With the whole world able to quickly locate practically anything that someone does on the internet, I’m thinking more and more about my social media life.

It started simply enough - a friend told me that she was only accepting friend requests from very close friends on facebook. At present, she’s got 36 friends on facebook. I guarantee you she knows every single one of them. She probably could call any one of them on the phone if the inclination struck her. I have 303 “friends”, and a count of my first ten yielded two of whom I can honestly say, “I have no idea who this person is.” And that’s just one metric to measure facebook overexposure. I don’t even want to think about the number of pictures that I wouldn’t ever want to explain in a job interview.

Most recently, the Cisco Fatty incident caused me to think even more about the information I send to the entire world about myself. My tweets tend toward promoting this blog and retweeting interesting information about Generation Y, but I have also been known to throw out a politically charged tweet or say something irreverent.

In short, I’m getting the feeling that my online personal brand has some room for improvement.

What I’d like you to do is take a look, and take just one minute to answer this single question: Based upon what you find from a google search of my name, would you hire me?

Search results for you:

Google results on “TJ Wihera”

Google results on “Timothy Wihera”

A simple “yes” or “no” will do the trick, but if you want to explain why, please don’t hold back. I’ll be blogging about the results later this week, so be sure to check back to see if other people agreed with you.

Feel free to leave your comments below or e-mail them to me at tj@generationwhy.com - I look forward to hearing from you!

Yesterday, I was scheduled for a day shift at my security job. The weather intervened, however, and dumped more than a foot of snow on Denver. So, despite the fact that we were at work, there was nothing to do - everyone was staying home. Management made the decision to close at 2:00, which left me and my friend with the entire afternoon free.

At first, we weren’t sure what to do. Everything was closed: restaurants, movie theaters, and (not surprisingly) mini-golf courses. So, we headed home, and as I ran the snow blower over my walk, inspiration struck: We could start a small business for the afternoon. This was, after all, a lot of snow, and there were likely to be people willing to give us money to remove it from their walks.

We threw my dad’s snow-blower and a snow-shovel into my buddy’s truck, and off we went. We opted for a door-to-door approach, with my friend driving the truck and me giving the sales pitch.

To be honest, I was a little bit nervous about our competition. Especially little kids. Competing with little kids is brutal.

-They’re cute. (Great branding.)
-They can undercut us. (Lower overhead.)
-They offer a better product. (What’s better than getting your walks cleared? Getting them cleared and feeling like you’re helping a little kid!)
-Did I mention they’re cuter than I am?

Fortunately for our little start-up, we didn’t see any little kids out there competing with us. And while that was great for my pocketbook (we made more than enough for dinner and drinks), I think it’s a drag for these kids and the people who will employ them in the future. Just think about all the great lessons one can learn from running his own small business, even for just a day:

-Just how hard customers are to get. (Only about one in every ten doors we knocked on proved to be a customer for us.)
-The role that costs play in a business, particularly labor costs. (Each kid in the gang cuts into the margins pretty brutally.)
-Seeing the difference that efficient, hard-working employees can make to your bottom-line.

There’s probably a whole host of others, too. Those were just the first three I thought of while my jeans froze into funny shapes.

So, what does this mean to you? It’s simple: Ask your applicants if they’ve ever had their own business (snow-shoveling, lawn-mowing, lemonade stand, etc). If they say yes, they’re not just telling you that they have mastered the demanding skill of making lemonade. They’re telling you:

1. They’ve got initiative. If you can get out and start your own business - even if it’s for only one day - you can get yourself going.

2. They understand something about business. They may not have an MBA, and maybe they can’t even put that understanding into words, but they’ll apply those lessons to their practices at your business.

3. They understand that their efforts turn into money. They see that the money isn’t a gift. They see that it isn’t an entitlement. They understand that if they do nothing, they get nothing.

So, ask your young applicants if they’ve ever started their own business. It’s one question, but it tells you so much.

A good friend of mine told me last night that he had turned in his two weeks’ notice at his job. He’d been with the company for over two years, but had been getting steadily unhappier. The straw that broke the camel’s back though proved to be an incentive program.

Now, I’m big on incentive programs. I think they’re a great way to get people motivated, bought-in, and (best of all) to give cool stuff to your employees. Because everyone loves cool stuff. Do you ever wonder why it is companies give out bonuses? It’s because they like to incentivize performance, and the theory is that such incentives will drive better performance. So, the fact that this idea should be applied not just to management, upper-management, and executives, but should also filter down to the front line strikes me less as a “why would we do that?” kind of concept and more as a “duh” moment.

But they have to be good incentives. If you are offering something undesirable, it’s hardly a reason to perform, is it? Cool incentives include:

*Cash money!
*Giant plasma TVs. Heck, even normal-sized plasmas.
*Gift cards
*Paid time off

I think the other thing that a good incentive program should have is an achievable, measurable goal, with the emphasis on achievable. If you offer a week of vacation to the first front-line employee to save your company $100 million, odds are good you’re just being specious. [Not to mention shorting him just a little bit in terms of reward-to-accomplishment ratio.] If you offer an incentive for “awesomeness,” you are leaving a lot of room for the perception that your decision was based upon favoritism, rather than performance.

Good accomplishments to incentivize:

*Performance on reviews
*Sales
*Completion of landmarks [training, time with company, etc.]
*Consistently meeting clearly articulated standards [punctuality, dress code, etc.]

Let’s apply these two principles to the incentive plan that ended up sending my friend out the door. The reward offered was a 52″ plasma TV for an employee who had all of his training completed. We’ve got a cool reward and an easily measured goal that can be accomplished. So far, so good.

Then what was the problem? Certainly the plan worked: my friend got fired up and completed his training. Unfortunately, come the day that the prize was to be awarded, his managers announced that it would be going to the team member who had completed the most sales. Now, by itself, this wouldn’t be a problem, as it further rewards good performance. The problem was: my friend works in receiving. It’s not a sales position.

He felt tricked. Here, he had been told that he could potentially earn a great reward for accomplishing a task, but no matter how admirably he achieved it, he would never even be eligible for that reward. With that single twist, his managers managed to take what was obviously an effective incentive program (it did get him to complete his training) and turn it into an employee severance incentive. They lost a two-year employee because he felt that they had been dishonest.

The two fixes here are simple:

1. Be clear up front about conditions. If an incentive doesn’t apply to a certain group, let them know. You might even want to let them know why they aren’t eligible, too.

2. Broader eligibility for incentives is a good idea. Do you think that anyone else from the receiving department will care about completing their training next time?

In my Vegas post, I mentioned that sometimes the small things matter, and that those can increase your applicant pool, which (while it can increase the time required to filter through it) should increase the quality of your final selection.

As if to prove my point, I read the following on TO Polk’s blog (he’s a 25-year-old from South Carolina):

It’s been fairly quiet on the job search front. As a result, I’ve deviated from my original plan of working for a gaming publisher. The way this economy is, I’m fairly open to anything right now. At the moment, my only qualification for a accepting job is that it’s not somewhere crummy. Basically I don’t want to live in the Great Plains. Unfortunately, I haven’t even gotten far enough to where I can be picky regarding where I want to live. Most of my job searches have resulted in me just not hearing back from anyone. On the bright side, I know it’s not just me. I’ve heard from other people, recent graduates, recent “downsizees,” and those just looking for a new job, that they’re not hearing back from companies either. Talk about picking a good time to re-enter the workforce. Had I known this, I would have hung out in school for an extra semester — original plans be damned.

Two things I think employers should notice about this:

1. “Most of my job searches have resulted in me just not hearing back from anyone.” That’s a terrible feeling. And a quick call back or e-mail to tell applicants that they should keep looking can make that difference. TO says, “I know it’s not just me. I’ve heard from other people… that they’re not hearing back from companies either.” In other words: every single one of those contacts he made was an opportunity for a company to build its image as an employer, even if it’s from someone who wasn’t hired there. From the sounds of it, every single one was missed.

2. “The way the economy is, I’m fairly open to anything right now.” This could be a mixed blessing. You can get them in the door now, but once the economy is bullish again, will they stay? TO said he planned to work for a gaming publisher. If, for instance, you aren’t a gaming publisher, you hire TO, and you don’t want to deal with higher turnover costs once we hit the end of this cycle, you’ve got to be thinking about how to keep your him now. Doubtless the current downturn will change Generation Y, but does anyone think it will affect a complete change in our attitudes? Don’t count on it.

I spent the weekend in Las Vegas with my younger brother, celebrating his 21st birthday. While there, I noticed a couple things that Vegas understands about young people. As someone employing young people, you should understand these principles, too:

1. Young people like to gather.

In Vegas, this means nightclubs to attract a young crowd of like-minded people. (You know what they’re thinking about…) And while that kind of a charged atmosphere might be tough to translate into the workplace if you’re not running a nightclub, one thing is easy to translate: finding a bunch of young people with similar interests.

I don’t think I can over-stress the importance of this. I applied at one restaurant because I had two friends working there. After they peaced out, I, too, was out the door. On the other side of the equation, I stayed with one company far longer than I ever would have because I so enjoyed the people I worked with.

This doesn’t mean you have to hire only certain types of people. Don’t shy away from having a couple computer geeks on your staff right next to the football team’s O-line. Instead, focus on finding people with similar personalities. I suggest looking for people who smile a lot. As long as people who smile a lot are working together, they’ll find some common ground.

BOTTOM LINE BONUS FACT FOR TOUGH TIMES:

People quitting less often means less turnover, which means more money in your pocket. Best of all, this kind of selection process only costs you the time required to think about exactly what kind of culture you want to establish for your young employees.

2. Free goodies can translate into big commitments

Cocktail waitresses prowl casino floors, giving free drinks to players. Why? Partly because little freebies can translate into a much bigger commitment later. Just ask anyone who has dropped more at the table than he would have spent on drinks. (AKA, anyone.) The idea here as an employer is that your employee will commit to gambling more on you: more time, more effort, more energy.

Now it should be noted that getting your employees sloshed likely isn’t a very good strategy for accomplishing your day’s work. You’ll need to find other possibilities. Two thoughts there: We heard rumors that some of the casino employees get to eat free at the buffets for their lunches. Jealousy was the reaction of every person at the table. One of my favorites perks for a downtown business is a bus pass. It’s a pretty low cost to you, but it hooks the employee up with something valuable, especially if parking costs a lot near your office. I’ve talked to a couple friends recently who say that their bus pass is their favorite perk.

BOTTOM LINE BONUS FACT FOR TOUGH TIMES:

With times tough, some employees are just happy to land work. Why still bother with this kind of thing? Well, how about this: if you can increase your applicant pool simply by being known as an employer that offers good perks (again, think Google) you will be able to find more productive employees. Better productivity translates into better profits.

So, I was blindsided by daylight savings this year, and my Sunday morning meeting fell victim to the time shift. This is likely karma for four straight years of using both the spring and fall time changes as an excuse to be an hour late for work. (Don’t ask how the fall back excuse worked. It was a different elaborate lie every year.)

This got me thinking about a small favor I would like from my employer: Write on the schedule that Sunday is daylight savings. I forget things. Sometimes a reminder is helpful. However, I also know people who don’t forget little details like “the entire world (except for Arizona) is shifting by an hour tonight.” I think that rather than grabbing all of your employees and verbally reminding them, leaving a reminder on the schedule strikes a reasonable middle ground between reminding your TJ-like employees without offending those who are well aware that such an event is upcoming.

With that in mind, here are three other things I’d like my employers to do when they schedule me:

1. E-mail out the schedule.

I’m not captain organization, so even when I do write down my schedule, I frequently lose whatever I wrote it on. I have a much harder time losing e-mails. If you create a contact list titled “Staff,” and give each employee the option to get in on it, it shouldn’t take you more than thirty seconds to e-mail out the schedule after you’ve completed it. You could even make adding new staff members’ e-mail addresses to the list a part of your new-hire process.

2. Don’t go overboard on my hours.

Times are tough, and labor hours are not easy to come by. Naturally, you want your best people in their places. However, this doesn’t mean that I want my 20 hour-per-week job to become a full 40 hour-per-week job. Hard work should be rewarded, so make sure you aren’t rewarding your performers with a punishment.

3. Avoid scheduling me for the dreaded clopen.

I worked at a quick/casual concept where we left for the night between 10:30 and 11:00 p.m., and the place opened at 5:00 am the next day. We loathingly refered to this rough turn-around as a “clopen.” It’s particularly distasteful if you happen to be a procrastinator and have to write a philosophy paper inbetween getting home and leaving for work. (Not that I speak from experience there.) In any case, I suggest avoiding clopens whenever possible.

1. “This is how we’re supposed to do it.”

The continuation of this sentence is “But here’s how we really do it.” This sends your young employee a very clear message: our standards are negotiable. Once I’ve realized that standards can be negotiated in one area, I am always ready to negotiate standards in every other area. (In fact, I typically enjoy doing so.)

2. “Corporate says…”

Corporate versus the front-line is the ultimate workplace conflict. It’s the haves versus the have-nots. It’s the in-touch versus the out-of-touch. It’s young versus old. It’s operations people versus profit people. It’s us against them. It’s unpleasant to sit through, and it hurts your bottom line. So, why the hell would you start this fight during your training? I understand that you don’t really want to be held responsible for some of the bone-headed things that come down from corporate. (Please refer to my rant on desk drawers for an example.) Tough luck. It’s much more valuable to have your staff at peace with your company’s rainmakers than it is to have them think you are the coolest manager ever. Behave accordingly.

3. “If you’ve got the time…”

Speaking as an employee who has worked in a half-dozen different business models, from quick casual restaurants to major retail chains to small businesses: I never have the time. I am a busy person who is constantly working on something. If it’s important, teach me that it needs to be done and give me a deadline. If it’s not important, don’t ask.

4. “Please.”

Your English teachers didn’t say, “Please, students, put quotation marks around a direct quotation.” They said, “Quotation marks are required to indicate a direct quotation.” They did this because requests can be turned down, but requirements cannot. Your training in the workplace should operate on the same principal.

5. “Because I said so.”

If I ask why we have a certain practice, you better have an answer ready. And it better be a specific, functional answer. For instance, “Why do we put three tomatoes on a sandwich?” is a question I might ask. If you reply, “That’s the spec,” or “Corporate wants it that way,” odds are good I’m going to think you’re a jerk. Odds are even better that I won’t bother to do it unless you’re around, because your word and your authority are about as meaningful to me as a reference to Mayberry. However, if you say, “Well, it’s a combination of factors: We’ve done the math, and three tomatoes allows us to make good money, while at the same time not throwing off the taste of the sandwich,” I now understand why we do what we do, and can better help us reach our goals because profit and taste are meaningful concepts to me.

This is the first week of March, and the NCAA tournament is approaching. With your young employees apprehensive about the economy, an opportunity is knocking. It’s simple. All you have to do is offer to add $50 or $100 to the office NCAA pool.

This does two things. First, it sets people at ease in terms of the economy. If you can afford to pitch fifty or a hundred bucks to the office pool, it shows that you’ve got some stability. After all, the reasoning goes, if you were about to go under, you (a) couldn’t afford to do this and (b) likely wouldn’t have time for these kinds of gestures. Which brings us to the second effect of this offer: it makes things a little bit more fun around the office. It shows your young employees that you understand they have interests outside of work.

I can tell you that if my boss walked in and made this kind of offer I would really appreciate it. While it certainly wouldn’t make up for bad management or a lack of job security, it would go a long way toward showing me that I’m not dealing with either.

As a second suggestion, don’t be afraid to fill out a bracket yourself. You might just win back that c-note if your recent grads are all loyal enough to put their alma mater in the Final 4. (Note: This is no guarantee if you employ UCLA grads.)

Do it!