Do you think productivity improves when pets are allowed in the workplace? Author Laurie Tarkan shares her thoughts:

"Imagine having man’s best friend—your pooch—sleeping at your feet while you’re crunching numbers at work, lifting his furry chin for a scratch when your stress starts to rise, or nudging you for a fast game of fetch in the conference room. Well, companies like Zynga, Amazon, Ben & Jerry's, Clif bar and Google and even the U.S. Congress allow dogs at work. Why? Executives are well aware of the stress-reducing and team-building benefits to employees when they have their faithful companions by their desk chair side.

These benefits are not just wishful thinking among dog lovers. A study in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management found that stress declined over the course of a day in employees who brought their dog to work, while it rose for dog owners who left their pups at home and for non dog-owners. Though it was a small study, there’s plenty of research showing that having a pet or just petting a dog for 15 minutes reduces stress.

There are other benefits as well:

• Having dogs in the office can bring co-workers together and enhance social interaction.
• Studies show that dogs in the workplace have a positive effect on employee, business and organizational health.
• You’ll take more mini-breaks to interact with your dog. These are great for reducing stress and more stress-busting than browsing the web for your mini-break.
• Your doggie needs to be walked, which gets you off your butt and out in the fresh air once or twice a day.

The downside is that you may have co-workers who are allergic or just not big fans of dogs. They may even feel ostracized by not being part of the dog crowd. Some companies that allow dogs at work require employees to register their dogs, filling out a form about their health and temperament, to insure that their dog won’t hurt anyone or spread fleas through the office. At Softchoice, a New York City-based technology service provider, each dog owner has to prove to a “Dog Committee” that their puppy is office-friendly. The committee has a three-strike system for dogs that misbehave.

If you want to give it a go, tell your boss about Take Your Dog to Work Day on June 21st.

Here are some ground rules from the TYDTWD website:

1) Check with management and co-workers to see if anyone is allergic, afraid of or opposed to you bringing your dog to work for TYDTWD.
2) Dog-proof your work space. Remove poisonous plants, hide electrical cords and wires, and secure toxic items such as correction fluid, permanent markers, etc.
3) Give your dog a bath before he goes to work with you.
4) Don’t bring an aggressive or overly shy dog to work.
5) Prepare a doggie bag with bowls, food, a leash and clean up bags.
6) Avoid forcing co-workers to interact with your dog and don’t get angry with your colleagues who just aren’t into Fluffy."

By Laurie Tarkan, Published June 18, 2013, | FoxNews.com

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Would you like to receive free recruitment advertising tips? How about recruitment and hiring information packet with "Best Practices" customized to your sector of the domestic or global workplace?

Send your request to MITTONMedia President, John Mitton, at jmitton@mittonmedia.com. Or call John directly at 832.969.5627.

MITTONMedia is a recruitment advertising agency that goes out of our way to understand your business and hiring challenges. Functioning as a personal "back office" for each of our clients, MITTONMedia has a 25 year successful track record of making recruitment programs as pain-free an experience as possible. We do it by delivering a larger volume of high quality candidate flow, significantly reducing "Time-to-Hire" and "Cost-to-Hire" metrics, and providing outstanding customer service that ensures you get the attention you deserve.

At MITTONMedia we do the work. You get the credit...and the results...and the promotion!

By Ricardo Lopez, Los Angeles Times, Posted: 06/18/2013

According to a recent Gallup survey, seven out of 10 workers have "checked out" at work or are "actively disengaged."

In its ongoing survey of the American workplace, Gallup found that only 30 percent of workers are "were engaged, or involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their workplace." Although that equals the high in engagement since

Gallup began studying the issue in 2000, it is overshadowed by the number of workers who aren't committed to a performing at a high level -- which Gallup says costs companies money.

The poll, released last week, examined worker engagement beginning in 2010 and ending in 2012. The previous poll period covered 2008 through 2010.

The survey classifies three types of employees among the 100 million people in America who hold full-time jobs:

• The first is actively engaged, which represents about 30 million workers.
• The second type of worker is "not engaged," which accounts for 50 million. These employees are going through the motions at work.
• The third type, labeled "actively disengaged," hates going to work. These workers -- about 20 million -- undermine their companies with their attitude, according to the report.

"The general consciousness about the importance of employee engagement seems to have increased in the past decade," said Jim Harter, Gallup's chief scientist for workplace management and well-being. "But there is a gap between knowing about engagement and doing something about it in most American workplaces." estimates that workers who are actively disengaged cost the U.S. as much as $550 billion in economic activity yearly. The level of employee engagement over the past decade has been largely stagnant, according to researchers.

The report found that different age groups and those with higher education levels reported more discontent with their workplace. Millennial’s and baby boomers, for instance, are more likely to be "actively disengaged" than other age groups. Employees with college degrees are also more likely to be running on auto pilot at work.

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Would you like to know how to immediately improve the level of employee engagement at your company?

Contact MITTONMedia President, John Mitton, at jmitton@mittonmedia.com. Or call John directly at 832.969.5627.

MITTONMedia is a recruitment advertising agency that goes out of our way to understand your business and hiring challenges. Functioning as a personal "back office" for each of our clients, MITTONMedia has a 25 year successful track record of making recruitment programs as pain-free an experience as possible. We do it by delivering a larger volume of high quality candidate flow, significantly reducing "Time-to-Hire" and "Cost-to-Hire" metrics, and providing outstanding customer service that ensures you get the attention you deserve.

At MITTONMedia we do the work. You get the credit...and the results...and the promotion!

In his book, A Year of Growing Rich: 52 Steps to Achieving Life's Rewards, Napoleon Hill offers his suggestions for securing a job promotion in your move up the corporate ladder:

"Your ability to inspire others is a blank check on the bank of life that you can fill in for whatever you desire. If you lack this ability, you can take steps to acquire it. Here are some rules to adopt and follow:

• Go out of your way to speak a kind word or render some useful service where it is not expected.
• Modify your voice to convey a feeling of warmth and friendship to those you address.
• Direct your conversation to subjects of greatest interest to your listeners. Talk 'with' them rather than 'to' them. Consider the persons with whom you're conversing as the most interesting in the world, at least at that moment.
• Soften your expression frequently with a smile as you speak.
• Never, under any circumstances, use profanity or obscenity.
• Keep your religious and political views to yourself.
• Never ask a favor of anyone you haven't yourself helped at some time.
• Be a good listener. Inspire others to speak freely.
• Remember that an ounce of optimism is worth a ton of pessimism.
• Close each day with this prayer: 'I ask not more blessings, but more wisdom with which to make better use of the blessings I now possess. And give me, please, more understanding that I may occupy more space in the hearts of my fellow humans by rendering more service tomorrow than I have rendered today.'"

Try this challenge. Put these personal brand building suggestions into practice for one month. One day at a time. Take notes about different situations, what you did or said, and the results.  If you make a mistake, so what? Keep going. At the end of the month send an email and let me know how things turned out. My guess is that you will be pleasantly surprised with the results of this consistent effort to build and strengthen your personal brand. Not to mention enjoying the stunned amazement and looks of envy from co-workers as the boss starts rewarding this astonishing transformation. Start today!

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Would you like to receive free recruitment advertising tips? How about recruitment and hiring information packet with "Best Practices" customized to your sector of the domestic or global workplace?

Send your request to MITTONMedia President, John Mitton, at jmitton@mittonmedia.com. Or call John directly at 832.969.5627.

MITTONMedia is a recruitment advertising agency that goes out of our way to understand your business and hiring challenges. Functioning as a personal "back office" for each of our clients, MITTONMedia has a 25 year successful track record of making recruitment programs as pain-free an experience as possible. We do it by delivering a larger volume of high quality candidate flow, significantly reducing "Time-to-Hire" and "Cost-to-Hire" metrics, and providing outstanding customer service that ensures you get the attention you deserve.

At MITTONMedia we do the work. You get the credit...and the results...and the promotion!

You spend a lot of time, money, and man hours looking for the highest quality candidates available in today's workplace. Finally, after weeks of painstaking effort, a candidate sits in your office. You extend the offer. They reject your offer. Back to Square One.

"Recruitment" is "Sales." Part of sales is increasing your closing ratios. So how do you go about closing more deals when it comes to landing top prospects for your employer?

Scott Weiss offers some tips in his article, Avoiding Offer Rejection :

"Enough years in the recruiting business and enough missed placement opportunities by mishandling the offer scenario has taught me to be patient making job offers.

In a tight market for talent, companies want to move top candidates through the hiring process quickly and try to lock the candidate down before competitors do. But first in this race is often times a losing position, as candidates use a hybrid practical/emotional decision-making process when selecting a new job opportunity.

Psychology plays a major factor when it comes to choosing a job, and we as recruiters need to first be aware of it, understand it, then master it to achieve high closing rates on the most promising candidates. We can start down this path by exploring the different job seeker profiles we as recruiters come across.

Job Seeker Profiles

When a job seeker decides to put themselves out there for new opportunities, it’s for one of a few different reasons.

Here are the job seeker profiles we see in the market:
1. Seeking a promotion/better pay at their current company (leverage)
2. Layoff/out of work
3. Unhappily employed and seeking a change (most often due to an extenuating circumstance at their current company, usually caused by their relationship with their manager, lack of interesting work, or company culture.)
4. Relocation

There are certainly other reasons, but these are the most common. The first thing as a recruiter we must do is identify which type of candidate we are dealing with, as each profile will require a slightly different approach to managing the hiring relationship.

For example, Profile 1 candidates are going to play you. They have no intention of leaving their current company even if they tell you they do, and will work through your process just to get the offer that they can take back to their boss to negotiate the promotion/raise. It’s entrapment/blackmail at its finest.

Fortunately, you likely won’t see much of this, as this profile requires a hint of deviancy that most job seekers just don’t have. But your job is to weed these candidates out early, as they’ll drain your resources and leave you and your hiring managers out to dry.

Profile 2, the active job seekers who don’t have a job, will be anxious to see an offer from you because they really need a job. Similar to Profile 4, the relo candidates, they’ll communicate well, tell you everything they have going on, and push to lock down an offer as soon as they can. Be careful though as Profile 4 candidates often morph into Profile 3 candidates, which are the focus of my post.

Profile 3 candidates are common, and dangerous, and most often when you make an offer to a candidate who doesn’t get accepted, you are dealing with a Profile 3 candidate: the one who is ready to leave their current company for the right reasons, but doesn’t need a new job and as such, plays the field. These are a tricky lot, but a little bit of psychology and a lot of patience will help you grab these candidates when you want them.

Understanding the Psychology

The unhappily employed candidate is going to stay at their current job as long as they can until they find the best possible next step for them. They’ll interview as many places as they can, then use each of those companies’ interest to make the other companies more interested.

This is only natural, and the candidates don’t set out to play any kind of game. The game finds them. It’s similar to real estate, when multiple offers start appearing for the same property and realtors compete to win for their clients, and the selling agent works to get the best possible offer for their clients. No realtor wants to have to play the game (though

I’m sure many get a small thrill out of the excitement) but it’s part of the job.

Candidates who apply to your jobs (or get referred in) who fit this profile have the best intentions. They are looking for a new place to hang their hat. Money will be a concern but is not the key driving factor for them. They are great candidates to work with and most often will be the ones you make offers to.

But they are also the ones who most often will turn your offers down.

By the time they are talking with your company, they are probably already talking with at least two or three other companies about similar positions. They are getting a sense that they have value in the market, and that is raising the stakes for them a bit. Their mentality shifts from “I need to find a new company to work for” to “I need to command the best possible offer for myself.”

Your goal is to make sure that if you are the first offer, you are the only one.

The Offer Dance

Like a well-choreographed waltz, you must learn the steps and lead the dance with your partner, the candidate.

The steps:

Confirming interest/commitment from hiring manager: While the dance starts on your first call with the candidate (and staying close through the interview process to find out what other jobs they are interviewing for, and how far they are along in those cycles), things really kick into high gear once you hear from your hiring manager that they are ready to make the offer to your candidate.

Pre-closing the Candidate: Ahh, the pre-close. Likely a product of the Robert Half school of thought, the pre-close call is the one when you, as a recruiter, must probe the candidate to get a sense of “where their head is at” as it relates to their job search. If you haven’t built a strong relationship of trust with the candidate from the beginning, you won’t get to dance this step with the candidate. But provided you have, they will give you their attention and you’ll need to ask the big questions:

• What other opportunities are you looking at that are interesting to you?
• How does our opportunity compare to the others What do you like or dislike about the others?
• When do you want to make your decision?
• Based on what you know about our opportunity now, what would it take to get you to cut off conversations with the other opportunities?

Pay close attention to the answers your candidate gives. If you are serious about landing this candidate, this is not just a process exercise — this is the conversation that makes and breaks deals with candidates. Remember too that the candidate does not know they have an offer yet, or one is coming; you hold that info in your back pocket. You can, however, elude to it with phrases like “it sounds like they are really interested in you,” as the candidate will be fishing for this information.

Determining Your Flight Plan: the answers you get to the probing question will help you build your flight plan. If the candidate is not giving you signals that they are ready to accept the position, then you must tell the hiring manager to wait to make an offer. This is not always easy to do, as you are basically telling the manager that they can’t have what they want, but remind them that it is for their own good. My guess is that most offers don’t get accepted because this is the critical mistake made by the recruiter — they don’t push back hard enough on the manager they know the candidate is not ready to accept the offer, and just go ahead and make it anyways.

If you have a stalled situation, your job is to stay close to the candidate, and tease the manager’s interest when appropriate. Most times there is mutual interest, so the candidate will wonder why they aren’t getting an offer yet, which will make them want it more. This is your best tool. If you get a candidate checking in with you every day for an update, you’ve got your fish on the hook. But it might not be time to reel it in just yet. Until you hear from the candidate that they would be willing to accept an offer at “X” terms, you must stay in position and wait them out.

The Green Light

Once the candidate does give you the green light that they are “mentally” ready to accept a position with your company, you must move into closing mode.

The first thing you must do is walk the candidate through the counteroffer scenario. They may be slightly surprised when you bring this up, but will be glad you did, as they too are thinking about that dreadful conversation they must have with their boss when they tell them that they are leaving the company.

The counteroffer conversation accomplishes a few things: it helps get the candidate mentally ready to commit, and gives you the assurance that they know what they are up against when they go to give notice. In most cases, the best candidates will be assets to their current employers, who will not let them walk out without a fight. You need to arm your candidate with the tools to win this battle.

Remind the candidate why they are looking to leave in the first place, and that the employer will selfishly attempt to lure them to stay for their own selfish reasons, but nothing will change over time. Spend 30 minutes having this conversation, as its a crucial one, and you’ll build trust with your candidate the way few recruiters do.

Once you are out of the weeds on the counteroffer scenario and feel secure that the candidate will not fall into the employer trap to “wait and see what they can come up with to keep them,” check for final assurance that the candidate has their spouse’s blessing on your job. If they don’t, advise them to have that conversation and call you in the morning. Again, patience.

When you have that final clearance, and know the candidate’s floor for salary, you can now move toward making the offer.

Final Thoughts

The overarching theme when making an offer is to be patient and keep your finger closely on the pulse of the candidate. If you make the offer too soon, and the candidate doesn’t feel they have earned it, they’ll use it as leverage for a better offer with one of the other companies they are talking to.

Candidates want to be courted and want to earn a job, not have it just handed to them — after all, if it was that easy for them to get a job at your company, what kind of company are they going to keep there?

Patience and doing the dance steps outlined above will ensure that your offers get accepted. If you can’t get to the green light stage with any candidate, you may want to think twice about making the offer at all. Why take the time and energy (and disappoint your hiring manager) by making an offer that is used only to better position that candidate for a job with your competitor?"

Avoiding Offer Rejection by Scott Weiss Jun 7, 2013, ERE.net

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Would you like to receive free recruitment advertising tips? How about recruitment and hiring information packet with "Best Practices" customized to your sector of the domestic or global workplace?
Send your request to MITTONMedia President, John Mitton, at jmitton@mittonmedia.com. Or call John directly at 832.969.5627.
MITTONMedia is a recruitment advertising agency that goes out of our way to understand your business and hiring challenges. Functioning as a personal "back office" for each of our clients, MITTONMedia has a 25 year successful track record of making recruitment programs as pain-free an experience as possible. We do it by delivering a larger volume of high quality candidate flow, significantly reducing "Time-to-Hire" and "Cost-to-Hire" metrics, and providing outstanding customer service that ensures you get the attention you deserve.
At MITTONMedia we do the work. You get the credit...and the results...and the promotion!

Business writer Courtney Rubin reports that if the job market doesn't turn around soon, many recently laid-off workers are prepared to take matters into their own hands. According to a new CareerBuilder survey, more than a quarter of workers laid off in the past six months said they are considering starting a business of their own.

The survey of nearly 4,500 workers also revealed that 96 percent of those who started their own small business in the last year have another job besides their start-up. A sample of the businesses ranged from bakeries and board game design to scented candles and sports camps for kids.

"The intellectual capital that companies were forced to lay off over the last 18-24 months was substantial and it is not surprising that many individuals are using their business skills to create their own opportunities," said Brent Rasmussen, president of CareerBuilder North America, in a press release.

The same survey – which also included some 1,400 hiring managers – showed many small businesses plan to hire new employees during the second half of 2010.

Nearly a third of small businesses with 500 employees or fewer are planning to add to their staff before the end of the year. Twenty-one percent plan to add full-time positions and 11 percent expect to add part-time help. Another 6 percent will bring on private contractors.

Among small businesses with fewer than 50 employees, nearly a quarter (24 percent) plan to hire in the second half of 2010.

Small businesses have accounted for 64 percent of new jobs in the U.S. over the past 15 years, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Small firms currently employ more than half the country's entire workforce, says the SBA.

Small business hiring can be seen as a sign of economic recovery. Meanwhile, a separate – and global – study shows small business confidence around the world is rising. What HSBC calls the "index of confidence" at small and medium-sized businesses in 21 markets rose to 118 in the second quarter from 111 in the fourth quarter of 2009. In North America specifically, the index jumped from 107 to 119.
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Would you like to receive free recruitment advertising tips? How about recruitment and hiring information packet with "Best Practices" customized to your sector of the domestic or global workplace?

Send your request to MITTONMedia President, John Mitton, at jmitton@mittonmedia.com. Or call John directly at 832.969.5627.

MITTONMedia is a recruitment advertising agency that goes out of our way to understand your business and hiring challenges. Functioning as a personal "back office" for each of our clients, MITTONMedia has a 25 year successful track record of making recruitment programs as pain-free an experience as possible. We do it by delivering a larger volume of high quality candidate flow, significantly reducing "Time-to-Hire" and "Cost-to-Hire" metrics, and providing outstanding customer service that ensures you get the attention you deserve.
At MITTONMedia we do the work. You get the credit...and the results...and the promotion!

MITTONMedia offers workshops around the US and Canada for HR professionals and recruiters. During opening remarks I ask participants if they have any questions that will hopefully be answered  as we go through the recruitment training materials. Most questions involve the failure of current recruitment advertising methods to attract and engage high quality candidates. "Why isn't my social media working?" "Why isn't my newspaper ad working?" "Why do job board postings only attract under-qualified applicants?"

The one simple answer to all those questions is because they have allowed themselves to become trapped within the "Inside-the-Box Syndrome." While there are several reasons employers fall victim to the "Inside-the-Box Syndrome," their outcomes are very similar:

• Results Diminish

Take employment classifieds in the newspaper or job board postings online. Why does response drop inexplicably, despite the fact you keep running the same ads with the same job descriptions week after week?

Your audience moves!

You may think that you are reaching just as many people with a given media vehicle as you were last year, or even last fall. But audiences move, tire, get confused, and are distracted. HR professionals and recruiters need to be as fickle as their audiences if they hope to be successful reaching and engaging their target groups.

• Retina Burnout

If you keep doing the same thing over and over, your target audience "tunes out" the recruitment advertising message.  They have seen it so many times that they become numb to it.

• Employee morale suffers

“What’s wrong with my company?” When your current employees keep seeing the same job ads in the same places week after week they eventually begin to wonder what's wrong. If nobody else wants to come to work for the company, why in the world are they working for the company? Results of a recent SHRM survey report that 74% of all current employees are open to a new opportunity with a different employer. Keep doing the same things week after week and you may get to see those survey results in action.

• Miss out on a LARGER audience

Seana Mulcahy wrote in her book, Danger: Falling Clicks, that “Distribution for most advertising campaigns tend to be completely out of whack. For instance, a small group of an audience could be completely overexposed whereas the bulk of your target audience may not be seeing or hearing your ads enough… Simply put, you don't want to overexpose an audience and waste money.”

By sticking with one or two recruitment advertising resources you risk missing out on an even larger pool of quality candidates who are getting their news, entertainment, and career information from different sources.

Finding the Exit Ramp

What happens when employers decide to try creative, alternative methods of recruitment advertising that are outside their traditional "box?":

• They being to reach a broader range of quality applicants.

• They fill positions faster.

• They begin to reach and engage non-traditional candidates.

• They save on hiring costs.

• They enjoy a competitive edge, sometimes for the very first time.

• They enjoy an increase in the flow and diversity of candidates.

• Their "Employer-of-Choice" branding goes way up.

• They receive fewer complaints from hiring and project managers...and current employees.

• Opportunity for creativity is unleashed.

• The front office rewards HR for delivering a better Return-on-Investment.

• Niche targeting becomes an effective, cost-efficient recruitment too.

• Better candidates start to engage and respond to the hiring messages.

The process of change is never easy. Climbing out of your comfort zone, being open to new ideas and processes is one way to stay ahead of the competition in today's marketplace. I hope you are bold enough to begin that transformation today.

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Would you like to receive free recruitment advertising tips? How about recruitment and hiring information packet with "Best Practices" customized to your sector of the domestic or global workplace?

Send your request to MITTONMedia President, John Mitton, at jmitton@mittonmedia.com. Or call John directly at 832.969.5627.

MITTONMedia is a recruitment advertising agency that goes out of our way to understand your business and hiring challenges. Functioning as a personal "back office" for each of our clients, MITTONMedia has a 25 year successful track record of making recruitment programs as pain-free an experience as possible. We do it by delivering a larger volume of high quality candidate flow, significantly reducing "Time-to-Hire" and "Cost-to-Hire" metrics, and providing outstanding customer service that ensures you receive the attention you deserve.

At MITTONMedia we do the work. You get the credit...and the results...and the promotion!

"Hump Day" arrived quickly this week. That mystical line of demarcation, embraced by the workplace, which reminds everyone, "Your weekend draws near!"

In my case it is going to be a pretty crazy end of the week and weekend. Our son graduates from high school on Saturday. In-laws and out-laws start arriving tomorrow. There are arrangements to be made, rooms to be cleaned, party decorations to obtain, briskets to be smoked, and graduation presents to track down.

At the same time all this is going on, our recruitment advertising agency has never been busier. We have traditional and online media plans to prepare, career fairs to organize, radio and TV commercials to produce, approaching deadlines to hit, and customer service to deliver. Across the US, Canada, and a new project that just popped up in France which requires an international conference call early Saturday morning.

When I told my wife about the Saturday morning conference call I was going to have to make in the midst of our "graduation chaos" she replied with those three little words husbands love to hear: "Are you nuts?!"

Which begs the question, "Is there an effective way to blend everything going on in your professional life with everything going on in your personal life?"

My well developed sense of self-preservation led to a googling session designed to seek out answers to that question. I found several helpful tips, including the article I share with you this morning:

"The Right Way to Leave the Office on a Friday"

"It can be hard to separate office life from personal life, making it hard to transition from the office environment into family life for the weekend, especially during the summer.

Closing out your week on a summer Friday in an orderly and positive way is a great way to make a clean psychological transition into your weekend. Nobody likes the feeling of unfinished business hanging over their head while playing with the kids or dining with the family on Sunday night, so it’s important that you do what you can to make as clean a break as possible when walking out the office door at the end of the week.

Based on conversations I’ve had with clients over the years on how to make a clean mental break, here are a few ideas to help make the weekend transition a clean one:

• Check the Win Column. Celebrating success is something we could stand to do a little more of, particularly in these tough times. Before walking out the office door you should always do a quick check of what you got done over the week as a reminder of your positive contributions to the organization.Take note of something that went well, compliment a co-worker on an accomplishment, or drop a thank you note to a client. The idea is to find something positive that makes you feel good about your job and make sure that moment is the last thing on your mind before walking out the door.
• Tidy Up. Before walking out the door for the weekend, take a few minutes to scroll through your inbox, toss any unnecessary paper piled on your desk and straighten up your workspace. This will give that feeling of a fresh start when you arrive on Monday.
• Close the Door…Literally. When you leave the office, make sure you actually leave! Try and tie up any loose ends so that you can truly disconnect. Don’t leave anything hanging that you can quickly take care of before heading out. There is nothing worse than having that feeling of something hanging over your head over the weekend.
• Truly Disconnect. I recently met a CEO who turns off his phone at 6:00 every Friday night. Don’t be afraid to shut down your smartphone or at least shutoff the e-mail alerts and let people know about the policy. When you walk out that door be sure to tell your colleagues the period of time you will be unavailable and stick to it! It’s important to be present for your family and friends.

As we head into summer keep your priorities in mind. Most of us strive to live well and strike a positive work-life blend, so be sure to close every Friday in a way that will allow you to disconnect for a couple days and genuinely engage in some summer fun."

by Dr. Woody, Published June 03, 2013, | FOXBusiness

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Would you like to receive free recruitment advertising tips? How about a recruitment and hiring information packet with "Best Practices" customized to your sector of the domestic or global workplace?

Send your request to MITTONMedia President, John Mitton, at jmitton@mittonmedia.com. Or call John directly at 832.969.5627.

MITTONMedia is a recruitment advertising agency that goes out of our way to understand your business and hiring challenges. Functioning as a personal "back office" for each of our clients, MITTONMedia has a 25 year successful track record of making recruitment programs as pain-free an experience as possible. We do it by delivering a larger volume of high quality candidate flow, significantly reducing "Time-to-Hire" and "Cost-to-Hire" metrics, and providing outstanding customer service that ensures you get the attention you deserve.

At MITTONMedia, we do the work. You get the credit...and the results...and the promotion!

MITTONMedia is a recruitment advertising agency with clients, both national and international employers, who implement a matrix-style structure within their organizations. Used properly, the matrix model is a very effective tool for keeping everyone on the same page within the organization.

The matrix model, however, is not a good fit for every candidate. So the question becomes how do you go about recruiting potential applicants that fit this system?

Kevan Hall, from ERE.net, has some interesting thoughts for your consideration:

"It’s no secret that many organizations are moving away from the traditional hierarchical and functional way of working, toward a more matrixed structure where people report to multiple bosses and work on multiple teams with colleagues in different functions and locations, if not different time zones and cultures.

While this model can be effective, it’s by no means simple. In fact, it’s a much more complex way of working. Competing goals, influence without authority and accountability without control are the norms.

For recruiters, let’s look at the implications of this shift, and whether we need different types of people and different skill sets to succeed.

In working with hundreds of organizations around the world, we have identified five factors that go together to make up the matrix mindset. Here’s the list of those factors along with some ideas of how recruiters could look for evidence that candidates have this mindset.

Self-Leadership — Look for evidence that individuals have taken control of their own goals, role, and career. Do they have a track record of finding and engaging with the other people they need to be successful? Do they carve out a role for themselves or wait for others to solve their problems?

Breadth — Ask where interviewees have thought beyond their role and function. Do they take ownership for the delivery of results that cross-organizational boundaries or do they tend just to look at things from their own functional role perspective? Do they understand the business context they work in?

Comfortable with ambiguity — Candidates who want a clearly drawn job description are likely to be disappointed in the matrix. Are they comfortable with less clarity, and do they have the confidence to propose their own ideas and suggestions? Ask for examples from their business or daily life about how they’ve dealt with ambiguity or made sense of a previously unclear situation.

Adaptive — Successful matrix managers are flexible and open to new ideas and new ways of working. They know that today’s solution to problems may not be the right answer tomorrow. Do candidates show evidence of coping with significant change in their lives and careers? Was this stressful or stimulating? Can they demonstrate some sort of personal or professional change as a result?

Influencers – Because a matrix undermines traditional authority, people use a wide range of influence techniques and sources of power to get things done. If candidates seem to always fall back on hierarchy they may be unsuccessful in the matrix.

As always, the best indicator of success is to already have been successful in this kind of environment. Because this is a new way of working for many people, however, we may have to probe more broadly to find examples of where people have demonstrated elements of this mindset.

For example, you may find evidence of self-leadership and influence in community, educational, or other aspects of people’s lives.

How people deal with major life changes can be good indicators of comfort with ambiguity and the ability to be adaptive. Moving jobs and locations can be useful areas to probe, particularly if the move meant a significant change in lifestyle, such as an international move.

For many people, the matrix mindset is underpinned by a skill set that allows them to influence others and get things done without traditional authority. Simulation can be helpful here. Recruiters can observe these skills in action by using an assessment center methodology that puts people in a complex, ambiguous environment where they have to take into account different perspectives and influence others in order to be successful. Group and individual assessment exercises can be designed to show these behaviors in action.

Working for multiple bosses is not for everyone, and it does challenge some of the traditional ideas about management. Consider that both IBM and Cisco reported losing around 20 percent of their managers in the years following the introduction of a matrix structure.

When done correctly, though, a matrix organization can lead to broader and more challenging careers and a higher level of personal development.

In the end, everyone — company leaders, their recruiters, and their employees – should keep in mind that success in a matrix environment is not about structure, but about mindset and ways of working. In this respect, recruiters have a critical role in bringing people into the organization who are both comfortable with and effective in this increasingly common way of working."

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Would you like to receive free recruitment advertising tips? How about a personalized packet of information, customized to your sector of the workplace, explaining how MITTONMedia  helps solve recruitment and hiring challenges on local, national, or global levels?

Then send an email to John Mitton at jmitton@mittonmedia.com. Or call John at 832.969.5627.

MITTONMedia is a recruitment advertising agency that goes out of our way to understand your business and hiring challenges. Functioning as a personal "back office" for each of our clients, MITTONMedia has a 25 year successful track record of making recruitment programs as pain-free an experience as possible and delivering outstanding customer service.

Our customized recruitment agency advertising programs substantially increase high quality applicant flow. Thanks to unique specialties combined with proprietary behavioral targeting and research tools, MITTONMedia programs also help significantly decrease "Cost-to-Hire" and "Time-to-Hire" metrics.

Professional, skilled/craft positions, or seasonal hiring. No matter what the industry, MITTONMedia does the work. You get the credit...and results!

Inc's. Tim Donnelly shares tips for writing a "Customer Survey" for your business:

"What's the best way to find out what people think of your business and where they think you need to improve? Just ask them, Sherlock.

Regularly surveying your customers can provide a direct insight into how happy your products and services make your customers, what deficiencies hurt your bottom line, and on what kind of new product development you should focus your efforts.

Professional surveyors talk a lot about the concept of "fit:" Is your business meshing with your desired audience? If not, you might as well be throwing out money. "Quality is in the end much more important than price in terms of determining overall satisfaction," says David VanAmburg, director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. "It's very easy to attract customers by offering discounts. At the end of the day, if you don't offer a quality product that taps into what the customer feels is really a good fit for him or her, it doesn't matter where your price is."

Some corporations use customer surveys to impress their stockholders. Others, such as public utilities, show the information to regulatory commissions, while still more use it to track trends over years.

Customers who rank themselves as "completely satisfied" are worth three to six times more than those who say they are just "satisfied" or "dissatisfied," says Jeffrey Henning, founder and vice president of strategy of Vovici, an online survey management company that has worked with Marriot, Cisco, and many other large companies.

Most customers, VanAmburg says, are eager to share their opinions, and show a great deal of savvy for rating products. They're just waiting for you to ask.

Writing a Customer Survey: Identify Your Goals

Before you even start thinking about what questions you want to ask customers, survey professionals say you should ask yourself: What am I trying to learn, and what am I going to do with that information?

"If customers are happy, you really want to know that. If they're not happy, you can't hide," says Howard Deutsch, CEO of Quantisoft, a survey and consulting company. "You need to know why and you need to take action, or you're going to go out of business." Deutsch says growing companies should strive to conduct a customer survey once or twice a year.

Don't ask customers a question without a plan for how it will be used to provide insight for you company's stakeholders, says Gina Pingitore, the chief research officer for J.D. Power and Associates, a global customer satisfaction research firm best known for its automotive quality rankings."What's the impact of being a yes or no on satisfaction scores?" she says. "You should have a very clear understanding of how you're going to analyze the data."

Deutsch says companies usually turn to two types of surveys. Self-service questionnaires through web services such as Survey Monkey, through which a company can write its own questions and then be presented with the raw data. The second type is to go through more individualized professional survey services that have their own survey methods and present you with analyzed data, charts, graphs and detailed comment reports.

Experts say common goals of surveys include:

• Measuring customer loyalty
• Helping human resources departments train staff or execute new staff initiatives
• New product development
• Direction for new financing
• Gauging customer service effectiveness

Writing a Customer Survey: Crafting Quality Questions

Designing a questionnaire is a more complicated science than most people think, Pingitore says. "People get their Ph.D.s in it," she says. Every aspect of the survey can affect the outcome, including the phrasing used to pose the question, the order the questions appear on the survey and the options for how to answer, such as whether respondents are asked a yes-or-no question, or to rate their response along a scale.

Professionals say to keep these tips in mind:

• Don't write questions that are ambiguous. Make them as specific and targeted as possible.
• Don't write "double-barrel" questions, such as asking, "How easy and timely" an experience was. "They're two different constructs," Pingitore says.
• Use scalable questions that ask customers to rank their responses on a numerical or qualitative spectrum. 
  • The ASCI uses a "multiple indicator" approach that creates scores based on responses to three different questions that relate to customer satisfaction. By asking customers, for instance, 1) how satisfied they were with an experience, 2) to what degree did their experience exceed or fall short of their expectations; and 3) how that experience compares with their ideal, the results create a weighted three-dimensional picture, VanAmburg says.
  • The ASCI uses a 10-point scale for its qualitative questions as well, which allows for more grey area than a more narrow scale, he says.
• Ask a lot of questions. "The more questions that you ask, the more facets of it you get at, the more you minimize the margin of error, the more you minimize the noise in any survey," VanAmburg says.
• If repeating a survey, make sure to keep the questions identical from year to year so the results can be compared.
• Include at least a few open-ended questions. They allow for broader feedback you may have left out of your survey. "If a question is worth asking, it's worth putting a comments field in after each section," Deutsch says. "They'll pour their guts out in many cases." Open-ended questions are tricky because the answers often aren't specific, Pingitore says. But as coding software even for large-scale surveys has improved, these kinds of questions help round out your survey and add more flavor to the outcome.

Writing a Customer Survey: Choosing the Best Format

Figuring out how to distribute your survey depends on your type of business.

Phone surveys used to be the standard in the industry back when all customers had land lines, but in the era of the cell phone and do-not-call list, it's less reliable.When Vovici recently tried to do a national phone survey, halfway through the survey process the company realized it hadn't reached a single person under the age of 24.If phone surveys are your only option, keep the questions short and make it clear right away that you're not trying to sell anything, Pingitore says.

Online surveys are now the preferred method because they are the most cost-effective, efficient means of producing data quickly, experts say. They also eliminate the human error from a surveyor keying in data over the phone.
If you only have customers' mailing addresses, it's more cost-effective to mail a postcard directing people to an online survey rather than send the whole questionnaire, Pingitore says. Some stores also have success handing out a survey at the register or printing a link to a survey on the receipt, Deutsch says.

Writing a Customer Survey: Work Toward Getting a Great Response Rate

It's a good idea to plan ahead for a survey and start building a database of customer contact information.
"If your list isn't good it doesn't matter how good your survey is," Pingitore says. It might even be smart to send out a test e-mail to your contact list to see how many addresses bounce back before investing in a survey.

Surveying by e-mail also means you'll have to format it so it doesn't get marked as spam, or disregarded as e-mail marketing. Survey companies can help you tailor the keywords in your subject line and body of the message so that the purpose is "simple, clear, and motivating," she says.

If you're doing a snail mail survey, trade up a bit: Anything that distinguishes the survey from direct marketing will increase your success rate. First-class postage is more expensive but also more effective than third-class, Pingitore says. Use a laser printer to make the address look hand-printed. Make the form attractive with white space, large fonts and a clear description of how the information will be used. Allowing respondents to remain anonymous also helps, but if personal information is collected, you should clearly describe how it will be used.

Picking a random sample is important to make your survey credible, Henning says. "If you have true randomness, then you only need to talk to 400 to represent population in the millions," he says. Smaller companies have a harder task: if you only have 100 customers, you'll need to talk to 80 of them to get a significant confidence level," he says.
Many stores are able to get contact information through club card or frequent buyer program: 40 percent of people will usually give their address when asked at the register, Henning says. "I actually think that justifies having a loyalty program alone," he says.

Writing a Customer Survey: Interpreting the Results

One sure way to annoy your customers or clients is to ask for their opinion but then do nothing with the feedback.
"If you don't take action, you're better off actually not doing the survey," Deutsch says. "You're really disappointing them, and chances are they may go elsewhere."

Pingitore cited a recent study in Germany that looked at the impact of consumers who took part in satisfaction surveys. Customers who believe companies take action based on the feedback feel better about the company and are more likely to respond to surveys.

Once you receive the results, circulate the data widely throughout the company to make sure everyone knows what's on customers' minds. "Too often management will see them and no one else will see them," Henning says. Publicizing the results can also help too: it paints your business as responsive to customer concerns, and willing to make pragmatic changes."

For information about how MITTONMedia can help with your customer satisfaction survey or employee satisfaction survey, send us an email at info@mittonmedia.com. Visit us online at www.mittonmedia.com.

Monday morning workplace tips to help you make it through the week. From www.fun-at-work.org:

What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
- Ambrose Bierce

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
- A. H. Weiler

One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

If you hate your job, of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is best.
- Unknown wise person

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.
- W. Somerset Maugham

Never learn to do anything: if you don't learn, you'll always find someone else to do it for you.
- Mark Twain

When the going gets tough, the smart get lost.
- Robert Byrne

When you're starting to have a good time, you're doing your job wrong - have the good time anyway, however.
- Workplace graffiti

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
- Katharine Hepburn

The formula for complete happiness is to be very busy with the unimportant.
- A. Edward Newton

"Wow. The week really flew by in a hurry. I don't feel like I accomplished anything." Sound familiar?

MITTONMedia shares these tips from author Thomas J. Leonard to help you begin "transforming your effectiveness" today:

1. Expect twice as much from others as you expect from yourself.
2. Ask for EXACTLY what you want when you want it, not what you think is reasonable.
3. Have a list of people to whom you can immediately delegate tasks, problems, and ideas.
4. Get the information you need immediately.
5. Cut your normal appointment block time in half.
6. Respond to problems with three times as many resources as are needed.
7. Stop tolerating what you don't like.
8. Keep your word.
9. Beef up systems.
10. Decline requests.

MITTONMedia will help you immediately transform the effectiveness of your advertising and employee recruitment advertising programs. Email us today at jmitton@mittonmedia.com.

MITTONMedia suggests taking the "Baby Step" approach. Trying to map out effective, affordable advertising strategies can be overwhelming at first but, like any large project, can be successfully accomplished after breaking everything down into small manageable pieces.

As a first step in creating an advertising strategy for your business, take time to write out and answer questions like these:

1. How does your business help people?
2. Who are your competitors in the area?
3. What do your competitors do better than you?
4. What do you do better than your competitors?
5. Describe the person most likely to need your products and services AND can afford to purchase your products and services?
6. Where do these people go to get their news and entertainment information?
7. Where are your competitors currently advertising?

Take the baby step approach when it comes to advertising your business and soon, like this little guy, you will begin to get more comfortable with the process and ultimately enjoy success!  Contact MITTONMedia for more ideas about how to successfully advertise your products and services.

POSTED ON FEBRUARY 20, 2013 @ WWW.SEO411.COM

What makes the ideal choice from all of the available online marketing companies? How can the consumer save money while maximizing results? What is most important when searching for a better page ranking?

Ask about the experience of the proposed service provider. If the provider hires employees, are those people trained and experienced? Is their work reviewed, checked, and edited? Experience is a must for a successful provider.
Ask about a warranty or guarantee. Most reliable and trustworthy providers will give the customer some sort of guarantee whether it is result-orientated or time-orientated. There may be stipulations to the contract. Be sure to get the warranty in writing along with the agreed upon contract.

Ask whether or not the work completed is provable and tracked. Most providers can easily allow the client to have access to the logs and results of their hard work. Getting positive results means exploring those records and logs to find out if they are consistent and going in an upward motion.

Finding a reliable and better provider means a lower investment over time. The organization gives results that continue working for a longer period of time. The page ranking will improve at a slower rate because the organic results happen slowly and continue growing. The best choice for the job is one that will continue working with the business as long as the services are needed.

Not all online marketing companies are created equal. Finding the best organization for the money means exploring how those businesses can better cater to a website owner while still providing the desired results via a long term campaign.

"Nothing personal: Why recruiters don't get back to you

By Suzanne Lucas / MoneyWatch/ March 25, 2013, 1:30 PM

If you've been on the job hunt in the last few years, probably more than once you've cleared your schedule, taken a vacation day or hunted down a last minute babysitter in order to attend an interview. Everything seems to go well, but you never hear from the recruiter again. Ever. Not only do you not get the job, you never hear anything from the company and sometimes your calls and emails are not returned at all.

I find this appalling behavior, and have written expensively on how this is unacceptable behavior. I've challenged recruiters to justify their behavior and finally got a response from a former large company recruiter, on the condition that he remain anonymous. His job was going well, he wrote, until there was a reduction in force, which cut HR staff and added additional responsibilities to the staffing department. He has since moved to another HR position. Here is his account:

"Days to fill" became the defining performance metric (excuses for why some positions were harder to fill than others such as location, or the job having the wrong pay, were considered irrelevant).

In addition to recruiting, recruiters are responsible for background checks, drug screening and all other onboarding processes. Each recruiter had around 15 people onboarding at a time (on top of 60 open positions). Keep in mind that recruiters are hired for their sociability/energy levels more so than their ability to be organized... so, there were recruiters trying to keep track of where each new hire was on dozens of sticky notes (and even in one case napkins). Organization and detail orientation was not their strong suit.

Recruiters were also hiring for positions that they knew nothing about (i.e. recruiters that knew nothing about IT were phone screening Senior Technical Analysts and Computer Programmers in 30 minute conversations that determined who was flown in from around the country for face to face interviews with hiring managers). Requisition loads nearly tripled to an average of around 65 (with highs of 85 open positions).

The applicant tracking system was (and still is) a mess. Before a bulk communication could be sent out to every candidate in the requisition, each one had to be set to the same status (i.e. submitted/phone screen/1st round interview/2nd round interview etc.).

There was no batch process that set every candidate to the same stage unless a hire was made, in which case a message was sent out.

For positions where the job was put on hold (or where there was a special circumstance for one or more candidates that required a different message), one had to manually change every candidate to "Company Not Interested" or "Position on Hold" etc. before a batch e-mail could be sent out.

In practice, the process of sending out an update that a position was on hold could take 15 minutes to complete for external candidates alone if the candidate list was large enough... and this was once the recruiter finally got confirmation that a job was on hold (they would go weeks at a time not knowing and having to develop a candidate slate that was ultimately often discarded).

Everyone was overworked, not adequately trained to do their jobs, and they'd just seen some of their closest co-workers fired. So, they started showing up at 8am, leaving at 4:30pm, focusing strictly on days to fill and letting everything else suffer. Recruiter turnover was through the roof.

Once a position went over 45 "days to fill" your manager sat down with you to "counsel" you on how you could improve your performance. At 60 days there were daily calls with your manager to discuss the position and how to fill it quickly...keep in mind these were for recruiters sourcing positions they knew nothing about.

The department took a credibility hit as managers spent several hundred of dollars flying candidates in for interviews only to quickly asses the candidate was an awful fit. In the past recruiters understood the jobs they sourced... the new normal had changed this dynamic, and so recruiters eventually went from being "Business Partners" to note takers/phone screeners.

Recruiters invented "tricks" to fool the system into stopping the "days to fill" clock. They would un-post positions they couldn't get to for the day -- because if a position wasn't posted to the company website it didn't count against days to fill. They just hoped they didn't get caught. They would negotiate closing and re-opening positions as new (thus resetting the clock) if the manager wanted to make a minor tweak to the job description. It's a new job, they would say.

Leadership wanted low days to fill, so low days to fill is what they got.

Candidates see their resumes go into the black hole that is an applicant tracking system, the recruiter never getting back to them. Then they have a sour taste in their mouths -- "How rude!", they think.

Having seen firsthand the behind-the-scenes process of what goes on in recruiting, however, I now 100% understand why a recruiter would rather interview someone they may actually hire as opposed to reaching out to a candidate and updating them on their status instead.

Recruiting turnover (not just at my company) is insanely high in the U.S. for many reasons. One of them is that most managers don't really understand what goes into recruiting, and subsequently undervalue the emotional capital and relationship building that is part of sourcing strong candidates.

Instead they focus on the sorts of metrics they can bring to the board of directors (turnover, days to fill, average cost of hire etc.) and design the performance metrics of the recruiters jobs around these criteria.

And that is why, even after you've been interviewed, you never hear back from recruiters."

Growth in the energy sector is one of many factors contributing to a healthy jobs report. Unconventional oil and gas production have created more than 1 million jobs with 800,000 more expected by 2015.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0309/Jobs-report-the-energy-connection-to-growth 

MITTONMedia is known for our cost-efficient, effective recruitment programs for energy sector jobs around the world. For more information send an email request to John Mitton at jmitton@mittonmedia.com. Or call/text John at 832.969.5627.

Lose an Hour and You Will Hunt for it All Day

"Early to bed, early to rise; use time right or be ready to die," says the clock.

Remember the times when you were growing up.

You were always taught to wake up early and you were also made to make it your motto.

I remember the nursery rhyme. "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."

But as it is, my clock has started singing another version; "early to bed, early to rise; use time right or be ready to die."

I am sure everyone wants to live longer and no one is ready to die.

There is a reason why it is important to wake up early.

One reason is that when you wake up early, you get enough time to rest between tasks. For example, you have something to do and it must be accomplished by 10AM.

You are so used to waking up at 8AM and before you know it, it's 11AM. So, the best thing to do is to wake up at 5AM, and do the usual rituals you do before setting out to accomplish that task.

This will make you more active and you will have plenty of time to rest.

With that said, let's jump into the reasons for waking up early.

5 Reasons for Waking Up Early

Here are five simple reasons for waking up early and getting your work done:

1. Better safe than sorry: if you wake up late, there is always a probability that you will get to work late and this will definitely not be pleasing to your boss. It is better to be on the safe side by arriving early than for you to have a routine of saying, "I'm sorry," every time you arrive late.

2. Leave a good impression: being early will make people see how organized and also disciplined you are. Everyone has his or her late days but don’t use that as an excuse to become a late person. Using myself as an example, there were times when I'd arrive late to work and it made me feel miserable. Hey! Don’t blame it on traffic because that is everyone's excuse. If you want to beat traffic, it is very easy; wake up early and get going!

3. Reduce your blood pressure: yes! Being early has an effect on your health. You might not believe me, but try this out; have something to do by 10AM and wake at 9AM, mistakenly. See how you react to it. Well, let me tell you if you don’t know how to express it in words; you will be shocked to see that you overslept, your heart will beat like you ran a 500 meters race in 1 minute. You will be disorganized, confused and you might end up having an accident while trying to rush to work. Do you want that for yourself? Of course not. No human would want to take his or her life.

4. Reduces stress: what does stress do to the body? It breaks it down. So, waking up early gives you time to get yourself. One thing that leads to instant death is over-stressing the body. The body can be stressed in diverse ways. Using this as an example; you are supposed to be at work by 8AM and you wake up at 7AM, with the hope of getting there in an hour. Unfortunately, you get there at 8:45AM and you have to get things done by 6PM. Unfortunately, you aren't able to finish up even by 7PM. You then go home with little rest and wake up that same time to go to work. Making the things to be done, pile up.

5. Makes you stay healthy: now, this is self-explanatory, so I don’t need to go into details.

The Consequences

Now that we have seen the reasons for waking up early to get the job done, let's look at some of the consequences of not being an early riser.

1. Stress that can lead to sickness and death

2. Poor health

3. Increase in blood pressure: this is one example of health problem that may happen if you don’t wake early and save yourself the trouble of rushing to meet up.

4. Disorganization: when you wake up early, you get enough time to do what you want, take whatever thing that needs to be taken without being in haste. But when you do otherwise, you forget things, if not one thing and you won’t be yourself for the rest of that day.

With all those things noted, here are some short and inspiring quotes on early rising to get you going.

Short & Inspiring Quotes on Early Rising

1. "A stitch of time saves nine."

2. "Time once lost can never be recovered."

3. "To use up the best times in life, be punctual."

4. "Opportunity lost (time) can never be regained."

5. "Time is precious."

6. "...tick says the clock, what you have to do, do quickly."

7. “Lose an hour and you will hunt for it all day."

Take this into consideration, and start waking up earlier.

It doesn't have to be by much. Just a few minutes earlier each day will yield results in the weeks and months to come.

Think small steps, not quantum leaps."




.

Employee Recruitment Programs

Recently MITTONMedia was engaged by a Fortune 500 client to produce and conduct an internal survey regarding their Recruitment Department. Including Senior and Departmental managers, the purpose of the survey was to determine if there were any disconnects in the company’s recruitment processes and performance.
 
The survey feedback we received from managers provided the company with the information they needed to target problem areas and make minor changes to their policies and procedures.

As a result, the company soon enjoyed enhanced performance and a stronger sense of the recruitment process being a team effort. For example, managers who participated in the survey felt better about their leadership roles. Not only because they were asked for their input, but because managers were also able to see that their impressions and opinions were valued by the employer.

Customer Service Survey

Conducting an in-house survey about perceived levels of Customer Satisfaction for your business often leads to higher productivity and increased profitability. Here are a few questions to help you get started creating your own in-house survey:

1. How do you define customer satisfaction?
2. How do your employees define customer satisfaction?
3. How does your sales department define customer satisfaction?
4. How much time and money should your company spend on retaining average customers?
5. How much time and money should your company spend on retaining top customers?
6. Why do customers leave?
7. What are some of the needs that your customers haven’t even thought of yet that you can help fulfill?
8. What are some of the needs you fulfill for customers on a regular basis?
9. What kind of weekly reports or measurable goals do you need to put in place to track your Customer Service progress?
10. How quickly do you respond to customer questions and take care of problems?
11. Do customer questions and complaints get routed to the correct department?
12. Are your customers just satisfied or do you blow their socks off?
13. Do your customers promote you and your products/services to their friends?
14. If you were your own customer, what things would you ask the company to improve?

Do you have a program in place that provides you with regular feedback for your programs and processes? If not, give us a call. MITTONMedia can help you implement effective and cost-efficient in-house surveys that will give you the information you need for peak performance in every area of your company. 

Here is how to get in touch with me personally:

• John Mitton
• Email: jmitton@mittonmedia.com
• Phone/Text: 832.969.5627

Remember. At MITTONMedia we do the work. You get the credit…and results!

A strong ego paired with high self-esteem are often necessary qualities for starting and growing a small business. However, these same qualities can sabotage an effective advertising campaign for that same small business if they lead to a self-focused instead of a customer-focused advertising message.

I'm sure you've seen some of those "advertorial" magazines in your local suburb. Slick publications that often appear more interested in catering to the ego of the business owner than getting out an effective advertising message.

For example, an orthodonist opens up a new practice in the local community. He/she buys a full-page, 4-color, advertorial spread in one of these magazines. The accompanying self-focused picture shows the orthodontist posed in front of a book shelf full of medical textbooks or an "ego wall" displaying all his/her degrees. Also includes a couple of those alarming "Before/After" pictures. Kind of leaves you cold, right?

What if, however, the orthodontist decided to do a customer-focused pictorial layout?. A picture showing him/her surrounded by a group of happy, smiling teenagers?  Or a beaming family? A portrait that communicates, "Here is what our practice has done for others and we can do the same for you and your family, too!" Think you'll agree this approach resonates a hundred times better with potential customers than the self-focused, ego-driven approach.

When it's time for your next advertising program, think about replacing me-focus with customer-focus. Your bottom-line will thank you.

"People don't care how much you know...until they know how much you care."

In case you're curious, I don't just write about having a customer-focused attitude. I make sure we put it into practice every day of the week in our workplace. Customers notice. They tell us working with MITTONMedia is like having their own PhD in Advertising and Creative Problem Solving:

1. Customers appreciate our innovative ways of getting things done.
2. They trust our 25+ years of experience and expertise. 
3. They love being spoiled by an exceptional level of customer service. 
4. Businesses enjoy their new competitive edge gained by putting in place MITTONMedia's customized solutions that deliver targeted, cost-efficient, and effective advertising programs.
5. They are pleased with MITTONMedia's customer-focused advertising messages and collateral materials that get immediate attention and generate a qualified response. 

Like MITTONMedia has said from the very beginning, "We do the work. You get the credit."®  Contact John Mitton today for more information about our Local, Regional, National, and International capabilities and services: jmitton@mittonmedia.com; 832.969.5627 (Direct.)

MITTONMedia® designs QR Codes and enhanced QR Code “Internet experiences” for business advertising and employee recruitment programs. A Quick Response (QR) Code is a two-dimensional code that can be scanned by smartphone cameras to automatically pull up text, photos, videos, music and URLs.
 
These codes have become mobile-friendly ways to point people in the offline space to online resources.

QR Codes: Getting Started

As we share with businesses that are “first-time users,” if you're going to use QR codes for business advertising you'll want to keep in mind that QR codes -- and the apps that scan them -- are still foreign to many people.
 
While it is true that more and more people are starting to associate the codes with action, we never assume that customers will know what to do. So we make it a point to spell out how to scan the QR code, and help instruct customers on where they can grab scanner apps.
 
One of the most important things to remember is that QR codes should provide some kind of value to the scanner. It may be easiest to direct QR code scanners to a website, but that's likely not the most engaging place to send people.

QR Code Scanners:
 
 Apps that can scan codes are available for most smartphones. Search your app store for "barcode reader," or "QR code scanner," and you'll find several to choose from.
 
On the iPhone, options include QuickMark and Optiscan. On Android, Barcode Scanner is a popular QR code reader.
 

Put QR Codes to Work
 
Here are a few ways that you can use QR codes for business advertising and employee recruitment programs:
 
On business cards: A fast and simple way to use QR codes for your own professional purposes is to place them on business cards. Generate a barcode that directs scanners to your online resume, small business Facebook Page or your website to help new contacts find you or your business faster.

On marketing materials: You've got fliers, brochures, programs, handouts, whitepapers and a myriad of other materials in your media kit. Add QR codes to direct viewers to a particular area of interest.

In storefront windows: Generate a QR code to place in your office or storefront window. You can use this code to inform customers of upcoming in-store events.

For freebies: If you really want people to pay attention to your QR codes, make them good for something fun. Say you've placed a QR code decal in your storefront window; why not reward those who scan it with 10 percent off their purchase or a free pastry? Give them something small to thank them for their patronage. Simply create a custom QR code for the freebie you want to offer. You could even get creative and hide the QR code offers online, like on your Facebook page or website, or somewhere inside your store.

For employee recruitment programs: Recruiters are the HR department's "sales force." QR codes help recruiters put the "human" touch back into the recruitment process and provide "What's-In-It-For-Me" information that helps close the deal. Candidates don't care about a traditional corporate website. They want a career-related landing page designed just for them. A place loaded with pertinent information including: current employee testimonials; video tours of the workplace; guides for different career paths within the company; examples of how the employer makes employees feel relevant and challenged; opportunities to travel; opportunites to move within corporate divisions; and examples of the employer's social involvement in the community. In addition, potential employees, especially college students, also want a point of personal contact within the company. A name, telephone number, and email address of the recruiter who will serve as a "personal portal" within company.  All of this can be accomplished using QR codes paired with a vibrant, career-related corporate landing page. 

More information:

For more ideas about QR Codes and how to use them for your business, get in touch with me today by scanning this "Contact" QR code with your smartphone:

Or, for non-smartphone users:

• John Mitton
  • john@mittonmedia.com
  • Office: 281.242.4473 ext. 107
  • Direct: 832.969.5627

Pepsi aired a TV spot during the 3rd Quarter commercial break promoting a site where you could download a copy of the favored New England Patriots “Official Team Anthem,” as performed by Aerosmith. 

The wheels started turning. Suppose an ad agency person had gone to Pepsi before the game with a great idea to save Pepsi hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pre-game predictions had the Patriots as prohibitive favorites. The game was being played on the Patriots home turf, Gillette Stadium. Bill Belichick’s game plan and Tom Brady’s arm ensured a crushing defeat for the Ravens.

Given the overwhelming odds of a New England victory, the ad agency person would make the case that Pepsi could save hundreds of thousands of dollars by only airing the Patriots version of the team anthem download commercial. No need to pay additional air time for the Ravens version of the commercial because the audience wouldn’t care. They would be totally focused on enjoying the Patriots coronation as new AFC Champions!

As it turned out Ray Lewis and the Ravens beat the Patriots 28-13 and advanced to Super Bowl XLVII to face the San Francisco 49ers in New Orleans. Patriots’ players and coaches started their offseason earlier than anticipated and some fans went home happy while others started talking about next year.

What do you think would have happened if my "What if?" scenario had really come true?

During MITTONMedia’s 25 years of creating advertising and marketing programs for a variety of companies, we sometimes have to deal with a client’s own “What if?” scenario:  Fear of Failure.  What if the “Big Idea” they take to their C-Suite ends up failing miserably?

In our “Beyond Post & Pray” advertising workshop we sometimes share a tongue-in-cheek example of what happens if a great advertising idea should happen to backfire:

1. There is a giant wave of initial Enthusiasm for the idea.
2. The ad campaign starts, the fantastic idea backfires, Disillusionment.
3. Immediately followed by Panic.
4. Leading to a Search for the guilty.
5. Followed by Blaming the innocent
6. Concluding with the uninvolved receiving an undeserved Reward.

There are no guarantees every advertising idea will work every time.  The flip-side, however, is that there are strategies designed to help ensure success for your advertising dollars. Here a few ways we help our clients stack the odds in their favor to enjoy a healthy return on their advertising investments:

• Establish goals
  • ­What do you want to achieve?
  • ­What are the obstacles you need to overcome?
  • ­What happens if you don’t overcome the obstacles?
  • ­What is the starting point and where do you want to go from here?
• Locate your audience
  • Market research
  • ­Consumer surveys
  • ­In-house surveys
  • ­Residential and corporate database mining
• Determine the most effective, cost-efficient ways to share the advertising message
  • ­Do the Research
    • For example, media usage surveys help determine most effective ways to target:
      • The right people
      • At the right times
      • With the right message
  • ­ Lean towards trusting the research more than personal opinions and feelings
• Craft a “What’s-In-It-For-Them” advertising message
  • ­Use your advertising message to answer some or all of these questions a prospective customer might have about your products/services:
    • How will a person’s life be better if they use your product/service?
    • Why is your product/service better than the competitors?
    • What are the significant differences?
    • Who else is using your product/service?
    • What is the best way to obtain your product/service?
  • Analyze your answers by asking “So what?” after each one.
    • This is an industry secret used by the most successful advertising copywriters so be careful with whom you share it!
  • If you don’t like the answer scrap it and replace with a more targeted benefit statement.
  • Examples of Right and Wrong answers:
    • “Q: Why should I let you do my open-heart surgery? A: Because our practice has been open for 15 years.” Wrong answer!
    • “Q: Why should I let you do my open-heart surgery? A: Because we have NEVER lost a patient.” Right answer!

If you are struggling with “What if?” advertising issues for your business MITTONMedia can help you identify and create effective, targeted, and cost-efficient solutions:

• John Mitton: jmitton@mittonmedia.com; 832.969.5627
• David Foster: dfoster@mittonmedia.com; 713.594.1947

Remember at MITTONMedia we do the work, you get the credit…and results! ®

"Julie Murphy aspired to the classic kid summer job after watching the cartoon pig Olivia run a stand on TV. Instead of setting one up in the front yard, her mother Maria Fife thought she'd have more customers if Julie waited for the Last Thursday monthly art fair in Portland, a grassroots fair that's something of a free-for-all.

So Julie made a list of supplies (this is the 21st century, so hers included hand sanitizer) and a hand-lettered poster that read "Yummy." She set up shop in a wheelbarrow, and the customers came for 50 cent glasses of lemonade even before she'd finished making the first batch.

Twenty minutes later, it all went sour.

According to The Oregonian, a woman with a clipboard approached Julie and her mother, asking for the state-required $120 temporary restaurant license. When Fife said they didn't have one, the woman told them they needed to leave – or possibly face a $500 fine.

Supporters – the people staffing booths near Julie – rallied for the little girl's cause, even making an announcement to the crowd to support the stand. Business boomed. But the inspectors came back and shut the stand down.

"It was a very big scene," Fife told The Oregonian.

"I understand the reason behind what they're doing and it's a neighborhood event, and they're trying to generate revenue," said Jon Kawaguchi, environmental health supervisor for the Multnomah County Health Department. "But we still need to put the public's health first."

Would Julie have run into the same trouble if she'd been a little less ambitious and confined her stand to her front lawn? Probably not, said Eric Pippert, the food-borne illness prevention program manager for Oregon's public health division.

"When you go to a public event and set up shop, you're suddenly engaging in commerce," Pippert said. "The fact that you're small-scale I don't think is relevant."

After a public outcry (and plenty of donors willing to fund a license for Julie), Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen this week apologized to the girl and her mother and told county health department workers to use "professional discretion" in doing their jobs.

"A lemonade stand is a classic, iconic American kid thing to do," he said. "I don't want to be in the business of shutting that down."

As for Julie, she refers to the shutdown as "a bad day." But it hasn't broken her entrepreneurial spirit -- or put her totally out of business: Her mother has said she can set up shop again at a neighborhood garage sale."

Is that what we have come to these days? Crushing the entreprenuerial spirit of grade school children for the betterment of society?  Let's hope not. As a matter of fact my kids are looking for a weekend project. Lemonade stand and hot dog bar? Oh yeah. We're doubing down this weekend!

"In Wheel Time" rocks the radio airwaves as one of the most entertaining car shows you will ever hear!

The MITTONMedia office staff hasn't seen much of me around the office lately. Not that they are complaining, right?

Going AWOL has been in large part to the unbelievable success of our radio "car show," In Wheel Time. Hosted by veteran TV automotive reporter Don Armstrong and Mike Herzing, President of the Texas Automotive Writers Association (TAWA), ITW has redefined radio car show in this area. It truly is one of the most entertaining radio car shows you will ever hear.

Creating the show we were sure to follow some of the basic rules for a successful show (and advertising campaign.) A couple of rules we followed:

Make it RELEVANT & ENTERTAINING

When Don and Mike first came to me and asked for help in producing a new car show on the radio my first question was, "Why do we need another stinking car show?" Don explained it was a new concept. Not about how to fix up an old car with a cheap part. Nope. More like one of those TV news glamour shows. (And if you know Don and Mike, you know why I am laughing so hard as I put them in same league as "Glamour" news shows.)

Not only did the show have to be relevant. It also had to have a pace that would keep listeners attention during the three-hours show was on the air every Saturday.

Solutions was to decide each of the broadcast hours into four different segments:

Wheel News

Lesson #1: Make sure the show doesn't suck.

You only have a few minutes to capture someone's attention and get them engaged in the process. Which is why  Don and Mike going a little bit screwy as they share interesting news of the week from auto manufacturers, discuss important trends like skyrocketing price of gas and who is selling it the cheapest that week. They also ponder about  will people ever buy another hybrid, or why did they ever buy one in the first place? Crazy Driver stories of the Week,that make your teenage driver look like a chauffer to the stars compared to some of these yahoos. Then there's interviews, audio AND video, with some of Kings and Queens of the industry and their many minions. Top it off with NASCAR and NHRA races, fiery accidents, and human interest stories and you have a very interesting and informative first 15 minutes of the program.

Keep It Running

Lesson #2: If they're laughing, then they are paying attention.

Don and Mike get bombarded with "every man" questions from "Mister Dipstick." Dipstick know absolutely nothing about automotive maintenance but he darn sure has no SHAME. Which means he asks Don and Mike the questions nobody else will for fear of looking a gear moron. Questions like: how do you replace the blinker fluid?; Is 5-quarts too much oil to put in a 1993 Honda Civic?; And why don't they put the steering wheel in the center of the dashboard?  One more? Why is it called a "Moon Roof?" 

Believe it or not there are legitimate answers to all these questions. Which means while you may be laughing at Mister Dipstick, you will probably also being learing something new at the same time.

Toy Time

Lesson #3: Variety is a magic elixir that reaches, engages, and entertains.

Like I said, this ISN'T a car show about fixing up old jalopies with smuggled parts. It is about wheels and the things that run on them. Cars, Classic Cars and Car Clubs. Motorcycles, including the 3-wheel kind like the Spyder from can-am, and Motorcycle Riding Clubs like the Toad & Cycle hosted by a nearby pub. Then there's the ATV's and RV's. Who is winning on the NASCAR and NHRA circuits? Swap meets, car clubs, charitable events and much more.

Drive It Home

Lesson #4: It is OK to tell the truth. Listeners respect that more than blowing smoke.

Of course EVERYBODY on the show gets a new car to drive and 5-Star review each week EXCEPT for Mister Dipstick. That's OK. Dipstick is angling for one of the "Toys" to drive during the week: a Spyder from can-am; an RV to drive up and down the Gulf Coast, an ATV to drive the a deer lease, which is different than driving it through a deer blind. Will it ever happen? What do you think... 

One of the hallmarks of their weekly car reviews is that both Don and Mike tell the truth. For better or worse if they like a feature of the vehicle, you know about it. If they don't like it, you get an earful about that, too. But as long as Don and Mike are keeping listeners informed and entertained, without upsetting the sponsors too much, then the show is doing its job.

And speaking of sponsors, the show has been really blessed to have national sponsors who were there in the beginning and will grow with us as "In Wheel Time" moves into national syndication in the next month or two. Thanks to:

• Jeep
• Ram Trucks
• Ford
• BG Products, Inc.
• Pamela Printing
• Zap Trap
• L3 Design
• All About Cakes
• MITTONMedia.

The journey has been great thus far. Why don't you come join us for the rest of the way?

You can listen to In Wheel Time on Saturday, 10a-1p (CST), on 1560 THE GAME/Yahoo Sports Radio Network. (Rumor is show is moving to 9a-12n the first Satuday in May, 2012.)

MITTONMedia introduced the concept of "QR Codes" to our clients nearly four years ago. We were definitely ahead of our time as many of them had a difficult time grasping the concept of a Rorschach-like bar code that could help sell products and services as well as recruit new employees. Within the last year, however, the QR Code concept has caught on fire for a number of different reasons including increased familiarity with the medium and smart phones that facilitate the process.

Jon Barocas is the founder and CEO of bieMEDIA, a Denver-based online marketing and media solutions company that specializes in video content production and distribution, mobile visual search, technology platforms, SEO, VSEO and more. He posted an article today on Mashable.com, sharing his thoughts and opinions about QR Codes, their durability, and what might be next in line to replace them: Mobile Video Search (MVS.) Given his background in video content production, his feelings toward Mobile Video Search are understandable. And he presents an interesting case supporting what he feels is a viable alternative to the use of QR Codes.

What do you think?  Please read Jon's article and then email your thoughts and opinions to me, John Mitton, at jmitton@mittonmedia.com.

Enjoy the article:

"Like most technology fans, I am always ready and willing to try any technology that promises to simplify my life. QR codes seemed to present an accessible and uniform way for people with smart devices to interact with advertising, marketing and media. Those little squares of code seemed to open a world of opportunity and potential. But after using them for a length of time, I shifted my perspective.

My initial honeymoon with QR codes was very short-lived. The initial rush that I had received from trying to frame the code on my device had lost its luster. I started to view QR codes as a barrier to additional information. And in many instances, the rewards (whatever I received as a result of scanning the code) did not measure up to the effort of the transaction itself.

Consider a recent study by comScore, which states that only 14 million American mobile device users have have interacted with a QR code. In essence, less than 5% of the American public has scanned a QR code. So where’s the disconnect?

Inadequate technology, lack of education and a perceived dearth of value from QR codes are just three of the reasons mobile barcodes are not clicking with Americans. But it goes deeper than that.

Humans are visual animals. We have visceral reactions to images that a QR code can never evoke; what we see is directly linked to our moods, our purchasing habits and our behaviors. It makes sense, then, that a more visual alternative to QR codes would not only be preferable to consumers, but would most likely stimulate more positive responses to their presence.

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The QR Alternative

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Enter mobile visual search (MVS). With MVS, you simply point at a product or logo and shoot a picture with your smartphone’s built-in camera. Within seconds, the MVS application will provide product or company information, or even the option to make a purchase right then and there on your mobile device.

MVS is a far more compelling and interactive tool to enable mobile marketing and commerce. In today’s increasingly mobile world, instant gratification is the norm, and taking the extra step of finding a QR code scanner on your mobile device no longer makes sense. With MVS, you are interacting with images that are familiar and desirable, not a square of code that elicits no reaction.

The opportunities are boundless with MVS. Unlike two-dimensional barcodes and QR codes, MVS will have wrap-around and three-dimensional recognition capabilities. Even traditional advertising will be revitalized with MVS. For example, picture an interactive print campaign that incorporates MVS as part of a competition or game. Marketers can offer instant gratification in the form of videos, mobile links, coupons or discounts as incentive for taking the best pictures of a particular product or logo.

The world has already started to migrate to MVS. For example, companies in Argentina and South Korea currently allow commuters waiting for subways or buses to view images of groceries or office supplies. Embedded within these images are recognitions triggers: Smartphone users place and pay for an order to be delivered or picked up within minutes.

Also, MVS can cash in on word-of-mouth marketing. Marketers will seamlessly link their campaigns to social networks so consumers can share photos and rewards, such as vouchers, coupons or music downloads, with their friends and followers.

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QR Code Security Risks

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In addition to being a more versatile medium, mobile visual search is also more secure than QR code technology. Cybercriminals are able to cloak smartphone QR code attacks due to the nature of the technology — QR codes’ entire purpose is to store data within the code. There is no way to know where that code is going to take you: a legitimate website, infected site, malicious app or a phishing site. MVS’s encryption modality will eliminate the opportunity for malicious code to download to your smartphone.

Recently, there have been documented cases of QR code misuse and abuse around the globe. For instance, infected QR codes can download an app that embeds a hidden SMS texting charge in your monthly cellphone bill. QR codes can also be used to gain full access to a smartphone — Internet access, camera, GPS, read/write local storage and contact data. All of the data from a smartphone can be downloaded and stolen, putting the user at risk for identity theft — without the user noticing.

Mobile visual search is a safer and more secure technology that can provide more information and content than a QR code, without as many security risks. By focusing on real-world objects and images rather than code, MVS lessens the risk of a virus or Trojan attack.

Safety, security and versatility — there are many reasons that MVS will supplant QR codes. However, there is one important, largely overlooked reason to favor MVS over QR codes: For the first time, we will be able connect with our actual surroundings in a truly interactive way. We will be able to provide a virtual marketplace that is familiar and accessible. Humanizing this interaction and making it more visual are the foundations of MVS’s imminent success."

Is your company getting ready to jump on the online advertising bandwagon?

Before you do, check out this article by Jon Mitchell in ReadWriteWeb: 

"U.S. advertisers spend nearly $40 billion a year for online advertisements, but 31% of their ads are never seen. That means $12.4 billion will be wasted on U.S. online ads this year. That's the average across all sites; on some sites, only 7% of the ads were "in-view," meaning 93% of them went unseen.

That sounds ominous for the health of Web content. But ad spending is up by over 20% this year. Online ad spending will exceed print magazine and newspaper ads for the first time this year. So, put another way, online ads in the U.S. are still worth enough to brands to waste $12 billion a year on them. But is all this waste necessary?

Dr. Magid Abraham, CEO of comScore, says that today's display ad market is "characterized by an overabundance of inventory, often residing on parts of a web page that are never viewed by the user." Online ads may be working overall, but the problem with out-of-view ads "dilutes the impact of campaigns" and puts a "drag on prices" for publishers.

31% of ads in the study were delivered successfully, but they were never seen by a consumer. The user either scrolled past the ad before it loaded or never scrolled it into view. On average, 4% of ads were delivered to viewers outside the desired geography, with some campaigns running as high as 15%. That means some ads were shown to customers in places where the product is not sold.

Even among ads that were seen, 72% of the campaigns in the study ran alongside site content that was "not brand safe." If you're advertising cheeseburgers, and your ad runs next to a news article about the obesity epidemic, you're not likely to get much value out of it.

Online ad growth is projected to slow down over the next five years, but the trend is still positive. It's a good sign for the Web that the ad market is healthy, but it could be much more effective with smarter technology."

Writing in the January 14, 2012 edition of The Washington Post, writer Michelle Singletary cautions college students and their families to pay attention to what different college majors are worth in today's workforce. As Ms. Singletary points out, "Not all college majors are created equal."

You may want to print out a copy of this article and save it for future reference. I know that's what we're going to do in our house!

"I have this game I play when I meet college students.

“What’s your major?” I ask.

The student might say, “English,” “psychology,” “political science” or “engineering.”

And then, in my mind, after factoring in some other information, I say to myself “job” or “no job,” depending on the major.

An English major with no internships or any plan of what she might do with the major to earn a living? No job.

A political science major with no internships that could lead to a specific job opportunity? No job, I think.

Engineering major with three relevant internships in the engineering field? Ding. Ding. We have a winner. Job.

Certainly a college degree is the ticket to many jobs. The unemployment rate for people with only a recent high school diploma is 22.9 percent, and it’s an astonishing 31.5 percent among recent high school dropouts. Nonetheless, the lack of career planning before a school is chosen, a major is selected and debt is borrowed is shocking to me. Not enough students — and their families who are also taking on student loans — are asking what their college major is worth in the workforce.

For years, long before the Great Recession and today’s almost 9 percent unemployment rate among new college graduates, I’ve been begging students and their parents to consider the fallout from their choice to borrow heavily to attend a school when the student has no clue about the expected career opportunities of a chosen major.

Too many students aren’t sure what job they could get after four, five or even six years of studying a certain major and racking up education loans. Many aren’t getting on-the-job training while they are in school or during their semester or summer breaks. As a result, questions about employment opportunities or what type of job they have the skills to attain are met with blank stares or the typical, “I don’t know.”

And don’t get me started on people who borrow heavily to get an advanced degree without really knowing whether it will lead to a fatter paycheck that can easily service the debt. In some cases it will, but for some academic disciplines, the salary bump isn’t as much as people expect.

Maybe a new report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce will help encourage students to make better choices about which college and degrees they pursue. “Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal” answers the question that many people are asking in the aftermath of the recession. Is college still worth it?

For most, it is. But it all depends on your major, the report concludes.

“It was true in the 1970s that the purpose of going to college was to get a degree because you could move through a lot of occupations,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown center. “But since then, the difference among degrees has grown substantially.”

Median annual earnings among recent college graduates vary from $55,000 among engineering majors to $30,000 in the arts. Education, psychology and social work majors have relatively low unemployment, but their earnings are also low and only improve marginally with experience and graduate education.

“Today’s best advice, then, is that high school students who can go on to college should do so — with one caveat,” the report’s authors write. “They should do their homework before picking a major because, when it comes to employment prospects and compensation, not all college degrees are created equal.”

A series of reports released by the Georgetown center has focused on matching jobs with majors. In 2010, the center warned about the growing disconnect between the types of jobs that employers need to fill and the number of people who have the education and training to fill them. The report, “Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018,” argues that students should align their postsecondary educational choices with available careers.

In the “Hard Times” report, the center found that the unemployment rate for recent graduates is highest in architecture (13.9 percent) because of the collapse of the construction and home-building industry. Not surprisingly, unemployment rates are generally higher in non-technical majors, such as the arts (11.1 percent), humanities and liberal arts (9.4 percent), social science (8.9 percent) and law and public policy (8.1 percent).

A college education is not an investment in your future if you are taking out loans just for the college experience. It’s not an investment if you’re not coupling your education with training. It’s not an investment if you aren’t researching which fields are creating good-paying jobs now and 30 years from now.

I wouldn’t want to discourage people from pursuing a career they love, even if the pay isn’t very high. However, that choice should be made with the understanding of which job opportunities might be available and weighing what you can expect to earn annually against the cost of taking on debt to finance your education."

MITTONMedia has just launched a website for one of our new clients, L3 Design.

L3 Design is a landscape design and construction company which caters to a discrete clientelle in upscale neighborhoods around the Houston area. (If you've driven through River Oaks, you've seen their work.) L3's consistent growth, the majority of it coming through word-of-mouth referrals, can be partly attributed to the creativity of their designs, the quality of work performed, and unparalleled customer service.

Blair Michener, L3's Director of Design, has been recognized with 35 regional, national and international awards for his design work and was a judge at this year's Texas Nursery & Landscape Association's prestigious TEIL Awards for 2011. L3's Founder, Lauren Olenius, is the master of delivering customized solutions for individual needs and a delight to talk with about all things "landscaping." Lab's are her thing as you'll see when you visit their website. Lauren's motto is: "Every Client…Every Dream…Every Time."

To schedule a consultation with Lauren or Blair for your landscape design projects, call 281.974.2783. You can also email Lauren at Lauren@L3-DESIGN.COM or Blair at Blair@L3-DESIGN.COM. 

We are happy to announce that MITTONMedia has been recognized for our customized employee recruitment advertising strategies and award-winning creative production by being nominated in the "Best HR Service Provider" category for the 7th Annual HR IMPACT Awards!

Need help with your advertising? Call MITTONMedia!

Amy Chulik, a writer for CareerBuilder, recently shared her thoughts about Gen Y's impact in the workplace:

'"What words come to mind when I say Gen Y?" Aaron Kesher asked the many attendees at 2011's Society for Human Resources Management conference who were packed into the room. "Entitled!" shouted one person. "Job hoppers," chimed in another. Soon, many in the room (many of them non-Gen Yers, with some Gen Y members sprinkled in) were shouting things like "smart," "résumé builders," "technically savvy," "stereotype," "comfortable with change," and "creative."

Obviously, we all have specific words and phrases and ideas that match how we perceive Gen Y to think and behave in the workplace. Gen Y, made up of those born between 1980 and 2000, have their own notions of themselves, too. In Aaron Kesher's, "Why Y? Plugging Into a Generational Powerhouse" session, Kesher encouraged all of us in the room to rethink our notions of what we think Gen Y is all about, to consider the strengths they bring to today's dynamic workplace and to use this knowledge and understanding to more successfully recruit and retain Gen Y workers.

"Do not doubt that this generation will change the face of the American workplace as their parents did," Kesher said. "In the next five to 10 years, the number of Gen Yers in the workforce will increase dramatically."

As the number of Gen Y workers is only getting larger, it's about time we as a collective workplace learn more about Gen Y so that we can understand them, appreciate their unique strengths, and more successfully integrate them with other generations in the workplace.

What is work from a Gen Y perspective?

• Work ethic: Job loyalty, for a long time, was shown by how long you stuck around and paid your dues -- and older generations still think in line with this. Gen Y, on the other hand, says, "I show you love by how hard I work, not how long I stick around."
• Tech savvy: It's not so much that Gen Yers are tech savvy, Kesher pointed out -- they're tech dependent. They're the generation that's come of age with the explosion of technology, so it's natural that they would be comfortable with it.
• Communication and teamwork: Gen Y is not necessarily entitled; they just feel comfortable asking for what they want. When it comes to communication, you can often count on Gen Yers to spread out the message fast and often. We need to realize, Kesher said, that throughout Gen Y's public education, the majority of the work was done in groups, and that their role wasn't usually as the leader of a group -- instead, many were "equal" team members. Therefore, many Gen Y members function fairly well as a group and as "team players," but some struggle in standing out as individual, assertive leaders.
• Money: Employers, listen up: Gen Y is talking to each other about the money they are (or aren't) making at your organization. They are comparing how competitive your salary is with your competitors -- and they're not afraid to share their findings. One audience member mentioned recently hearing Gen Yers discussing openly the job offers and bonuses they were getting -- and she was shocked. After all, discussing how much money you make is one of the last great American taboos -- yet Gen Y seems more comfortable with discussing this sort of information.
• Recognition: Gen Y is a generation of the "there are no losers -- everyone's a winner" mentality. "But they didn't make that up (boomer parents)," Kesher pointed out, to a round of laughter. Gen Yers don't care how it gets done --they just want to get it done. And they want to be told they did a good job once they do it; recognition is very important.
• Diversity: "Why do only white people work here?" might be something a Gen Y worker thinks while viewing a company site or sitting in the lobby while waiting to be interviewed and noticing the lack of diverse employees. Gen Y doesn't embrace diversity -- they expect it -- and if your company says you believe in diversity, but then a Gen Y worker shows up and all workers look the same -- they will think you're not living up to your diversity message. This generation has grown up with a greater awareness of and comfort with diversity of all kinds. From home lives, to school experiences, to messages absorbed from pop culture, they often don't see what all the fuss is. This can manifest as difficulty in understanding why others struggle with issues around differences. A question of whether gay marriage should be legalized, for example, is a non-issue for many Gen Y individuals -- and this shift ties into a larger cultural shift in general.
• Work versus life: "I love my job, but I love my life more" -- that's something you may hear a lot of Gen Yers say. One of the critical issues that will need to be ironed out at work in the future, Kesher said, will revolve around workplace flexibility. We're increasingly seeing workplace flexibility issues evolving in the workplace, and Gen Y workers in particular (though they're not alone) want to know how they can maintain their relationship with work while still having the flexibility to live the life they envision. As mentioned above, Gen Y has no problem with work or with the idea of working hard -- it's just that their job will never be the whole of their identity. They were raised with the imperative to "follow your dreams!", and their job and life may intersect in new ways than we've seen in past generations. "Gen Y," Kesher stressed, "doesn't want a job -- they want a life that hopefully includes a job."
• Being green: This is the generation that's leading the green movement -- so give them the power to build, make changes, and become leaders in your organization's (existing or non-existing) green movement.

Why worry about Gen Y?

Ensuring that the different generations working together under one roof actually work well together is a big concern for many employers. After all, if knowledge isn't able to be sufficiently shared from generation to generation, older generations will eventually retire -- taking with them decades of experience. In addition, workers who work well together are likely to be happier, more productive and better brand ambassadors for companies."

Google makes a lot of money from online advertising.

In the twelve months ended June 30, 2011, Google made $33.3 billion in revenues. Of that, 97 percent ($32.2 billion) was from advertising.WordStream, a provider of software for keywords and pay-per-click marketing campaigns, has done research to discover which keywords receive the highest costs per click (CPC) in Google AdWords.

WordStream compiled the data using its own Google Keyword tool to determine the top 10,000 most expensive keywords over a 90-day period. The keywords were organized into categories by theme. The largest keyword categories were determined by the number of keywords within each category, as well as monthly search volume and average cost per click of each keyword.

Here are the top 20 keyword categories that fetched the highest costs per click:

1. Insurance - $54.91 per click
2. Loans - $44.28 per click
3. Mortgage - $47.12 per click
4. Attorney - $47.07 per click
5. Credit - $36.06 per click
6. Lawyer - $42.51 per click
7. Donate - $42.02 per click
8. Degree - $40.61 per click
9. Hosting - $31.91 per click
10. Claim - $45.51 per click
11. Conference Call - $42.05 per click
12. Trading - $33.19 per click
13. Software - $35.29 per click
14. Recovery - $42.03 per click
15. Transfer - $29.86 per click
16. Gas/Electricity - $54.62 per click
17. Classes - $35.04 per click
18. Rehab - $33.59 per click
19. Treatment - $37.18 per click
20. Cord Blood - $27.80 per click