Living in the Midwest and paying close attention to business news, the reports are very clear that the economy and the employment situation are not very good. Although I recently questioned how these reports added to the situation, I know from real life interaction and the stories that I hear that people whom have lost jobs or that are out of work are having a very difficult time finding employment. This also creates a challenge for hiring managers as they are being overwhelmed with job applications and many of the applicants do not meet the requirement of the job description, but it is left to the hiring manager to weed them out. A good example is a recent listing for 250 jobs at Office Depot yielded 4,000 applications, which is now up to the human resources department to choose the best 250.

In most cases, hiring managers will take the natural course of reviewing resumes and determining who is the most fit based on an applicants work experience detailed in the resume. There are other processes that are sometimes employed like pre-application surveys and personality tests to determine how well a candidate may fit a job, but after all of those processes that are developed to weed out applicants are used, someone still has to make the decision on who is the best candidate to hire.

That makes me wonder if in these trying economic times, with the overwhelming number of resumes that are received, if it has created an environment that has caused hiring managers to make hiring decisions based solely on past work experience more than evaluating the person, their work experience, and their natural instinct to succeed in a position.

My guess is that although many companies are down-sizing, this is also a great opportunity for many companies to upgrade their talent as many talented people are now searching for employment. But if their work experience does not closely match the requirements, will they get the opportunity? For instance, if a person has a history of success with increasing responsibility in a variety of positions and has the natural instinct to handle direct reports, communicate with clients, successfully direct teams, effectively manage upwards, and quickly adjust to changing business needs, would that person even make it through the screening process of the many job applicants. My gut feeling says probably not.

I am not totally discounting experience because it is very important, but I have often seen successful people succeed in whatever situation they are placed mainly due to attitude, work ethic, effectiveness, and approach. Although there is a learning curve to their new task or position, they typically ramp up very quickly and excel by the way they approach the situation.

I really don’t know how to best solve this problem because the challenge for a hiring manager is always tough to select the right person even before the complexity of stacks of resumes were added. I just think that there are so many talented people who could probably improve the quality of a work team who will never get the opportunity because their career path does not exactly match the requirements. There has to be some value placed on a person’s natural business instinct and how they handle situations and when combined with work experiences and successes, that separates them for the rest. Companies should use this time not to just piggy-back the recession and down-size because it is acceptable, but to use this as opportunity to improve their workforce and set themselves that much further in front of their competitors when the economy does turn around. I can almost guarantee, that the companies that take advantage of this opportunity and focus on the level of talent that is available during the recession, will benefit ten-fold when economic times improve. It only requires going one step further in your evaluation and using the natural instinct to determine if a candidate can be successful outside of limiting the evaluation to the items listed on a resume.

January was my first full month of blogging in which my goal was to post at least one post per day, Monday through Friday. I did pretty well with posting on most days, but also missed a few in which I was able to make up for on the weekends. I thought I would have trouble finding topics, but between current events, some mind mapping I did at the beginning of the month, and simply remembering to write about some of the techniques that I regularly use, topics were not a problem. As I wrote more posts, new topics came to mind that I could add to the list, so topics should not be a problem for a time to come.

Here are some stats from Google Analytics that I was able to achieve in January. The numbers are not bad for the first full month and they set a good baseline for the months ahead. Using these numbers I can set goals for February and measure the percentage improvement.

Some of the January results:
Visits – 302
Pageviews – 546
Pageviews/Visit – 1.81
Time on Site – 2:05
% of Traffic From Search Engines – 30%

I am pleased with the 300 visits in January considering that I did not start posting until the 6th of the month and did not do any promotions on the blog. All of the numbers trended positively over the course of the month and with an average time on the site of over 2 minutes I can only expect that stat to improve as more content as added to the site

Goals for February 2010

My goal for February is to improve on the results from January and increase traffic to over 1,200 visits. That represents 4oo% increase in visits. It sounds optimistic, but without any outreach to increase traffic in January, a small effort in February should help to increase traffic. At least that’s my plan.

How I Plan To Meet My February Goals

I expect to be even more busy in February than I was in January, but there are some steps I will take ti increase traffic that I believe will have the biggest impact. Some of the techniques I will use are:

Social Media Submissions – I submitted two posts to StumbleUpon in January which drove 22 visitors. In February I will submit every post to Stumbleupon as well as other sites like Digg, Delicious and Reddit using Social Marker to save time. I would expect social media sites to drive at least 300 visitors in February.

Increase Twitter - My twitter account, @briankeithmay, only has about 80 followers right now and will have to increase for better exposure from Twitter. I will probably use Tweet Adder to increase my followers. In order to reach my goal of 1,200 visits in February, I will need over 1,000 twitter followers by the end of the month. I expect Twitter to drive over 200 visitors to the blog in February either through posts that I tweet about or through link on my profile page.

Post Four(4) Video Posts to Youtube – Although, I am not sure of the topic, I will post videos to Youtube that are training on some topic related to internet marketing or just life in general that may drive some traffic back to the site. My expectations for traffic from Youtube postings is pretty low, but it will help me to understand how to post videos best for success and which topics perform the best.

Three(3) Guest Posts – To increase links and to increase traffic, I will guest post on 3 other blogs throughout February. Since I have not identified any targets for guest posting, this will be more of a challenge, but it must happen if I am going to meet the goal of 1,200 visitors in February.

Facebook – With over 800 friends on Facebook, I will post at least 4 posts over the course of the month and my expectation is that I can receive at least 100 visitors from Facebook over the course of the month, Now that I type this I also think I may create a fan page so that I can get a message out to a group more frequently and more quickly. Facebook should become a nice traffic source.

Carrying through with each of the methods that I listed coupled with direct type in traffic and search engine traffic, I should comfortably be able to reach my goal of 1,200 visits in February. If you are reading this and want to help out, pass this post on to a friend or a hundred and help me reach my goal for February. I also have a personal goal of losing 10 pounds in February. This will simply require discipline in going to the gym regularly and eating better and staying away from the fast food.

The goals for this month are kind of aggressive but very attainable. I expect February to stand as the groundwork for even more aggressive goals in March. I will update my goals list on March 1st to let you know the results. Let’s go!!!

We are almost a week into the new year and many of the resolutions that were made have been broken already Much of the reason that you gave up on your new years resolution is your attitude towards the change that you want to make and the shift in your mindset that is necessary to keep after the goal. Most of the resolutions that are made are focused on aspects of your life that you do not like and want to change. This could be weight, income, relationships, smoking, etc. It is likely you view the focus of your resolutions negatively and that is why you want to change it, which makes sense. The challenge is to see the positive in the change that you want to make and not focus on the negativity of the action that your resolution is focused on.

For instance, weight loss is the number one resolution for the new year. The change that most want to make is how they look and how they feel about themselves. The focus is not the weight, but the effect that the extra weight has on everything else. To remain positive about this goal would mean you need to focus on your body image, the positives that you find in it’s current state and the changes you would like to see in the near future. Focus on the changes in your body image and it is more likely you will be able to focus on your weigh loss goal than stepping on the scale multiple times per day and being disappointed with the results.

You should set an optimistic goal for yourself to reach every day or by the end of the week. you set your goals high, you will push yourself harder to achieve these goals. You will want to keep yourself focused on the big picture. It is important to be realistic, but also important to see that little failures do not necessarily have to add up to big failures.

When you have set backs, as we all do,  then you should approach them as learning tools and not some horrible thing that you can not recover from. You don’t want to get upset or angry, but take it and learn from it. You will want to keep in mind that every new goal that is worthwhile has failures when they are first new, but if you are able to learn from the mistakes, you’ll be able to see the big picture. You will need to stay optimistic about your goals and your future and the results will come.

As inspiration, I will close with one of the best poems that I know, “If” by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

If you have fallen off track with your new years goals, it is early enough that you can pull it back together. Don’t give up!