Mashable: Latest 10 News Updates - including “December Job Hunt Tips”

Mashable: Latest 10 News Updates - including “December Job Hunt Tips”


December Job Hunt Tips

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 03:24 PM PST


Cesar Ulloa is a Senior Staffing Manager in the Accounting & Finance Contracts division at Winter, Wyman, the largest and one of the most recognized staffing organizations in the Northeast. Find out more on the Winter, Wyman blog or follow on Twitter @WinterWyman.

Finding a job during the holiday season may be easier than you think! Bust the holiday job-search myths, and find your next job.

Do you have a tip for job hunting during the winter months? Tell us in the comments below.


Holiday Job Search Myths


Nobody hires in December.
December is typically a busy time of the year for hiring. Several industries, such as retail, bring on temporary employees to help with everything from payroll to filing.

The budgets for jobs are exhausted.
Several companies review their budgets not only for the year ahead but also for the remainder of the year, and may find a surplus. Also, not all companies work on a calendar year. Some fiscal years have already begun back in October.

Nothing ever happens between Thanksgiving and the third week of January.
Some of the busiest weeks are between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Many companies are preparing for the approaching year and these hiring decisions usually get made before the start of the New Year.

Use December to plan your search and be ready to hit the market after the first of the year.
The holidays are a more relaxed time of the year, and job seekers should take advantage of that. Hiring managers are in a festive mood and job seekers should be very proactive in their approach. If other job seekers believe in the myth that the holidays are slow for hiring, then you could be at more of an advantage with less competition.

Even if an employer may have an opening, many hiring managers are tied up with budgets, deadlines and family obligations, and they are difficlt to get a hold of.
Temporary jobs are not only a great option in the workforce, but a great employment option and usually don’t require multiple interviews so decisions can be made quickly. They usually don’t require the decision of several hiring managers.


Job Search Tips During the December Holidays


Go to holiday networking events.
This is a great way to meet people who are in the holiday spirit. Again, the holidays are a time for cheer, so why not get out in an environment where decision makers are in a festive mood.

Send holiday cards with your business card enclosed to hiring managers.
This is a great opportunity to reach out to hiring managers, and even if you think your card may get lost in the holiday shuffle, you never know the impact it could make.

Network at your family parties.
It's a small world, and you never know who your brother, cousin or mother knows in your industry. A personal connection to a possible job opportunity, recruiter or hiring manager is a great way to get your foot in the door.


Social Media Job Listings


Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!

More About: December, features, job search series, jobs, mashable, new features

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Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS]

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 02:38 PM PST


1. Flyboard




Want a jetpack? Never mind that -- this water-powered pair of rocket boots lets you perform tricks and fly around either underwater or over the surface. Remember Astro Boy? You get the idea. Get out your $6,600 and get ready to strap on these hovering rocket feet, sucking up gallons of water and blasting you from here to kingdom come. Is there a learning curve to flying this thing? It can't be easy. We're thinking that guy should be wearing a helmet. [via DVICE]

Click here to view this gallery.

If you’d like to fly like a bird, swim like a dolphin, play drums on your chest and own a robot that might someday own you, you’ve come to the right place. It’s time for the Top 10 Tech This Week, blowing you away with the best and brightest, the craziest and scariest, the most innovative and unbelievable technology introduced in the world over the past seven days. Buckle up, because here we go.

More About: Ferrari, Flyboard, robots, Top 10 Tech

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XXX Domains: An Obvious Failure

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 02:07 PM PST

anya amasova

Mashable OP-ED: This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.

Is it just me or is the ICANN plan to corral online porn going terribly wrong? We already have reports that universities are snapping up XXX domains in an effort to get ahead of porn pranksters who want to besmirch a few good online names with smut.

I guess this turn of events was obvious to anyone with half a brain.

Legitimate porn sites have little interest in the triple X domains, which went on sale earlier this week, for their businesses because they see them as potential censorship and, more importantly, they thrive on people accidentally stumbling on their URLs. In the early days of the web this was common because porn purveyors snapped up known names and brands — none of which had to feature an obvious porn domain label. That's how "Whitehouse.com" ended up, for a time, as a porn site.

.XXX was designed to improve the situation. No more accidentally typing in, well, something you didn't intend. With a designated porn domain, it's unlikely anyone would end up in the wrong place. Better yet, corporations and homes could easily block all .XXX domains. That's the plan, but if pornographers stay away and legitimate people, companies, businesses and universities race to snap up any and all XXX domain names that could be construed as theirs, then this triple XXX domain could be an embarrassing failure for the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

Think I'm exaggerating? The AP reports that 80,000 XXX domains were sold in presale and many companies like Pepsi and Nike lined up to purchase adult domains. The University of Kansas reportedly just paid $3,000 for a variety of XXX URLs.

It's unlikely anyone will ever type in www.KUgirls.xxx, but that's not the point. The university just wanted to be safe. I understand the impulse. Even as I'm writing this, I'm wondering if I, too, should try to protect my good name by buying the LanceUlanoff.xxx domain.

I know where to go. GoDaddy.com is registering them for $99 a year, making these domains considerably more expensive than standard domains (which you can buy at various sites at anywhere from $1.99 or $9.99—yearly maintenance fees are then more expensive). According to the website, if I wanted to launch an adult website under that URL, I actually have to become an "Internet Community Member" and then confirm my status of "the sponsored adult entertainment community". My guess is that this is how the ICANN polices the URLs, to ensure that someone isn't registering someone else's brand as a porn site. I have no plans to do so, which conveniently means I do not have to become a part of the "Community." GoDaddy tells me this too, and is — fortunately, I guess — only too happy to help me park my URL for the same exorbitant fee.

Atop GoDaddy's XXX domain registration page is this: "Let’s be adult about it. Create an adult Web presence or protect your brand." This is followed by an explanation of why you'd want to register an XXX domain. Note what it starts with:

Secure your brand. Protect your reputation.

Perhaps you'd like to create an adult entertainment website. Or maybe you’re here to keep your brand from being registered as a .XXX by someone else. Whatever your reasons for wanting a .XXX domain, you've come to the right place. To check the availability of your domain, type the name you want into the search box above.

GoDaddy has built its brand with coy references to sex (check out any of its Super Bowl ads), but it's not being coy here. The message is clear: If you don't want someone launching a porn XXX domain with your name or brand, you’d better let GoDaddy take your money and register it for you.

While I see the parallels with the early days of the web, this situation is different in one fundamental way: Those snapping up the domains for protection will never use them. No one outside the porn industry wants to run a live XXX domain website. These businesses and universities are simply buying them in what GoDaddy actually calls "Defensive Registrations" to hide them from view forever (and they'll pay GoDaddy yearly fees to do so).

Instead of creating a solution, the ICANN's apparently misguided efforts have spawned a new anxiety: "Your Brand Name in Porn." The fear is so strong that it's got all these people buying up domains just so the wrong people can’t get them. As I see it, this could be quite a windfall for GoDaddy. The company should send the ICANN a thank-you note.

More About: .xxx, domains, GoDaddy.com, top level domains

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3 New Digital Solutions For Capturing and Sharing Content

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 01:34 PM PST


The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Each weekend, Mashable selects startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.

This week we chose three companies whose reps presented at the DreamIt Ventures demo day in Philadelphia on Wednesday. All three have created fresh digital takes on collecting and sharing different types of content.

SnipSnap turns paper coupons into digital coupons with an app that “clips” them with a smartphone camera. Spling aims to be a platform for sharing and storing links, and ThaTrunk makes it easy to share files with people nearby.


SnipSnap: A Digital Organizer for Paper Coupons


Quick Pitch: SnipSnap scans, saves, and redeems printed coupons on your mobile phone.

Genius Idea: Giving printed coupons digital perks.

Mashable’s Take: SnipSnap is a bridge between physical and digital coupons. The app uses optical character recognition, image recognition and barcode scanning to extract data from any printed coupon your smartphone photographs. It recognizes almost every kind of coupon type.

Once your paper coupons are loaded onto your phone, the app will alert you either when you enter a store where you can use one, or when an expiration date is approaching.

The process also makes printed coupons shareable and trackable through social media. The tracking aspect is what will make the startup money — advertisers will be able to target coupon offers and deals to customers based on their coupon clipping history.

SnipSnap, which plans to release its first app this month, makes paper coupons more efficient for both the consumer and the merchant. But there’s a significant hitch in its plan: Many supermarkets don’t accept digital coupons yet.

“We are hard at work on a breakthrough method for allowing you to redeem paper-based coupons via your phone,” assures the SnipSnap website, “and are aiming to release this capability in early 2012.”


Spling: A Social Network With a Link Library


Quick Pitch: Spling is a new social platform for content discovery and sharing.

Genius Idea: Indexing the links you share around the web.

Mashable’s Take: The promise of Spling is compelling: “Share any link with anyone, at the at the single click of a button, while creating a repository where [you] can store and index [your] favorite links.”

Wouldn’t it be great to share to Google+, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Tumblr and Facebook using the same little browser plugin, and in the process create a library of favorite links on one page that you can refer to in the future?

Yes, it would. But unfortunately this isn’t how Spling delivers its promise. Instead, it attempts to create another social sharing space — complete with Spling friends and customizable “circles” of these friends with which to share selectively. Captured links are stored in a user profile and browsable to other users (if you make them visible) under broad categories. There’s an option to share with Twitter and Facebook, but it comes with an ad for the service (“I just Splung!”) that you probably won’t be thrilled to share with your followers.

Making it easier to share content across multiple social networks while maintaining one link database is a great idea, and if Spling could focus on that, I’d use it. But as it is, Spling complicates my situation by asking me to participate in another social network, exacerbating the problem rather solving it.


ThaTrunk: An App for Sharing Multimedia Files With People Nearby


Quick Pitch: ThaTrunk shares creative content to other users nearby.

Genius Idea: Proximity-based sharing.

Mashable’s Take: Authors, artists, musicians and speakers are all likely to distribute files of multimedia events. But the process can be clunky. Do you hand out thumb drives? What if you only want to give away an excerpt of a book?

ThaTrunk offers a clever solution to the conundrum. Its soon-to-be-released app uses GPS to create a proximity network that grows and shrinks with the number of other users nearby. One user can easily send a file from the cloud to all of the others near him, after which they can easily share it on their social networks.

Awesome, yes. Unfortunately, it’s only viable if there are other ThaTrunk users nearby. Asking event attendees to download an app in order to receive a file isn’t the most unthinkable hurdle, but it’s a hurdle.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, Wuka


Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, Dreamit ventures, SnipSnap, Spling, Startup Weekend Roundup, ThaTrunk

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5 Things Your Business Can Learn From a Rapper

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 12:19 PM PST


This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Professional inspiration can come from anywhere, even the unlikeliest of places. This month, I was inspired by a rapper imparting business advice to startups.

Hip-hop historian, music technologist and founder of hip-hop band Stetsasonic, Glenn K. Bolton — also known as Daddy-O — recently spoke about the parallels between budding hip-hop artists and startups during his presentation at Geekend 2011, a techie conference presented by BFG Communications.

Daddy-O’s advice for hopeful rappers and startups were astoundingly similar. As a successful rapper himself, Daddy-O’s own experiences brought truth to his words.

Inspired by his story and wisdom, we’d like to share some of Daddy-O’s thoughts on what early-stage startups — and businesses of all types, really — can learn from hip-hop artists.

After this primer, we also recommend studying up on the Notorious B.I.G’s 10 Crack Commandments, a rap introduction for beginner crack dealers that, oddly, also translates well to the startup world.


1. Put Your Creative People on the Front Lines


“If you do not keep your business people in the back room, patching people up, they’re going to muck it up,” says Daddy-O. “You let them talk, you’re done.”

Daddy-O is a big fan of putting the creative brains of an operation in the spotlight and keeping business people in the background for support.

In the hip-hop world, the creative people are the rappers — the business people include the record labels, the managers and anyone else helping distribute and manage the rappers’ music. Daddy-O explained that many successful rappers started off as independent artists — Master P, Cash Money, P. Diddy, to name a few. “The big checks come, they run to the big checks,” says Daddy-O. “And then ultimately, you see some of them fall off.” When business comes before art, the art suffers.

Startups and small businesses face this same problem if the business side of the operation comes before the product. Startups should focus on developing sound products, just as rappers should focusing on creating the best music that they can. Once the product, whether it be an app or a new LP, is at the top of its game, it shows — and the business will roll in from there.

Daddy-O compared business and art to a war zone — you have your foot soldiers (artists and creatives) out on the front lines, getting things done, and you have M*A*S*H (the business heads) back at the base, making sure everything runs smoothly.


2. Don’t Let Odds Get in the Way


“Passion is the kid in his mama’s house with one Marshall amp and a guitar, and his mother saying that he’s a bum, and he’s still doing it. Passion is those kids in a garage with a piece of software,” says Daddy-O. “If you’re going to be passionate about anything, you better not let odds get in the way. Because you can just strip the word passion out of there.”

Daddy-O explains that nothing should stop your passion, whether you’re a would-be rock star or a hopeful startup entrepreneur. For founding hip-hop artists, such as Daddy-O, who started rapping in 1979, there were a lot of critics of the genre who were calling it a fad or listening in disgust as DJs rubbed records the wrong way. “You think we listened?” Daddy-O asked. “It only made us scratch more. It only made us rap more, because we didn’t really care.”

Everybody’s odds are different, and you may think that attaining your business goal is impossible — if you put your passion behind it, though, you’ll always win. Whether you reach that final goal or just get pretty dang far along the way, you’ll learn something that makes it all worthwhile.

“You’re not going to be sure about most things you do in life. As songwriters facing a high degree of uncertainty, we embrace it. It actually energizes us. It’s the same butterflies that Michael Jackson got every time before he hit the stage. That degree of uncertainty is healthy if you look at it the right way — embrace it, because that’s what makes winning exciting.”


3. Never Stop Practicing


“Businesses fail, because in the beginning you’re always practicing, always using your gift — whether that’s writing code or a new rhyme. But after your program gets picked up or after the record company signs you, you stop.”

“That’s it in a nutshell,” says Daddy-O, and he points to inspiration as the driver to keep practicing. Whether you were inspired by someone else’s work or you feel that your talent is a God-given gift, your only option is to stay inspired. Here’s a fun anecdote Daddy-O told:

“You’re in the beginning of a startup — you subscribe to Fast Company, Wired, Inc.; you’re following everything Guy Kawasaki says online; you bought all of Brian Solis’ books; you’re talking back and forth with Chris Brogan all the time, cause he’ll answer anyone; and you feel like you’re getting it. That’s until someone cuts you a check, and all of a sudden you’re out the window. All of a sudden your inspiration becomes your competition, and you’re no longer tweeting. What happened to that blog you were doing every week? What happened? Oh, you’ve got a check now. You don’t wanna fail? You don’t have an option — stay inspired.”


4. Use What You’ve Got


“The golden egg isn’t winning — it’s usage. Usage is enough. That’s all you have to do — use what you’ve got,” says Daddy-O. “That’s what Jay-Z does. He never stopped rhyming. That’s what Sean P. does. He never stopped rhyming. Every engineer I know, every developer I know, every designer I know, that’s all they do — they just use what they’ve got.

“You will continue to be inspired if you keep on doing it. There’s no way to be a break dancer and keep dancing, and not be inspired — because you will evolve if you keep doing it. You aren’t going to keep doing the same four moves every time. You’re going to get tired of the same four moves. If you’re writing code, you’re not going to keep writing the same four lines of code over and over — you’re going to get better.”

In the beginning, rap was about keeping it new — rappers were required to have a new rhyme every time they took the stage. Making rap albums was considered “whack,” explains Daddy-O, because it meant you were recording your routine, nothing was new. As a result, rappers were constantly writing new rhymes. To get better, you’ve got to use your mojo, says Daddy-O.

This lesson has stuck with Daddy-O over the years. His business motto is, “Your evolution is inevitable if you keep doing it.”

Using what you’ve got is just as true for equipment as it is for mojo. “You ask any guitarist, and they don’t want a crappy guitar,” says Daddy-O. “But I guarantee you, Flea plays just as well on a sucky bass as a good bass, because he learned to play on a sucky bass. Use what you’ve got, and it will get you to the next level.” Don’t be jealous of the shiny, new goods that other artists or entrepreneurs are working with — make the best of what you have. Whether that’s talent or equipment, use it until you’ve exhausted it, advises Daddy-O.


5. Find Where You Belong


When you listen to a hip-hop artist, it’s inevitable that he will give a shout-out to his hood — be it Brooklyn, Atlanta or the Bay, a rapper’s home turf is a part of his music.

Marketers would call this concept “knowing your market,” says Daddy-O, but rappers look at it as knowing where they belong in the music world.

For businesses, it is important to understand what cluster of people your product or service is targeting and then communicate and act accordingly.


BONUS: Do Not Handle Legal Work Alone


Along your journey to being a successful businessperson — or rapper — you’ll get the opportunity to do a lot of the work yourself, learning about different aspects of your industry and business. The only thing you should never categorize as a DIY project, says Daddy-O, is legal work. If you’re negotiating a contract, always seek legal advice. But other than that, he says, get your hands dirty.

Image courtesy of Geekend and iStockphoto, MivPiv and Flickr, Marco Raaphorst

More About: advice, Business, features, geekend, mashable

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8 Best New Apps This Week [PICS]

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 11:28 AM PST


Evernote Food and Evernote Hello





Evernote released two new iPhone apps on Wednesday, "Food" and "Hello," that coordinate with its archiving platform.

Evernote Food arranges photos of dishes, photo captions and other "impressions" into folders or "meals." You can easily share these folders to Facebook, Twitter and email.

Evernote Hello helps keep track of people you meet and where you met them. The idea is that you will simply hand your phone to a new acquaintance, who enters his or her own contact information and snaps a mugshot. Evernote tags the contact with the location of where you met them and other people you met at the same time -- which in theory makes it easy to remember who they are later. If you don't feel awkward handing over your phone instead of your business card at events, it's a smart solution.

Content from both apps can be accessed anywhere you access Evernote. Free.

Click here to view this gallery.

With about 500,000 apps in the Apple App Store and an estimated 300,000 apps in the Android Market, finding the gems among the virtual haystack can be full time job. The good news is that it’s our full time job.

We’ve trekked through the overly frivolous, the ugly and the downright impractical in our search for the 8 best new apps this week, and we’ve gathered them together in the slideshow above. We hope you enjoy this week’s top picks.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, Jorge Quinteros

More About: Android apps, best new apps, iphone apps, weekend app roundup


Motorola DROID4 Spotted on DroidDoes Site [PICS]

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 10:51 AM PST


It seems that Verizon is preparing its DroidDoes minisite for the arrival of the RAZR-esque Motorola DROID4, although as far as we can tell, the content is not actually live yet (the screenshot is purportedly from the mobile site). While not much about the 4 remains unknown save for a price and release date, the near-final looking appearance of the alleged promo page would seem to at least indicate that a launch is close at hand.

Coming just about six months after the DROID3′s debut, the Gingerbread 2.3.5-powered 4 offers a sleeker form factor along with LTE connectivity, and steps up the rest of the internals somewhat as well: the dual-core processor has been bumped a few hundred megahertz to 1.2GHz, while the DDR2 RAM clocks in at 1GB.

We’ll almost certainly see the DROID4 hit stores before the end of the month, but as with the Galaxy Nexus, rumored ship dates keep coming and going. The latest leak from Droid-Life points to a release on the 22nd, so we can’t really be sure if there are delays at play here or not.

Thanks, Anonymous

More About: android, leaked, Motorola DROID4

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iScreen: Apple TV Imagined with Magnificent Curved Screen [PICS]

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 10:09 AM PST


Slightly iMac Look




From the front, it looks a bit like a conventional TV or all-in one Mac

Click here to view this gallery.

Whenever CiccaresDesign dreams up a mockup of an upcoming Apple product (as it did with the no-show iPhone 5), the results are invariably interesting. Federico Ciccarese’s fantasy of what he calls the “iScreen” is no exception, showing a spectacular curved glass display whose design tips its hat to the iMac but adds a couple of design flourishes that might be the envy of Apple itself.

Let’s emphasize up front: This is not a leak of an Apple design, but it’s a concept of what the rumored Apple TV might look like by the time it becomes reality, possibly sometime between now and 2013. It was created by CiccaresDesign for MacRumors.

However, it’s not entirely based on fantasy. Given Steve Jobs’s tantalizing aside to author Walter Isaacson as the two worked on the late CEO’s biography — where Jobs boasted that he had “cracked” the secret to television, envisioning an integrated, wirelessly synched TV set with “the simplest user interface you could imagine” — an Apple television could very well be in the offing.

Beyond that, another one of the latest obsessions of Steve Jobs was with curved glass, as seen in his plans for Apple’s spectacular flying-saucer-like HQ. As you can see, that idea was worked into this design to maximum effect.

Click through the gallery, and you’ll see an imagined embedding of the Apple iPhone 4S’s new digital assistant, Siri, where the new TV might be able to respond to your voice commands, and perhaps even anticipate what sorts of shows you’d like to watch.

These designs are fun to admire, but let’s keep in mind that Apple hasn’t announced any such products. Even so, if Apple were to release a TV packed with computerized goodness, lorded over by some kind of advanced Siri goddess, do you think it would look sort of like this?

More About: Apple TV, design concept, iScreen, rumors

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Should Your Job Title Be More Creative?

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 09:25 AM PST

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Sales Ninja, Linux Geek, Marketing Rockstar. These are all real job titles being used in the business world today, and according to data from online business card printer Moo.com, these creative titles are on the rise.

You’ve probably seen some of these tongue-in-cheek titles at digital conferences or among savvy startup entrepreneurs. But is an imaginative title like Word Herder or Copy Cruncher a fit for you?

We spoke with a number of HR professionals and hiring managers to get their thoughts on out-of-the-box job titles, and in the end, it all came down to corporate culture and communicating a clear role at your organization. The list of pros were few and the cons were many. But that shouldn’t discourage those of you out there hoping to be known as the Head Honcho or the Website Weaver.

Read on for a look at the pros and cons of choosing an inventive job title, from the perspective of 12 hiring extraordinaires.


The Pros


In our chats with recruiters, three main positives came up when dealing with imaginative job titles. For the most part, these pros were cosmetic, and the underlying feeling among all of our interviewees is that job applicants must be able to back up their creativity with a boat load of qualifying experience, just like every other candidate. So, could a wacky title help get you noticed? Maybe. Here are the top three pros for thinking outside of the box:

  1. Stand Out: “I believe there’s a real need to be creative and ‘stand out from the pack’ in today’s hiring climate. If handled correctly, the external message these kinds of titles and job descriptions sends will be meaningful to the entire broader audience interested in your company, signaling that your organization is different from the norm.”
    Ed Nathanson, Director of Talent Acquisition, Rapid7
  2. Strike Up a Conversation: “Having a unique title makes for fun, interesting conversation when networking and helps break the ice. As a hiring producer, I love creative titles — but they must be original. Trite never works in my book. The best creative title I think I’ve heard is Cineninja for a director of photography. More people should dare to be different.”
    H.Cherdon Bedford, Owner and Creative Superhero, Humblebee Media
  3. Communicate the Company’s Culture: “Funky job titles can serve as an extension of a company’s brand and indicate that you are a company with a fun culture that doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
    – Carlos Jimenez, President, The Zella Company

The Cons


Our HR experts identified a long list of reasons why a clever job title could hurt your odds in the job market. If you have your heart set on a unique title, though, don’t let these words of wisdom stop you — most of the cons are based on the workings of traditional business. If you have your eyes set on a more progressive company, then a list of edgy previous titles may just catch the recruiter’s eye.

Imaginative titles aren’t all candy and rainbows, though — think hard before you make the leap, because you may have a lot working against you. Here are some of the cons associated with job title wordsmithing:

"I’m sorry, but if you have a business that you want to be taken seriously, you don’t hire someone as a Chief Playtime Officer for $100K a year. It sounds like a kindergarten monitor.”
  • Don’t Follow a Dying Trend:“Several years ago, during the Internet bubble, it was ‘trendy’ for individuals to have job titles which were not mainstream. The silliest I ever saw was Chief Playtime Officer. I’m sorry, but if you have a business that you want to be taken seriously, you don’t hire someone as a Chief Playtime Officer for $100K a year. It sounds like a kindergarten monitor.”
    Alan Guinn, Managing Director and CEO, The Guinn Consultancy Group
  • Be as Clear as Possible: “Job titles can be a great marketing tool, but emphasis should always be on clearly communicating the role’s function. There’s a real backlash against titles that are creative without being clear, especially in the tech sector. An applicant, the company and future associates should all be able to understand what value the role brings to the company and the skill set implied. More creative titles can have their place in less formal settings, on business cards or personal profiles that are more for self-expression than job description.”
    Bhavna Dave, Director of Talent, Clearspring
  • Stay Away from Cliches: “Ninja and rockstar are so overused in the startup recruiting space. I prefer to use genuine functional titles to advertise openings and attract the right candidates, but once we get someone on board, we’re open to what they’d like to be called.”
    Megan Pittsley, Associate Director, E la Carte
  • Focus on Your Work, Not the Title: “Personally, I don’t like [non-traditional titles] and from the hiring meetings I’ve had with managers, they don’t like them either. They tend to be perceived as cheesy to the elite creative talent in the industry. What gets better results with elite talent are standard titles, good clients, award-winning work and a strong culture.”
    – Zachary D Killian, Lead Recruiter, The Marketing Arm
  • Don’t Fool Tracking Systems: “Creative job titles are a career ‘don’t,’ because they often won’t be recognized by Applicant Tracking Systems. Applicant Tracking Systems are automatic sorters used by many large companies — and more and more so, even SMBs — that pick out keywords, including position titles, in resumes. The systems look for keywords that correspond with the open position. So, if your resume doesn’t have the applicable keywords — which likely won’t include ‘Word Herder’ or ‘Sales Ninja’ — the system will discard the resume, and it’ll never be read by a human.”
    Heather Huhman, Founder & President, Come Recommended
  • Be Taken Seriously: “These [creative] titles, while fun to read, feel extremely ‘forced’ and give me zero idea of what a candidate’s real capabilities are. If I’m comparing two resumes, one with ‘Sales Ninja’ and the other with ‘Director of Sales,’ for example, I would take the latter a lot more seriously.”
    Mike Sprouse, Chief Marketing Officer, Epic Media Group
  • Don’t Distract Recruiters:“Many recruiters and hiring managers are in the Baby Boomer age range. These individuals know more traditional titles, and that is what they will use to search for candidates. These same people often view these creative titles as distractions or desperation.”
    Sharon DeLay, Founder and President, Adjunct Solutions
  • Don’t Be a Narcissist: “I recently worked with a company who arranged to bring in its Social Media Guru for a meeting, and that was his official title, on the business cards and everything. It frankly smacked with so much machismo that he would have had to just blown me out of the water with his ideas and understanding of social media in order for me to walk out of that meeting with a good impression of him. He didn’t impress. And maybe having a Director of Social Media Strategy title wouldn’t have changed things, but my only real memory of the meeting now, six months later, is thinking all the way through that this guy had the gall to use such a title.”
    Sean Muir, Marketing Manager, MRINetwork
  • Think Long-Term:“It’s too easy for creative job titles to come across as creepy today and become dated tomorrow. Your team might think you’re hip and edgy. Potential clients might think you are lame. What seems super cool now, in ten years will most likely to be embarrassing.”
    Lisa Merriam, Brand Consultant, Merriam Associates

Some Inspiration


If the long list of cons doesn’t scare you, and you’re thinking of getting creative with your title, here’s a little inspiration. These are the top 20 modern job titles, as determined by Moo.com:

  • 1. Sales Ninja
  • 2. New Media Guru
  • 3. Word Herder
  • 4. Linux Geek
  • 5. Social Media Trailblazer
  • 6. Corporate Magician
  • 7. Master Handshaker
  • 8. Communications Ambassador
  • 9. Happiness Advocate
  • 10. Copy Cruncher
  • 11. Transportation Captain
  • 12. Web Kahuna
  • 13. Marketing Rockstar
  • 14. Problem Wrangler
  • 15. Superstar DJ
  • 16. Digital Dynamo
  • 17. Designer Extraordinaire
  • 18. Head Cheese
  • 19. Plumber Hero
  • 20. Movie Magic Maker

What’s Your Title?


Do you have a creative job title? If so, share it in the comments below. If not, what are your thoughts on changing the pace with a more imaginative title?

Image courtesy of Erica Swallow

More About: Business, business cards, features, job titles, Marketing, mashable, networking, recruite, Recruiting

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The 10 Most Retweeted Photos of the Week [PICS]

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 08:15 AM PST


1. R.I.P. Jorelys Rivera




On December 6, Jorelys Rivera, a 7-year-old girl from Georgia, was found dead in a dumpster next to the River Ridge apartments where she lived. She had disappeared from the apartments' playground 4 days earlier. According to the police, the little girl was raped and then stabbed and beaten to death. Even though Jorelys' photo was posted by @ispeakkMYmind_ (1700+ followers) two days before the end of this week, it was retweeted so many times that it is last week's most-retweeted picture. The picture was accompanied by the following tweet: "R.I.P to the 7 year old girl that was raped and found dead in a dumpster RT to show respect." Our deepest sympathy goes to the family of this unfortunate victim of such thoughtless brutality.

Click here to view this gallery.

This week’s most popular photos re-tweeted in the English language were a mixed bunch, peppered with both tragedy and comedy. Unfortunately, the most re-tweeted picture was of a tragic young victim of brutality, and another one was a picture of a missing person whose story had a much happier ending.

On the other hand, most of the pics were more lighthearted, showing you people and their activities from a completely different perspective. Even though there weren’t as many celebrity pics this week as usual, of course, there’s a hint of Justin Bieber in there, who seems to dominate all things Twitter.

As you peruse the 10 most popular Twitter photos of the week, compiled for Mashable by real-time photo search engine Skylines between Dec. 2 and Dec. 8, keep in mind that if you click through to the pics’ originating pages, the number counts might be different because Skyline made its determination a couple of days ago.

And if you still haven’t gotten enough, take a look at last week’s roundup of top Twitter photos.

More About: Photos, twitpic, Twitter, yfrog

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5 Timekeeping Apps for Your Small Business

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:12 AM PST

time image

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Time is money, especially for small businesses on the hustle. It’s important not just to properly manage time but also to accurately log actions and keep employees (and yourself) accountable.

What better way to do just that than going digital with an app developed solely for timekeeping? These five apps will help you and your business keep track of time, start and stop timers on individual tasks and make sure your whole team is as efficient as possible.

Take a look at some of our picks for a variety of platforms and mobile devices and let us know how you keep track of your time.


1. Time Master


time master image

With a name like “Time Master,” how could we not put this on the list? The iOS app costs $9.99, but that gets you a pretty comprehensive and easy-to-use app that’s loaded with features. Time Master lets you sort, arrange and start and stop individual tasks or group them by a certain client. You can track expenses and import files into the app, and Time Master even comes with a decent search function to help sort through all that data.


2. Timesheet


timesheet image

Timesheet is a free Android app that is designed to help you sort project-based time tracking. The app is a little pared-down compared to some of its cohorts, but it’s a reliable and much simpler way to manage smaller-scale timekeeping. Users can easily track projects, add breaks and create notes for running tasks all within a bright and user-friendly interface.

These projects can then be exported in a number of formats for later use. Timesheet may not be a timekeeping hub for your small business, but it’s a good, clean option for individuals who don’t need complicated management features.


3. Harvest


harvest image

Harvest is an all-around timekeeping powerhouse for Android, iOS and desktop. Harvest has all the timekeeping features you expect (individual and group projects, start and stop timers, search, etc.), with the ability to create online invoicing, reports and track expenses.

Harvest is simple enough that even a luddite can figure it out, but it comes with a good balance of features to cater to casual and power users alike. The app has tiered pricing starting at $12 a month for unlimited access by one user. There is a free version but it is limited to one user, two projects and four clients.


4. Toggl


toggl image

Toggl takes after Harvest in providing a simple interface packed with useful features. Toggl, which works on Android, iOS and desktop, comes with the suite of tools you’d expect from a top-tier timekeeper, and it’s compatible with other programs, such as Quickbooks, Basecamp and more. Toggl can also instantly generate graphic reports of how you — and your team — spent the day, helping you maximize how your business operates.

Toggl has a little bit of day-planner built into it with “time budgets” and options for team reporting. Like Harvest, Toggl has tiered pricing starting at $5 per user per month, which has limited features but can be accessed by up to five users.


5. FreshBooks


freshbooks image

All of these timekeeping apps all come back to making sure your invoices are correct. Like its gargantuan sibling QuickBooks, FreshBooks is all about efficiency. The app is less about managing and tracking time spent on individual projects as it is about providing users with a wealth of ways to manage and compensate those logged hours. Users can try the app for free and create a secure, unique log-in page on the website.

There are a bunch of mobile options for accessing the app, but downloader beware, there are numerous complaints about syncing options with some of the options. Make sure you download an app that is currently supported by the FreshBooks support crew. For example, TimeAssistant seems like a safer bet than MiniBooks for iPhone.

How do you keep track of your time? And how important is timekeeping to running a successful small business? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Loren Javier

More About: App, Business, Mobile, Small Business


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