It’s a rainy Tuesday. The temperature is just above freezing. It’s February in Buffalo, and I’m in a bad mood.

Nothing in particular has gone wrong today, but has anything really gone right?

On days like today, therapists (or my co-worker Frank) would counsel us to find humor in the mundane and perhaps even learn a new life lesson or two. Instead of projecting your own anger or annoyance onto people around you, think intrinsically about why a situation upsets you and deal with it on your own.

I decided to do a case study – with me being the primary subject.

SITUATION (this is real, sadly) – I called a candidate for a BSME job opportunity I’m working my BUTT off to fill. Initially he tried to make a joke that went terribly awry. He says, “Corey is your name, huh? Wow, based on the emails you’d sent I thought you were a man”. Of course I get this all the time so I politely laugh it off and tell him know, my parents are just crazy hippies who wanted to name their child something ‘unique’. Don’t you know the next words out of his mouth are “Well maybe you’re just a man trapped in a woman’s body”. !!!!!!!!

After that, whatever THAT was, the whole phone conversation went downhill. He ended up being someone who was close-minded to everything I had to say. During that phone call, if my anger could be measured like they do in cartoons (think bulging thermometers) it would have burst through like an erupting volcano.

SO WHAT DID I LEARN? – Most importantly I learned to laugh at this completely unfathomable comment. I mean, I’m literally laughing out loud right now as I write this. And believe me, this is not the first off color, or weird thing a candidate has said to me over the years. People have made comments about my age, my sex, my relationship status, my wrist tattoo (in my opinion, a very tasteful one), my education, everything.

After each of those conversations I end up feeling the same way I did today – flabbergasted that someone would have the nerve, or stupidity (in this specific case), to make comments that could be taken offensively.

Now my therapist (co-worker Frank) would tell me that I’m too sensitive, and that I need to stop letting silly little comments get to me. Beth – another co-worker offered that “Maybe he was just nervous”. Both of them are probably right.

But as a recruiter where do I draw the line with the silly, mildly offensive comments? Do I let them go and have a candidate make a silly, mildly offensive comment in an interview with my client? Or do I axe the candidate from my wheelhouse of talent?

I’m sure there’s no right or wrong answer, but I expect a certain level of decorum and respect when speaking with a new contact. Not only is it illegal for me to make the comments I have to suffer through, but also it’s bad form! Shouldn’t interviewee’s give the same respect interviewer’s give?

Maybe I’m old school – I’m open to comments. What do YOU think?

Last night Wendy and I attended the ASQ Buffalo Chapter monthly meeting. It was a forum recommended by Mike Cardus – a completely awesome, well known team building advocate in the Buffalo area.

Anyway, we really like Mike and took him up on his offer to attend a meeting and hopefully get introduced to some NEAT Quality Professionals.

Aside from some yummo chicken picata and apple pie for dessert, Wendy and I got to meet some pretty awesome people who reminded me of how important, how integral quality programs are to today’s businesses – large and small. If you’re manufacturing a product – high quality is expected.

If you’re providing a service (like an oil change, which is where I’m writing this blog) – high quality service is expected. Long story short – QA and QC professionals aren’t just found working in manufacturing. There’s a high demand for certified QA/QC/QE professionals in healthcare, environmental management, food safety, IT, construction, retail, etc.

As a matter of fact, as I had mentioned to our table last night – if I had it to do all over again I would love to start a career in quality compliance and/or engineering. In a manufacturing sense Quality encompasses things like Lean/Six Sigma program implementation, ISO compliance, product quality testing using GD&T and sometimes NDT, and improving processes to decrease non-conformance and increase thru-put.

How much fun would it be to act as the perennial problem solver? How can we do this better? How can we do this more efficiently? How can we increase quality without increasing our cost? Maybe it’s not the right cup of tea for everyone, but I find that particular kind of challenge fascinating. It’s well and good to be the innovator, but it’s rewarding to take an idea and make it feasibly manufacturable.

SOME VOCAB WORDS FROM MY BLOG ON QUALITY:

ASQ – American Society for Quality (they have chapters all over the country – for instance, we dined with the Buffalo chapter last night!)

QA/QC – Quality Assurance/Quality Control (Two terms that have many interpretations because of the multiple definitions for the words “assurance” and “control.” For example, “assurance” can mean the act of giving confidence, the state of being certain or the act of making certain; “control” can mean an evaluation to indicate needed corrective responses, the act of guiding or the state of a process in which the variability is attributable to a constant system of chance causes. *For a detailed discussion on the multiple definitions, see ANSI/ISO/ASQ A3534-2, Statistics—Vocabulary and Symbols—Statistical Quality Control.* One definition of quality assurance is: all the planned and systematic activities implemented within the quality system that can be demonstrated to provide confidence that a product or service will fulfill requirements for quality. One definition for quality control is: the operational techniques and activities used to fulfill requirements for quality. Often, however, “quality assurance” and “quality control” are used interchangeably, referring to the actions performed to ensure the quality of a product, service or process. – thank you for the info asq.org!)

QE – Quality Engineering (The analysis of a manufacturing system at all stages to maximize the quality of the process itself and the products it produces. – thank you for the info asq.org!)

ISO – International Standardization Organization (ISO offers certifications for almost EVERY company from a manufacturer to a business service provider!)

LEAN Principles – (Lean manufacturing/production: An initiative focused on eliminating all waste in manufacturing processes. Principles of lean manufacturing include zero waiting time, zero inventory, scheduling *internal customer pull instead of push system*, batch to flow *cut batch sizes*, line balancing and cutting actual process times. The production systems are characterized by optimum automation, just-in-time supplier delivery disciplines, quick changeover times, high levels of quality and continuous improvement. – thank you for the info asq.org!)

Six Sigma – (A method that provides organizations tools to improve the capability of their business processes. This increase in performance and decrease in process variation leads to defect reduction and improvement in profits, employee morale and quality of products or services. Six Sigma quality is a term generally used to indicate a process is well controlled by examining standard deviations in a normally distributed process.  – thanks for the info asq.org!)

GD&T – Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing (methods and tools used to test the quality of a manufactured product)

NDT – Non Destructive Testing (methods and tools used to test the quality of a manufactured metal product. These tests assess strength without corrupting the internal structure of the metal)

I’m sad today.

I dropped my 15 month old daughter off at daycare today and outside her classroom is a bulletin board filled with the notes from her daily activities, lunch menus, etc. Well today there was a formatted, letterhead note posted informing us that her head teacher would be leaving to pursue other career opportunities.

Rumor has it that she is leaving to take the same position at a different daycare and I know I got a pit in my stomach when I read that she was leaving. At 15 months, my daughter is going through her “stranger danger” phase and it’s tough for her to acclimate to a new face in the classroom, which she is now going to have to do. In addition to the selfishness of my feelings, I’m also saddened to see Cadie losing such an amazing teacher.

I have seen her grow so much in the time she has been with her teacher and it saddens me to think about her being in a classroom with someone else now.

So when I was leaving, I was thinking about where her teacher would be going and what could be better than working where she is right now…because as a parent, and on the surface of things, I LOVE my daycare. Everything appears to run smoothly and Cadie is so well taken care of every day. I know she is being nurtured and watched out for and I suppose I figured that the company itself would do the same for its employees as its teachers do for my child.

But maybe that isn’t the case. And shame on them if that’s the scenario.

I know that it seems like we beat to death the fact that a good working environment trumps almost all else, but the fact is, it’s true. You may not make the most money but if the environment in which you work is great and flexible and comfortable, why would you really want to leave. The grass is really very rarely greener when you already have it really good.

The point is, it’s not hard to make your employees think twice about pursuing other avenues. I know there may be extraneous factors, such as travel or relocation that may play a deciding factor in an employee’s decision to move on, but if you make it a great, comfortable work environment, some extra thought may be put into the decision to leave.

And in the IT and Engineering world, we’re talking about highly skilled technicians. These employees are the bread and butter of your company’s existence and they are really hard to find a replacement for. Not only does it cost you time and energy, it’s emotionally draining on your entire team.

Keep the good ones! By giving them small incentives, benefits, flexibility and treating them like an equal, your employees will be much more inclined to stay where they are or at least think twice before jumping ship.

March 1 – Increase availability and reduce costs with redesigned OMEGAMON

Highlights
Topics include:
·        Redesigned user interface for an expansive enterprise view
·        Built-in best practices based on problem-solving scenarios
·        Autonomic functions for data synchronization
·        Use of less compute resources and fewer address spaces
·        Monitoring more components of the zEnterprise

Speaker: Mike Goodman, OMEGAMON Product Manager, IBM Software Group
Broadcast date: March 1, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, 4:00 p.m. GMT / UTC
Developed for: IT and enterprise architects; IT managers; system analysts; system programmers; and, operations managers
Technical level: Intermediate

When operations staff or system programmers have to navigate multiple systems, applications and products to track down and fix problems — your business is losing valuable time and money. This process also introduces the risk of system outages because problems take too long to resolve. Is that the sound of increased costs? Add to that, the prevalent decrease of maintenance windows, and it’s clear that increasing staff productivity can go a long way toward addressing important issues in IT today.

Attend this complimentary webcast, presented by IBM and SHARE, to learn about the redesigned Tivoli® OMEGAMON® family of products with better monitoring, faster problem management, improved maintenance and decreased resource usage. IBM worked with its customers to understand their top mainframe monitoring and management requirements and redesigned it accordingly. Now you can more easily monitor and maintain your entire mainframe environment, with an enhanced 3270 user interface, problem-solving scenarios, self-describing agents, and support for zEnterprise™ and zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension.

Overall, the new OMEGAMON user interface helps subject matter experts better understand what’s happening on their mainframe with information customized to focus on key problems experienced in System z® environments. This redesigned OMEGAMON can help increase mainframe visibility, decrease costs and reduce risks.

Join us after the webcast for a live question-and-answer session. The webcast will also be available for replay after the event.

March 6 – Customer experiences in maximizing analytics through query acceleration

Highlights
Topics include:
·        Meeting more requirements of business users
·        Improving price/performance for analytic workloads
·        Minimizing the need to create data marts for performance
·        Creating a highly secure environment for sensitive data analysis

Host: Alan Meyer, Senior Marketing Manager, System z Data Warehousing, IBM Software Group
Speakers: Peter Bendel, Senior Developer, DB2 Analytics Accelerator, IBM Software Group
Jeffrey Feinsmith, Director of Integration, Netezza Technology
Frank Neumann, Data Warehousing on System z, Center of Excellence, IBM Software Group
Broadcast date: 6, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, 4:00 p.m. GMT / UTC
Developed for: Data center operations and managers; DBAs; IT architects and managers; BI program managers and report authors; BI Competency Center executives
Technical level: Intermediate

With the speed of business today, and the need to make fast, fact-based decisions, organizations are no longer willing to wait on information from slow queries. The new IBM DB2® Analytics Accelerator meets that challenge and is one of the most exciting new products in the IBM Data Warehousing portfolio, creating additional opportunities for analytics on System z®.

The first customer experiences are in and the results are even better than expected. Join us for this complimentary webcast and learn how IBM customers are planning new architectures and new workloads, now possible through the acceleration of their analytic queries. You’ll see how this blending of DB2 for z/OS® and Netezza technologies is simplifying data warehousing environments, facilitating transparent deployment and reduced costs, removing the need to export data off the platform and enabling phenomenal speed. In this one-hour webcast, we’ll review initial analyses from customers, and why they see DB2 Analytics Accelerator as a true game changer.

Join us after the webcast for a live question-and-answer session. The webcast will also be available for replay after the event.

March 8 – See into the heart of CICS and resolve problems faster across LPAR boundaries

Highlights
Topics include:
• Using problem-solving scenarios designed by customers
• CICS and z/OS® monitors combined in an enhanced 3270 workspace
• Fewer screen interactions to find root cause performance impact in real time

Speaker: Mike Goodman, Tivoli OMEGAMON Product Manager, IBM Software Group
Broadcast date: March 8, 2012, 11 a.m., EST
Developed for: IT and enterprise architects; IT managers; systems analysts; system and CICS programmers; and, operations managers
Technical level: Intermediate

IBM CICS® performance is important to virtually every business that uses it — and it’s critical to quickly find and fix CICS problems before they become outages. IBM has continued to enhance and extend Tivoli® OMEGAMON® XE for CICS capabilities to make its monitoring and management faster, more productive and more effective.

Join us for this complimentary webcast for an overview of OMEGAMON XE for CICS V5.1 — with enhancements based on customer requirements — as we explore its redesigned, problem-solving features. You’ll learn how greater visibility into CICS can help you resolve issues across Parallel Sysplex® and LPAR boundaries with fewer screens and keystrokes.

In this one-hour webcast, we’ll discuss how OMEGAMON XE for CICS 5.1 helps you more easily monitor and maintain your entire mainframe environment to quickly find and fix problems before they become outages. We’ll also show you how you can exploit IBM’s zIIP hardware to help you more easily meet service level agreements and lower the cost of compute time.

Join us after the webcast for a live question-and-answer session. The webcast will also be available for replay after the event.

March 13 – Beyond migration — Reduce CPU in DB2 10 using DB2 Utilities and Tools

Highlights
Topics include:
·        Minimize downtime associated with routine DB2 data maintenance
·        Set up recurring utility jobs for conditional and routine maintenance tasks
·        Drive significant savings in elapsed time and CPU during utility sort processing, especially LOAD, REORG and RUNSTATS
·        Customize DB2 utility tasks to meet your business needs

Speakers: Haakon Roberts, IBM Distinguished Engineer, DB2 for z/OS® Development, IBM Software Group
Jennifer Nelson, Product Specialist, Rocket Software
Broadcast date: March 13, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 3:00 p.m. GMT / UTC
Developed for: Database administrators and managers
Technical level: Intermediate

Most DBAs have a list of things they want to improve after migrating to IBM DB2® 10, and reducing CPU is usually at the top of the list. With the latest DB2 Utility enhancements applied in your environment you can accomplish this and reduce elapsed time during utility processing, automate statistics gathering and potentially eliminate some REORGs altogether.

You can always count on DB2 Utilities and Tools to provide Day 1 support for new releases of DB2. But do you know how to maximize their use in your environment? Are you familiar with the most recent performance features delivered in the DB2 Utilities Suite since DB2 10? Join us for this complimentary webcast and learn more. We’ll focus partly on CPU savings and zIIP offload, but also on features that improve availability in the DB2 Utilities and Tools. We’ll show you how you can take advantage of DB2 Tools in the utility management portfolio to maximize the effective use of DB2 10 Utilities. You’ll come away from this session with valuable, cost-savings and best practices information.

Join us after the webcast for a live question-and-answer session. The webcast will also be available for replay after the event.

March 14 -  Achieving optimum CICS performance

Highlights
Topics include:
·        Where to focus performance tuning efforts that also meet demanding SLAs
·        Automate monitoring of CICS applications and know when they exceed performance thresholds
·        Quickly identify and dynamically respond to out-of-line business situations
·        Ensure the scalability of your application portfolio
·        Take better advantage of the specialty engines

Speaker: Pete Siddell, CICS Tools Technical Specialist, IBM Software Group
Broadcast date: 14, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 3:00 p.m. GMT / UTC
Developed for: IT and enterprise architects; developers; IT managers; performance specialists; and system programmers
Technical level: Intermediate

With CICS® Transaction Server V4.2, even more optimization opportunities are now available. But with the growing complexity of systems, it can be difficult to take full advantage of them — without the support of powerful monitoring, tuning and reporting utilities. If you use CICS Transaction Server for z/OS®, especially if you use it with IMS Database Manager, attend this webcast to learn how new features in these products can significantly reduce your CPU usage and improve response times.

IBM and SHARE are presenting this complimentary webcast on optimizing the performance of CICS systems and applications. You’ll learn how it not only releases capacity to support new or growing workloads, but also helps to improve response times and increase customer satisfaction. We’ll discuss a powerful set of IBM tools that can work together to support a wide range of performance scenarios, not just threadsafe analysis, but capacity planning, application-level analysis, monitoring and alerting, problem determination, and many others. The webcast will feature extensive demonstrations of key scenarios.

Join us after the webcast for a live question-and-answer session. The webcast will also be available for replay after the event.

March 15 – The critical role of Service Management in moving to cloud on System z

Highlights
Topics include:
• Detect and recover potential problems in essential system resources automatically
• Quickly isolate and take action automatically to resolve issues
• Automate best practices for common data center provisioning activities
• Understand the structure of interdependent and complex applications

Speaker: Mike Baskey, Integration Architect and Chief Architect, Management Standards, IBM Software Group
Broadcast date: March 15, 2012, 11 a.m., EDT
Developed for: IT and enterprise architects; IT managers; systems analysts; system programmers; and, operations managers
Technical level: Intermediate

The move to cloud computing is being driven by several problems familiar to most IT professionals:
• Infrastructures that are slow to adapt and hinder business agility
• Software costs that consume a disproportionate share of IT budget
• Security management weaknesses that expose the business
• Inability to respond to peak demand that limits competitiveness

Cloud is all about making it easier to manage resources, and if you’re thinking about moving to cloud on System z®, or zEnterprise™, good Service Management will be key to your success.

In this complimentary webcast, we’ll discuss how to tie discovery and monitoring to performance and workload management, while considering capacity planning of your cloud environment on System z. We’ll show you how you can look across virtual servers — System z, System p® and System x® — and associated workload performance goals, to manage your System z, or zEnterprise, resources. We’ll also discuss how Tivoli™ monitoring can leverage Unified Resource Manager insight at the virtual server and operating system levels. This gives you the Service Management needed to begin a successful cloud implementation.

Join us after the webcast for a live question-and-answer session. The webcast will also be available for replay after the event.

March 20 – What’s new from the Optimizer in IBM DB2 10 for z/OS?

Highlights
Topics include:
·        Enhanced plan management
·        “Safe” query optimization
·        Improvements to complex OR and IN list processing
·        RUNSTATS management and performance improvements

Speaker: Terry Purcell, Senior Technical Staff Member, DB2 for z/OS Optimizer Development, IBM Software Group
Broadcast date: March 20, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 3:00 p.m. GMT / UTC
Developed for: IT managers; IT and enterprise architects; database administrators and managers; system programmers; and, operations managers
Technical level: Intermediate

One of the most significant benefits of query optimization is reducing the total cost of ownership. Since its initial inception in DB2® for z/OS®, the cost-based Optimizer has continually evolved to deliver expert-based query and workload analysis and many other performance-enhancing functions. In DB2 10, it’s proving to deliver even more.

Join us for a complimentary webcast and learn how the latest enhancements to IBM’s Optimizer are helping customers worldwide. For example, you’ll see how with critical tested selects statements, the DB2 10 Optimizer chose the optimal access path, sometimes even improving previous access path choices in DB2 9. In this presentation we’ll share the insight uncovered during early usage, provide the motivation for each enhancement, and delve into highlights of the actual enhancements.

Join us after the webcast for a live question-and-answer session. The webcast will also be available for replay after the event.

March 22 – Shave time off application and service delivery with enhanced event management

Highlights
Topics include:
• Proactive discovery capabilities for faster time to resolution
• Asynchronous discovery to ensure that discovered data is accurate and business service views are current
• Multiple, concurrent discovery jobs supported on a single discovery server

Speaker: James Moore, Product Manager, Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager, IBM Software Group
Broadcast date: March 22, 2012, 11 a.m., EDT
Developed for: IT and enterprise architects; IT managers; systems analysts; system programmers; and, operations managers
Technical level: Intermediate

To get full value out of IBM zEnterprise™, it should be used to manage mainframe and distributed environments. This requires seeing detailed views of infrastructure, including configurations and seeing the relationships of various components, such as applications and hardware. This information can help you manage events and event results by understanding relationships before the events occur. Are you able to track changes being made to the infrastructure and the change dependencies across software and hardware? By improving application and event visibility with discovery, you can understand the impact of changes, and application or event outages.

If you’re wasting time with manual efforts in trying to find and track all components, infrastructure and their interactions, including application and events — you’re wasting your investment. With the size and complexity of most zEnterprise environments, automated discovery provides a level of event management needed to meet SLAs.

If you’re already on System z® or you’re moving to zEnterprise, you’ve taken the most important step. Now it’s time to make sure you’re taking advantage of recent improvements in performance. The best place to start is by quickly discovering all the applications and events on your mainframe. In this complimentary webcast, we’ll show you how to improve event visibility using Tivoli® Discovery and Integration, enabling big savings in time and cost for application and service discovery across zEnterprise, including Linux® on System z and zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension.

Join us after the webcast for a live question-and-answer session. The webcast will also be available for replay after the event.

March 27 – IMS database replication for enhanced system resiliency

Highlights
Topics include:
·        Native IMS-to-IMS software replication for high-availability IMS data environments
·        Synchronizing the contents of IMS databases in near real-time with full recovery
·        Hot standby environmental support to reduce recovery time

Speaker: Greg Vance, IMS Replication Development for System z, IBM Software Group
Broadcast date: March 27, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 3:00 p.m. GMT / UTC
Developed for: IT and enterprise architects; IT managers; database administrators and managers; systems analysts; system programmers; security managers, and, operations managers
Technical level: Intermediate

IBM® IMS™ clients on System z® are always on the lookout for ways to improve system resiliency and availability, especially because IMS remains the lowest cost-per-transaction DBMS. Now there’s a new option. IBM InfoSphere® IMS Replication for z/OS® enables IMS as a source for IBM’s InfoSphere Change Data Capture solutions. This helps increase the availability of IMS data, whether it is for a continuous availability strategy or to ensure the timely distribution of critical enterprise information.

Join Greg Vance, IMS replication subject matter expert, in this complimentary teleconference as he shows how IMS and IBM InfoSphere IMS Replication for z/OS can help improve system resiliency and availability by enabling IMS as a source for IBM’s InfoSphere Change Data Capture solutions. Now, one IMS data replication solution, InfoSphere IMS Replication for z/OS, enables both homogeneous IMS database replication (IMS-to-IMS) and IMS database sourcing for heterogeneous replication. Greg will share details about implementing this solution, as well as an overview of the GDPS® Active/Active sites solution.

Join us after the teleconference for a live question-and-answer session. The teleconference will also be available for replay after the event.

I love Valentine’s Day. Yes, I am one of those sappy women who just thinks it can be a really romantic holiday. I actually sat down last night and painted my nails red, picked out a red blouse, chose heart shaped jewelry and even made a heart shaped cake for work, complete with pink food coloring to make it more authentic. I even have my radio love songs playing on my computer via Pandora, too.

What do I love so much about the holiday? I love my husband and I love my little daughter. They are the two lights of my life and they make every minute of being at home just so fulfilling.

I also love my job! And I really hope there are a lot of you out there who feel the same way! I mean, come on, I made a cake for work today to show my co-workers ow much I love working with them. I would have taken a picture of it, but it’s not even noon and there is very little left.

So I figured in the spirit of the day, I would list out what I love about each of my co-workers in one sentence…

• Chuck (President) – I love the fairness, flexibility and guidance he offers to each employee along with all his “trademarked” Chuckisms that we all know and love!

• Miles (Account Manager) – I love his sense of humor and dedication to the development of TxMQ’s future and the fact that he is my lunchtime workout buddy!

• Hank (Account Manager) – I love the drive that he puts into his work and the pride he has for the relationships he has cultivated and maintains.

• Melissa (Office Manager) – I love her ability to keep us all sane in a crazy environment and the fact that if not for her, TxMQ would fall apart at the seams.

• Corey (Engineering Recruiter) – I love her sense of humor, great smile and the way she can spin a troubled situation and make everyone laugh.

• Frank (IT Recruiter) – I love his soft spoken demeanor and the way he just listens, supports and tries to help out his co-workers in any way possible.

• Bert (IT Recruiter) – I love his dedication and how, despite his newness to TxMQ, he establishes a great work standard that we all can use as a guide.

• Sharon (IT Recruiter) – I love her motherly advice, nurturing personality and how she always steps up to the plate when given a new, challenging task.

• Mark (IT Recruiter) – I love how though he usually stays to himself, once in a while, he turns around and offers up a joke to make the whole team laugh.

• Nicole (Accounting) – I love her attention to detail and the amazing things she can do to Excel documents!

• Beth (Inside Sales) – I love her enthusiasm and willingness to learn everything she can about TxMQ.

• Kyle (Recruiting Assistant) - I love how Kyle can juggle school and work and still make TxMQ a priority…(he also replaced Howard the fish when he died last week with Howard 2.0!)

• Natalie (Engineering Division Manager) – I love how it appears Natalie NEVER sleeps and how hard she works every day to make herself and TxMQ’s engineering division a success.

• Sonja (Account Manager) – I love that although I have only met Sonja in person a few times, we can still correspond via email as if we have been friends forever and she always responds to inquiries quickly and efficiently.

• Eden (Intern/Office Assistant) – I love how quickly Eden turns her tasks around and how willing she is to take on additional responsibility even while she juggles her studies at the University at Buffalo.

It’s hard to write it all out in only one sentence! There’s a lot I can say about the amazing group of people I work with, but I will stop there. Just because it is Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean I need to get all sappy on you.

But truthfully, I hope you can also say the same thing about where you work and your co-workers. We spend the majority of our week at work, you might as well enjoy it when you’re there.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone…I’m going to go eat more cake!

Chuck has a great outlook on his hiring decisions. He likes to hire people who are smarter than he is. Not necessarily all around, but in their certain expertise.

Every time we sit down to interview a candidate for a job here at TxMQ, Chuck enters it with a unique frame of mind.

The top most question isn’t what he can teach this person, it’s how much this person can teach him. If I had a dime for the number of times I have heard him say that he aims to hire people who are smarter than he is to aid in his company’s success, I would be a rich girl right now. OK, well maybe not rich, but I bet I’d be able to go out for a nice dinner or two!

It’s an interesting concept really, and one that I am not altogether sure that many people can find themselves comfortable with. It’s unnerving to think that each person sitting across from you is smarter than you are.

But when you open yourself up to the concept, think about all the possibilities. If each person around you knows something you don’t know, then open yourself up to being a sponge and soak it all in. Your world can be unlimited in knowledge.

Hiring managers often have a problem with that and we have, more than once, had to coach our candidates to scale back their “smarts” in an interview situation. Why should we have to do that? You have hired us to find you THE BEST possible talent for your company. We shouldn’t have to coach our candidates to “dumb it down” in an interview.

Next time, just sit back and relax and learn something when you’re interviewing someone who knows more than you do. Don’t think about being “inferior” to this candidate. Think instead how you can utilize this AMAZING talent sitting in front of you to make your company even better than it already is.

Yesterday my cousin (a Recruiting Manager for a HUGE consulting and staff development firm in Beantown MASS – recruiting greatness must run in our blood) posted an article that’s really relevant to what I’ve been blogging about lately – COMPANY CULTURE.

This time it’s Forbes Magazine who’s making a comment. I’m so happy they’re on the POSITIVE company culture bandwagon!

To paraphrase, Forbes basically argues the point that the only TRULY sustainable competitive advantage any company can ever have over another is their corporate culture; their unique thumbprint.

You will NEVER be the ONLY Company to supply that innovative solution or product. There will always be competitors working feverishly to reverse engineer your pioneer product and come to market with a newer, bigger, better version. In the same sense, there will always be a competitor looking to “steal” your talent away from you.

As a recruiter I deal with it all the time. Company A wants me to help them acquire a candidate from Company B – and I will, it’s my job. The sooner business owners come to terms with this “dog eat dog” world, the quicker they will realize that Forbes is right – the only way to stay on top is to hire and retain THE BEST talent who will grow with you and continue to innovate for you.

The other interesting item that Forbes touches on is that “money can’t buy love” – to loosely quote The Beatles. Let’s be honest with ourselves; there will always be a competitor who can outbid you on the salary of your highest paid design engineer. That person and their big brain are potentially just one word (the “yes” word) away from taking their big brains and experience elsewhere; no hard feelings intended.

So what’s the SINGLE thing you have control over as an employer that will help you retain your talent? YOUR CULTURE.

Establish a positive culture of trust, loyalty, and hard work. Give a little to get a little. Foster creativity through collaboration. Have an open door policy and seriously consider how you can positively influence or change negative feedback from employees. Lead by example. EARN RESPECT.

Yes, there are some people who are (and will forever will be) in it only for the money. There’s nothing you can do to influence their career moves other than to come out as top bidder. But the vast majority of us CRAVE to work at a place where we feel happy and productive. We want to be able to grow within our positions and expand our brainpower with new skill sets. We want to feel like we fit in and that our opinions matter. Who wouldn’t want to feel these things when you spend 40+ hours a week in that environment every week? As a business owner if you’re able to create a culture that fosters loyalty, no amount of money will influence a happy worker to even begin to look for a new job much less accept a new job.

So now the question remains; why has company culture gotten such incredible press as of late?

It’s my opinion that it’s reactionary to the poor (mental/emotional) working conditions of the recession. Over 15MM (10% of workforce) Americans were laid off/out of work in 2009 as a result of companies cutting corners, trying to stay afloat, desperately hoping to turn a profit. What happened to the other 135MM who kept their jobs?

They suffered pay cuts along with insurmountable workloads to make up for their downsized colleagues’ jobs, many people suffered the loss of health benefits or vacation days; employers stopped contributing to 401K’s. To boot, everyone was nervous and edgy and cranky and PISSED OFF. Doesn’t sound like a good working environment to me. Does it to you?

Now that we’re tentatively in the rebound the focus on good and incented working conditions have taken center stage. Actually, the focus on company culture in articles and the news means to me that the darkest of our economic days are behind us and the employees are beginning to regain control of their work lives and that options are broadening.

Check out the Forbes article that inspired this blog.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2012/02/08/corporate-culture-the-only-truly-sustainable-competitive-advantage/

“Today is one of those days that I really wish I had a door or some headphones so that I could block out all of the
“woe is me” conversations…this is your JOB, there’s a reason why they call it WORK.”

I read this quote on someone’s Facebook page this morning, and it inspired my next blog. It’s a good thing, too because I was struggling with what to write about this week.

She’s right though…Work is called work for a reason. Now I am not saying that you can’t like, or even love what you do for work, but chances are, you’re not going to LOVE it 100% of the time. Heck, do you even love what you do personally, outside of work 100% of the time?

It’s acceptable. And you’re not really in any boat that everyone else isn’t in with you. So it’s really all about the way you handle yourself in that situation. So here’s my advice, short sweet and to the point…don’t go around work complaining about how much you dislike what you’re doing and don’t get sucked into the negativity cloud by others doing the same thing.

Be proactive and do something to make it better. Take a walk, eat some chocolate, put your headphones on, etc. Unless it really is that bad, you’re really in a hostile working environment, still I suggest you don’t be the negative Nelly. Just handle it day by day and if it’s truly horrible, start looking for another job.

TxMQ has recruiters that can help

www.txmq.com or www.engineering.txmq.com

I was inspired to blog today after reading an “Inc Magazine” an article titled,  “Inspiring Performance by Keeping Work Hours Flexible”.

This is one of those new fangled, new aged ideas dreamed up by those hippies over at Google and Facebook, right? Well, perhaps – but flexible work hours are CERTAINLY popular. As an employer if you’re not down with this new trend, you may be selling your company short on talent.

Let me first give a little insight into the different generations who have to work together from 9-5. The study of how generations interact these days has become a hot topic because there is such a communication gap between entry-level employees (Gen Y/Millennials), their managers (Gen X), and their managers (Baby Boomers).

In the workplace, Baby Boomers work hard to save for the future. They define their value at work by the number of hours they log and their undying dedication to one or two companies over the course of their long career.

Gen X is considered the lost generation (really because their parents were constantly at work). Gen X works for the paycheck to provide for their families and IS HOME BY 5 p.m. for their children because their parents were NOT.

Gen Y is all about the flexibility. They earn to spend (which is good because sometimes I think Gen Y’s spending is our only hope for coming out of this recession), they are altruistic in that they want to work for a company that can contribute to the greater good, and they CRAVE flexibility.

BABY BOOMERS – Here’s the reality. The future of your company lies with two generations who CRAVE flexibility in their work schedule (it doesn’t matter that their reasons are different). You may as well get on the wagon because resisting will only cost you talented employees.

Rigidity in the workplace is a thing of the past. As a matter of fact with the advent of Skype and cloud computing it should be!

And why should it be? BECAUSE WHEN YOU LOOSEN YOUR DEMANDS ON A 9 TO 5 SCHEDULE, you are demanding of your employees to be able to quantify and qualify their work in a new way!

If you allow for flexibility in your workplace and set goals rather than a quitting time, you will see productivity levels rise. No longer will employees bide their time on Facebook until they get to leave at 5 p.m. They’ve been given a goal to achieve in their own way, and in their own time. If they fail to achieve goals or live up to expectations then their job (that they love so much because they are SOOOOO flexible) is in jeopardy.

I could write for pages and pages about the benefits of maintaining a flexible workplace, but I have a cramp in my hand and I have my own goals to meet and achieve!

In the same breath I’d like to thank TxMQ for maintaining a flexible workplace! It’s a breath of fresh air in the staffing world, and I’ve NEVER been more productive OR more successful!

Take a look at the Inc. Mag article that inspired my blog!

http://www.inc.com/margaret-heffernan/why-flexible-hours-inspire-achievement.html

*Chart: http://www.fdu.edu/newspubs/magazine/05ws/generations.htm

It’s official. Apple is kicking Android device’s butt when it comes to use in the enterprise sector.

Why? Because for some companies, Android phones and devices are just not an option. Bruce Poon Tip from G Adventures only uses Apple iPhone and iPad. According to Poon Tip, Android devices and the Blackberry just can’t keep up in their environment.

According to a new study recently published, iPhones represented 53 percent of new device activations in the fourth quarter of 2011 for its enterprise customers as opposed to 28 percent for Android based phones.

However in the consumer space, Android phones out-sell iPhones, 52 percent to 37 percent.

The chief complaint on the enterprise level is security. Android is an open platform and users can download from sites that aren’t associated with Google’s Android market.

Without actively monitoring the security of these third party sites, it’s impossible to know the security of the apps.

What technology does your company rely on? All of TxMQ’s computers are Apple and we are split within the office about half and half, iPhone vs Android.

Do you trust Apps from open markets? How do you know what’s safe and what isn’t?