Kerstin Baker-Ash

Why Do Recruiters Call You At Work?

Another day, another call or e-mail from a recruiter. I suppose it's a bit trite in this economic climate to complain about getting calls from recruitment consultants, but do they have to do it at work? 

Let's get a couple of things straight:

• You're not a headhunter, you've found me and my job title on LinkedIn and called reception
• It's never a good time to talk at work, you know, in front of colleagues
• I don't want to relocate to Manchester, I don't care how nice you think the city is

Since you found me on LinkedIn and just won't admit it, don't you think it would be helpful to ask me about a role I might be interested in? Qualified for? The "exciting role" I could really "sink my teeth into" isn't in sales, it's certainly not in database management - I mean, just read the title description on the search results for my name:

 

Also, calling three weeks after you've started a new job is awkward to say the least, and it's pretty annoying to have to explain that you're new there in front of people (again, which they would've seen on LinkedIn if they hadn't been intent on making a thousand cold calls before noon). I'm not looking to move jobs, I like the work, the clients, and the people I work with, but that never works as an eff off should. Now? I've got the perfect, airtight excuse these days - and would recommend using it even if it's not true. As soon as you say the p-word, they run scared, stumbling over their words and apologizing for disturbing you at work. Sure, you can call me again in a year when I'm back at work, but are you really going to remember?

Finally - no, I don't want to recommend names of other people at my work that would be interested. Do your own darned job.

Reckon I'll still get calls from recruiters after this post? I sure as heck hope not.

Guess What? I Didn't Save £0.05 This Morning

I was psyched this morning, thinking that all the work the government did to save me some money during these tough economic times was finally going to pay off.  I was going to be £0.05 closer to my goal of saving £12 over thirteen months from my morning latté tradition.  Sadly, I've not got an extra five pence in my pocket today.

What happened?  You see, businesses couldn't cope with change as quick as the government wanted it. On top of that, many businesses aren't changing their prices.  That's right, folks.  You've in effect had a 2.5% price increase, courtesy of Her Majesty's Government.  Unicom did a survey of 308 small businesses in the UK, and just over a quarter of them said that they were going to pass on the VAT rate reduction. The cherry on top of that lovely price raise sundae?  Businesses which are signed up to a VAT scheme under HM Government's small business "outreach" are now keeping a lower proportion of VAT revenues.

I love the quote from Mr Peter Hounsom on the BBC website, summing up what this VAT reduction is quite nicely; "it's vote manure".

Social Media and Tragedy: Hysteria, Hype or Helpful?

I want to begin this post by offering my heartfelt sympathy and thoughts to those affected by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.  There are no words, there is no fix-it phrase or mantra.

I try to engage in social media.  I have accounts across the spectrum; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a heckuva lot more.  When an earthquake hit Sichuan Province in China, the Twitterverse erupted in a steady stream of information sharing and updates from those in the affected areas.  Last night, I rather accidentally read the first of many updates from Jason Calacanis about news of a terrorist attack in Mumbai.  Other news began to trickle in, and I flicked between the Beeb, CNN and Al Jazeera at home to get updates.  At one point, CNN told its viewers to check Twitter out for latest news and updates.

Okay, so has Twitter (and the wider social media universe) been helpful?  While some of the news coming out of Mumbai has been helpful - Aditya Sengupta being particularly helpful by updating maps and the list of injured and deceased as well as an aggregated feed of information from the aptly named account MumbaiAttacks - a lot of it seems to be hysterical chatter and bandwagon jumping.  How much of it is genuinely useful to you?  I can't say that much of it is to me.

For breaking news, Twitter is great.  It's the first place I heard about the Mumbai attacks, the Sichuan earthquake.  URL-shortening links from CNN or any other media outlet and tweeting it seems to be clogging the feeds of a lot of people today. The platform is designed for rapid-fire response, but I would venture a theory: the people who are then made aware of the situation are going to get their news elsewhere.  They're going to read the viewpoint that's important and relevant to them (i.e. Canadians wanting updates on the status of fellow Canadians might go to the Toronto Star, people wanting updates on the Chabad House attacked by the terrorists might go to VosIzNeias, and British people might go to the BBC).  The information on those sites, as much as we love to use hashtags, is far more organized and readable than a random mashup of TinyURLs and advice to stop Tweeting updates because the terrorists might be watching.

The Telegraph breathlessly announced that last night, the social media came of age.  Wait a second.  Did someone not say this about the earthquake in Sichuan, the cyclone in Myanmar or the arrest of an American in Cairo?  It's a great medium and feel free to call me old school here, but let's take a breath.  While print newspapers might be taking a last, raspy gasp of air, traditional media outlets are alive and kicking.  They integrate social media, alongside real, trained journalists (okay, maybe Faux News doesn't count here).  I'll eat my shoe (and it's a big one) if social media overtakes television or the internet as the place where people get their updates - it's simply far too disorganised to become a viable option for the masses.

Maybe it's time we stop thinking we're as important as we want to be or perceive we are in the social media sphere and give a thought to the people who are caught up in this tragedy of unimaginable proportions.  I'll venture a tweet here - please be with them, support them and help them as they deal with this attack.  It's happened, and I sure as goodness can't do anything about it from where I'm sitting.  Pray, meditate, contemplate, reflect.  Peace be with them.

Text Alerts - Worth It?

The Metropolitan Transit Authority dragged itself into the 90s (okay, the 00s...) today by adding a text alert service to update you on potential stumbling blocks in your NYC subway journey.  Great idea, in principle.  Silicon Alley Insider has already unsubscribed from the service, saying that the frequency of the messages (11) and the fact that the alerts were not SMS character limit friendly made it more of an annoyance than a helpful service.

I've been using First Capital Connect and Tube Alerts for as long as I've been working in London. More often than not, they add time to my journey by telling me a line is severely delayed (when it isn't and I end up taking a longer route), or not updating anything leaving me standing on the platform wondering where my bleeping train is.  The last FCC alert I got was on the 31st of October, telling me that Finsbury Park station was closed - helpful, sure.  But FCC haven't alerted me to the line problems this morning on the Hertford Loop, the cancellations on Monday on the Great Northern Route or last week's travel chaos because of overhead line problems.  So, a great service in theory but a poor service in practice.  Also, you can't specify a route (i.e. Kings Cross to Knebworth), but a larger line.  This means irrelevant texts as well - I'm really not interested that trains aren't calling at Peterborough, or any stops in between Kings Cross and home.  In fact, it's like unwrapping a surprise gift on the platform.  The train's not calling at any stops until Welwyn North?  Score!

TfL alerts are a bit better.  I can specify my normal morning and evening journey, as well as an alternative Piccadilly Line route if the morning commute gets jammed on the Victoria or Bakerloo lines. Again, the problems are both accuracy and timing; if Kings Cross closes because of overcrowding, I don't get a text message about it and instead learn about the closure when the train mysteriously carries on to Highbury and Islington.  I do understand that there are a lot of considerations running such a complex public transportation system, but if the station matrices can be updated and I can get API access for iPhone applications that are relatively up to date (i.e. within 5 minutes), why can't TfL automate their systems to pick it up? Thankfully, it's not a character limitation issue like the MTA's; I get a single text message (if I get one, har har) and a quick update.  The system is much more robust (and less 1998 web design-y), allowing you to add multiple routes and multiple times, and although you're restricted to two text alerts per day, you can always opt to receive e-mail alerts.  You can turn your alerts off when you go on holiday, saving you a wake-up call at a particularly gruesome hour to remind you of what awaits you upon your return to real life, and a particularly expensive roaming bill.

The most bizarre text alert I received was a youthful congratulatory message from the British School of Motoring shortly after I passed my driver's test.  Geared at text-savvy 17 year olds and not old farts like me who can't transfer their full Canadian drivers license over to a British one (at least without being Americanly restricted to automatic transmissions), it incentivizes you to sign up your mates so that you can all drive round like boy racers with full driving licenses.

Text alerts are a great idea in practice, but of all the major public transport networks involved in it, none of them seem to have got it bang on.  Either you can't choose your routes, you get too few or too many texts, and the alerts aren't relevant to you or up to date for your journey.  Far from relying on text messages, I usually check the FCC, TfL and BBC websites conveniently bookmarked (I make no excuses for my nerd behavior), which can sort of kind of help me out in planning my journey.  At the end of the day, I usually find out about a Tube delay, train line problem or massive football match overcrowding (damn you, Arsenal!) the olde fashioned way.  Stuck on the platform, ears plugged by soothing tunes and smiling.  If there's nothing I can do about it, I try to get on with it.  I wish I could provide this sage advice to some of my fellow passengers...

...and just as I'm about to press post, TfL saves itself:

 

VAT Reduction, E-Commerce and You

In an effort to stall or slow down the death spiral of consumer spending in the UK, Alistair Darling announced today in the government's Pre Budget report that Value Added Tax (VAT) would be reduced to 15% from 17.5%.  This means that from Monday, 1st December, that new 40" LCD television you want to buy is going to cost £538.29 instead of £549.99, saving you a credit crunch munching £11.70 you can apply to the case of cabernet sauvignon you intended to purchase for your office holiday party and the gas to ferry you to your kids' school pageants; the tax is actually increasing on tobacco, alcohol and petrol on the same day to make up for the loss.  If you're saying "huh?", you're not alone.  It seems like a very minor bandaid fix with major pain points for retailers and customers alike, not to mention the mad rush expected on petrol stations, liquor stores and tobacconists this weekend after payday.

What does it mean for retailers who operate e-commerce sites?  Firstly, VAT is already hard-coded into most e-commerce systems.  This means a major overhaul for only a 13 month period when this VAT reduction is valid (the kind folks in government are giving us a year plus a whole month to enjoy a £1.06 savings on that £49.99 pair of jeans).  VAT isn't applied to a lot of "raw" foods (i.e. meals that aren't pre-packaged/cooked/takeaway) or children's items (clothing, shoes, etc).  So the real "savings" are going to be for the bigger ticket items like TVs, furniture and holidays abroad.  My last little sarcastic dig: people aren't buying these things anyway, and a savings of £15 on a £600 holiday isn't going to be a make or break in the decision process.

The VAT rate change presents a huge problem for e-retailers come Monday morning.  With the team at Inside AdWords advising us how to prepare for Cyber Monday (which follows Black Friday, the day that you see news reports of people in Santa sweaters camping out at Wal-Mart after a hearty Thanksgiving meal in lawn chairs at 4 am waiting to bag Christmas bargains), we can expect an uplift in volume as people shop online for holiday presents.  Businesses are left to scramble and update their systems to the new VAT rate, and the same goes for online retail stores as much as it does for bricks-and-mortar high street shops.  Online businesses are now realizing that, in order to avoid stalling for the sake of a pound until next Monday, they're going to have to apply a 2.5% discount at the checkout right away. Currys and Body Shop were some of the first UK e-commerce sites to use this promotion tonight, and some enterprising PPC kids will doubtless use this in their ad copy come tomorrow morning.

What frustrates me is that the government has now created an artificial stagnation in sales (not just online) for the rest of November.  The Pre Budget report has snuck in a rise to petrol which hasn't gone down relative to the increase after the price of a barrel of oil tanked (pun intended).  Curiously, Darling has also included a sly whisky tax of 29p, which could hit Scotland's economy.  

Yes, the economy is in tatters.  Yes, decisive action needs to be taken in order for consumer confidence to increase.  The VAT rate decrease seems a ridiculously weak response to this, and something that is going to cause a bigger nightmare to retailers (who will doubtless raise prices by 2.5% in order to avoid temporarily changing their systems for a year).  I overheard people on my morning commute talking about how this rate change is going to represent a nightmare for them. At my favorite coffee shop this morning, the manager was already talking about spending the weekend at work changing the systems and price boards over to reflect the change.  Yes, I'm going to save a whopping five pence on my morning extra-shot latté, representing an overall savings of £12 (5p a day) for the entire 13 months this VAT reduction is valid for. For large and small businesses alike, this is going to be a headache of massive proportions.  For the average consumer, it's going to mean diddly squat.  It would be helpful if the government took a step back and thoughtfully addressed the problem, instead of creating a secondary mess out of the economic storm in the United Kingdom.  Oh well.  One can only hope...

Three Requests to the SEM Industry from an "Outsider"

In what seems to be something lurking on the horizon for ages, the last week has seen some pretty nasty comments flying back and forth from people I would consider titans of the SEM industry. While I don't want to praise and insult in the same breath, there's a lot of pettiness and bulling each other up just for the sake of it, and for an outsider, this presents a huge obstacle to overcome if you want to "make friends", learn from people in the industry and climb that rope. So my thirtieth (which isn't a huge milestone) post is asking for advice, asking for niceness and asking for people to take their blinders off and develop the contributory nature of the industry. It really was like this once. Seriously.

Request #1: Try to be a bit more Jenny-From-The Block once and a while, and develop people in the industry. You were here once too. You were trying to crawl your way through the quagmire that makes up the industry, and someone helped you out and gave you a break. It sounds fluffy and paying it forward, but that's what the industry was good for once. People, in their recent push to be the best, biggest, and loudest look down their noses at newbies who, while not new to the industry, are new to the popularity contests that the cutting-edgeness of the industry provides in the form of forums and microblogging platforms.

Request #2: Try to meet at least one up-and-comer or even just a plain old n00b per conference. Some of the so-called experts in the industry surround themselves with clackers and hangers-on, and seem to be stuck in a rut of everyone telling them they're great - that's wonderful. Give back. Test. Try new things. Expand your horizons beyond pure SEO. You might even become better than you already are.

Request #3: Write for the sake of teaching, not to be applauded. I love the idea of Sphinn. I'd love to be Sphunn. Some of the best things I've seen, though - not Sphunn. Not even Dugg. They're from the people who, although very well versed in what they do, share for the sake of sharing. We've moved on from high school, right? Sure, life is one big popularity contest, but we're mature enough now to recognize that a lot of people have good ideas that aren't on the top 100 of "Greatest Hits" on Sphinn. Aren't we?

Look, I get we're all trying to make money. I'm very far from suggesting that we don't need to self-promote. We absolutely do. I really do believe however, that what makes the industry unique is the amount of collaborative power that we have. We don't use it though, because we're climbing over each other to be the biggest, loudest, rudest SEM out there. There are some great examples of people in the industry coming together to make a beautiful blog or center of knowledge - I'd like to see some more.