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Archive for July, 2007



Premium Content Eve…And a Teaser!

July 31st, 2007

Mike is returning from a family vacation tonight, and he is soon to upload much of the final Premium Content I have been sending him over the past several days. What remains to be done is that uploading, plus some testing of the credit card operations, and some double checks.

Our intent is to announce GO LIVE on Premium Content with an email to all registered members (and a Blog Post) sometime tomorrow. You won’t have to keep coming back to the site - you’ll get an email when the switch has been flipped. :wink:

There’s a special gift coming to EVERYONE in the email, and it will be attached to the Blog Post as well.

Thank you all for your enthusiasm about this important day in the Manager Tools community!

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Sexual Harassment (Part 2 of 2)

July 30th, 2007

Today, we finish up our conversation on sexual harassment.

Last week, we covered some introductory guidelines. This week, we cover the 9 steps you should take when you are made aware of a situation that may be harassment.

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Podcast Awards - Voting Commences!

July 29th, 2007

Thanks to many of you, Manager Tools has been nominated for both the People’s Choice and Best in Business Podcast awards. We’re honored!

Unlike during the nomination process, you can vote once a day for the entire 15 day period, and we’d appreciate it if you would. You can cast your votes here: http://www.podcastawards.com/

Even if you don’t vote for Manager Tools, please stop by and vote for your favorite shows … it’s a great (and easy) way to show your support. Voting won’t last long, so please take the time now to vote.

As always … thanks for your continued support!

Mark and Mike

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The Interview Casts - An Overview

July 27th, 2007

There’s been so much demand for the Interviewing Casts, we decided to release them along with Premium Content. And, if you subscribe to Premium Content for a full year, we’ll give you these incredible casts for free.

We believe this is the most complete and detailed description of Interviewing Behavior ever produced. To show you the depth and detail, below is more in-depth about all 15 of the casts.

How To Prepare For Interviewing - Most candidates fail because they miss the fundamental focus of the interview. Spending time researching the company is usually time POORLY spent. The key is to research your background and know how to gather up all your accomplishments, and categorize them…and that’s in this cast. Also, how do you prepare delivering your answers? You’ve got to rehearse, and we tell you how here. It’s easy and fast, irreplaceable..and in this cast.

How To Write A Cover Letter - What’s the PURPOSE of a cover letter? How many paragraphs? What should each paragraph say? How much of your background should you put in it, and how do you know which parts to include?

How To Prepare Your Resume (Previously Released) - It’s more than an interviewing document: it’s about career management. We describe our one page format, and how to structure each job in three parts: administrative information, responsibilities, and accomplishments. You may not think it possible, but it’s the standard, and when you achieve it, you’ll appreciate it.

What To Wear During An Interview - So many candidates stumble here. There’s nothing worse than being told it’s casual, only to find yourself the MOST casual person in the room. It makes a difference, despite what everyone says. For men and women, we detail every item of clothing, from shoes (they must be able to be shined) to jewelry and neckwear. Colors, fabrics, length, and brand recommendations. It may not be cool…but it will help get you the offer. What’s cooler than that?

The Five Parts of An Interview, Horstman’s Laws of Interviewing, and The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made - There are 5 parts to an interview, starting with your First Impression, and ending with Follow Up (because if you don’t have the offer the interview’s not over, right?) We describe what you need to do in each part and why. Horstman’s Laws of Interviewing encapsulate years of interviewing: what works, and why. And the 5 Biggest Mistakes will surprise you.

How to Make a Good First Impression - What do you do immediately before the interview starts? Once you enter the room, did you know that the speed at which you walk makes a difference? How do you greet your interviewer? And what do you need to study BEFOREHAND to be ready for the inevitable chit-chat…which IS evaluated?

How To Answer “Tell Me About Yourself” - This is the second most important question you’ll get in an interview. There is a right structure, a right length, and a most effective way to describe your background. And, a good answer is 3-5 minutes long. Don’t believe those who tell you 1 minute!

How To Answer Behavioral Interviewing Questions - This is the crux of all effective modern interviews, and very few know how to do it well. But it’s not hard after listening to this cast and the next one. We’ll lay out what your first sentence should be, exactly what words to follow it with, how to transition into your detailed description, and how to end your answer. If you’re delivering a chronology of events, you’re doing it wrong. This cast alone will improve your success rate by 50%.

Two Examples of Behavioral Interviewing Questions - Mark actually delivers two different behavioral interviewing answers, word for word, and the shownotes give you the transcript. You can actually hear and see how the structure comes to life, and how effective our recommended approach is.

How To Ask Questions In An Interview - A lost art for most candidates, asking poor questions can sink a borderline interview. Most questions we hear ARE poor. What are the areas you CAN’T ask about, what questions are effective, and what is the actual structure of each question? Yes, we’ll tell you what to ask and how to ask it. Nothing about salary or benefits, if you’re wondering!

How To Close - Mark’s favorite interviewing tool. At the end of the interview, what do you say? What 7 words constitute a nearly foolproof technique for increasing your chances and leaving no doubt about your interest? We’ll tell you what those words are, and how to follow them with details that are persuasive.

How To Handle An Offer - How much time will you have? What do you say when you receive one? How should you accept? What do you do with multiple offers? How do you time your acceptance and decline? How much time can you reasonably expect? And how do you get more time if you need it?

How To Handle Salary Discussions - This is one of the least understood and most dangerous areas of interviewing. The old rule that “he who says a number first loses” is just plain WRONG. We’ll tell you why you can’t negotiate (it’s true), and how to discuss compensation effectively. And, when you can and when it’s too early.

How To Follow Up - Most candidates walk out of interviews and just want to be done with everything. Smart candidates write thank you notes. They know how many paragraphs it should have, and what to put in each paragraph, and how to restate their interest, and how to personalize the note. They know it gets MAILED. And, they know how to follow up by phone, with what to say, and how often to call.

How To Handle Phone Interviews - (Previously Published) We walk through how much HARDER phone interviews are, unless you are prepared. We tell you how to use being on the phone to your ADVANTAGE. Where should you be when the call comes in? What should you have in front of you? We also recommend what kind of phone to use, how to talk, and what to do beforehand. Did you know you should be standing up? If you didn’t, you need this cast.

That’s it (ha!) 15 casts of deeply detailed guidance and recommendations. This is our compendium of 20 years of recruiting and interviewing advice all in one place. It’s a great value proposition at $150, and beyond belief as a free incentive for those of you who subscribe to Premium Content for a year.

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Our Introductory Offer

July 26th, 2007

We have a special offer to go with the launch of Premium Content that we think you’ll like. :wink:

For all those who subscribe to Premium Content for one year, we will GIVE you the set of 15 Interview Casts for FREE.

Let’s talk about what that means. First, of course you can sign up for monthly Premium Content for $15, and you’ll get Premium Content for all shows in our archive and future shows. We think that’s a great value.

But if you agree to subscribe to Premium Content for one year in advance ($180), the Interview Casts and associated Shownotes and Slides are yours for free. We will be charging $150 for the Interview Casts product if purchased separately.

That’s $150 of additional value free, for subscribing for one year.

We’ll keep the offer open until the end of September - 2 full months.

What ARE the Interview Casts? For now, we’ll list the titles, and in a subsequent post, we”ll provide more details.

How To Prepare For Interviewing
How To Write a Cover Letter
How To Prepare Your Resume
What To Wear During An Interview
The Five Parts Of An Interview, Horstman’s Laws of Interviewing and The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made
How To Make a Good First Impression
How To Answer “Tell Me About Yourself”
How To Answer Behavioral Interview Questions
Two Examples of Behavioral Interview Answers - Word For Word
How To Ask Questions In An Interview
How To Close
How To Handle An Offer
How To Handle Salary
How To Follow Up
How To Handle Phone Interviews

As one of our friends said, “That’s generous even for YOU guys!”

[Tomorrow: Interview Cast Details]

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What IS Premium Content?

July 25th, 2007

Starting 1 August, we will provide everyone the opportunity to purchase Premium Content for $15 a month. We believe that’s an incredible value proposition, but that’s because we know what Premium Content IS.

For every weekly cast and members only cast, Premium Content will be:

- PDF Slides covering all the key points of the show.

- Shownotes (in some cases transcripts) of the show.

When you come to the site, you’ll see links to the shownotes and the slides for that show. (You can see an orange “Premium” Icon in our left column right now). If you’re a premium subscriber, the links to content will be live, and you will be able to download the shownotes and slides the moment the cast is up. (If you’re not a subscriber, you’ll be able to see the content, but not access it.)

If you’re wondering what shownotes “are”, and how the slides will look, we’ve made this blog post a sample of show blog posts, and the content for How To Run A SWOT Exercise Supporting Strategy are below. The orange icons indicate that the shownotes and slides are Premium Content.

For example (from the show on How To Run a SWOT Exercise Supporting Strategy):

How To Run a SWOT Excercise Slides (PDF)
How To Run a SWOT Excercise Shownotes (RTF)

What about the archives?

The entire archives are included, no extra charge. If you’re a Premium Content subscriber, you get access to shownotes and slides for all of the archives as well. As long as you’re a subscriber, you have access to everything. Download it all, for your personal use (it’s still copyrighted).

We want you to have it all, and we’re not going to charge you for individual shows.

We do have a couple of minor caveats. Not every show’s Premium Content will be ready on 1 August, and we apologize for that. We decided that if we weren’t going to charge you for archived content, you would give us 30-60 days to fill out the archive catalog, so to speak (and we knew you had waited long enough). But, the key shows, the ones we suspect most of you really want…they’ll all be done.

At launch, roughly 70% of all shows will be available. (We’ll give you weekly updates on what shows have been added).

The reason that some shows have transcripts as opposed to shownotes is that we’ve gradually developed better and better shownotes. Early shownotes are just not as effective, we think, as transcripts.

We are aware that opening up the archives could be seen as incenting some selfishness, either in the form of “I can subscribe for one month, get everything, and then unsubscribe”, or, simply waiting longer to subscribe, because it will all still be there.

But we believe in the Manager Tools community, and would rather serve many than worry about a few.

[Tomorrow: Our incredible Introductory Offer. You’re not going to believe it!]

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Premium Content Pricing

July 24th, 2007

Before we cover, tomorrow, what premium content will “be”, we thought we’d start with how much it’s going to cost. This probably seems backwards, but we get lots of questions about our site and pricing.

Premium Content will cost $15 per month for everyone.

We’re trying to keep prices as low as we can, to allow ANYONE to subscribe. I think I’ve said it before: “Tiffany advice at Wal-Mart prices.” Our mission is to change the world of management, and we believe reaching more people is critical to our success. Lower pricing serves our mission best.

We’ve answered many questions and heard many comments about Manager Tools being free. The weekly casts, the Members Only casts, the forums, the blog posts, etc…all free. We love it when we hear, “I can’t believe this is free!!” Periodically we get long mails thanking us…and that’s a big reason why we’re doing this. A member recently reviewed our services in an international publication, and one of the criticisms offered was that we clearly couldn’t keep offering this for free, and Mike and I think that the point was that we were “hooking” people into Manager Tools, only to suddenly start charging.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Weekly casts will always be free for individual use. Members Only casts will always be free for individual use. Membership itself will always be free. The Forums will always be free.

Premium Content goes above and beyond our free weekly and Members Only casts. We’re providing it to answer the many requests for written documents, one use of which is to reduce note taking while driving! We want to make it easy for you to review previous casts, and easy to build a management library.

$15 a month, for everyone. Easy.

[Tomorrow: Premium Content details, with examples.]

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Sexual Harassment (Part 1 of 2)

July 23rd, 2007

This cast tells you how to handle a potential Sexual Harassment problem within your team.

Very few things strike fear in the heart of a manager more than the thought of a potential sexual harassment claim. The sanctions are severe, there’s the taint of an accusation that may never go away, the gossip… to say nothing of the loss of control of the process, and the danger of false accusations. All this on top of the fact that sexual harassment is not only beneath contempt, but it’s also inscrutably hard to understand, and even the finest employee can unknowingly step into this morass.

To some degree, we’re not surprised by most managers lack of understanding of the rules. For most managers, we don’t have time to try to understand the actual law, and even if we read it we wouldn’t understand its implications. Further, most managers don’t think themselves capable of such things (for all kinds of reasons). But, sexual harassment is an example of Horstman’s Unknown Briefcase Rule: If you were told to carry around a briefcase of unknown origin, and were ALSO told that there might be a nuclear weapon in it, it would certainly change your relationship to it enough to ask, “Okay, even if the chances of it going off are slim, if it did go off it would be VERY BAD, so tell me what I need to do it to keep it safe…just in case.”

This cast will keep you safe. Just in case.

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Premium Content Launches 1 August!

July 22nd, 2007

On 1 August, we will launch Premium Content.

To lead up to the launch, we’ll be blogging/announcing details of the launch every day between now and 1 August.

If you’re new to our community, a couple of basics:

- Our weekly and Members Only podcasts will AWAYS BE FREE for private and individual use.

- Premium Content will be (at minimum) shownotes and slides, to allow you to build a library and stop having to take notes. We are pricing them as aggressively as we can (we think you’ll like it!)

More soon…but for now: stay tuned for more, and for the launch on 1 August.

FINALLY!

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Effective Teleconferencing - Part 2 of 2

July 16th, 2007

This week, we conclude our conversation on effective teleconferencing.

Both this week and last week, we make reference to our Effective Meetings podcast. If you haven’t listened to that show, we recommend highly that you do. All the recommendations we make there apply to teleconferences as well … I mean, you did get our point that teleconferences are meetings and not briefings, yes?

Extra Content

Legend:     Members-Only    Premium    Interviewing Series



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