Tesar-Reynes

I had breakfast today with a good friend. Whenever we get together, my brain simmers for a good time after. Our conversation today covered the oil spill, commercial real estate, the attraction of the Catholic Church, the immigrants in Arizona, the Medici’s, Thorstein Veblen and the restructuring of global business. I’ll talk about the last subject and not bore you with the rest.

Starting in late 2008, businesses stopped spending money. The phrase “Cash is King” resounded everywhere. As the corporate sales charts went into free fall, the only actionable strategy left for business was to cut cost. Reduction in staff was the name of the game. People were not necessarily cut selectively: whole departments were vaporized. As an HR director told me, when she walked down the halls, she could hear people humming the theme from “Jaws” or mimicking the …

Last week’s Inc. Magazine included a great article entitled, “How to Write an Offer Letter,” detailing the keys to any good formal job offer letter. I thought this would be perfect for some of the hiring managers and recruiters who read our blog. (Thanks, as always, for your readership.)

If you’re asking yourself how important the offer letter is in the hiring courtship, the short answer is extremely important. Perhaps an analogy would do. Offer letters are like the wedding vows you take with a new employee you’re entering a working relationship with. It represents the terms of your new “marriage” and the expectations that both employee and employer are expected to hold to.

According to the article, in addition to clearly communicating a formal offer to a potential employee, the offer …

Last week, my partner Bob and I flew into New York to meet face-to-face with a company that had really impressed us. We wanted introduce them to some of our clients and were driven to their headquarters to see a multi-media presentation on their capabilities.

Here we were in their headquarters and the presentation got wonky and did not execute. Instead of ordering in the techs or crying “poor me,” the presenter had an alternative backup presentation on a thumb drive that he plugged in and it went without a hitch.

Yesterday I was in another presentation where the presenter came over the day before and ran it through on his PC. The next day, the PC conked out and he had a backup on a thumb drive. He tried …

In a recent gathering I was asked my opinion on the subject of age and the job market. After the conversation progressed for a while, the issue broke down into two pieces: chronological age versus perceptual age and naive preemptive cutting of the candidacy due to age.

I fully believe that chronological age is a poor qualifier for an individual’s candidacy. I have known people in their teens that acted like they were in their 50’s, conversely I have known people in their 80′s that acted like they were in their 40’s.

Perceptual age, how one acts, is all about enthusiasm, flexibility, curiosity and the ability to relate. As a search company we are much less concerned by someone’s age, and more how than by how they act and think.

There was a general consensus in the room that …

I had the good fortune on the second of June to speak at the Chicago chapter of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG). Check them out. There were about 60 or 70 people in the room, and I was impressed by their level of commitment to help one another.

As I understand it, about one third of the group worked for local companies, one third were consultants, and one third were in transition to a new job. The leadership of the group was enthusiastic, helpful, and offered a great deal of resources. The members reflected the leadership’s emotions and seemed genuinely concerned about helping fellow members. They have branches all over the country.

I am a natural born optimist and have been looking for something that would show a sign that the economy was turning for quite some time. I think I got my first sign in the second week of May. That’s when our phone started to ring, and we got six new searches or projects in the course of the next seven days. We are not back to full activity, but it’s nice to be busy again.

The one frustration is dealing with a couple of clients that have fought the good fight internally and are now looking for people to join their company. Some of these hiring managers feel that they can get good people for less than market value and that they are doing them …

If you saw my last post, you read about my suggestion to hire a social media manager. Along with that thinking, your social media manager’s first step will likely be to draft a corporate social media policy.

I’ve tweeted this post on corporate social media policies about four times the last month. In it, you’ll find excellent examples of the policies corporations big and small, from computer firms to marketing firms, have written for their workforce.

Most top managers harbor reservations about social media because their scared of losing control of message. I don’t blame them. How can a corporation as big as IBM expect to keep all their employees on message point?

A social media policy will help keep your workforce in check. In fact, rather …

A resume lives in two dramatically difficult dimensions: on the monitor and on a piece of paper. I am amazed at how few people take advantage of this distinction. Most everyone knows how to put together a good print resume but how many use the cornucopia that is available through their resume on the screen?

Here is a perfect place to embed objects that will lead the reader to write ups or citations about you or your product. With Flickr being so easy to use, why not show examples of your products, displays, logos or print ads. Consider posting your creative reel on YouTube. If the site you created or revised for the client is still up, refer the reader to there! It’s all real time. All the world is interactive today. …

With my internship ending in June, the next few weeks will present a unique challenge: a job search in the worst job market since the Great Depression.

My roommate, a film student who also buses at the Cheesecake Factory, remarked yesterday how happy he is just to have a job. “8 percent of this country is unemployed,” he said. “That’s basically 10 percent. That’s a lot of people. I have no room to complain.”

He’s right. For me, this is the first time I’ll face a job search in adulthood, meaning rent and bills loom on the horizon. I consider this a true test of valor. Either I emerge from this hunt triumphant or will have to face the pride-swallowing alternative – a call to mom and dad for some …

People who are late for meetings drive me nuts. On the surface, it shows someone who is not organized or professional. If they arrive late, they are disruptive, and usually cause the meeting to last longer than planned.

The real grind for me is on a more personal level. I revert back to being an eight-year-old who feels that my time is less valuable than theirs. It’s like they’re rubbing my nose in it. I have to be very careful to not become hostile. The moment they speak, I wonder if they even realize that they are generating this sort of vibe to other people in the meeting.

In terms of interviewing, I remember a candidate of mine who arrived late for an appointment with a hiring manager. She had not called ahead of time to notify him. When she showed …