Tesar-Reynes

There seems to be a few things that are in common with many of the people I talk to today. They are fearful, frustrated and reinventing themselves.

I just talked to a person who spent many years in the QSR industry and they have honed a new concept store that will be opened by the end of the year.

Recently I ran into another person who is going into personal career training to help Baby Boomers transition into a new way of making a living.

We are dealing with someone we knew years ago who is trying to buy small distressed agencies and grow a local midwestern network. I had lunch last month with an old candidate who has propelled herself up the organization by becoming …

I have an entrepreneurial spirit. Often, I daydream of starting my own business and making Business Week’s list of America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs. The young men and women who populate this year’s finalists look like rock stars to me. One of them, Shama Kabani, caught my attention because she made her mark by starting a business specializing in exactly what I do – Social Media Marketing.

This girl is 24 years old and she already owns a company that expects revenues of $280,000 in only its second year of operation. Her business, …

After being out of work for a while, the idea of any money versus no money becomes pretty clear. The problem lies in negotiating with a potential employer for a lower salary. When working with a search firm, a person has a sense of perimeters. When going into a job negotiation solo, there is a sense of flying blind.

Two questions you may have are:

1. If I ask for too much, will I price myself out of the job?

2. If I price myself too low, do I come off as damaged merchandise or desperate?

There is no good answer. Two suggestions:

1. Bounce the question off a trusted recruiter you know.

2. Ask the interviewer what the salary range is for the job spec.

…

I am working on a search where the right candidate will probably have to relocate to the New York Tri-State area. Most of the people I have talked to are, knee-jerk, saying no. Too many of them are under water on their mortgage.

They intuitively knew that a future employer wasn’t going to bail them out of their mess. It is sort of a catch-22. “I got to get out of here and find a job; but I can’t get out of here to find a job.”

The only short term answer I know is either commute to the new opportunity or rent your home and then rent on the other end.

Bob and I have sensed a glimmer of improvements in the economy since around April or May. We know that we are a leading indicator of the economy and we should feel it first. Thus far it has been mainly false starts and things being put on hold. It drives us nuts!

The emotional effort of getting up for new things and then having them fade away is tough. It has caused us to become slightly more jaded about any opportunity that comes along. The good news is that the phone is ringing more and there is a palpable shift in attitude.

Stay tuned.

I was talking to a good friend of mine in the banking regulation business. We were smiling over the fact that the Dow had broken 9,000. We were even talking about the possibility of “the boys taking a hiking trip in the Rockies”. I was pretty stoked about some good news. But then I am by nature, an optimist.

After a refreshing positive pause, we started talking about the crunch that is about to appear in commercial real estate. We wondered aloud about whether it would have much effect on the recovery. We decided it would have some, but “not too much”.

I was still in an okay mode until he talked about the fact that, since the banks are not lending the money like they should, and …

Harry Gold, of the Click Z network, shared these ten tips for negotiating with media vendors today.

I hated media in school. It just seemed too much like math to me. However, thanks to a teacher I had in my entertainment marketing program in L.A., who also happened to be the SVP of Media at Paramount for twenty years, I learned to ask an important question:

Where’s the money?

Enjoy.