Kind of a mini side rant here, and by the way is this thing on? Mic Check, Check 1, Check 1, Check 1, 2. Check baby, check baby 1,2,3, 4, Check baby check baby 1... all I wanna do is a zoom zoom zoom and a boom boom? No? Okay.
So anyway, I kind of hesitate to write this because no doubt I'll use or at least try to use and maybe even need Craigslist's services at some point. I will also say what many others have. Craigslist as a concept was and is great. Obviously they have been very successful. At the same time, and kind of going back to my "too big to fail" post, when a business or a person has a good taste of success and it goes to their head(s) the results can be ugly.
What has me a bit riled up is the "ghosting" of ads and just the overall inconsistency that Craigslist seems to operate by in terms of enforcing their own terms of service. I'll admit it's been a little while since I've read them, but just based on what I've personally experienced and what others have written about in their own blogs, such as this little dandy paint a sordid tale. That link by the way has many different topics to the blog, all Craigslist related. I just happened to be reading on the ghosting subject since some of my posts there lately have been ghosted.
Whenever things such as these come up the old freedom of speech and censorship arguments are thrown out. It's a mixed bag, because to a certain extent a forum, an online community or site, even a place of employment to some extent can censor or punish you for things you say. That being said, these types of entities should always be held accountable to enforce standards and protocol fairly across the board, with little to no inconsistency, discrimination/favoritism, and in as considerate and respectful a way as possible. In reading another blog on Craigslist and their indiscretions, someone reported that their posts were flagged by competitors who did not like the fact that they titled their post "Cheapest prices in town!!" Did Craigslist investigate the issue or take the response that most reasonable people would in saying, "So what?" No, they allowed the flagging to take place and I take it removed the posts. When the author of those posts presented his case to the Craigslist staff they brushed him off. That story is in the same blog I linked above, under Craigslist Community.
Personally, I had problems with Craigslist when I was trying to use it on a regular basis several months back for business purposes. I would post ads that would never actually post or would disappear. When I inquired about this I received absolutely no response. It's not as if I was getting paid for posting these ads. I needed ads to appear so that hopefully people would see them, call me, be interested, and allow me to make some money. It wasn't an MLM or pyramid scam either. It was actually recruiting of truck drivers.
What gets me about all that is I tried to follow their terms of service and posting procedure to the letter. I was told beforehand too that had titles had to be different and ad bodies had to have some differences in them or your ad would get ghosted. This may have been part of the problem as perhaps Craigslist's programming felt some of the ads were too similar. At the same time, it goes back to a point of consistency. Even today I can see people who spam post in multiple categories all at one time in categories that have little to nothing to do with say the job they posted, for an example. It's the exact same ad too, copied and pasted. Maybe they've figured out how to game the Craigslist system. But again one person trying to promote their business should not be at the mercy of a program or even people who for whatever the reason have no consistency. Try to play by the rules and have your posts get ghosted. Flagrantly abuse the system and have your posts remain. Something is off there.
I just don't like the idea, which from personal experience I believe is very true, that Craigslist is just "picking" on certain people that for whatever the reason they don't like. People can scam and spam the heck out of that site and be okay. I understand there are disclaimers to the rants and raves section. But I can skim through that and find it loaded with posts titles and posts that are racist, vulgar, and posted by people who would probably get smoked on a show titled "Are You Smarter Than My Pet Rock?" Yet, make a post speaking your mind in an intelligent and fairly level headed manner and that post may not ever appear. What's even worse is the allegations and not even just allegations but apparent documentation that posts from hookers, drug peddlers, and the like have at times passed the Craigslist test, whatever that is.
I'm not saying policing or monitoring a thing like Craigslist is simple. But they either need to work hard to be what they were designed to be... i.e. an online "free classified" site and forum for people to conduct business freely and speak their mind in a fairly respectful manner, with all due diligence to monitoring and moderating in a responsible manner. Or, they need to die the death of a business/entity that gets too big for its britches and gets spanked either by competition or by the consumer or public just saying "enough is enough". Quite frankly, it's the American way.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
You Might Be a Scammer If...
In the tradition of the great Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a scammer if....
If you claim to be a legitimate business and inform one of your "candidates" that they are one of your top five or final five selected applicants for the job but that you're actually wanting to interview seven people.... you might be a scammer. I mean seriously, do these people really think that this pretty obvious discrepancy won't be noticed? Still, I'm sure that unfortunately in these times they do draw people in who say, "Oh it's probably just a typo or I'm sure there's a reason for it."
If you claim to be a legitimate business and inform one of your "candidates" that they are one of your top five or final five selected applicants for the job but that you're actually wanting to interview seven people.... you might be a scammer. I mean seriously, do these people really think that this pretty obvious discrepancy won't be noticed? Still, I'm sure that unfortunately in these times they do draw people in who say, "Oh it's probably just a typo or I'm sure there's a reason for it."
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Why Too Big to Fail is a Deadly Misnomer
Well, I started this blog and I haven't kept up with it. Shame on me. I've got a couple of stories to tell, believe me. I really want to promote this thing as well. I also really want to help other people stay out of bad situations if at all possible. If nothing else, if anyone can learn from my mistakes, then I will have accomplished something. That's the case if even I personally am a little slow in learning from them myself. :)
I just wanted to make a quick post today. You know how we have the phrase "too big to fail"? Go ahead and chuckle to yourself over that because it seems we really only use it after a company or someone else has failed that thought they were "too big to fail". It's kind of like today how whenever we talk about the Titanic it's almost always mentioned that it was deemed an unsinkable ship. I in no way mean to diminish, mock, or be insensitive in any way regarding that tragedy. But it's like the line from the Joe Nichols song The Impossible. "Unsinkable ships sink, unbreakable walls break". In this life we basically have a limited or set number of guarantees. You'll be born, you'll live an indeterminate amount of time, you'll at least be expected to pay your taxes (most of us anyway) and you'll die. Anything else is a crap shoot.
The problem I've noticed today is when companies start to think and act big and forget that they started small. I suppose with companies that have been around forever it's a fairly easy trap to fall into when the founder of the company is either well on in years or long since departed this life. But think about it. A person starts a company and works hard to establish their company as a trustworthy one. They meet a lot of people, shake a lot of hands. They work off of some type of a personal code or an established code regarding good ethical business. The employees they do hire, they stand behind and treat as actual human beings. I'm not naive enough to say or think that it was a perfect world and no one was ever fired or mistreated. But I have to believe that the companies that truly grew and became successful in the long term started off with that mindset. They had to. Even back then, it was a competitive marketplace at least to some degree. I'm sure there were some creative cheats who found a way to game the system at least for a little while. But overall if you wanted to succeed and grow and prosper, you had to be competent sure. But you also had to be honorable. If you weren't, people would take their business elsewhere.
I think companies today need to get back to having at least a bit more compassion, and not only for the feel good soft gooey in the middle reasons. The dynamics of the world and of the workplace are changing, and the companies , managers, and CEO's who stick to the mindset of it being all about the financial capital and budgetary bottom line may be left behind. I agree with Darren Hardy of Success magazine. The competitors for talent and market shares today are not just fellow members of the local chamber of commerce. It's the guy launching his business from his bedroom or his basement, not his board room. It's the woman with a talent and a brain who has a product or service that is in demand that she can produce and market on her time, not doing it for someone else while punching a time clock. Companies used to compete for the best and the brightest people. However, I think today the more they devalue their employees and look at them as numbers and disposable resources, the more they will lose out in the end. I'm not saying that a boy with a dream is going to start a company that puts say Microsoft out of business. But then again, to quote another part of that same Joe Nichols song, "I've learned to never underestimate the impossible".
The moral of the story is this. Managers and leaders of today and tomorrow, as again Darren Hardy mentions, are going to need to be experts in human capital, not just financial capital. They will need to learn how and know how to best utilize their people, to get the most out of them, to be empathetic toward them at times, and to create and instill leadership in others. I'm not a big network marketing fan or guru but the concept is a noble one. Bring people into your organization or group, teach them the business, invest in their personal success so you can help them grow. In so doing, you help your business or company grow and succeed. Companies that follow not that precise model but that general idea will flourish. Companies that have managers, executives, and CEO's holding on to their spot like grim death because they've "earned it" will lag behind at some point.
Success and growth is great. It's a product of our capitalist system, it's the American dream and American way. However, arrogance, rigidness, and even cockiness is deadly. The companies that grow big and let it go to their head are in a precarious position in the future marketplace. The ones who adopt a model of "we're doing it this way because we've also done it this way", it's a 50/50 proposition as to whether or not that will work today. As the saying goes, pride goeth before the fall. Companies that believe and become convinced that they are too big to fail generally are the ones who almost inevitably do.
I just wanted to make a quick post today. You know how we have the phrase "too big to fail"? Go ahead and chuckle to yourself over that because it seems we really only use it after a company or someone else has failed that thought they were "too big to fail". It's kind of like today how whenever we talk about the Titanic it's almost always mentioned that it was deemed an unsinkable ship. I in no way mean to diminish, mock, or be insensitive in any way regarding that tragedy. But it's like the line from the Joe Nichols song The Impossible. "Unsinkable ships sink, unbreakable walls break". In this life we basically have a limited or set number of guarantees. You'll be born, you'll live an indeterminate amount of time, you'll at least be expected to pay your taxes (most of us anyway) and you'll die. Anything else is a crap shoot.
The problem I've noticed today is when companies start to think and act big and forget that they started small. I suppose with companies that have been around forever it's a fairly easy trap to fall into when the founder of the company is either well on in years or long since departed this life. But think about it. A person starts a company and works hard to establish their company as a trustworthy one. They meet a lot of people, shake a lot of hands. They work off of some type of a personal code or an established code regarding good ethical business. The employees they do hire, they stand behind and treat as actual human beings. I'm not naive enough to say or think that it was a perfect world and no one was ever fired or mistreated. But I have to believe that the companies that truly grew and became successful in the long term started off with that mindset. They had to. Even back then, it was a competitive marketplace at least to some degree. I'm sure there were some creative cheats who found a way to game the system at least for a little while. But overall if you wanted to succeed and grow and prosper, you had to be competent sure. But you also had to be honorable. If you weren't, people would take their business elsewhere.
I think companies today need to get back to having at least a bit more compassion, and not only for the feel good soft gooey in the middle reasons. The dynamics of the world and of the workplace are changing, and the companies , managers, and CEO's who stick to the mindset of it being all about the financial capital and budgetary bottom line may be left behind. I agree with Darren Hardy of Success magazine. The competitors for talent and market shares today are not just fellow members of the local chamber of commerce. It's the guy launching his business from his bedroom or his basement, not his board room. It's the woman with a talent and a brain who has a product or service that is in demand that she can produce and market on her time, not doing it for someone else while punching a time clock. Companies used to compete for the best and the brightest people. However, I think today the more they devalue their employees and look at them as numbers and disposable resources, the more they will lose out in the end. I'm not saying that a boy with a dream is going to start a company that puts say Microsoft out of business. But then again, to quote another part of that same Joe Nichols song, "I've learned to never underestimate the impossible".
The moral of the story is this. Managers and leaders of today and tomorrow, as again Darren Hardy mentions, are going to need to be experts in human capital, not just financial capital. They will need to learn how and know how to best utilize their people, to get the most out of them, to be empathetic toward them at times, and to create and instill leadership in others. I'm not a big network marketing fan or guru but the concept is a noble one. Bring people into your organization or group, teach them the business, invest in their personal success so you can help them grow. In so doing, you help your business or company grow and succeed. Companies that follow not that precise model but that general idea will flourish. Companies that have managers, executives, and CEO's holding on to their spot like grim death because they've "earned it" will lag behind at some point.
Success and growth is great. It's a product of our capitalist system, it's the American dream and American way. However, arrogance, rigidness, and even cockiness is deadly. The companies that grow big and let it go to their head are in a precarious position in the future marketplace. The ones who adopt a model of "we're doing it this way because we've also done it this way", it's a 50/50 proposition as to whether or not that will work today. As the saying goes, pride goeth before the fall. Companies that believe and become convinced that they are too big to fail generally are the ones who almost inevitably do.
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