Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

Posts Tagged ‘Google’

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.

I rather like this paragraph:

Type in the word ‘motivation’ and Google returns over 87 million references, a large proportion of which turn out to be from the usual suspects – self-styled motivational gurus, peddlers of the latest quick fix and similar snake-oil salesmen – all intent on earning their over-inflated consultancy fees.

It comes from an interesting article about motivation on modernselling.com.

The good news is the Google page count for the word ‘motivation’ is down to just 48,300,000 (today). But I don’t think the ‘snake-oil salesmen’ have all packed up and gone. In reality any business sector with lots of customers and high levels of spend always attracts it’s share of charlatans.

How do you ensure you only engage with good quality suppliers and partners?

I was rather enthused about Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. I Tweeted about this a few days ago saying, “Giving Bing www.bing.com a go. It’s good and localisation seems to work well. I also like the ‘format to phone’ feature; ace on Blackberry.”

Today I was further impressed by the following email that I received:

Hi Kevin,

I’m writing on behalf of Microsoft to invite you to a discussion about Bing, the new search engine that recently launched in beta in the UK.

The session will be a small round-table event to discuss Bing and since we saw your recent tweet regarding the use of Bing on a phone, we thought that you might be interested in coming along. The idea would be to get your initial thoughts and you’ll get an update on the future steps for Bing which are being developed specifically for the UK. During the session you’ll have the chance to talk with Microsoft representatives and other people from social media like yourself, who have expressed some early opinion.

This will take place in the next couple of weeks, so if you’re interested in coming along, or have any questions, just get in touch and I’ll send you some more details.

Thanks,

Colin Mercer

Excellent, cooking on gas, was my thoughts. I replied straight away and guess what? The email bounced with this message:  

Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender　

This is the mail system at host safetwo.sceur.ch.

I’m sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It’s attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster. If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.

Perhaps Bing will struggle against Google? Or perhaps this was a freak occurrence.

Apparently Colin works for 1000heads. He was representing Life Without Walls which is a Microsoft sponsored initiative run by 1000heads that organises events, social gatherings, trials and a host of other enlightening activities.

It appears that the Daily Telegraph shares my enthusiasm for the Google G1 phone.

Click here to go to my first post about this.

Google Phone

I’m rather excited by the pending arrival of the Google Phone, G1. But it will be a quandary for me.

Out of principal I would not buy an iPhone as I find their distribution approach offensive. I don’t want to move to O2 and I don’t want a new phone number. These are both things that were demanded at the UK launch of the iPhone.

This resulted in me finally abandoning Sony handsets (having worked for them in the 80s and 90s there was a bit of a loyalty) to get the functionality I wanted. I migrated to Blackberry Pearl 8100.

But the Google Phone is looking very exciting. That said, there are mixed views about the launch. Do I depart from Blackberry in favour of Google?

I rather like the new Google offices in Zurich:

I had to chuckle. I was looking for some information and I dived into Google. Double and triple loop learning was the subject I wanted to read about. The site I landed on was that of my sister, Amanda Harrington.

Mind you, she was always the clever one. Now with a BA, two Masters Degrees and well on her way to her PHD.

And as it happens the information was just the kind of brief summary I like. Thank you, Amanda. Here it is:

Single-loop learning: Feedback within surveys, quality control and performance management all tend to focus on specifics and on asking: “Are we doing things right?”

Double-loop learning: We help you design and use feedback in more challenging ways, questioning underlying assumptions, developing new skills and asking: “Are we doing the right things?”

Triple-loop learning: Working at a deeper level with both self-feedback, and informal and formal feedback from other sources, increases the ability to develop, individually and as an organisation. In this way, our clients learn how to use feedback processes more dynamically and to ask: “How can we make well-informed choices that are right for us?”