Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

I’ve yet to get all the details on this but I’ve just been told that employees at a certain recruitment agency are banned from using Facebook. Quite incredible.

We discovered this after we Googled a prospective candidate and found their LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. When discussing our observations the recruitment agency said they didn’t use Facebook to check candidates because they were banned/blocked from using the site.

What does this tell you of the agency? They don’t trust their own staff? They are giving less screening of candidates than most other agencies?

And while I’m at it…

Writing this blog post reminded me of the first email I received this morning. It was a spam email from Timothy James Consulting. How do I know it was spam…it was sent to an email address that hasn’t even been released yet inviting me to recruit someone with a skill set that is irrelevant for my team. I’d already told them to remove this address but it is clearly easier for them to carry on spamming me.

So watch out for emails from chris@timothyjamesconsulting.com or anyone else @timothyjamesconsulting.com. I’m not the only person that is not impressed with them, see this blog post.

How has B2B marketing changed in the last decade? Well in our business physical brochures are becoming less common, PDFs are prolific, websites are the order of the day and there are many other changes as well.

I was pleased to read a nice, succinct article at marketing.co.uk that talks a little more about these changes in B2B marketing.

One of the factors that is changing these days with regard to B2B marketing is the brochure culture. We often relied on brochures to introduce our business. However, it is changing dramatically, these days. Businesses are moving away from printed brochures. So if you are thinking of making thousands of copies of your brochure, hold on for a moment and look around to see what is happening in your industry. Most of the niches have moved on to using online versions of their brochures. You will look outdated if you are going to run around with your printed brochures or send them through the post. You will also be able to reduce your marketing expenses by uploading your brochures online. It is much faster and easier to distribute your brochure to your target audience. Moreover, you can save a lot of money. Today not many people ask for brochures, rather they ask for a website URL. It is also much easier for your customers to review your brochures online as they do not have to carry it along with them, they can access it anytime from anywhere. So why waste your money and efforts on brochures. By going online with your brochures, you can go green.

Click here to read the full article.

Resignations have increased in the year to February 2010, despite growing fears over job security. Data collected from 43,312 individuals in 197 organisations also reveals that earning power has dropped dramatically in the past year, with ‘take home pay’ heavily influenced by where people work and what they do.

“It is clearly time for business to grow up. We can no longer afford to reward people with pay rise after pay rise especially as all the evidence suggests that money isn’t the main motivator anymore. Instead, employers must concentrate on building remuneration packages that incorporate earnings with development opportunities, offer flexible approaches to work and recognition of the need to better engage with staff.”

Read the rest of this article at the Chartered Management Institute site.

Surely it is time to take a better look at how we engage staff and to start using incentives and recognition tools to our advantage?

Scary or what? That wonderful website Springwise (daily fixes of entrepreneurial ideas) reports the US business that provides you with a fake child.

Why? So that you can get the same perks as parents i.e having to leave work early on certain occasions. Neat idea but can it also, in the spirit of the fairness it seeks, deliver sleepless nights and the occasional stress of a real child? I doubt it. Read more at springwise.com

Sometimes I think plumbers get a raw PR deal. There are instances where they do a fabulous job, display a sense of humour and are great communicators. Here is the email dialogue between my wife and our plumber.

Mrs H:

One question…you know at the bottom of the vertical shower rail there is a hoopy thing through which the hose is fed…can we cut that off?! The trouble is, when I want to just wash my hair quickly I need to take the shower head down and do it leaning over the bath, but because of  that thing being there it restricts how low the hose can come and I sort of have to hold the thing way above my head…do you get my drift? It seems to me we could take it off as it serves little purpose… or does it?!

Plumber John:

It’s there to prevent the shower head from being able to get into the bath water which would cause a Fluid category 5 backflow contamination risk as defined in the The Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999.

In practical real-world [1] terms this means that if, say, Fireman Sam comes and sticks his pump on a hydrant in your street he might actually suck water back out of your house pipework and if you’ve dunked your shower head in the bath while he’s doing so that could suck bathwater back through the pipes, and since your botty is in the bath said water might include “faecal material or other human waste”. Then, having put out the fire, Sam disconnects his pump and Mrs Goggins [2] fills the kettle to make him a Nice Cup Of Tea, drawing in some of your Fluid Category 5 bathwater which is now in the public main.

OK, so how likely is that? But the water regs are framed from the point of view of “what would happen if…” not “how likely…” (and, to be fair, taken over the entire country and ongoing time, such situations are more probably likely to occur sooner or later).

Anyway you could unscrew the shower head, take the hose out of its hoopy plastic prison ring and screw it back up again and use it as you wish. Just don’t blame me if Thames Water’s goons come breaking down your doors in the middle of the night ;^)

[1] depending what world one is on
[2] sorry am I mixing up characters?

The 3 email challenge…I like this article, it suggests that most email exchanges last no more than 3 emails. I just went back through some emails and noticed the ones where I am waiting for number 2! Read the full article by clicking here.