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5 Interviewing Mistakes That Can Lead To Hiring The Wrong Person
Mistake #1: Going with the flow
Inexperienced interviewers sometimes fall into the trap of letting the interview become "free form", spending different amounts of time on different questions, basing follow-up questions on on how the...
Chinese Business Culture for the Western Businessmen
It is important to learn Chinese business culture or etiquette if you need to trade, but, sell or negotiate with mainland Chinese now or in the future
Chinese business culture and etiquette The Chinese business practice is vastly...
Extramarital Affairs: What Everyone Needs to Know... and what you can do to help
Recent statistics suggest that 40% of women (and that number is increasing) and 60% of men at one point indulge in extramarital affairs. Put those numbers together and it is estimated that 80% of the marriages will have one spouse at one point or...
Here is the best assistance with reference to agriculture.
Sometimes when you're trying to find better advice about agriculture, it will be tricky separating value packed information from ill-advised agriculture suggestions and support so it is sensible to know how to moderate the information you are...
The Wages of Science
In the United States, Congress approved, last month, increases in the 2003 budgets of both the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. America is not alone in - vainly - trying to compensate for imploding capital markets...
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Integrity is the Best Tool to Get What You Want
As a child, you probably heard, "to thine own self be true." But what does that really mean? When the newspapers are full of cheating and lying business owners, politicians, and academics, does it really make sense to maintain your integrity?
To me, the answer is a clear, unwaffling YES! Without your integrity, you really don't have a business or a career—just a waiting game until you world comes crashing down around you.
But fear of being caught isn't the reason to live your life with integrity. The real reasons are that it helps you get to where you really want to be, and lets you feel really good about yourself.
Sometimes, integrity involves taking risks. Here's an example from my own career:
A graphic artist and I were at a pitch meeting to produce some materials for our local Board of Realtors. The organization had registered a very obscure domain name that only had meaning for them.
The "safe" thing to do would have been to nod our heads and continue the conversation. But when we heard the domain name, the graphic artist and I exchanged looks, and we started telling the organization why the domain they’d picked would be a marketing disaster. I told the executive director to imagine giving out that name on the radio, and to look at a name that would reinforce the group’s identity and message.
We went out on a limb; this was a free consultation during a meeting to pitch for business, and if someone was really attached to the name, we might never have gotten the job. But we all brainstormed a bunch of better domain names—and then a few months later I got a call from the president of the largest real estate firm in the service area. He had been impressed at that meeting and
came to me to rewrite the firm’s entire collection of a dozen or so brochures—a very juicy assignment. By advising the client that its course was strewn with obstacles, I had put myself in the position to receive a much, much larger assignment, one for which I was not competing against any other copywriters.
Over and over again in my life, I've achieved or drawn closer to my goals by turning down work I didn't feel good about, refusing to compromise with my core principles, treating others with respect, and expecting high standards of others. I've even had to educate a few clients about plagiarism as I refused their assignments.
Arthur Andersen, the founder of the accounting firm that was driven out of business by integrity failure, lost a major account after refusing the company’s request to engage in exactly the sort of unethical accounting that later brought down his company—early in his career, when he wasn’t sure he could meet his next payroll. He told the client that there was “not enough money in the city of Chicago” to change his mind. Too bad his successors didn't understand this!
Copywriter and consultant Shel Horowitz has started an international campaign to change the business world--to create a culture of ethics and cooperation: http://www.principledprofits.com/25000influencers.html. His most recent books are Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World (both award-winners). For more on ethical, cooperative business practices, please visit http://www.principledprofits.com To discuss your next marketing project with Shel, write to mailto:shel@principledprofits.com, call 800-683-WORD, or visit http://www.frugalmarketing.com
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