The Walk for Hope is 10k (6.2 miles) walk from the Angus Barn Restaurant through Umstead State Park that raises funds for scientific research into the causes, cures and to discover more effective treatment of mental illness.  The walk starts at 10:00am. The Walk ends back at the Angus Barn for a fabulous post walk celebration with live music, great food and prizes.  It is a fun day, a great way to get exercise and spend time with friends and family and all the while helping many who suffer in silence. If you’re not up for the 10k there is a half walk and a 1 mile Nature Walk around Angus Barn Lake.  If you prefer to run, the Run for Hope starts at 8:00am. 

Join the APC Walk For Hope Team:

Just click the link below to register and join APC’s team.  Note our team code is: APC.

http://www.walkforhope.com/registration.aspx?TheTeamJoinCode=APC

I WANT TO HELP, BUT CAN’T MAKE THE DATE:
If you can’t make the walk, but want to make a donation under APC’s team,

Just click on the link below and use my walker code of ‘troy’ or ask me who needs additional contribution to meet the minimum.

http://www.walkforhope.com/donate.aspx?TheCode=troy 

I need more details on the day before I make a decision:

Please visit www.walkforhope.com or contact Troy Roberts at: troberts@apc-services.com or Blair Briggs at:  bbriggs@apc-services.com

North Carolina scored particularly high marks in the fields of Technology & Innovation and Business Friendliness.

If you are considering relocating to the area and have any questions or would like a firsthand account of the joys of working and living in North Carolina, contact us!

(It should be noted that while North Carolina is number four on the list of best states to do business, it is also apparently the fourth laziest state in the union, according to another, strangely conflicting study by BusinessWeek.com.  I guess you could say we work hard and play hard…)

Check the video out on YouTube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H16buInPn4

You can find more information about this great organization here:  http://unchaindogs.net/

A few months ago I watched a webinar that was based on The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence, as found on Parature’s website.  It featured lots of intelligently presented, pragmatic advice, including the ‘8 Management Principles’ of Nordstrom.  All of the principles were compelling, and I definitely recommend viewing the webinar, but the one which most caught my attention was #4:  Hire Nice, Motivated People.  This was further elaborated by the phrase, “Hire the Smile.  Train the Skill.” 

This seems simple enough, but it really resonated with me.  This is because I have long believed that being nice is a large part of what makes a person successful in the area of customer service.  Take me, for example.  I’m pretty nice.  In fact, I’ve been told many times that I’m TOO nice.  I’m not saying this to toot my own horn, although that phrase is hilarious; I just think that my excessive desire in life to make sure other people are happy and comfortable translates well into a job in customer service. 

For example, if you are a customer, and you call me up because you have a problem or an issue, I will listen to what you’re saying, empathize, care about your concerns and genuinely do everything I can to help you.  I don’t think this is a trait that can be learned on the job– you can teach someone how to assist customers, but you can’t teach them to actually care about customers and relate to their problems.  And I’m not sure this is a particularly desirable trait in other areas of business, where being more aggressive and less empathetic will get you a lot further.  But it does mean that I work hard to make sure customers are happy not only because it is my job, but because I enjoy helping people, which allows me to bring a certain amount of authenticity to the work I do.  I think customers pick up on this.  They can tell when you don’t really care about their issues, and are just trying to ‘handle’ them, and when you genuinely do. 

What do you think?

To all our Canadian friends and colleagues:  Have a wonderful holiday!

In my opinion, few things make a poorer impression in an emailed message than an intentional misspelling or word abbreviation.  Accidental spelling errors are bad too, but I would argue that intentional misspellings are worse, because you theoretically knew the correct way to spell a word or phrase– ‘are’, for example, or ‘thank you’– and instead deliberately chose to express yourself using the absolute minimum number of letters you could possibly get away with while still communicating your essential meaning.  In business, this usually comes across as hasty, thoughtless, or just plain lazy. 

No matter the subject of your email, it can’t ever hurt to be respectful by including a salutation, proper capitalization, punctuation, and even vowels.  Call me old-fashioned, but these days, knowing that someone took the time to properly address an email to me, spell my name correctly, and include a period at the end of their message gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. 

Still, there are those who argue that emailers should get a free pass if they’re clearly sending a message from a Blackberry or an iPhone.  After all, they might be standing at a baggage claim or holding a cup of coffee and a briefcase and crossing the street!  It’s hard to dot your i’s and cross your t’s when you’re juggling several things at once.  Shouldn’t I just be grateful that they emailed me at all?  I still say no.  Sending your email on the go should not exempt you from having to use proper spelling or grammar. 

Or am I behind the times here?  Have we reached the point where communication is so terse and brief and constant that abbreviated language is acceptable in business?  I’d love to hear other opinions on this one. 

Thx.

-Molly

One of the best reasons to hire a contractor tomorrow is that you can take some pressure off of your current team. It’s very doubtful that you simply have excess project or people budget, but if you’re making your best and brightest work an extra 10 hours a week to meet a deadline, how are you affecting their life style and happiness? What is the cost of losing one of them? How about 2? If you bring in a contractor for 2-6 months, it can help keep your best people engaged and happy, and potentially allow you to beat your deadline. What is that worth?  Can a level 1/2 helpdesk person take the administrative burden off of your expensive IT person so that they can focus on some things that can really grow your business? I challenge you to ask this question.

This has been said time and time again, but you can also pull the budget to hire a contractor from a different pool than you would use to hire a full-time employee. Often you may have project budget that can be used for additional hardware, software, or service.  Is there a service that you’re paying tens of thousands of dollars a year (or  more) that can potentially be handled (or eliminated) by a contractor working on site?

There’s also something to be said for contract-to-hire, or more like evaluation-with-potential-to-hire. You can see how this person and their skills fit in your environment, and maybe hire them after an evaluation period. A great manager of mine once said “There’s  a 50% divorce rate in this country, but people still think they can pick a fulltime fit for their organization with a few hours of interviewing”. I found this really relevant, because a couple may date for years before they decide to marry, and later learn that they’re not a match. Yet, everyday, companies are deciding the people they want to be around for 40+ hours a week by holding cattle call interviews and meeting with the best for a few additional hours. Perhaps, in the future, employees will be contractors for 3-6 months so they may be evaluated before being brought on full-time.

There are plenty of other valid reasons, but nobody likes a giant wall of text, so I’ll save my thoughts for next time. Feel free to e-mail me with any questions or comments: jguigno@apc-services.com

I’m really not sure how I feel about the idea of being given a motivational lapel pin by my boss for a job well done.  Or a poster that says, “Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to achieve uncommon results”.  (Although it’s always nice to be common!) 

Ok, maybe I am sure how I feel about it:  Ambivalent. 

Fortunately, to my knowledge that catalogue has never been ordered from by anyone at my company.  I think that is a good thing.  I’m somehow not enthused about the idea of receiving a coffee mug that says, “YOU PUT THE ‘COOL’ IN WATER COOLER” or a plush monkey wearing a vest that says, “WORK HARD – PLAY HARD!” from my boss.  In fact, I think it would almost devalue the work I am doing. 

Basically, I’m no longer five.  I am not that excited about receiving toys and presents for a job well done.   It’s not that I don’t want my hard work to be acknowledged, but I AM saying that having management take me aside and let me know that they appreciate the work I’m doing is just as meaningful– and possibly MORE meaningful, than having them take me aside and give me a travel coffee mug that’s full of jellybeans and that says “You Make The Difference”. 

If my team did a great job on that last project, just telling me, “Your team did a great job on that last project,” is to me more significant than giving me a poster that says, “The Power of Team”.

Am I crazy?  Or is the idea of receiving motivational doodads at the office kind of undignified? 

I think that a good manager knows what is important to his employees, and knows how to reward them in meaningful ways for a job well done.  I am fortunate to have such a manager.

-Molly

On the one hand, this is understandable.  There’s work, and then there’s play.  There’s your 9-5 business life, and then there’s your life outside of the office.  The two certainly don’t have to mix.

But the problem is that often, they do.  Our coworkers frequently also become our friends.  We spend so much time with them at work, that it is natural for deeper relationships to develop.  The trouble is that the line begins to blur, particularly when it comes to our online, social-media personas. 

There are many social networking sites that are clearly first and foremost for connecting professionally, such as Linked In and BrazenCareerist.  But Facebook, as far and away the most popular social networking website, is often the site that the most people have in common.  If you’re going to connect anywhere with your coworkers and possibly your boss, it will likely be through Facebook.

At this point, this is not as much of an issue for those who are job searching, because after the whole Facebook privacy brouhaha, most people are aware that it is wise to keep your personal information on Facebook private.  But when you allow someone into your network, they generally have access to much more personal information about you.  Is this information something that you feel comfortable with your supervisor seeing?

There is no easy answer here, but I think it’s a topic that deserves further discussion.  How have you navigated through this situation?

–Molly

1)  Leave The House:  It may sound obvious, but it’s very easy to let yourself get so caught up in job-searching that you forget to do the normal activities that you would be enjoying during your off-hours if you were employed.  If you’re like me, you tend to grow a little morbid and strange after spending too many hours alone in the house.  Suddenly normal social interaction seems to take a herculean effort– even something as simple as swinging by the supermarker to pick up milk becomes a daunting task.  “Maybe I’ll just stay in and order a pizza online again,” you might figure.  But don’t.  Spending too much time in the same place is likely to keep your thoughts running along the same track, which is not a good way to either refresh yourself or allow you to be creative in your job searching.  Go down to the coffee shop around the corner; hang around the library– there are plenty of fun, inexpensive locales at which you can still get a lot done.

2)  Try to Keep Regular Hours:  If the professionals at the companies where you are applying are awake and ready to hear from you during business hours, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be up bright and early as well.  Sleeping in means you lose valuable time during which you can be contacting (and contacted by) jobs you are interested in.  Since you may as well consider job-hunting to be your job (the hours are certainly flexible!), there’s no reason not to do as much of it as possible during the regular work-day.  Of course, this doesn’t mean that the occasional late morning sleep-in is something to feel guilty about; it’s certainly one of the perks of being unemployed.  Make sure to let your employed friends know what they’re missing out on every one in awhile.  It’s only fair. 

3)  Make Time for Your Friends, and Make them Make Time for You:  It’s easy to feel as though your employed friends are too busy to hang out with you, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t see them as regularly as you always have.  Emailing, texting, and lurking on Facebook for hours might feel like it’s fulfilling your need for social interaction, but come on.  You know there’s nothing like real face time with people who care about you.  If you have other friends who are also job-searching, you can arrange to get together with them during the day for lunch or a walk in the park.  You can also organize a low-budget social gathering, like a potluck or a movie night.  Even though job-searching is a stressful activity and can definitely be a grind, you deserve to make time for yourself and to enjoy life while you are between jobs.