In my work with people, leaving a good impression is more important than everything else. And confidence is an important part of leaving a good impression. I am a high-level recruiter, and people's trust is crucial for my success. They put their future in my hands and need to know they can depend on me. Just like I know I can trust the fiber-rich-active-ingredients yogurt in those sensitive days. You know, when I have high-level meetings with people I may hire.
Like today. And I forgot mine at home. Thank god we have an intern now. I can focus on the agenda, he can focus on the yogurt; he's not doing much here anyway. Early start this morning, almost before half past ten. And by 11 the day already looks promising, just like the horoscope said it would be. My first lunch meeting is at 3, with someone that wants to grow in a multi-national, multi-cultural company. Sounds promising, you don't find many candidates with such high aspirations these days. And he's showing initiative, too. By the age of 35 he created his own one-person company and appointed himself president. What better way to relate to other people than working alone and calling yourself president? I think people tend to open up more easily to presidents.
Anyway, the position is local sales representative, which is huge. For that, president still sounds a bit limited, maybe. Let's see what else we have on the short list before jumping to conclusions. Thoroughness is very important when you're working with people. Not quite as important as a leaving a good impression, but it ranks very high nevertheless.
So far we have a mogul, two emperors and a level-eight chief ninja priest.
One emperor already mentioned he could only work part-time; in the morning he needs to drop the dynasty at the kindergarten and then he has another part-time job which he does not want to abandon because it has potential for brilliant growth. I wouldn't normally expect anyone to be able to work full-time in sales anyway, but his can't-do attitude about something that cannot be done ticked him off the list. Beside that, an emperor doesn't sound as promising as you may think, but that's okay, you're not expected to know that if you don't have my experience and feel for people. And if I picked the other one, how would I justify that to the former? Best to be diplomatic and drop them altogether.
The mogul mentioned something about a parole officer and a loan officer which may not be very enthusiastic about him working in anything that involves other people's money.
And there's the priest. Well, he put Latin in 'known languages', I'll give him that; he could probably understand those PowerPoint presentations with "Lorem ipsum"
that I see everywhere, but other than that priests are not very experienced
with Office applications and computers. And I happen to know for a fact they're rather lazy during the week and then try to make up for it during weekends. Not a great sign. And a sales job involves overtime. It's not written in the job description, but it's common knowledge, you are expected to know in advance. And the rest of his title sounds a bit made-up.
Come to think of it, fingers crossed for the president, the more I think about it the more he seems to be the best fit. Oh, and before I forget: he put in the résumé 'I am a very oriented person'. To an untrained
eye such a statement may not sound like much, but it shows he has an oriented attitude. Towards
what, it is not that important. What is important is the significant edge you get compared to people who write disoriented attitude. That's a big plus. He also put 'attetnion to details'. Twice. I'm sold. 100% sales material. Oh, if you
still think the object of his attention is relevant, it all comes
to light a few bullets below: "managing and planning resources for
different projects around the globe". Mystery solved. And his voice sounded so nice on the phone. We have a winner!
I'll be proactive and have an offer ready for him, to finish quickly; I just remembered I need to take the cat to the vet afterwards; I cannot step back at this point, no matter how much he asks.
All in all, such a productive day today. If everything pans out -as I planned- I'll only need to set my status to 'Work from home' and leave earlier. An almost perfect day if it weren't for that idiot; this is the second day in a row when he brings full-fat. At least this time it's the one with pro-biotics. University is a waste for some people, I really don't know why we bother bringing interns here. Safe to say, this is not president material.
Showing posts with label something else. Show all posts
Showing posts with label something else. Show all posts
08 July, 2016
13 January, 2015
Couching tiger, hidden remote
There's a link to my Twitter, where I posted a joke shared on my Facebook
page from some other place. I also put it on LinkedIn, because I'm a
professional. And I want people to enjoy my wit all over the entire social media.
I may even add a comment, but usually I will not. But I might embed some ads, and
then wait by the ATM while basking in my online popularity.
It's called social media, and looking at some of my connections on various sites, it seems to be pretty easy. Take a random photo with your iPhone, add some effects to make it unique and special (it's easy, unique effects are built-in), post it all over the place, and if writing a complete sentence is too complicated, just put a few random words with a hashtag in front of each. For instance, if it's a selfie but it contains only 8% of a corner of your left cheek and the rest is your hip woolly beanie or a scooter or a coffeehouse chain logo in the background, add something like #princess, #sweetie or #chillin'. And don't forget, last sentence must be "Pls share if you like it, Like if you agree". That's it, job done. The worse you are at framing and wording, the more artistic your friends will think you are. Easy.
And if it still isn't, fret not; there are experts all over the place willing to explain you the mysteries of the internet and social media. Some of them are really good, they have been around since Instagram only had black-and-white photos and the hashtag was known as the number sign.
If you're serious about being prolific, the first thing you need to learn is that the number of Likes you get is inversely proportional with content quality.
If you want to go even deeper, they can also teach you about trending, SEO and other interesting TLAs which are useful when you want to sound smart in a conversation with other people that don't have a clue, either. But usually, you don't want to go that deep, do you? Which is fortunate, as I haven’t paid much attention and that’s pretty much all I know about this topic. So let’s call this an unrelated introduction to what I really wanted to write about here: something else.
As most good corporate citizens, I am on a constant lookout for ways to improve efficiency. That would be an easy task if I were a manager; I’d cut my team’s bonuses and tell them it’s a directive from HQ for improving customer satisfaction by streamlining operational expenses and reshifting focus and resources towards this core-priority objective, which would lead to bigger bonuses for the next three years. This would allow me to lower costs and also get a bigger bonus for it. As I’m not a manager, I had to actually think for a bit, and after 2 strenuous minutes of hard thinking (spread across several days) I came up with a complete list (of two items).
Firstly, I’d get a couch. Improved ergonomics will considerably improve my productivity, leading to better results; for instance, faster times at Evil Sudoku can increase the amount of time I could allocate to actual work. A couch involves an initial cost, of course, but there would be savings, too: one of my favorite office activities is measuring how many milk packets I can pour in various containers such as paper cups, other colleagues’ mugs, empty flower vases, and -sometimes- other colleagues’ laptops while they’re busy taking to the car water and Coke bottles from the kitchen because... because the quality to price ratio is unbeatable anywhere else, I guess. Anyway, as a couch is more tempting, a decrease in interest for such experiments would lead to a decrease in expenses for milk packets. This alone would gradually cover the cost of a new couch in no-time (10 to 20 years, which is the standard for any decent strategy). Not to mention the savings on Post-It’s, as my inclination towards origami would plummet as well.
Another way of improving efficiency at the office is getting my own office. I’m not buying the ‘open-space improves team collaboration’ mantra, because most 'collaboration' revolves around jokes I've heard many years ago, "Have you seen the email I sent you 20 seconds ago? It’s really important." (Yes, I have seen it and I’ve already deleted it, turns out it wasn’t that important) and loud phone conversations about any possible pointless topic, except work, of course. "Hi, precious. Have you done your homework? You did? Good. Maths, too? That’s nice, has mommy/daddy checked it? Is grandma already home? Has she fed you lunch? What did you have?" (Followed by detailed inquires about every item in the fridge or pantry). "Well, I’ll be home in half an hour, too. Tell grandma she doesn’t need to buy water, I already took care of that. Put grandma on the phone, anyway. Bye, honey. Yes, I love you, too. Byyyeeee." The time until grandma picks up the phone is a great opportunity for additional inquiries about that email. "It’s really important..." "Hello? Did precious do all the homework? Have you checked? Even maths? Have you had lunch? What have you fed her?" (Guess what follows here). "Oh, by the way: don’t buy water; I took care of that." (I'm tempted to join in and add that Coke and whatever sodas are available in the kitchen have also been taken care of), "I’ll be home in 30 minutes. Bye". Obvious lie aside (they had told precious they’d be home in half an hour and then, 20 long minutes later, they told grandma they’d be home in half an hour, too), the open space is a constant source of such interruptions which distract me from watching YouTube. I often have to rewind and re-watch certain bits, which means even less time available for actual work.
Other potential areas of efficiency improvement involve a reworking of the cigarette breaks schedule and possibly getting a hyena or a tiger (hyenas are smart and fierce and tigers are cool and fierce) trained to react to certain ringtones and keywords. And a PA to delete emails on my behalf. But right now I’m a bit busy checking color swatches for the couch; I don’t like to be unprepared.
It's called social media, and looking at some of my connections on various sites, it seems to be pretty easy. Take a random photo with your iPhone, add some effects to make it unique and special (it's easy, unique effects are built-in), post it all over the place, and if writing a complete sentence is too complicated, just put a few random words with a hashtag in front of each. For instance, if it's a selfie but it contains only 8% of a corner of your left cheek and the rest is your hip woolly beanie or a scooter or a coffeehouse chain logo in the background, add something like #princess, #sweetie or #chillin'. And don't forget, last sentence must be "Pls share if you like it, Like if you agree". That's it, job done. The worse you are at framing and wording, the more artistic your friends will think you are. Easy.
And if it still isn't, fret not; there are experts all over the place willing to explain you the mysteries of the internet and social media. Some of them are really good, they have been around since Instagram only had black-and-white photos and the hashtag was known as the number sign.
If you're serious about being prolific, the first thing you need to learn is that the number of Likes you get is inversely proportional with content quality.
If you want to go even deeper, they can also teach you about trending, SEO and other interesting TLAs which are useful when you want to sound smart in a conversation with other people that don't have a clue, either. But usually, you don't want to go that deep, do you? Which is fortunate, as I haven’t paid much attention and that’s pretty much all I know about this topic. So let’s call this an unrelated introduction to what I really wanted to write about here: something else.
As most good corporate citizens, I am on a constant lookout for ways to improve efficiency. That would be an easy task if I were a manager; I’d cut my team’s bonuses and tell them it’s a directive from HQ for improving customer satisfaction by streamlining operational expenses and reshifting focus and resources towards this core-priority objective, which would lead to bigger bonuses for the next three years. This would allow me to lower costs and also get a bigger bonus for it. As I’m not a manager, I had to actually think for a bit, and after 2 strenuous minutes of hard thinking (spread across several days) I came up with a complete list (of two items).
Firstly, I’d get a couch. Improved ergonomics will considerably improve my productivity, leading to better results; for instance, faster times at Evil Sudoku can increase the amount of time I could allocate to actual work. A couch involves an initial cost, of course, but there would be savings, too: one of my favorite office activities is measuring how many milk packets I can pour in various containers such as paper cups, other colleagues’ mugs, empty flower vases, and -sometimes- other colleagues’ laptops while they’re busy taking to the car water and Coke bottles from the kitchen because... because the quality to price ratio is unbeatable anywhere else, I guess. Anyway, as a couch is more tempting, a decrease in interest for such experiments would lead to a decrease in expenses for milk packets. This alone would gradually cover the cost of a new couch in no-time (10 to 20 years, which is the standard for any decent strategy). Not to mention the savings on Post-It’s, as my inclination towards origami would plummet as well.
Another way of improving efficiency at the office is getting my own office. I’m not buying the ‘open-space improves team collaboration’ mantra, because most 'collaboration' revolves around jokes I've heard many years ago, "Have you seen the email I sent you 20 seconds ago? It’s really important." (Yes, I have seen it and I’ve already deleted it, turns out it wasn’t that important) and loud phone conversations about any possible pointless topic, except work, of course. "Hi, precious. Have you done your homework? You did? Good. Maths, too? That’s nice, has mommy/daddy checked it? Is grandma already home? Has she fed you lunch? What did you have?" (Followed by detailed inquires about every item in the fridge or pantry). "Well, I’ll be home in half an hour, too. Tell grandma she doesn’t need to buy water, I already took care of that. Put grandma on the phone, anyway. Bye, honey. Yes, I love you, too. Byyyeeee." The time until grandma picks up the phone is a great opportunity for additional inquiries about that email. "It’s really important..." "Hello? Did precious do all the homework? Have you checked? Even maths? Have you had lunch? What have you fed her?" (Guess what follows here). "Oh, by the way: don’t buy water; I took care of that." (I'm tempted to join in and add that Coke and whatever sodas are available in the kitchen have also been taken care of), "I’ll be home in 30 minutes. Bye". Obvious lie aside (they had told precious they’d be home in half an hour and then, 20 long minutes later, they told grandma they’d be home in half an hour, too), the open space is a constant source of such interruptions which distract me from watching YouTube. I often have to rewind and re-watch certain bits, which means even less time available for actual work.
Other potential areas of efficiency improvement involve a reworking of the cigarette breaks schedule and possibly getting a hyena or a tiger (hyenas are smart and fierce and tigers are cool and fierce) trained to react to certain ringtones and keywords. And a PA to delete emails on my behalf. But right now I’m a bit busy checking color swatches for the couch; I don’t like to be unprepared.
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