More on recruiters (say it fast)

Ai is currently hiring a user experience lead to add to its UXD resources. (We're hiring a freelance IA, too... email me if you know anyone for either position. But I digress.)

I have gotten an unsettling amount of recruiter contacts in the days since we posted the job ad. Most of them are polite enough, and I turn them down, politely. This is nothing new; Loren and I have a long history of frustration with muscle-in tactics.

But I occasionally get inquiries that just blow my mind. Consider this, which came to me via LinkedIn, which is usually a good place for targeted communication:

While Linked In is a great resource, it cannot give you access to the most elite talent in the Internet arena. We can. Our difference is that we aggressively call directly into your top competitors and leading firms in your field to source candidates who are among the top 10% in your industry.

Holy smokes! Here I am, trying to wisely use networking to extend the reach of my job ad. And I get a networking reply that suggests I use them to cold-call the competition until they unearth some good candidates.

Underneath the letter was some marketing copy, equally flabbergasting:

* Aggressive cold call recruiting.
Our recruiters make 150 or more calls per day. We directly call into your competitors to recruit the top 10% in North America.

The company promises quantity and quality! I was still working on the math behind that one as I read the last bullet:

* We work exclusively for you.
The candidates we recruit are exclusively yours, and we will never send someone we recruit on your behalf to any other company.

Somehow it's hard to believe that a recruiter with hard-nose tactics like these won't be sharing what little bits of successful entry it finds with every client it recruits.

I suppose there are employers out there who employ, and enjoy, these tactics. But I'm not on that list. (I wonder if I'm on the call list, though....)

Starbucks: Opportunity Cost

With the return of the prodigal Schultz, Starbucks seems to have made the choice that it's about good coffee, and not necessarily fast coffee. To that end, they dump their coffee (which was in a thermal carafe to start with) every 30 minutes, whether its been consumed or not.

As a consequence it seems like they're always out of coffee now. Every time I get up to the front its, "sorry, we're brewing a new pot, it will take a few minutes". What? This is New York City! Not some laid back fish market in Seattle! I need my caffeine fix NOW.

But they've made their choice. They will not be slinging coffee as fast as possible, in order to assure quality.

(No if they would just purchase more coffee brewer machines and stagger the brewing frequency they could have it both ways, but never mind...)

Opportunity Cost

You have to focus. Doing one thing really, really well is infinitely better than doing many things merely adequately. That means selectively choosing which activities to engage in. This is true whether it's a business or a private individual doing the choosing.

In business, doing everything ensures mediocrity. This rule seems to hold true regardless of the size of the business. As companies like Yahoo and Microsoft have found out, as they try to find new horizons to conquer it becomes difficult for them to maintain the compelling nature of their original offerings. Additionally, people have a hard time accepting the company as a business that exists outside of their original space. For example, most people view Microsoft as an operating system and office suite company, or at least a maker of desktop and server applications. Far fewer think of them for their online offerings, such as Office Live or MSN.

I hear a lot of ideas for Internet start-ups, and I see a lot of people making the mistake of trying to do everything. It's gotten to the point that when I hear a pitch for a business that contains a bundle of the currently hip buzzwords ("social networking" is the term du jour), I instinctively start to wonder if there's a real idea in there. It's just too easy to start building an Internet business without establishing the business part.

Sometimes this comes from start-ups comparing themselves to established businesses. They assume that they have to launch with all of Amazon's e-commerce features, all of Google's search capabilities and all of Facebook's social networking features. Not only is this a way to wrack up an enormous development bill, but it won't particularly serve the start-up in the marketplace. The Internet rewards great new ideas, or at least ideas done in a great new way.

So the secret is to not do everything. Strategically choose features not to implement, business areas in which not to engage. If your core idea is good then you'll have a foundation on which to build, and if it's not then all those additional features won't save you anyway.

Tracking Distributed Art

A while back I had mentioned I was making a recording, collaborating over the Internet, with my old band. I've started a blog on Tumblr where I'll be tracking that project, in case you want to follow it. The blog is called "The Sound of One Amp Exploding", and can be found here: http://oneamp.tumblr.com/.

Sports Museum of America

The long-awaited Sports Museum of America opens to the public today.

It is an experiential place, full of tangible exhibits and games. One can hold Alex Rodriguez's baseball bat, compare the weight of an Olympic javelin and shotput, and do skill tests in cycling, skiing, rowing and--most interesting--Nascar pit crew.

SmA is an Ai client, and a few of us had the pleasure of attending their opening night gala last night. (I posted a few photos after the event.) Having toured the museum firsthand, I can confirm that it's great fun for any sports fan. We expected to just poke around during cocktails but wound up spending more than an hour reading, watching and playing.

Congratulations and best of luck to the Sports Museum of America and its founding team.

The auto opt-in

I have been surprised in recent months by the number of ecommerce sites that have defaulted to opt-in upon completion of a purchase.

Opt-in is, of course, supposed to be a voluntary and user-defined action. But it hasn't been that way for me as much as it used to.

As consumer spending slows, retailers, anxious to retain traffic and minimize customer acquisition costs, are taking steps to reach out to shoppers that fit their profiles. And what better way to do that than by hitting up previously converted users?

Interestingly, the sites that have opted me in recently are not uninformed small businesses; they're major corporations with major legal departments, all of whom should presumably know better. Among the offenders:

• Barnes & Noble, where I haven't shopped since 2007
• Citi, for a credit card that gets less than $1000/year in charges
• Home Decorators Collection, after a recent purchase (a Home Depot subsidiary)

Have you been spammed--I mean, opted in--recently? By whom?