the economy and creating jobs:

The answer? You can’t.

Not really, anyway. There’s a great article in the New York Times Magazine by Adam Davidson titled Can Anyone Really Create Jobs? The answer, unfortunately, is no.

The fact is that creating [jobs] in a far-too-sluggish economy is practically impossible in our current capitalist democracy. No corporate leader is rewarded for hiring people who aren’t absolutely required. Most companies hire only when its workforce can no longer keep up with the demand for its products.

If you’re not familiar with Adam Davidson, I highly recommend checking out his Planet Money podcasts. He does a great job of explaining complicated financial issues and their ramifications in an unbiased way. I often turn to these podcasts when I want to learn about issues like toxic assets, the mortgage crisis, why we bailed out banks, etc.

Okay, so there’s two schools of thought on how we create jobs, and while you may favor one over the other depending on your political view, the truth is that neither one does much good.

Many on the Democrat side champion the Keynes’ view that the government can create jobs by spending a boatload of money. The problem with that, as Davidson states, is:

The stimulus…has to be borrowed, and it has to be really, truly huge — probably something like $1.5 or $2 trillion — to fill the gap between where the economy is and where it would be if everyone was spending at pre-recession levels. The goal is to goad consumers into spending again. And President Obama’s jettisoned $400 billion jobs package, hard-core Keynesians argue, is nowhere near what it would take to persuade them.”

The Republicans obviously champion a more fiscally conservative view that says that a Keynesian stimulus can’t grow jobs or fix the economy — only time can, and that any meddling we do only delays the recovery. Davidson points out the irony of this viewpoint:

It’s a puzzle of modern politics that Republicans have had electoral success with a policy that fundamentally asserts there is nothing the government can do to create jobs any time soon.

Of course, I wouldn’t expect Romney, Perry, Cain or any GOP candidate to shout, “Just sit tight, we’ll get through this!” In fact, many of the “jobs creation” ideas proposed by the Republicans like tax cuts and loosening of regulations are at odds with this wait-it-out philosophy.

So is there any hope? Davidson closes the piece with his opinion:

An economy is truly healthy only when its people know how to make and do things that others will pay them a decent amount for. Jobs, in other words, are not the cause of a healthy economy; they’re the byproduct. And that’s another thing most national politicians know but will never say. So perhaps instead of (or, at least, in addition to) arguing over plans that aren’t going to happen, we should focus on what almost certainly will come true. The economy that emerges from this recession is going to be different. Without the distortion of a credit bubble, it is clear that far too many Americans don’t know how to do anything that the world is willing to pay them a living wage for. No economic theory offers them easy salvation. We don’t need to become a nation of app designers. An economic downturn is a great time to learn things — carpentry, say, or aerospace engineering — that others will eventually pay for.

My post today is really less a blog post and more a call for help. I’d like to get our readers’ feedback on LinkedIn groups that focus on Human Resources or Recruiting. In many ways, these types of discussion groups are the whole point of social media, but (in my humble opinion) I often find that there isn’t a whole lot of value inside the different LinkedIn HR and Recruiting groups—at least the ones I’ve come across.

The problem could very well be my own lack of knowledge or involvement, and perhaps there are great groups out there I need to join to change my opinion. Of course, a big industry-wide problem is that many of these groups are populated either by recruiters who blindly throw their candidates or searches into conversations:

QUESTION: “Hello, I am a healthcare recruiter in North Carolina, and I’m wondering if you’re still blocking social media sites at your healthcare institution?” Amy Recruiter, NC Health System

REPLY:  “Accounting Professional with 7 years experience AND knowledge of defense industry. Contact me today!”

Or the discussion threads are started disingenuously by people using a group as a slimy way to promote their own business. We’ve all seen the online discussions on groups that follow this script:

“Does anyone know of a good background checking software that is price competitive and can make a recruiter’s life easier?” Joe Blow, recruiting industry veteran.

Hi Joe. Why yes, there is a wonderful solution out there. ABC Background Checking is the premier background checking…” Jane Doe, HR systems vendor

Dig a bit deeper, and you’ll never guess what company both Joe and Jane work for.

Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but even when the discussions are legitimate, I rarely find them compelling enough to make me want to comment or read more. In fact, I usually find that the articles I read from places like www.ere.net have “comment” sections below each article with discussions much more relevant and interesting for the recruiting industry.

Are other people feeling the same way? Or am I missing something?

It’s official: I love Apple. I’m part of the cult, I’m drinking the kool-aid and I am a card carrying member of the club I used to mock.

Actually, I’m a very late convert to the Apple movement. For most of my life, I’ve been a PC stalwart, defending Microsoft and PCs and making fun of those hipster-doofus Mac types with their self-righteous air, coffee shop wisdom and shiny silver computers that cost double what a PC cost.

Then a funny thing happened: I started using a Mac. I remember we were doing a presentation for a client that had a lot of video and animation, and our Creative Director wanted to use Keynote (Mac’s presentation tool) instead of PowerPoint. The two programs are very similar these days, but there were key differences 5-10 years ago. Not only did the Keynote presentation look much better, but I defy anyone who doesn’t work for Microsoft to tell me that Keynote wasn’t significantly easier and more intuitive to use.

I still wore my slightly-tarnished PC badge of honor, but then we replaced our aging PC laptop with a Mac. You can be resistant to change, but when you go 6 months and no programs crash (remember the thousands of times you’ve seen ‘Microsoft has encountered an error and needs to close?’), no viruses erupt and annoying system updates don’t pop up every day, you begin to open your eyes.

Perhaps the final step in my conversion happened last week. I had made an appointment with the Genius Bar (okay, I still make fun of that name) at the Mac store on Walnut Street to replace a battery in our Mac Pro. This was just one day before the new iPhone came out and, as you might imagine, the place was all abuzz with nerdy excitement.

When I went up to the Genius Bar for my appointment at 3pm, the woman at the counter profusely apologized, telling me that they were running behind and I would have to wait 2-3 minutes. Then, as soon as I had pulled my book out of my briefcase, a gentlemen came up to me and told me he would help get me the right battery. When he tried to scan it for me to pay, it wouldn’t work because the Apple network was so jammed with requests and queries about the new iPhone. After about another two minutes, he told me that I had waited long enough and he popped the new battery in my Mac and told me to have a good day. That was it. A $90 battery at no charge because I had to wait a bit (although in total I probably waited less than 10 minutes). Are you listening, SEPTA?

Perhaps I’m wrong, but I can’t think of too many companies that would give away an item that expensive—or that holds such high standards for their service and marketing. What a lot of corporations miss is what a smart business move that was. Yes, they lost $90 that day, but guess what brand of laptop, phone and tablet I’m going to be loyal to for years to come?

With the passing of Steve Jobs last week, I was reminded of Apple’s landmark “1984” commercial. Over the years, I’ve given many presentations on branding, and I never fail to include this one, because it’s truly exciting and groundbreaking.  And it’s so fitting that one of the greatest commercials of all time would come from Apple, an organization with an uncanny ability to know their audience and what they want–often even before we knew we wanted it.

There are many definitions of “branding,” but one of the simplest and most useful is that a brand is a promise. If so, few organizations have delivered on that promise like Apple.

The full commercial is below, but I also wanted to share some fun facts about what makes this commercial so groundbreaking. Some of the items below are now commonplace in commercials, but at the time they were considered revolutionary in the advertising world.

• The product is never shown.
• The things Apple is “selling” with Macintosh in this commercial are not specs like processor speed or memory, but intangibles like innovation, freedom, and non-conformity.
• The ad has a big budget film quality to it, which isn’t surprising considering it was directed by Ridley Scott, whose films include Blade Runner, Gladiator and Alien.
• While the spot is famous for only being aired once, it was actually re-run quietly on KMVT in Twin Falls, Idaho at 1:00am so that it could qualify for awards.
• The skinheads you see in the ad were real skinheads recruited off the streets of London.
• The woman who throws the hammer (the only woman shown in the ad—and note that she is fit and empowered) was a real athlete, as all the actresses originally cast weren’t strong enough to lift and throw the hammer.
• Most people at Apple absolutely hated it. However, Steve Jobs came to the rescue and championed the spot. There’s even a rumor that Steve Wozniak offered to pay for the spot personally if the Apple board would give it a chance.

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the greatest commercials ever:

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of any product that’s more advertising-saturated than the automobile. By my unofficial estimate, every NFL game shows an average of 6 billion car commercials, and for me they all run together. Shiny cars sliding around on a test track, hurling down windy country roads, navigating sleet and rain while a child holding a teddy bear sleeps in the back seat, or proudly reaching its destination at the beach, lake or atop a ridiculous mountain. The soundtrack is usually classical or seventies rock while a male announcer with a deep voice drones on about:

• Performance
• Luxury
• Handling
• Power
• Safety

That’s why I find these commercials for the Toyota Yaris a breath of fresh air. The brilliant tagline? “It’s a Car.”

Sure, it’s tongue-in-cheek, but these no-frill TV ads are a perfect way to distinguish the Yaris from the competition. And it’s very smart. The Yaris is more of a functional, Point A-to-Point B kind of car, so it wouldn’t make sense to dress it up and pretend it’s something it’s not. Here’s three quick commercials that tell you all you need to know. Love it.

I don’t want to brag, but I feel I should tell you that the CEO of Netflix and I are pals. In fact, he wrote to me this week and asked for my forgiveness. Yes, to me! The email he sent began like this:

Dear Tony,

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

Okay, so the email didn’t go out to just me, and the genesis of the email was in response to a very loud and very public uproar over the way Netflix handed down a significant price hike to its customers. I’ve heard estimates that they’ve lost close to a million subscribers, and their stock price has been nose-diving. The more cynical of us (and I sometimes find myself in that camp) will say that the apology was carefully planned by the suits at Netflix, and is part of a corporate strategy to try and remediate some of the damage done over the last few weeks. And I believe that’s 100% true.

Still, it’s an apology from a CEO, and these days even an insincere apology from the top counts for something (okay, maybe I am in that cynical camp).

“I’m sorry,” may be the two most undervalued (and underused) words in corporate America. A simple, straight apology can often completely diffuse a tense situation, as opposed to shifting blame or making excuses, which almost always just exacerbates the problem. I really liked the end of Netflix’s letter:

I want to acknowledge and thank our many members that stuck with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly. Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.

To read the entire letter, click here. And here’s a little exercise. Think of something that happened over the last 6 months at your workplace that would warrant an apology from you. What would the apology letter you write sound like? How would it be received by your boss and co-workers? Would it have brought a cleaner, quicker end to the situation or caused more turmoil?

Mad Men has become so popular, and is such a part of our culture, that it’s even being used as an inspiration for a line of clothing at Banana Republic. However, we should always remember that the show reflects a bygone era, and that what goes on in the offices of Sterling Cooper would never be tolerated today—unless of course your office is full of really big fans–and has a great employment lawyer.

Upon hearing that his obituary had been published in the New York Journal, Mark Twain famously said, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

I’ve been thinking about his quote a lot recently, as it seems more and more articles I read are loudly proclaiming the death of something in our industry. In the last few months I’ve read industry articles with these titles:

LinkedIn is dead

Job boards are dead

Newspapers are dead

Twitter is dead

Web banner advertising is dead

Corporate recruiting is dead

Agency recruiting is dead

Advertising is dead

Sourcing is dead

Human Resources is dead

Before we start holding mass funerals, I think we should all take a breath. I realize that many of these articles use the “____ is dead,” proclamation to get attention, and I guess the outlandish, over-hyped statements that pervades politics and our media was doomed to trickle down to the recruitment industry.  Still, the hyperbole—even when the facts state otherwise—annoys me. For example, of all the ones listed above, I imagine “Newspapers are dead,” is the most widely-accepted, but consider a 2009 Scarborough report that found that 171 million people (74% of the population) have read a newspaper during the last week. That’s a pretty powerful stat for something that’s passed on to the next world.

Maybe we can all use this Labor Day weekend as a way to get our batteries recharged, and get some perspective. But beware! Someone, somewhere will surely be telling you soon that 3-day weekends are dead.

Is the grass greener on the other side of the cubicle?

Sure, it’s a cliché, but it’s a cliché that can be so intoxicating! If you work in an office environment, you dream of ditching it all and working construction (fresh air!), opening a sports bar with your buddies (work with people I like!), creating your own line of handcrafted jewelry (make my own hours!), running a cozy bed-and-breakfast (be my own boss!), and on and on.

Of course, on the other side of the fence are the people actually doing those jobs, and they dream about our fat-cat, cushy office jobs, waking up without back pain, working normal hours, having heat and air-conditioning, and the “easy” life.

All of these stereotypes are put to the test in an article in Sunday’s New York Times entitled, “Maybe It’s Time for Plan C.” As the article states:

“Plan B, it turns out, is a lot harder than it seems. But that hasn’t stopped cubicle captives from fantasizing. In recent years, a wave of white-collar professionals has seized on a moribund job market, a swelling enthusiasm for all things artisanal and the growing sense that work should have meaning to cut ties with the corporate grind and chase second careers as chocolatiers, bed-and-breakfast proprietors and organic farmers.”

The article profiles several people that have left their office jobs, only to discover grueling hours, low (if any) profits, and new trials and headaches that had never occurred to them:

“The lures are obvious: freedom, fulfillment. The highs can be high. But career switchers have found that going solo comes with its own pitfalls: a steep learning curve, no security, physical exhaustion and emotional meltdowns. The dream job is a “job” as much as it is a “dream.” Even when business is steady, the sacrifices are never far from mind. Is being your own boss worth the trade-off in medical benefits, gas allowances and paid vacations?”

One thing that I found encouraging in the article is that while many of the people interviewed candidly admit they never expected the amount of work and struggle that went into their new career, nearly all of them said the change was worth it, and wouldn’t go back.

How about you? What’s that “other” career you’ve been daydreaming about?

Last week I read an interesting study sponsored by the Kenexa High Performance Institute entitled: Attitude? What Attitude? The Evidence Behind the Work Attitudes of Millennials. In the report, they examine the conventional wisdom we have about today’s millennials as employees to see if the stereotypes have merit. Here’s just some of the things we tend to think of when we describe the millennials in our workforce:

• They feel entitled when it comes to their job—if they don’t like their work or variety of opportunities, they’ll leave.
• They demand a sense of fulfillment and personal accomplishment at work, and have little tolerance for more entry-level or menial tasks.
• They expect to be rewarded and praised for every small accomplishment.
• They are comfortable with change, and have few qualms or concerns about job hopping.
• They are rarely satisfied.
• (I would also like to  add that they’re thinner, have more hair and whiter teeth—darn those Millennials!)

However, the result of the Kenexa study paints a much different picture. The authors state that “by tracking more than 25 years of opinions through the WorkTrends study, we actually find that this picture is false.” In fact, as you’ll see in the charts below, in many cases millennials are on par or even surpass their Boomers and Generation X counterparts.

The study concludes with this summary:

Books are being written and stories are being told about the vast differences between Millennials and their generational predecessors. Yet, when it comes to the workplace, the differences are shockingly slight. How can we explain the disconnect? It’s possible that HR professionals and managers are adapting to their new charges, and creating programs that incorporate Millennials’ views into the workplace.

True, the study says, younger workers (“whether the hippies of the sixties or millennials today”) do display traits common to youth like periods of angst or optimism, but most organizations have seen many these attitudes before and can handle it. How about you? What does your experience as a recruiter or HR pro tell you about the millennial workforce?

If you’re a fan of the show Inside the Actor’s Studio, you know that at the end of each program the host James Lipton asks 10 questions of his guests.  The format was actually inspired by the French TV host Bernard Pivot, who would submit to his guests the “Proust Questionnaire,” named after the great French writer Marcel Proust. The concept is that one’s answers to these 10 questions reveal a lot about a person.

I thought I’d give it a shot, and get the ball rolling. My hope is that in future blog posts my fellow Alstinites will jump in and post their responses as well, and the world can see us for the wonderful/dysfunctional/bright/slightly odd group that we are. Here goes:

1.) What is your favorite word?

Serendipitous.

2.) What is your least favorite word?

Vomit.

3.) What turns you on?

Enthusiasm/Optimism.

4.) What turns you off?

Cruelty/Bullying.

5.) What sound or noise do you love?

My kids or wife laughing.

6.) What sound or noise do you hate?

The screeching sound of the brakes on SEPTA trains.

7.) What is your favorite curse word?

G*ddammit.

8.) What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Songwriter/Musician—other than having almost no musical talent, I think I’d be good at it.

9.) What profession would you not like to do?

Anything at a fast food restaurant.

 10.) If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

You just made the cut. Come on in.

In my previous blog posts  on Twitter, I revealed that I was the man behind the curtain tweeting for Alstin. I also talked about what I liked–and really, really didn’t like–about the way some people used Twitter.

This announcement is a couple of weeks late, but I want use this blog post to state that I am no longer the person tweeting for Alstin. That honor now falls to our new social media guru, Migdalia Gonzalez. If you’re not following Alstin on Twitter yet, this is the perfect time to start. Over the last few months, other duties have been pulling me away from spending as much time on the Alstin Twitter account as I would have liked, but the real reason for celebration is that Migdalia is a million times more adept and knowledgeable than I ever will be on all that is social media. Judging by all the new people following us and great retweets we’ve had over the last month, this is great news for everyone.

For those of you not following me currently, click here to find my tweets.

In my previous blog posts I would tell you about my Twitter ups and downs, and I didn’t want this post to be an exception. Truth is, I’ve really been enjoying and getting much more out of Twitter the last few months.  For those of us that use Twitter professionally, I think there’s been a weeding out of those that tweet mindless updates, and now most of what I see is a great sharing of information and insights.

I’m still disappointed that more folks in recruiting aren’t using Twitter—those of us that serve the recruiting industry certainly are, and it’s a shame that those direct recruiters and HR folks haven’t embraced Twitter more. Not just because we’d like the opportunity to connect with our true audience, but because they’re missing out on some really good resources and conversations they can’t get anywhere else.

Again, be sure to follow Alstin here!

The longer I work in recruitment advertising the more I believe in the old saying that the only true constant is change. I think Charles Darwin was spot on when he said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

That thinking also applies to our conventional wisdom about recruiting methodologies. Case in point: I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “What the Dog Saw,” and there was a chapter called the “The Talent Myth: Are Smart People Overrated?” In that chapter, Gladwell recounts the well known ABCs of recruiting we all grew up on: “Show your A employees love, your B employees training and education, and your C employees the door.”

This process of “differentiation and affirmation” is in many ways the brainchild of McKinsey and Company, the huge management consulting firm. It’s a concept a lot of organizations take to heart and implement to a large degree. At Alstin for example, we hire superb people, offer them support and direction when they need it, and then get out of their way so they can do the great job they were meant to. It’s a very empowering, entrepreneurial spirit that has served us well for over four decades.

But what happens if a company follows that advice to the extreme—or worse, misinterprets it? Actually, we know the answer, because one of McKinsey’s biggest clients did just that:

“[They] set up internal Performance Review Committees. The members got together twice a year, and graded each person in their section on ten separate criteria, using a scale of one to five. The process was called “rank and yank.” Those graded at the top of their unit received bonuses two-thirds higher than those in the next thirty per cent; those who ranked at the bottom received no bonuses and no extra stock options–and in some cases were pushed out.” As a senior member of the company said, “We hire very smart people and we pay them more than they think they are worth.”

So who was this large organization that tightly followed the direction of McKinsey, the country’s largest management consulting firm? The company was none other than Enron, and in some ways they were considered the ultimate “talent company.” Gladwell continues:

“Among the most damning facts about Enron, in the end, was something its managers were proudest of. They had what, in McKinsey terminology, is called an “open market” for hiring. In the open-market system–McKinsey’s assault on the very idea of a fixed organization–anyone could apply for any job that he or she wanted, and no manager was allowed to hold anyone back. Poaching was encouraged. When an Enron executive named Kevin Hannon started the company’s global broadband unit, he launched what he called Project Quick Hire. A hundred top performers from around the company were invited to the Houston Hyatt to hear Hannon give his pitch. Recruiting booths were set up outside the meeting room. “Hannon had his fifty top performers for the broadband unit by the end of the week,” Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod write, “and his peers had fifty holes to fill.” Nobody, not even the consultants who were paid to think about the Enron culture, seemed worried that those fifty holes might disrupt the functioning of the affected departments, that stability in a firm’s existing businesses might be a good thing, that the self-fulfillment of Enron’s star employees might possibly be in conflict with the best interests of the firm as a whole.”

Perhaps one of the biggest problems at Enron was that they paid more attention to their stars than to the mission of their company, and therein lies the foundation of their error: instead of giving its employees the support and freedom to serve their clients the best way they could, Enron forgot about their customers and just focused on what their “stars” wanted to do, whether it was good for the organization or not. More from Gladwell:

“Enron’s leader Jeffery Skilling: “If lots of [employees] are flocking to a new business unit, that’s a good sign that the opportunity is a good one. . . . If a business unit can’t attract people very easily, that’s a good sign that it’s a business Enron shouldn’t be in.” You might expect a C.E.O. to say that if a business unit can’t attract customers very easily that’s a good sign it’s a business the company shouldn’t be in. A company’s business is supposed to be shaped in the direction that its managers find most profitable. But at Enron the needs of the customers and the shareholders were secondary to the needs of its stars.”

To read more about Gladwell’s article of Enron and the Talent Myth, click here.

Was it really only 1-2 years ago that the issue of privacy and social media was on everyone’s mind? Big lawsuits were pending over the right of employers to control what employees said on Facebook and Twitter. People were screaming about how the latest Facebook setting change would further erode our privacy. Sites like www.pleaserobme.com served as a funny yet cautionary warning about how we were inappropriately sharing information with the world. That is to say nothing of the debates over Foursquare, the information we can quickly discover online about another person’s private life, and the things we sometimes absent-mindedly post on Facebook, forgetting that our co-workers, bosses, spouses and children are watching.

So what happened to that big debate? If you google “social networking and privacy” you’ll see that most of the results and articles from respected mainstream media are at least a year old. Did we stop caring about our privacy?

Perhaps the answer is yes. Facebook has had such a profound effect on our lives that most of us have–consciously or otherwise–said that we want in, even though we know that to do so means sacrificing some privacy. To us, the tradeoff is worth it. We love being “connected” to our friends and family, finding old co-workers and college buddies. We know that on some level we’re exposing ourselves, even making little mistakes here and there when we share too much information (I hope certain members of the Rosato family read this), or realizing we may be letting someone from our past find us who, frankly, we were happy to get out of our lives.

Of course, there are others who have looked at social media and decided they wanted no part of it—hmm, what dark secrets and perversions are they hiding? Just kidding; I still have a number of friends who aren’t on Facebook, Twitter or even LinkedIn, but it’s a pretty small percentage, and I imagine if I was 10 or 20 years younger that number would be close to zero.

I think the issue of privacy and social media is an interesting topic to debate—not so much because it’s good or bad, but because of how quickly and willingly we all sacrificed part of our private lives so we could be “connected.” And what does this mean for the future? Will our level of personal online exposure continue to grow? What if we decided we wanted some of our privacy back? What do you think? Let us know!

Oh, and be sure to follow me (non-threateningly) on Twitter – click here!

A few weeks ago, I went to Atlanta on business. The meeting went great, and I got to spend some time with one of my favorite partners in our industry. Then I made the mistake of trying to get back home. You know the story:

• Boy is sitting at the airport after a very productive day of business and can’t wait to get home to see his family.
• Boy sees the sky outside getting awfully dark, and suddenly remembers a quote from his literature class in college, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for thee.”
• Boy watches the thunder and lightning, and remembers that when he made his plane reservations 3 days ago, he got one of the last seats on the plane. He thinks, “I am in really big trouble.”
• Boy sees that his plane has been delayed an hour. He thinks, “That’s not too bad.” Then he sees something new on the board; a word he can’t quite make out. The word turns out to be “Cancelled.”
• Boy joins the herd of people running for the Delta service phones. He learns that there are no available flights to Philadelphia until 2pm the next day. At almost that exact moment he hears a man behind him say, “I just called three hotels. No rooms available.”
• Boy decides he will fly into Baltimore that night, rent a car and drive home.
• Boy learns more than he ever wanted to about the car rental industry. Like that if you rent a car at 11:30pm for just one hour, that counts as 2 days. Or that there are “convenience fees” for returning a car to a different location than the one you started from. In the case of one rental company, that fee was a less-than-convenient $300.
• Boy finds a car rental that is more reasonable, and tries to relax as he waits for his plane ride to Baltimore—which gets delayed an hour.
• Boy flies into Baltimore. Looking at his watch, he realizes that he’s going to get to Philadelphia before midnight, thereby saving on the second day of the car rental. Victory!
• Boy learns that they lost his luggage, sees a line of 30 people at the baggage service line and realizes he is not going to get to Philadelphia anywhere near midnight. Defeat!
• Boy drives his compact Kia rental up I-95 wondering if at any moment the car, which seems to weigh less than him, will be lifted into the air by the howling winds.
• Boy gets to Philadelphia, drops off his rental car, gets a van shuttle back to his real car and drives home.
• Boy finally gets to bed around 3am. Twelve hours later his luggage will arrive.
• As he drifts off to sleep, boy realizes that some day it will all seem funny, but can’t imagine when that might be.

While traveling last week on business, I grabbed a New York Times. On the back page of the Arts Section was a full page (don’t see those much anymore!) “letter of apology” from the Economy—courtesy of nytimes.com and monster.

You can read a copy of the letter here.  In the letter, the economy takes full responsibility for the job market over the last few years but adds, “But now the ball is in your court. You have permission to move on with your life. It’s time to move forward, find a job you love and get back to work.”

Hmm. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I’m an advertising person, and nytimes/monster was simply trying (as we all are) to create a unique way of getting their message out—and maybe even inspire some people who have given up to renew their job search.

On the other hand, the job recession was so brutal and hurt so many people, people who did everything they could to try and find a job, that I can’t help but wonder if this letter is a bit too glib. I’m not sure those who lost their jobs during the recession would appreciate their situation being used as a way to drive traffic to a job board. Also, while the ad is certainly clever, I don’t think those who are still unemployed are in the mood for clever.

Following the responses to the “letter” in various blogs this week, I’ve seen everything from ”ingenious” to the “dumbest ad I’ve ever seen.” What do you think?

If you’re part of the recruiting, HR or communications industry, you’ve no doubt witnessed a big increase in recruitment videos over the last few years. Maybe you’ve seen some award-winning, “best practice” recruitment videos with polished messages and striking images. Perhaps you even have a “day in the life” video on your career site or a message from one of your organization’s leaders on why candidates should consider your organization.

Those are certainly great uses for a recruitment video (and yes, your friends at Alstin can develop a great one for you) but I think it’s easy to forget how recruitment videos can also be used as tool to correct misconceptions about an employer. For example, the Baltimore Police Department (like many police departments across the country) is significantly under-represented by women. When they examined the issue further they discovered that one major reason was uncertainty and apprehension over the required physical tests. The solution was this simple, no-frills, 50 second video outlining the physical tests.

I really like this video, not because it’s going to win any awards for production or clever taglines, but because it’s a great example of how video can be used cost effectively (and with a quick turn-around time) to target a specific need or issue.

How about you? What misconceptions could a 1 minute video clear up about working at your organization?

If you haven’t read Tina Fey’s hilarious bestseller Bossypants yet, you really need to get with the program. While laughing out loud, you’ll get a great peek into her suburban Philly upbringing, her early comedy struggles, her stint as head writer and performer on Saturday Night Live, and her uncanny ability to stay grounded while being both the star of a hit series and a working mother.

While reading Bossypants I actually found a lot of wisdom worth sharing; advice that translates to both HR and Managers. Here’s just a sampling:

· On dealing with what other people in the office say about you: “After my Sarah Palin impersonation, I got some hate mail, and there are definitely people out there who will dislike me for the rest of my life because of “what I did” to Sarah Palin. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both.”

· On a diverse workforce: After interviewing for a writing job on Saturday Night Live in 1997: “Only in comedy does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity.”

· On sexism: “My unsolicited advice to women in the workplace…when faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: Is this person between me and what I want to do? If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you.”

· On not being a workaholic: SNL producer Lorne Michaels has a famous saying: “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.” Tina Fey adds, “You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it all go.”

· On surrounding yourself with the best: “Alec Baldwin is a master of both Film Acting and Real Acting. Being with him may not have made me a better actor, but at least now I know why what I’m doing is terrible.”

· On respecting others and not being an egomaniac: “There’s something to be said for fear of getting in trouble. The knowledge that while you are loved, you are not above the law. The Worldwide Parental Anxiety System is failing if this many of us have made sex tapes.”

· On working hard. “After a grueling period of work, you will crave some kind of reward. Don’t let this rush you into a big decision, like a new house or a marriage or partial ownership of a minor league baseball team, that you may later regret. The interesting thing about this advice is that no one ever takes it.”

· On your insane co-workers: “Never tell a crazy person he’s crazy.”

To read The New York Times Review of Bossypants, click here.

Looking over some of my blog postings from the past year, I see I’ve written about Information Sickness, reviewed books on what the Internet is doing to our brains and even discussed different viewpoints on how the Internet has changed society.

While I’m really proud of these blogs, I write about these subjects with a good deal of trepidation. The reason for my wariness? I don’t want to paint a misleading picture. I love my iPhone, can’t imagine life without the Internet, and I go on Facebook and Twitter constantly (thanks as always to TweetDeck for making the Twittersphere just a little more organized). When I write blogs like the ones above, I feel like I always have to start with a big disclaimer that I’m not “anti” social media/Internet or a technophobe (the last thing I want to be seen as is the old man shaking his gnarled fist at these kids today with their rock and roll…).

Of course, the Internet and social media have transformed our world, and it’s been amazing to watch its huge impact on both Alstin and my personal life. People who work with me know that I’m always enthusiastic about new ways to communicate, and I can’t imagine a company that has celebrated and embraced social media and technology like Alstin.

I guess my point, and perhaps I’ve never been able to express it as eloquently as I would’ve liked, is that whenever something changes the way we live and work as profoundly as the Internet and social media have, it’s naïve to think there aren’t consequences and repercussions. The best consideration of this dilemma I’ve read yet appeared in the Sunday New York Times Magazine.

Bill Keller, the author of the Times piece, describes it like this:

“Basically, we are outsourcing our brains to the cloud. The upside is that this frees a lot of gray matter for important pursuits like FarmVille and “Real Housewives.” But my inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity.”

Okay, and if I’m REALLY being honest, a big part of my interest and musings on the subject has to do with my personality: I’m a Type A guy, rushing from one thing to the next at a million miles an hour–and while that certainly suits me to live and work in 2011, I worry that my powers of reflection and contemplation will suffer. Also, as a father of both a teenager and a tween, I worry about their ability to stay focused, relax, think deeply and creatively, and know when it’s time to “unplug.”

Mr. Keller continues:

“The shortcomings of social media would not bother me awfully if I did not suspect that Facebook friendship and Twitter chatter are displacing real rapport and real conversation…The things we may be unlearning, tweet by tweet — complexity, acuity, patience, wisdom, intimacy — are things that matter.”

I know that may sound like hand-wringing to some, but think about it: your day is spent on the Internet jumping from one page of info to another, making quick status updates on FB while “liking” the new pictures of your friend’s beagle, responding to every bing from your SmartPhone like Pavlov’s dog, hopping on TweetDeck to retweet articles you half-read while skimming emails, and texting as quick as your fumbling digits and self-correct allows. Now repeat those activities, hour after hour, day after day. How can that new(ish) behavior (and for many of us over 30 it is a recent behavior), not change who you are, and the way you act and think?

Of course, that’s just my opinion. Enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend!

By now, you’ve read all about Facebook’s clumsy attempt to spread negative information about Google to newspapers and bloggers (if you haven’t, or want to learn more, here’s a nice synopsis). What most of us jaded folks in advertising found most incredible wasn’t Facebook’s ugly tactics, but how utterly inept and foolish their methods were. If only Facebook had followed some of Mom’s classic advice:

1. If you don’t have anything nice to say…
How much do you think Facebook would pay to go back in time and make this all go away? Also, there’s a rich irony here, as one of Facebook’s biggest problems (and precisely what they accused Google of) is the issue of sensitivity and protection of their users’ personal information.

2. When you talk trash about someone, you’re saying as much about yourself as you are about them.
The substance of Facebook’s accusations about Google are debatable, but the horrendous way Facebook went about it ensures that the story will always be about them–not Google.

3. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
Most media pros believe that what Facebook is really upset over is the issue of the content in Google’s Social Circle being pulled directly from Facebook. If only Facebook had focused on that, I think they would have garnered more sympathy in the media.

4. Don’t make that face or it’ll freeze in that position.
Facebook has got to do some serious PR work, and change the face they put out to the public. Between snarky interviews from Mark Zuckerberg, movies like The Social Network, to continuous privacy concerns—well, let’s just say that Facebook is certainly reinforcing their brand, just not in a good way.

5. This too shall pass.
Let’s face it: Facebook is wildly popular and has forever changed the way we communicate and connect with each other. People like Facebook, and they want to see what Facebook will deliver in the upcoming years. PR-wise, they just need to stop throwing gasoline on the fires they set for themselves.

I don’t worry too much about Facebook. In the hyper-speed of today’s news cycle, most people will forget about this incident in the next month or so, and Facebook’s brain trust will get another chance to mend their image. Let’s hope they don’t blow it. They should start by calling their moms.

As those who read our blog know, I am a huge fan of great fiction. Every once in a while though, something from the world of reality catches my eye. This month it was Malcolm Gladwell’s hugely popular book, Outliers: The Story of Success.

First, a quick bit of background to put the book in context (and so you can sound erudite at the next cocktail party): Gladwell is a bit of a controversial figure these days. Some think Gladwell’s work in Outliers and his other two best sellers, The Tipping Point and Blink are changing the way we understand our world. Others believe his books are a sleight-of-hand and not statistically valid—basically, the charge is that Gladwell develops theories, and then finds proof to support them–while conveniently ignoring evidence that doesn’t fit his ideas.

My opinion? I think Outliers is fascinating, and I find that Gladwell’s ideas are well grounded and rather hard to dispute. The premise of Outliers is that our “traditional” thinking about successful people (i.e., they are either born into privilege/opportunity or else work harder than everyone else and pull themselves up by their bootstraps) is just one part of the story, and that we often dismiss other criteria that doesn’t fit into this myth. Or, as Gladwell puts it:

“In Outliers, I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work … The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot… It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.”

Still skeptical? Here’s just a few of the things you’ll learn reading Outliers:

· An extremely disproportionate number of the premier hockey and soccer players in the world are born in January, February or March. You’ll learn why, and also why this has some alarming corollaries for our education system.

· The “10,000 hour rule” and why it was so critical that Paul McCartney and John Lennon met when they were teens, and, even more importantly, why the marathon sets the Beatles played in Germany when they were young was a catalyst for their future success.

· The reason why nearly all the computer gurus like Bill Gates, Bill Joy (rewrote the UNIX program we still use today as well as created Java), Steve Jobs, Paul Allen (Microsoft’s co-founder), Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett Packard) and Eric Schmidt (Novell and Google’s current CEO) were born within the same 3-5 year period.

· A study of people with high IQ’s discovered that once you’re “smart enough,” a higher IQ doesn’t translate into any measureable real-world advantage—that is, someone with an IQ of 130 is just as likely to be a CEO, invent something groundbreaking, or even win a Nobel Prize as someone with an IQ of 180.

The real hook of Gladwell’s book is that successful people indeed do stand apart from the rest of us, but often in surprisingly unexpected ways. I think HR leaders would find Outliers of great interest, and provide some innovative insight into their own company’s talent. For more information about Outliers, click here.

PART 5: How cheesy can you get?

We’re so accustomed to commercials that use exaggeration and hyperbole to get their point across—in fact, we expect it. The not-so-subtle messages we receive tell us that using Product X will make us happier, richer, more attractive and a better person. But some commercials go too far, piling on the corn. In some cases, it’s intentional and meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Others…well, see what you think.

1. Mentos

Mentos commercials have enough corn to fill a silo. This is my favorite. This poor guy’s day was ruined until he popped a Mentos into his mouth and took life’s lemons and made some lemonade. Of course, the finished product looks nothing like a pinstripe business suit, but who cares?

2. Kraft

I always wince at the commercials that try to make something seem “cool” by having quick cuts and upbeat music surrounding it. The “something” in this case is mayonnaise and other condiments.

3. Mr. Microphone

If you’re going to be cheesy, why not go all the way? Watch how Mr. Microphone makes all these people so very happy.

4. Clairol

I think the actress here is on some heavy medication. I really like the part where she says “I don’t understand it,” as if hair coloring was astrophysics.

5. Love your Laminate

Nothing wrong with professing your undying love for your laminate when your husband and kids are right there. I’m not sure why, but this one comes off a bit creepy.

Be sure to come back to this blog regularly to see future installments of Old Commercials to Make You Smile…and Cringe!

This is my second blog post on the candidate experience. If you read my first one, you know that the candidate experience is being talked about a lot on both sides, and the talk is NOT good. Most industry experts will tell you that, for the most part, the candidate experience today is nothing short of horrible.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve met with both senior HR leaders and students from various colleges, and they’ve both expressed their frustration. At a seminar I attended this month, a Senior VP of HR at a large, very well-known company said this about the candidate experience: “It makes me ashamed of our profession.”

And just this week there was a great article on ERE.net entitled: Talent Acquisition Steps That Enrage Not Engage which included some very frustrating but very true stories of candidates being abused by the organizations supposedly wooing them.

You may ask yourself (as I often do): If both sides agree that the candidate experience is so horrible, why doesn’t it get fixed?

I think it all (still) comes down to resources. Let’s use Jane the Recruiter as an example:

Jane is a smart, dedicated recruiter who takes a lot of pride in her profession. She’s decided she’s going to make the candidate experience better by starting in her own little corner of the world. Of course, because it’s 2011, Jane’s entire department is stretched thin, and she always seems to be juggling a hundred things that need her immediate attention. This morning Jane’s hiring manager says he needs a Tax Accountant. Internal candidates and the people in their TAS don’t really fit the bill, so the position is posted on a large job board and some niche accounting sites (and of course it gets picked up on indeed.com, search engines, etc.) By the end of the week Jane has over 500 responses, and less than one quarter of the respondents are even remotely qualified.

Okay, now it’s your turn. How can Jane be a brand ambassador for her organization and ensure that those 500 people have a good candidate experience? Suppose all 500 received a “thank you for applying” mass email after submitting their resume, and another mass email when the process ends. Does that really qualify as a good candidate experience?

As you can see, there really isn’t an easy answer to this problem. On one side, you have a recruiting department that is extremely lean and is working without the right resources/tools, and on the other side you have candidates who desperately want to join/rejoin the workforce that are flooding the market. I think as the economy continues to improve and recruiting becomes more candidate-driven, the candidate experience will have to get better, but even then it’s going to take awhile.

Recruiters: How about you? What steps are you taking to improve the candidate experience?

I can’t believe it’s been nearly 2 years since I wrote about my love for Honest Tea. That posting cemented my reputation as an iced tea addict—and I also received a very nice postcard and email from Seth Goldman, the founder of Honest Tea.

Since then, the company (and my obsession) has continued to grow. I used to have trouble finding Honest Tea, and often I would make special trips to Whole Foods just to stock up. Now, though, I find it just about everywhere, even in the train station, convenience stores and some of my favorite restaurants—like this fantastic new one just a block from our office, the delicious Barbuzzo.

My co-workers are so used to seeing me carrying an Honest Tea into meetings, I think they’d fall over if they ever saw me with another brand or (gasp) a soda. I was at an industry conference the other day, and the woman next to me spotted my Honest Tea and asked, “I’ve seen those Honest Teas around. Do you like it?”

Hmm, I thought. Do I give her the five minute answer or the three hour presentation? Or should I just show her the Honest Tea tattoo that covers my back?

I sometimes think that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, all the execs at Honest Tea would be looking at reports, scratching their heads and muttering, “What on earth happened to our sales in the Philadelphia area?”

Honest Tea regularly introduces new flavors (what do you mean you don’t get their e-newsletter, follow them on Facebook and Twitter, and pop on their website once a week just to check in?) but as a loyal dog I find myself mostly sticking to my two favorites: Honey Green and Moroccan Mint. However, I often enjoy an Honest Tea at the end of a hard day, so I opt with a delicious new one with no caffeine: Heavenly Lemon Tulsi.

As with any marriage though, there have been some rough patches. I was truly concerned to learn in March that Coca-Cola had completed its acquisition of Honest Tea. Oh no, I thought, will this mean it will no longer be organic, they’ll start using high-fructose corn syrup or lose its quirky image that so endeared me in the first place?

For now though, I’m not worried. Honest Tea had been using Coca-Cola as a distributor since 2008 (the real reason it’s been easier to find), and I was proud of the fight they put up over the HFC debate with Coke. I realize some of you may be less passionate about iced tea than I (perhaps “sane” is a better word), so let me give you the highlights of the fight.

· Coke becomes Honest Tea’s biggest investor.
· Coke executives “ask” Honest Tea to remove the words “no high-fructose corn syrup” from its juice pouches because they think it’s a slam on the many Coke products that contain HFC (which, of course, it is). “We got a strong request to change the wording,” said Seth Goldman. Yikes. I wonder what that “strong request” was like.
· Instead of cowering, Honest Tea decides to stand its ground. I like to imagine someone stood up in a meeting and shouted “We will not bend to corporate greed or penny-pinching optimizing! We have to think about Tony!”
· Goldman smartly avoids getting in a debate with Coke over whether high-fructose corn syrup is basically the same as sugar (it’s not) and instead argues that “the (no HFC) notification was a key signal to buyers that there were no hidden ingredients in the drink, an important issue given the growing chorus questioning whether high-fructose corn syrup contributed to the risk of obesity in adults and children.”
· In the end, Coke relents. A smart business move because it allows Honest Tea to stay true to its brand and culture, two things that have made it so successful and attracted a loyal following from people like myself.

So that’s the Honest Tea news. I promise to try to blog more frequently on all things iced tea. Don’t forget you can find Honest Tea all around the Philly area now, so be sure to stop into your local store and try one. Or, if you see me out and about, just ask. I probably have one in my briefcase.

Last week I received an email from The New York Times announcing digital subscriptions (some call it a “paywall”) effective March 28th. Some content will remain free, and there are several “rules” and different levels of digital subscriptions to be purchased (in fact, early complaints seemed to be centered more on the complexity and machinations of the digital subscriptions than the fee vs. free debate). The quick cheat sheet is that current NY Times print subscribers will get digital access for free, and the cost for full access for non-subscribers will be $8.75 per week.

Information about the nuts and bolts of this plan can be found on this FAQ page. The stakes are really high on this one, and you can bet media outlets across the country are watching to see if the idea of digital subscriptions latches on this time.

Over 1 1/2 years ago I wrote a blog post about paying for content, and my opinion really hasn’t changed: I believe newspapers should be charging for content. The information delivered by newspapers, be it political, local, opinion, sports reporting, movie reviews, etc. has true value—and I know this because for over 200 years most people have willingly paid for that value.

The challenge now (and a problem that the newspapers created themselves) is how can you “re-convince” people that something they’ve been getting free for a decade should now be paid for?

At the Nieman Journalism Lab (part of Harvard University), they gathered some experts to give their thoughts on the paywall, and whether it will succeed or not. Their responses are passionate, varied and worth hearing. Check it out here.

In my opinion, newspapers provide a vital service to our society, and if their survival depends on a model where they’re fairly compensated for their work, that’s a win-win for all of us.

In 1985, Don DeLillo’s award-winning and influential novel White Noise was published. The novel was one of the first to discuss “Information Sickness” and what happens to us when we’re constantly exposed to the fire hose of information and noise that bombards us every day. While the release of White Noise predates the Internet, the 25-year-old novel seems more prophetic and relevant than ever.

The problem with Information Sickness is that many of us feel helpless, or even compelled, to keep consuming more and more information. How many times have you told yourself that you’re not going to check your email again tonight–or that you’re only going to check your Facebook or Twitter account twice a day? What if your iPhone stopped working for 48 hours? What would those 2 days be like for you?

Yes, there are even “forced sanctuaries” popping up around the country where, for a nice fee, they dump you in a cabin in the woods with no electronic access to the outside world. Sound like a nice respite…or hell on earth?

To my way of thinking, there is no denying that the Internet, Smart Phones and Social Media are permanently changing our brains (read more in my blog Is the Internet Making Us Stupid). But here’s the real question: Is that a bad thing? Is this just our brain’s way of adjusting to a new method of processing information–like we had to with radio and television? Or (cue scary music) are we approaching a scenario where we’re “addicted” to information, even if this endless consumption of information comes at the expense of our lucidity and serenity?

What do you think? How are you feeling?

By now, you’ve probably heard about The New York Times article, “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” and the trouble JC Penney found itself in for using “black hat” methods to raise their profile in searches. Basically, black hat searches are “dark art” methods of improving an organization’s natural search rankings—in JC Penney’s case, by inserting thousands of unrelated web sites in the retail industry that linked to JCPenney.com. While these black hat searches or “link schemes” are not illegal, those that don’t play by Google’s rules for SEO risk their wrath. In fact, in 2006 BMW was caught using black hat searches and was actually removed from search results by Google.

For me, the article raised a lot of questions still yet to be answered:

• JC Penney is a huge retailer and was rather blatant in its black hat attempts (the article discusses how often Penney’s came up #1 in search results for several unrelated items like bedding, dresses, area rugs, etc). Does this mean that lower profile organizations (imagine an industrial parts supplier or catering firm) are doing the same thing, but under Google’s radar?

• If JC Penney had been more subtle, would it have gone unnoticed even longer? The black hat searches happened over the holiday season and the results are undeniable—even JC Penney was bragging about their sales: “Internet sales through jcp.com posted strong growth in December, with significant increases in traffic and orders for the key holiday shopping periods.”

• Obviously, millions of dollars in revenue are at stake. One person was quoted as saying “SEO is a game, and if you’re not paying black hats, you are losing to rivals with fewer compunctions.” What percentage of companies are using unfair search methods and getting away with it?

• SEO is a highly complicated, specialized industry and many large companies farm out their SEO to specialty firms. Where does the liability lie when a consulting firm is caught using black hat methods?

• What should the penalty be for firms caught breaking the rules? Google says they “take corrective action” sometimes even manually dropping companies in searches–but in the case of Penney, the damage was done. What is a fair punishment, especially considering the lost revenue of competitors who would have come up higher in searches?

• There are 200 million domain names out there and only 24,000 employees at Google. How reasonable is it to expect them to be able to monitor black hat search techniques?

• In the SEO world, Google is close to an industry monopoly and the authority on what is defined as a black hat search, as well as the repercussions. Is that too much power for one company? Who’s watching Google watching other companies? Is there a conflict of interest if one of the firms engaged in a “gray” SEO method is also a huge advertiser on Google?

Perhaps the JC Penney case will force Google to be more open about its policies toward black hat searches, maybe even clearly defining the rules as well as penalties for those that do not wear the “white hat.”

An Exclusive Alstin Interview with CEO Roberto Angulo of AfterCollege, Inc.

Just recently I learned of an exciting and important new tool for employers looking to get a “state of the union” on how they are perceived by both recent and college graduates. That tool is the Employer Popularity Index, created by our friends at AfterCollege, Inc. Roberto Angulo, CEO of AfterCollege, sat down with us to talk about the index and how it can be used by employers.

Tony Rosato: Thanks as always for joining us, Roberto. What was the motivation to create the EPI (Employer Popularity Index)?

Roberto Angulo: The initial goal of the Employer Popularity Index (“EPI”) was to let users request opportunities from the companies they wanted to work for. The task to AfterCollege was to go get those opportunities and make them available to our users.

The Employer Popularity Index was born out of the data we collect. It represents an unfiltered view of which companies college students want to get opportunities from and where they want to work. The companies represented by the EPI are not necessarily customers of AfterCollege, nor do they necessarily advertise with us. It is our job to go get their opportunities and make them available to our users. The great thing about the EPI is that we let students enter their preferences and we don’t make them choose from a pre-defined list. The feedback comes directly from their heads and into the EPI. As a result, the EPI is evolving into an analytics tool that helps employers measure their brand on campuses in real time, helping them develop their college recruiting strategies.

Tony Rosato: Can you give us a brief synopsis of how the Index is calculated?

Roberto Angulo: The data for the EPI is automatically tallied whenever a college student registers on AfterCollege.com or on one of the 16,000 academic departments and student groups where we power career networks. Students can either follow employers that are advertising jobs on AfterCollege or they can enter any company they want to work for, regardless of whether these employers use AfterCollege or not. Because we know the school, major, degree, academic program and other data points for our users, we can give employers a good breakdown of what types of students want to work for them. The EPI has received close to 30,000 requests in the first 45 days since we launched it.

Tony Rosato: Who are some of the most highly rated employers, according to your index?

Roberto Angulo: Employers can go to http://www.aftercollege.com/popularity to see the top 500 requested employers. We’ve added views so you can see the top employers by industry, including engineering, nursing, allied health, business, and finance. Among engineering students for example, Intel, GE, Google and Boeing are among the top requested employers. With nursing students, Kaiser, CHW, Cedars-Sinai and Sutter Health are among the most popular. Employers can click on a particular campus and also see what organizations are popular on a per school basis. This is drill down capability is useful because each company has a different list of target schools from which they typically recruit.

Tony Rosato: What if an organization doesn’t find themselves on your index? How can they get listed?

Roberto Angulo: The index currently shows the top 500 requested employers. In the coming months, as the tool comes out of beta and more users continue to add companies, it’s more likely that employers will find themselves on the index. Even then though, not all employers should expect to appear on the main index, since not all of them will experience the “Google effect” as we call it. Large multi-disciplinary companies will dominate the main index because they have the omnipresence and brand investment where they become household names.

However, employers can drill down to a particular university and see the top-ranked employers at that school. They may find themselves there. Each school has its own unique set of top employers.

Employers should focus their efforts to specific disciplines and campuses and over time, they should start seeing themselves on the index, at least on the school specific ones.

Tony Rosato: What would you recommend if an organization finds they are not scoring very high on the index?

Roberto Angulo: The best way for an employer to score higher on the index is to make sure they maintain a consistent brand on campus, whether it’s through on-campus visits, online advertising, or both. This is also regardless of whether this is done through AfterCollege or through other media, although we always want employers to use AfterCollege for their on-campus efforts. This is our specialty and we do a great job at it.

Tony Rosato: What are your long terms hopes for how the EPI will be used? How do you see it evolving?

Roberto Angulo: Our goal is to offer a transparent view into where college students want to work. This helps us better serve our users, it helps schools better gauge student demand, and it allows employers to be more strategic in their college recruiting and branding initiatives. Over time, we will be adding more views into the data and we may find uses for it that we haven’t even though about. For example, we intend to roll out more drill-down capabilities, so employers that are popular at local schools can see rankings on a regional basis. We continue to receive feedback from students, schools and employers, and our hope is to make this as useful of a service as possible.

Tony Rosato: Thank you Roberto! For more information on the Employer Popularity Index, click here.

There was a great article in last week’s New Yorker by Adam Gopnik titled “The Information: How the Internet Gets Inside Us.” His essay discusses the big-picture effect of the Internet on our lives, as well as analyzing the conventional wisdom about its benefits and drawbacks. Gopnik says most of us fall somewhere into 1 of 3 categories:

1. “Never-Betters”
These people believe that we’re entering a near-utopia, and all it’s because of the Internet. They will cite how it’s made our world smaller, connecting people in ways never before possible, literally saved lives and its “democratization” of information.

2. “Better-Nevers”
This group believes we would be much better off if the Internet never existed, and that much of the ills and alienation we experience today is the Internet’s fault. These people not only mourn the decline of books and magazines, but state that the Internet is changing our brains, lessening our attention spans and (ironically) disconnecting us from one another.

3. “Ever-Wasers”
These people say that well, that we’re always saying this. Because we can’t step outside our current experience, whatever “age” we’re going through is (obviously) our most modern age, and brings with it new technology that is exciting to some and disturbing to others. This group claims that the Never-Betters and Better-Nevers said the same things about the invention of the printing press, then the radio, then the automobile, then television and now the Internet. In fact, fifty years from now we’ll look back at the Internet Age with nostalgia as a simpler time before the next technological advancement was invented and rescued/ruined everything.

Of course, in many ways all three are both completely right and laughably wrong. For example, in the case of the Never-Betters, think of the hypocrisy in the abundance of books being written about how the book is a dead medium. Gopnik uses the example of the toaster:

When the electric toaster was invented, there were, no doubt, books that said that the toaster would open up horizons for breakfast undreamed of in the days of burning bread over an open flame; books that told you that the toaster would bring an end to the days of creative breakfast, since our children, growing up with uniformly sliced bread, made to fit a single opening, would never know what a loaf of their own was like; and books that told you that sometimes the toaster would make breakfast better and sometimes it would make breakfast worse, and that the cost for finding this out would be the price of the book you’d just bought.

Here’s my question to our readers: even though there’s some truth in all three factions, do you find yourself more strongly linked with one group? Or is Gopnik right when he says:

Thoughts are bigger than the things that deliver them. Our contraptions may shape our consciousness, but it is our consciousness that makes our credos, and we mostly live by those. Toast, as every breakfaster knows, isn’t really about the quality of the bread or how it’s sliced or even the toaster. For man cannot live by toast alone. It’s all about the butter.

Sunday’s Super Bowl provided not just a thrilling game, but a huge spotlight for advertisers looking to launch new campaigns and get their products noticed. What’s so special about Super Bowl ads (besides the hefty price tag: estimates this year were at $3 million for a 30 second spot) is that today’s TV viewership is incredibly fragmented, and the Super Bowl still allows a rare opportunity to have your message seen by the majority of the country.

For better or worse, here’s what I thought were the 5 most talked-about commercials. What were your favorites?

1. Volkswagen “The Force” Ad

2. Bridgestone Tires “Reply All”

3. Doritos “Finger Lick”

4. Pepsi MAX “Love Hurts”

5. Best Buy “Ozzie vs. Bieber”

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
- Charles Darwin

When Darwin said the words above, he probably wasn’t talking specifically about the workplace in 2011, but he might as well have been. It’s hard to think of another time in the last century when workers were impacted by so much change. First of course, there was the economic meltdown, which reshaped our job market and the work expected by employers in unprecedented ways. But, perhaps more importantly, there have been the game-changing technology advances (especially in communications) that’s revolutionized the way we work.
What does this mean for the average worker? I think it means that the old cliché “The only constant is change,” will be the new mantra, and it’s important that you don’t get left behind.

Of course, I’m not advocating that you immediately reject everything you’re doing now and blindly jump on the next industry trend or buzzword. I do believe however, that a new mindset is required, and that you ignore new trends and technological developments at your own risk. For example, there’s a big difference between a ). learning about Foursquare, how it’s being used by companies and individuals, and deciding it’s not for you and b.) dismissing it as a waste of time when you really know nothing about it. And trust me, your employer will know the difference.

An obvious benefit to being enthusiastic and adaptable to change is that you make yourself so much more valuable as an employee—and I believe the longer tenured you are at your job, the more important this becomes–no one likes the miserable crank who still wants to work exactly the same way he did 15 years ago and dismisses all new technologies as hogwash.

Here’s how to start:

• Change your attitude. Try to make a point of being curious and open to new ways of doing things. Don’t criticize or judge a new technology until you really understand it. You may find something important that you can apply to your job and share with you co-workers, or make an informed recommendation to your boss.
• Read up on industry articles. No matter what field you work in, there is a website, blog and forum out there where people showcase and discuss hot topics and new developments.
• Attend webinars and seminars. Often just a half hour presentation on a topic by an expert will give you a great base of knowledge you can build from.
• Don’t get too comfortable. Technologies are always evolving. A new tool that may have seemed too unwieldy or unproductive when it was launched a year ago may have made major modifications and had all the bugs worked out.

Sure, it’s tough. We all have so much to do and so little time to get it done, and learning new things brings us outside of our comfort zone. But in today’s fast moving and quick change economy, it’s essential for success.

Our COO, Mike Tedesco passed this around the office last week, and I had to share it with our blog readers. Of course, I love the parody and satire of the advertising industry, but (in a crazy way) I think also it speaks pretty well about the research, strategy and planning that goes into an ad campaign.

This blog will mark the third time (read Part I and Part II here) I’ve written about my experience on Twitter. As I’ve said before, I am the person who most often tweets for Alstin, but I am by no means a Twitter guru. Actually, I enjoy the viewpoint of being one of the  “Joe Twitterers” out there; a business professional trying to get as much out of it as possible without making too many mistakes–or losing his mind. 

I really hate repeating information from previous blogs, but I believe there’s one huge mistake people and organizations still make when they first come to Twitter, so here’s my message: TWITTER IS A TOOL. A tool with great possibilities, but still a tool. It’s not a marketing function, it’s not a recruiting process, and it’s not a social media plan; it’s a tool. Anyone who thinks setting up a Twitter account is going to fix a broken marketing or HR strategy, or somehow make your outdated brand seem cool to a new generation of candidates is in for a big disappointment.

 Here’s what I’ve seen recently:

 What’s good:

• As Twitter has aged, a lot of the people who initially jumped on the bandwagon or set up an account so they could tweet the minutiae of their lives have (mercifully) gone away. I was happy to see this “shaking of the tree,” and in the last six months I’ve noticed a higher percentage of people using Twitter to share relevant content and make real connections.
• A whole slate of new tools and updates are coming out all the time to make the Twitter experience better, as well as make it easier to find people, share information, follow topics and more.
• Whatever your field, if you spend some time following the right people, you’ll get directed to some great resources you probably wouldn’t have found elsewhere.
• Still a fan of TweetDeck? I know I am. The scanning of its multiple columns now seems like part of my DNA.
• It sounds like a cliché, but the more you use Twitter, the more you get out of it. I recommend periodically reviewing who you’re following, dumping the ones who send out poor content and giving props to those that do.
• While most statistics show Twitter use falling, those that are tweeting are doing so more often—and I think more appropriately.

What’s not so good:

• Is it just me or does it sometimes feel as though Twitter is becoming a bit stale? There are always more great people to follow, old contacts to find, topics to search, etc., but I sometimes wonder if we’re hitting a wall in regards to Twitter’s usefulness and productivity.
• Not to contradict an earlier bullet but, while it’s definitely better, I think there are times when the overall content tweeted out…well, stinks. There are still too many people or organizations who feel they need to tweet 10 times a day even if they don’t have much to say. Again, maybe it’s just me, but even with the topic sorting tools, I feel like much of the time when I check Twitter I’m looking at mostly noise (okay, maybe I’m just a miserable curmudgeon, as I often feel the same when I check Facebook, and that’s my family and friends).
• Recruiters? Human Resources people? Hello? Anyone home? I wish I could say it’s changed from the last time I wrote about Twitter but it hasn’t: excepting some great organizations, Twitter still is not being used regularly as a recruiting tool. Personally, I don’t think it’s because it can’t be, but because other forms of social media like Facebook and LinkedIn are inherently better suited for recruiting.
• Why can’t we be friends? In my little world of recruiting and advertising, I would say less than 10% of the people I know are on Twitter–and of course those are the people I really want to follow and hear from.

To be honest, I blame myself for some of my problems with Twitter. The truth is that with any new tool, you must constantly be adapting and learning new ways to get more out of it—and I’ve made that one of my goals in 2011—so stay tuned for more info.

Oh, and one more thing: FOLLOW ALSTIN ON TWITTER!  

As a lover of newspapers, I guess I’m a bit of an old timer. I still believe these reports proclaiming the death of all media that existed before 1990 is a bit rash. Still, I love the tongue-in-cheek seriousness and mock hysteria of this video. There are some hard truths here for people in the ad industry who have been unwilling or unable to adapt and stay on top of the revolutionary changes in communications. How has new media changed your business?

Around the office, we always have a laugh poking fun at clichéd corporate-speak. Utter the phrases “new paradigm,” “think outside the box,” “value added” or “synergy” around here and you’ll get either a rolling of the eyes or a stapler thrown at you.

I don’t know if “Blue Ocean Strategy” is really going to catch on in the corporate world or if it will just become one of those overused phrases that people say glibly in sales pitches and seminars, but at the risk of office supplies being hurled at me, I do think the concept makes a lot of sense and has great possibilities, especially in recruiting.

The concept of Blue Ocean Strategy (or BOS) was developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, and is a result of a decade-long study spanning more than 30 industries over 100 years (1880-2000). Here’s the idea: most organizations battle competitors in a bloody “Red Ocean.” In that Red Ocean, we occupy the same space and vigorously compete on things like price, service, image—all while trying to differentiate ourselves from our competitors—when it reality we’re very similar (think of McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s).

What Kim and Mauborge claim is that the way to succeed is not through the wasteful, exhausting fighting of our competitors but by “creating Blue Oceans of uncontested market space ripe for growth. Such strategic moves—termed “value innovation”—create powerful leaps in value for both the firm and its buyers, rendering rivals obsolete and unleashing new demand.”

The headline on their website is, “Don’t compete with rivals, make them irrelevant.”  Apple and Google would be obvious examples of BOS organizations, and this graphic does a good job of showing the difference between Red Oceans and Blue Oceans:

Does this have implications for recruiting? Absolutely. I encourage you to read Jason Warner’s ERE article on ways HR Departments can make 2011 the year of Blue Ocean recruiting. One of the things Jason recommends is something Alstin has been helping clients with for decades: finding and attracting candidates using nontraditional methods. To quote his example:

XOX Software is competing for software developers, just like every other technology company. Traditional strategy would suggest that it go head to head with Google and Amazon and Microsoft and all of the others, posting jobs on Dice.com and showing Facebook ads to people who work at those places, trying to entice them away. In other words, traditional recruitment competes in the same spaces for the same talent, applying traditional recruitment practices but trying to do them faster, more effectively, more broadly in order to get the talent that it needs.

Obviously, that’s the Red Ocean strategy. The Blue Ocean way would be to generate and reach those candidates in a nontraditional way. But BOS goes further than that. It demands that you look at all the parts of your recruiting system (while recognizing that they are probably very similar to your competitors), and analyze the benefits and costs of each. In this case, XOX Software realized that one that area that needed to be improved well beyond the industry standard was recruitment cycle time. Once achieved, XOX found it wasn’t even competing anymore because it was closing on the candidates it wanted before the competition could even decide they wanted to pursue the candidate.

Again, I imagine some people will start throwing the term Blue Ocean Strategy about as corporate-speak, but I think there’s lots of benefits, and I recommend visiting the Blue Ocean Strategy website and learning more.

I’d love to hear from anyone else who is trying BOS at their organization who wants to share their story.

In Part I of my blog on my Favorite Fiction from 2010 I talked about some great works by Richard Bausch, Joshua Ferris and Jonathan Franzen. Let’s get right to Part II of my list of the year’s best in fiction.

A Gate at the Stairs
Lorrie Moore
It feels odd to recommend a novel when you’re a big fan of the writer (and the writing is excellent), but you don’t think the latest effort is the author’s best work. It happened last year for me with Richard Russo’s That Old Cape Magic, and I find myself in the same situation with A Gate at the Stairs. I love Birds of America, Lorrie’s Moore collection of short stories (which includes the widely anthologized and unforgettable “People Like That Are the Only People Here”) and you frequently find her fiction in The New Yorker. In A Gate at the Stairs, we meet Tassie Keltjin, a Midwest college student looking for baby-sitting work—on the surface this seems like a simple coming-of-age story, but stay with it and see how quickly things get complicated. Great characters and a lot of wisdom in this very funny, very sad novel.

Willing
Scott Spencer
Most people know of just one Scott Spencer novel: Endless Love—yes, that Endless Love, the one they made into the terrible movie with Brooke Shields—but did you know the book got great reviews? No less than the great Joyce Carol Oates said, “No description of Endless Love can do justice to the rich, startling and always intelligent tenor of [Spencer's] prose.”  In Willing, Avery Jankowsky is a struggling freelance writer (are there any other kind?) whose life is, well, a mess.  Coming to the rescue is Uncle Ezra and his offer to get Avery on a high-priced, worldwide sex tour of Nordic countries. This novel is certainly not for everyone, and reviews were mixed, but I really enjoyed it, especially when everything begins going horribly, comically wrong on the tour. It’s also a satire on masculinity, the Internet and what happens when we get what (we think) we wish for.

Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Stories
Amy Bloom
Like Richard Bausch, Amy Bloom is a writer more famous for her short stories (although her last novel, Away was a national best seller) than her novels. The title here is very appropriate because the stories in this collection are all about love: physical love, broken love, unrequited love, enduring love, complicated love. The characters in Where the God of Love Hangs Out are all believable and memorable (especially the two sets of couples in the beginning stories) and the writing is fantastic.

An Object of Beauty
Steve Martin
Man, is there nothing Steve Martin can’t do? Stand-up comic, actor, screenwriter, magician, playwright, virtuoso banjo player, essayist–and novelist. This is Martin’s third novel (the others were the widely praised Shopgirl and one that I really loved, The Pleasure of My Company). In An Object of Beauty , Lacey Yeager is a beautiful, hyper-ambitious dealer set to make her name in the high-end art world of New York City (Martin is also a knowledgeable and avid art collector). Not as comic as you might expect, but great writing and, for those art philistines like myself, a mini-lesson in some of art’s masterpieces and insight into the world of art dealing and collecting.

P.S. Who says the world of literature can’t have juicy drama? Click here to read about last week’s big to-do when Steve Martin visited the 92 Street Y and the audience got mad that he wasn’t the “wild and crazy” guy, but instead spoke about art and his novel.

Noah’s Compass
Anne Tyler
Those familiar with Anne Tyler (The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons) knows she writes about the everyday in a simple, elegant way. In Noah’s Compass, Liam Pennywell is a sixty-year-old, humdrum fellow who has just been laid off from his teaching job. One night he’s attacked in his apartment and loses all memory of what happened. When he begins searching for answers about what occurred during that missing time, he’s also confronted with the history of his disappointing life. Anne Tyler is so easy to read and (like all of her work) Noah’s Compass is a winning mix of comedy and sadness.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet
David Mitchell
I’ve been fortunate enough to read all of Mitchell’s other novels (Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green are especially great), and it’s hard for me to recall another writer with such amazing range—he really creates a totally different novel each time out. The Thousand Autumns is one my favorites, and one of this year’s best. I do the novel a disservice by trying to fit it in a category, but I would say this is like a top-notch, literary, historical adventure (so unlike two of his previous novels, Number9Dream and Ghostwritten which were more surreal and experimental). Jacob DeZoet is a clerk in Japan working for the Dutch East Indies Company around 1800. His hope is to make his fortune and be worthy to win his beloved Anna back home, but the culture and people of Nagasaki, as well as the beautiful, damaged Orito Aibagawa, change everything for him. My only complaint is that Jacob is such an interesting character, yet we leave him for long stretches of time. Still, it’s a really great novel and I highly recommend it.

Please help add to this list. I’d love to hear what novels made your list in 2010!

As we wind down 2010, this December we’re all taking a look back at some of our favorite blogs. In case you missed it the first go-around, here’s Tony Rosato’s favorite – enjoy!

 My favorite blog post this year was “Is The Internet Making Us Stupid?”  because it’s something I still think about all the time.  We now live and work in a world where we’re constantly being interrupted and bombarded by info, and the click-happy, hyper-distracted way we use the Internet definitely seems to have an effect on our ability to concentrate and think more deeply.

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 some of you may remember from last year’s blog post, I am a huge fan of great fiction. This year, I read so many novels worth talking about that I’m going to need two blog posts to fit them all in!

As always, there were so many I just couldn’t get to. Sincere apologies to John Casey, Jennifer Egan, Justin Cronin, Elizabeth Kostova, Gary Shtenygart, Kathryn Stockett and others. Also, it’s worth mentioning (as I did last year) that I don’t aim to be viewed as some wanna-be literary critic; I judge novels not by deep themes, pretty prose, socio-economic impact or any other lofty criteria, but by how well the author tells a good story. I hope you’ll look at this list and find some great reads to get you through the winter doldrums. Here’s Part I of my favorites from 2010:

Something Is Out There
Richard Bausch
Unfortunately for most people, Richard Bausch is one of those “Best Writers You Never Heard Of.” He’s been referred to as the “Master of the Mundane,” and the title is intended as high praise. He’s written several novels (all the ones I’ve read were great), but he’s really recognized for being one of the best short story writers of our generation, and Something Is Out There is a great collection. Bausch’s characters are real people with real problems, and he pulls out what is funny, tragic, and moving in our ordinary lives. Lots of great stories here, and I highly recommend his previous collection, The Stories of Richard Bausch, one of my all-time favorites and a great, big collection of his gems.

The Girl Who Played With Fire and
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest
Stieg Larsson
I know people are getting tired of hearing about the late Larsson’s widely popular trilogy, but I have to include the last two novels here. The final installment (Hornet’s Nest) is a great, sprawling novel with big themes (like the deep corruption in governments and judicial systems—issues that Larsson himself took on in real life), and while it’s always fun to spend some time with the unforgettable anti-heroine Lisbeth Salander, it was the second novel (Fire) that I really loved. The Girl Who Played With Fire is just flat-out great storytelling. By far the quickest-paced and most gripping of the trilogy, this was one of those novels that I couldn’t wait to get home to read.  I don’t normally read mystery novels, but from my limited experience, The Girl Who Played With Fire was one of the best I’ve come across.

Again to Carthage
John Parker
A sequel to his 1978 cult classic Once A Runner (considered the best book ever written about running) Again to Carthage picks up the story of Quenton Cassidy, now ten years older and training to be just the fourth man in history to run under a 4-minute mile AND a sub 2:10 marathon–and also shooting for a spot on the 1980 Olympic team. I’m not sure this falls in the great novel category for me but, like the original, the descriptions of the training, ups and downs, and agony in the life of a competitive runner are unmatched. Both novels would be a great holiday gift for someone looking for serious inspiration to run.

So Much For That
Lionel Shriver
Shep Knacker’s big dream is to ditch the rat race and move to the tiny island of Pemba, where he can live cheaply and simply. Just as he finally saves enough and makes the decision to start a new life, his wife announces she has a rare type of cancer and needs him–and his money and health insurance. Wealth, illness and our current health care mess all serve as characters in this novel, but it’s the people Shriver saves her critical, unsparing eye for. Read So Much For That, and you’ll almost certainly recognize some of the characters as people you know in your real life–and Shriver really digs in, exposing their hypocrisy, selfishness and poor intentions. Great writing to be sure, although I found a very cynical bite to this novel, or at the very least, a general lack of faith in people. See what you think.

Peter Pouncey
Rules for Old Men Waiting
This is one of those slim, unassuming novels that so often get overlooked. Robert MacIver is in his eighties, alone, in poor health and grieving his wife’s recent death. Stuck in an old house in the middle of winter, he makes a pact on how he will live out the rest of his life. One of his rules is to work every day, so he begins the story of a unit in World War II, drawing from the interviews he had compiled decades ago. A short story set in a novel, but more importantly moving, lyrical and elegant, this is a great choice if you’re looking for a little book with a big impact.

The Unnamed
Joshua Ferris
For those who read his amazing debut novel, the hilarious (and when it comes to the recession, uncomfortably accurate) And Then We Came To The End, The Unnamed will be a real surprise. This dark novel is so different from his debut, and I was impressed with Ferris’s amazing storytelling range.  The novel focuses on Tim Farmsworth, who has a crippling compulsion: at random times and with no warning, he has to walk for hours and hours until he collapses in exhaustion. His family has survived two series of his strange illness before, but this time things begin to really unravel. What’s great about The Unnamed is that despite its strange premise, you find it easy to relate to Tim and his wife, and have real empathy for their bizarre situation.

Freedom
Jonathan Franzen
Imagine a novelist in 2010 being thought of as newsworthy enough to be on the cover of Time. A new novel from Franzen often brings up platitudes of praise, sniping, hyperbole, resurfacing of old battles and lots of debate—and I for one am happy that novels can still do that! So is this the great American masterpiece that serves as both a reflection and critique of modern society? Actually, I think it comes pretty close. As with The Corrections, the characters here seem like real people, and I think this big, sweeping novel has a lot to say about the way we live today. I know people will quarrel over whether this book is under- or overrated, but I think there’s no question that this is a great novel worth reading.

I’ll be back soon with Part II of my list. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from our readers on some of their favorite novels from 2010!

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, I just wanted to take a moment to thank all our blog readers for your support and great comments. We’re always thankful to have such an engaged, curious and supportive audience that checks in to read the A-Team.

Here’s an early treat for our readers: you all know how much I love old TV commercials, and I’m sure you’re deep into planning your Thanksgiving meal. In the spirit of giving, I thought I’d share with you a sure-fire way to make a delicious turkey. Some of you may be wondering: How can I make my Thanksgiving meal even more unhealthy? The answer, my friends is Butter! Butter! Butter!

Last week, I read a very interesting article on ere.net titled “What’s important to employees around the world”

I strongly encourage you to read the whole article, but here’s just a glimpse at some of the things they found:

• In the U.S. and the UK, a competitive salary is the most sought-after quality in a job.
• Germans list “challenging work” as most important to them in a job.
• Career advancement is the top goal of job-seekers in Brazil, India, and China.
• A convenient work location is a big lure in Germany and the UK; less so in the U.S. and UK.
• “The appetite for career growth in Panama is unbelievable. Companies are more interested in a company than expertise in a field; someone might move from human resources to a very different department rather than move from one HR job to another.”
• In Mexico, “security concerns make it more difficult to find information about people. Also, Mexico City has a formal culture where people are often much more dressed up than an American tourist might think…trust builds a little more slowly than perhaps in the U.S., took more nurturing.”
• In India, it’s all about the brand, “It’s a lot harder to get quality people if you’re not a big-company, whether a big Western name or a big Indian multinational like Infosys. If you lack a big brand, he says, “you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back.”

I find the differences across cultures and countries especially interesting because Alstin Communications is part of an alliance called EMPACTworld, a global network of independent advertising agencies specializing in recruitment advertising, employer branding and HR communications.

I’ve been fortunate enough to attend several of these meetings over the years and it’s truly amazing to observe how different our recruiting methods and communications can be. I remember about 7 years ago–this was when Monster and CareerBuilder were at their peak—learning just how little impact job boards had made in some European countries. I remember one of our members (I believe it was Belgium) brought in the jobs section from his country’s newspaper and it was close to fifty pages of full color, creative image ads.

I also remember how far behind we were (and still are) with using mobile technology for recruiting, as many of our global members were putting recruitment ads on SIM cards and sending candidates recruitment messages via mobile.

There is an obvious lesson in the article for those that recruit globally–what works splendidly in one country may be a disaster in another. However, even if you only recruit in the U.S., I think it’s wise to look at recruiting methods in other countries for ideas, trends and best practices, and try to incorporate some of those ideas into your organization.

A good TV commercial is really hard to pull off. You’re trying to influence an ad-saturated, savvy audience that knows they’re being manipulated, and good ideas on paper don’t always translate to a successful final product. Still, there are some that should never, ever have seen the light of day.

1. Using Nazis to Sell Jello

This one features the cast of Hogan’s Heroes. Hmm…a commercial with World War II POWs,  Nazis and Broadway star Carol Channing. What could go wrong?

2. Leather Warehouse

You might have to watch this commercial in small batches, as its coolness may be too much to take in one sitting. I’d love to have been in the room for this pitch: So this woman is walking into all these rooms, and all these different hipsters turn to face her, and they’re all decked out in the coolest leather. Oh yeah, but there’s one guy? He’s not in leather, and he actually seems sort of normal and he’s by far the least frightening? He’ll be our villain!

3. Right Price Furniture – Come Get Some!

Umm..No thanks.

4. Avis

This one actually makes me angry, though I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because this is a well-known company, and I’m sure they had a nice marketing budget and used an agency with a lot of smart people. Not sure how this one slipped through the cracks.

5. Claycomb, CPA

In case you get confused by the world class special effects, this is not a new George Lucas movie or deleted scene from Avatar. Beware of the Tax Monster!

6. Hobby Masters- My Personal Favorite!

Your life is now divided into two parts: before you saw this commercial, and this moment. One of the great questions of our time is why the director had the actors wobbling back and forth while they talked. Arlene and Charlie, please don’t ever change.

Be sure to come back to this blog regularly to see future installments of Old Commercials to Make You Smile…and Cringe!