The Kmiec Ramblings

In today’s world where information is very accessible I continue to find it perplexing that some recuiters clearly aren’t doing their jobs better. My LinkedIn profile is up to date.  My Facebook profile is open to the public.  My bio is available on both iMedia and on this site.  With all the information you have about me you should be able to laser focus only on jobs that are clearly in line with experience.

Today I received the following email from a recruiter:

“Hi Adam,

My name is [name] and I’m a recruiter with a company called [company name]. I came across your resume on LinkedIn today and am very interested in speaking with you about a job opportunity. The position is with a great advertising client in the Minneapolis area. This is a direct hire opportunity that offers great compensation, benefits and a highly creative atmosphere. I have attached the job description for your review.

If you are interested, please give me a call at your earliest convenience so we can discuss in further detail. If not, would you know of anyone who might be interested?

Thank you for your time,

[name]

So that sounds interesting and let’s be honest even if you are happy with your current job, you’d be foolish not to look. So I look at the position description that was attached and the following jumped out at me “Mid-Level to Senior Level positions available (3+ years of required experience). Senior Level people should be capable of leading large-scale integrated and interactive projects on national accounts. All applicants should have excellent multi-tasking skills, and can expect to juggle multiple projects and clients. ”

Why on Earth would you send a position requiring 3 years of experience to someone with 12? My response to the recruiter was:

“[name]

Thanks for thinking of me. But I’m not sure this is a great fit for me. I’ve got 12 years of experience and this position seems substantially more junior.

Adam”

I thought that was a nice, simple, truthful response. It was clear that the recruiter never took the time to look at my profile, understand what I’ve done, and what I’d like to be doing. Instead they simple did a blanket search for people in the Minneapolis area who have Interactive experience.

Folks, the web gives you so much useful information. Please take advantage of it.

We can learn something from anything and we should continually be trying to learn every day.  I firmly believe that.  My Facebook profile says, “My only real activity is consuming as much media and information as I possibly can each day. My brain never shuts off. I’m constantly thinkng, plotting, planning, and learning.” It’s true; that’s what I do every single day.

The other day, I blogged about one of my favorite movie quotes and all time business lessons, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”  That post got me thinking about all the other lessons we can learn from the movies.  With that in mind, here’s my list of 10 things you can learn…

10. Don’t Fake It, Learn It: You can fake anything for a short period of time. I’ve seen people fake “it” for years. Trust me, eventually it catches up to you. Eventually, you’ll find yourself in a situation where someone in the room, who’s smarter than you, calls you out. When that happens, you are indeed screwed.

9. Never Trade Your Reputation: If you lose everything else, you’ll be left with only your reputation. That reputation can help you get back on top quickly. A fantastic reputation will help you gain respect, earn opportunity, and maintain trust amongst those above you and those surrounding you.

8. Be Mindful of Gifts: Sometimes the lure of money can blind us. Cash, cars, bonuses, nice offices, assistants, etc. feel good, but it isn’t worth it if you sell your reputation to get those gifts.

7. Make Time to Train Your “Soldiers”: A well trained team can overcome even the most amazing odds. If we don’t make time to train and mentor those around us, above us, and below us we’ll eventually lose. Mentorship is very important and something we shouldn’t neglect.

6. The Little Things Matter: Every thing matters. The little things are often overlooked and when you have 1,000 little things that aren’t taken care of you can end up with several LARGE problems.

5. Solve Problems: Don’t look for excuses, don’t complain, don’t whine; look for solutions.  It’s easy to point out problems, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to figure out how to solve them.

4. Stay Hungry: Don’t rest on your laurels, don’t become complacent, don’t ever think you’ve finally made it. Someone is always hungrier. The minute you lose that hunger…you lose that edge; it’s really tough to get it back.

3. Make Time For Your Family: Jobs will come and go, but you’re family will always be there (for good or bad). All the spoils in the world mean nothing if you have no one to share them with. So make time to show your family how much they mean to you.

2. Get a Wingman: Everybody needs one. It’s too hard to go at it alone. Don’t look for someone who is 100% like you; it’s a recipe for failure because you’ll never get any alternative perspectives. Without an alternative perspective you might as well be talking to the mirror.

1. Keep Business and Personal Life Separate: In other words, it’s not personal, it’s just business. Don’t let your personal emotions enter the picture. Make your decisions based on the business needs, not personal. This of course means not hiring your friends, just because they’re your friends.

It’s one of my all time favorite quotes from The Godfather and in today’s cut throat business world it’s a lesson worth remembering. AskMen.com does a great job of breaking down what it means in business here.

I kid you not, part of a business school should be watching The Godfather along with several other movies. I’ve been thinking about doing a post on what we can learn about business from movies and today is the day I’ll start writing. I should have it completed by the end of the week.

Always loved this photo.  I took it March 12, 2003 using my Nikon F5 and Fuji Velvia 50  slide film.  You just can’t get warmth like this with digital.  Anyhow, hope your 4th is fantastic.

One Crispin I can get behind…

I don’t understand how Ticketmaster continues to operate in the way they do.  In this country we are anti-monopoly.  The government will strike you down if you even think about owning too much market share.  Yet, Ticketmaster continues to be ONLY viable option for tickets.  How can this be?

Let me give you 3 recent examples of why Ticketmaster sucks:

1. Ordered Neil Diamond tickets for a gift.  Chose the option for Retail Location Pickup; that means I can go to a Ticketmaster location and have them print out my tickets.  I go the nearest location, which is inside a Macy’s.  The system is down/will not work.  After waiting for 30 minutes plus, I finally ask the associate, can I take a look at the “terminal?”  She says, “go for it.”  It took me all of 5 minutes to fix the problem for her/them, which allowed them to print off my tickets.  Here’s the kicker…Ticketmaster charged me a $1.00 convenience charge to pick up the tickets.  Shouldn’t they have paid me?
2. Ordered Peter Frampton tickets for myself.  Chose the option for Retail Location Pickup.  Between the time I ordered the tickets and went to pick them up, Discover (my credit card of choice and the one I used to buy the tickets) had issued me a new care and new number.  I think you know where this is going.  I present my receipt, my driver’s license, and my new Discover credit card to the associate.  Despite ALL of this documentation they can not print my tickets, because I did not have my old Discover card with the my old number.  After dealing with them for over 30 minutes in person and via phone, Ticketmaster agrees to send me my tickets via United States Postal Service.
3. Ordered Ringo Starr tickets as a Father’s Day gift for my dad.  The concert is in NY, I live in MN.  I use the Retail Location Pickup locator on Ticketmaster’s site.  It shows me that the nearest location is a Macy’s about 5 miles from my house.  Taking my lessons learned from the above situations, I come prepared with my license, receipt, and credit card that I used to purchase the tickets.  I present all 3 and of course we have a problem.  Ticketmaster locations in Minnesota are unable to print tickets for events in New York.  The associate’s recommendation was to pick them up in person in New York.  Seriously.  Think about that.  Sir, can you please drive 1,800 miles to pickup your tickets?  So I call Ticketmaster who agrees to ship them to me via UPS for a charge of $14.50.  Now this gets better.  On the day of the show, I receive an alert from Ticketmaster to my iPhone.  The alert informs me the concert is canceled and I will receive a refund.  I then receive a follow up email that says “Your credit card will automatically be credited the ticket price and convenience charges, and should post to your account within 7 to 10 business days. Please note, the $3.00 per order processing fee and any ticketFast or UPS delivery charges are non-refundable.”  So the $14.50 that I shouldn’t have had to pay in the first time is now a sunk cost and Ticketmaster keeps their order processing fee.

If you are like me, then you’re saying to yourself, “Adam, if you think Ticketmaster sucks, and they screwed you over the first two times, why did you go to the well again?”  Good question.  Because there was NO other alternative.

In total, for all 3 transactions Ticketmaster charged me the following:

• Tickets: $392.00
• Building Facility Charges: $4.00
• Convenience Charges: $55.30
• Order Processing Charge: $11.34
• UPS Delivery: $14.50
• Retail Location Pickup: $1.00
• Tax: $2.78

I’m open to ideas and suggestions on what to do in the future and how to shine more light on Ticketmaster’s short-comings.  Thoughts?

I’m honestly not sure what to say or think about a site that says: “MyWonderfulLife.com is a free on-line service to help you plan and personalize your own funeral, so it reflects the way you lived. Becoming a member at MyWonderfulLife.com does not take the place of a Will, which is very important, but allows you to eliminate the guesswork for your loved ones during a difficult time.”

It’s a little freaky, but yet I can see why the site makes sense, serves a need, and could take off. Crazy.

I’m a life long BMW fan. I worked on BMW while at Fallon. I’ve owned a BMW. I tell anyone that will listen that they should by a BMW over a Mercedes, Lexus, etc. I think BMW should give me a new M3 Sedan. By doing so they’d be making money on me. Don’t believe me? Let’s do the math.

In looking at the math, we’ll use rough numbers, and only look at things that I can quantify easily. So what does that mean?

1. I offer BMW 1 blog post per day, 10 Twitter updates, and 10 Facebook Statuses. I can’t even quantify the verbal offerings This means BMW gets 21 touch points from me per day.
2. Over a 365 day year, they’d garner 7,665 touch points.
3. This site gets about 1,000 visitors a day
4. My Twitter stream is seen by about 4,000 people a day
5. My Facebook status is seen by 100 people
6. So that means my reach (not including overlap) is 5,100
7. That means 5,100 people would be exposed to 7,665 messages for a total of 39,091,500 impressions.
8. Using a VERY conservative $5.00 CPM, BMW would be getting $195,457.50 in paid media
9. Let’s round up the cost of a M3 to $70,000.
10. With a $70,000 investment, BMW would net $125,457.50

That’s the deal of the century because not only would make money on the deal, you’d have an owner for life, and possibly a bunch of new owners…that of course depends on how persuasive I am. For those of you that know me, you know how persuasive I can be

I decided to test my theory and sent a note to BMW.  I’ll eagerly be awaiting their call.