That was the week that was...Week ending August 28, 2009 - RecruitingBlogs.com

"I had three conversations with with three third-party optimists this week [30% fee]. All three observed an improvement in the business climate [25% fee]. They said things were looking up for recruiters [20% fee]. Yippee! [18% fee with a 180-day guarantee]."

Killing Time

That was the week that was...Week ending August 21, 2009 - RecruitingBlogs.com

"I have read a lot of posts this week. I read a lot of posts last week too. And yet, the question remains unanswered: 'Is headhunting ethical?'

I mean, c'mon, Recruiters -- it's not the meaning of life, is it?"

How to Not Suck as a Leader « Shrinking the Camel

So much has been written on the subject of leadership over the past thirty years that sometimes I honestly wonder if there is anything left to say. Popular authors and motivational gurus like John Maxwell have found so many clever ways to slice and dice and list and repackage their critical leadership advice that I am just about left speechless. Apparently, these trusted career advisors have discovered that there is an infinitely unfulfilled market of poor suckers like you and me who believe we are simply not good enough as we are, feeling unfulfilled, underpaid, or are just plain tired of being bossed around all the time.

But as I reflected further on my vast experience as a business executive and former career-ladder-climber, I realized that yes, there may be one hidden jewel that hasn’t been covered yet. So how about this for a new slant on Leadership:

Some of you will suck as leaders.

That was the week that was...Week ending August 14, 2009 - RecruitingBlogs.com

I have been compiling a round-up of recruiting-related posts on RBC since May 2007. At the start it seemed like a good idea, part of an ongoing exploration of my blogging navel. I called the weekly digest of links "That was the week that was..."

That was the week that was...Week ending August 7, 2009 - RecruitingBlogs.com

That was the week that was...Week ending August 7, 2009

Why Article Spinning Deserves an "F" Doctor Ebiz Answers Your Questions

"By article spinning (sometimes known as article cloning) I assume that you're referring to the practice of reformatting others' articles in order to create content on your site and avoid penalties for duplicate content by the search engines.

Or perhaps you're spinning your own article in a dozen ways to disguise the duplicate content.

Though you mention that you plan to do this manually, many use software programs that automatically replace words or phrases in an article with synonyms from some kind of database thesaurus. They also move blocks of content from their original position in an article to another position to make it appear that this is a different article."

Dangerous curves: Is forced ranking the pay-for-performance answer? - i4cp

"I'm not sure I know anyone who enjoyed getting graded in college 'on the curve.' It's strange and unnerving going into an assignment knowing that a certain percentage of students in the class are guaranteed to fail. Forced ranking leaves me with the same impression. Before the process even begins, someone is going to be number one, and someone is going to be dead last. Fine for a race, but is it the best strategy for an organization?

i4cp recently conducted a survey on pay for performance (view the sample results), and one of the findings was that about 21% of respondent companies use a forced ranking system for performance management. I personally thought that number would be much lower. While it's used mostly by the largest companies (more than 10,000 employees), about 14% of smaller companies also said they use it."

Monetize The Audience, Not The Content

"There's a lot of discussion out there about how online content should be monetized.

In particular, the newspaper industry is doing a lot of soul searching for the right revenue model. For many publications, particularly legacy publications with higher cost models, advertising alone isn't covering the nut.

Let's leave out the discussion of the print side of these businesses for this discussion. I think most papers would be better off without the print business but I also understand why many won't walk away from a print based product just yet."

Hat tip: John Sumser