Ranting on recruitment agencies

Hi there, beloved readers. In another attempt to conquer the blogging world, I would like to share my thoughts on something I recently went through. Actually, alot of changes have occurred! Most importantly, Joelle finally graduated, I found a new job and I have adopted two new cats. I can continue on like this forever, but I just want to get something off my chest. In the process of finding a job, I have struggled a lot. I haven’t really expected it to be a tough journey, as I consider myself to have a fair amount of good experience at a large company. Anyway, instead of applying at each company one at a time, I decided to have a recruitment bureau intermediate with my job applications. My experiences were simply said, quite bad. I would like to give those agencies whom I had the displeasure working with FIVE great tips, in order to improve your service and eventually to be successful.

5 basic and simple lessons for those recruiters who obviously didn’t do their job well

• Keep us informed. If you say you would call me back, then call me back, damn it!!! If not, then I find that disrespectful, and you give a terrible image to the company you’re working for.
• Be customer friendly/focused towards clients AS WELL AS job seekers. Spend more time with a candidate if that person has questions. Working for your clients means finding the best candidates you can introduce to your clients, but you also need to make sure that candidates find a company that suits them best. And the only way to make sure is to spend more time finding out our interests and competences.
• Please don’t act all that tough since you think you are the one to assess a person’s capability during an interview. I have met recruiters wearing suits, ties proud to be working for a professional company and therefore boosting their ego to the sky. My advice would be to be humble, sincere and social. In an informal setting, it’s best to know a candidate’s capabilities from an interview.
• Don’t make promises you can’t guarantee. Don’t say you will arrange an interview, when you don’t know for sure you can do it. And if you can’t do it, let us know (see first bullet point).
• Just do some research in what the job has to offer, not just in terms of the tasks itself, but rather in a more broader context. If I ask a question such as “how would you describe its corporate culture?” or “what members does the team I will be working consist of?” I expect an answer. If not, chances are big I’ll just be wasting my time, and so are you!!!

Obviously some of these tips are already well known in general, but I just like to mention them again as I have been a victim of incompetent recruitment practices. And through a quick browse on the internet I have learned that my thoughts are not unique in that sense. However, I would like to stress out the fact that these are mere examples based on personal experiences and I am convinced that there are recruitment agencies that are doing their job fantastically. I work in a company, whose recruiter approached me in a proactive manner. I am glad that person has done so, as I have a good feeling about my new job.

For all you job seekers, I wish you good luck finding your dream job (you too Poesie Mao). As for the recruiters… Hope you learn from these tips!

What did the left butt cheek say to the right butt cheek…?

They say that if you enjoy the work that you do, then you never have to go to work. Unfortunately, tihs does not apply in my case. I got a job that I don’t like plus the fact that it’s sooooooo faaaaar away from home makes it an agony to commute to work every day… You must be wondering how I have tolerated this for such a long time… Well, reading newspapers and daydreaming helps alot to fight the boredom in the train, but lately I have been enjoying alot with my new phone… It’s like an iphone look-a-like but still you can do most stuff with it as you can do with an iphone…

It’s an HTC Hero, and apart from messaging and calling I also use it for browsing through the internet, downloading and playing silly, but addictable games and reading jokes… Well, the last application is simply brilliant. Just a grasp of some of my favo jokes:

- Say “Alpha” and “Q” quickly and repeatedly, Get it???
- what did the left butt cheek say to the right butt cheek? If we stick together we can stop this shit!!!
- I have a time machine that takes me 7 hours into the future, and I call it my bed!

and an epic one…
- The town cop was parkedoutside a bar at midnight, watching for drunk drivers, when he saw a man stumble out the door, trip over the curb, try 30 cars before opening the door to his own and fell asleep on the front seat. One by one the drivers of the other cars drove off and finally the guy wakes up, starts his car and pulls out of the parking lot. The cop pulls him over and gives him a Breathalyzer test. The results show a 0.0 blood-alcohol level, the puzzled cop asks, “How can that be?” The guy says, “Well, tonight it was my turn to be the decoy!

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHA…

and everyday i get provided with some new jokes… from all categories!!! This gives me a good mood at the start of every day before arriving at the office. And after leaving the office each day, it cheers me up again from a bad day at work. Smile more, have some fun, life’s too short to be negative too often…

Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.
– Charles Reade –

An inspiring quote i found using my HTC Hero applicaiton. Long live the Smart phones!!!

THE NETHERLANDS (VS) SPAIN, match of the year!!!

Nowadays we can’t think ourselves and use all superstitious ways to give us more security.. There is this story about an octopus named Paul who has given predictions of the winner for several world cup matches, by presenting food in two boxes that each belongs to a different team facing each other. And the box that Paul chooses to eat from equals the eventual winner of the match. Thus far, the predicitons of Paul have been fairly accurate…

And now our dear friend Paul has made another prediction for the final. According to Octopus Paul spain is going to win the it… The hell with the octopus, that fish doesn’t know shit about football, it only knows how to swim and eat… and when the Netherlands win tomorrow, I’m going to make some big fat juicy calamari out of that thing on the grill… Just like the one I had in Greece, but much nicer!!!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

my predictions, the netherlands will win their first world cup!!! 2-1 for NL I’d better buy some octopus sauce now to prepare for the feast… For those of you who’ll read on Monday that Paul has been kidnapped… It wasn’t me enjoy the match!!!

I’m starting to despise football, and that’s all because of corrupt FIFA

and no,  it’s not because my world cup prediction of England winning turned out to be wrong… I’m talking about  the ridiculous management of the beautiful game of football…

FIFA is simply retarded and corrupt: A few facts why…

- countless cases of unfair offside calls, cheating  and pure goals not awarded most recent example the goal of Lampard vs Germany. WTF… Do we still live in the 16th century that we can hardly improve referee decisions by making use of modern electronic devices. This would probably get rid of all the agony that results from poor decisions being made by refs. Come on, you cannot expect them to be psychic and see all corners of the field for 90 minutes. Yet FIFA is not making progress on this matter.  And this is a disgrace and mismanagement by FIFA

- Modern slavery… As mr. Blatter put in in his own words, on the matter of Cristiano Ronaldo. Manchester United did not want to let go of the Portugeuse super star, and Blatter described that as an example of modern slavery. Well if you call that modern slavery, where this so-called slave is paid millions per month for playing football, what would you call today’s child labour, involuntary  prostitutions, etc. What’s funny about this is that these cases are very evident in South Africa, while FIFA has not contributed anything to fight these cases of modern slavery, despite billions earnings they make from this country…

- ridiculous refs participating at the World Cup.  let me name some countries the refs are from, Selibaby, Mali, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, El Savador, Guatemala… catch my drift? I saw the final of ice hockey of the vancouver winter olympics between USA and Canada. The referee was a Canadian, but they chose him to lead the match, because he is the best referee as I understood, regardless of origin. With all due respect to those referees, but if they are from these countries, i doubt that their experience with leading matching in their home countries can match up to those in some European, and South American leagues…

- Jack Warner, head of the CONCAF the  North, Central and South American continent, has  taken advantage of his position. Some examples were reselling world cup tickets given to him for more than a million US$ and many more cases of corruption.

- Blatter is purely evil has stayed at the top of the FIFA for over a decade and the mastermind for all of the above. What’s intimidating is that he  intends to stay for a term of four more years. He is 74 years old and ready to retire… For the sake of football, please booycott this guy!!!

During the time I am writing this, Spain and Paraguy are playing each other. This is my first post in quite a long while… and I know that not having updated my blog has cost me quite some views over the time… but I’ll try my best!!! Thanks alot  for reading…

Football insights with hubbypoes

It’s the year 2010… we’re nearly five months after the year and so much has happened on a global scale. To me the Olympics has been great, but the highlight of the year would be in my opinion the world cup football in South Africa.

Since long I have been a football fanatic; it’s hardly impossible to not be confronted in this small country with the phenomenon called football… and unfortunately some fanatic behaviour may escalate into hostility and healthy rivalry can grow into conflict. Hooligans are unfortunately the result of too much fanatics in the game.

As for me, I like the sport, but prefer to watch everything from a safe screen at my cozy little home. My favourite football club would always be the one located in Rotterdam, Feyenoord, and I enjoy watching European football, especially the Champion’s league. Mostly I look forward to European and World Cup football, being held every two years. Because, during these events the whole world will be watching who is going to be crowned the world champion in the world’s most famous sport.

Today is May 14th 2010, the day that I’m writing this, exactly one month the tournament will be started. As the World Cup fever is increasing, stakes get bigger. The world cup is of such importance, much more than you can imagine. Economically, it can boost the African tourism and benefit from its global exposure. Some see it as sake of national pride; others use this platform for conveying political messages. And there are just some who see it as easy money earning. Well, a whole lot of people I should say.

It’s always the hottest issue every time there is a tournament: Who will become the winner. Ridiculously huge bets are being placed. A look at the bookmarks, from several organizations, it is apparent that Spain will be the favourites to win the title, followed by Brazil. Funny to see that out of the top 10, simply 7 of them are European teams, two from South America and one African country.

 It goes even further, that prediction can even be approached in a scientifically manner. UBS made a prediction based on a statistical model using “in depth quantitative analysis”, taking into account mainly historical records resulting in Brazil being the favourites.

Well, obviously everyone knows that predicting the eventual winner isn’t like predicting the weather tomorrow. But unlike predicting the weather, it seems that many experts have diverging opinions on who will become de winner. It seems remarkable to see how so many people want to have their moment of prime time on television or other media to predict their future champion. The funny thing is that talking about this Bull crap sells. It seems people seem addicted to listening to speculative rubbish written in magazines, football websites, and sports programs etcetera. Even though, they might have heard millions of times the coverage concerning world cup.

As a sports fanatic, I think this breath wasting practice is simply a necessity as we simply cannot wait for it to start. We are dying to see it finally happening. As a matter of fact, most popular football websites have even started a countdown of the world cup 100 days in advance. I can’t wait and I also want it to finally start… and for my sake keep myself busy with speculation, just to fill up the time and entertain ourselves with nonsense hypothesizing, here are my predictions:

England’s gonna win the World Cup. If not, it’s going to be Spain or Holland. And Bayern Munich will win the Champion’s league. Have a nice 27 days remaining!!!

A typical spring day in the Netherlands

It’s april and spring greets me when waking up…

The day starts bright very early in the morning

Around 6 am, each day as I get up

Get to work, back to my daily adjourning

As I walk outside, energy rays shine upon me

When I look up, heavenly blue is all I see

A hot day today, everyone’s summerly dressed

Guys are wearing short sleeved shirts

Girls are wearing mini skirts

Modern fashion, I am impressed

It’s soo hot… our boss treats us for ice cream

At last some fun at the office for me and the team

As the day pass by I head back home,

Passing by the still pleasant weather

Back at my dome

With my girl and poes together

Time to sleep as the day comes to an end

In an instant I get lost in dreamyland

ZZZzzzZZZzzzZZZzzzZZZzzz

Suddenly woken up, noticing the sky is grey

The nice weather yesterday, was it just a dream…?

Noo, just that Dutch weather sucks to an extreme

Very much… to my dismay

Dedicated to the crappy weather of Holland

My truth on Non-Profit Org.: a tale of Diego Garcia

spring 2008 – in preparation of the olympics, the torch has been relayed in numerous countries across several continents. At that time I was still a student in South Korea. In many Western countries such as UK and France have protested against the torch relay, against the olympics, against the Chinese oppression towards human rights.

Now I’m not a very big fan of demonstrating in public for human rights and I’m not a member of any philantropic organization that fights for people… however, I am a firm believer that humans anywhere in the world should have their freedom to live  their own rights… in other words, I believe Tibet should have their freedom to live the way they want… This goes for Uguyr as well as for other ethnic groups that feel opressed in certain parts anywhere in the world…  

So let me tell you the story of an ethnic group from the island group called the Chagos Archipelago. Original inhabitants from the Islands have been colonized a few centuries ago by the French and British mainly for reasons of expanding their empire and exploitation of free labour and natural resources. It was around the 60′s or 70′s that the original inhabitants were forced to leave one of the islands, called Diego Garcia, because the UK and the US had plans to install a military base on that island as the location was strategically well positioned in the midst of the Cold War.

Now, more than 40 years later, I read in the newspaper De Pers, april 20th 2010 (though it is not of the highest quality, still reliable) the original inhabitants of Diego Garcia are still fighting for something that was wrongfully taken away from them. They want to have their freedom, their lives back in their home country, their rights. Unfortunately, the UK government is not willing to give up ‘their’ territory, despite court ruling that the UK government has acted unlawfully. The trial is still ongoing and it appears that this may take a while before their fight for freedom will finally be over.

I wonder if it really makes any sense and difference to demonstrate or join any organization like amnesty (I even think these organizations have too many causes to fight for that eventually they lost focus in their own existence). Human rights are important and I think it does matter

So what am I actually trying to say… there are simply too many cases in the world of violation against human rights (obviously one more serious than the other) and we can’t ever provide attention to all these cases. And what makes you give more attention to one case than another. Personally I find the situation of Diego Garcia equally serious as the situation in Tibet, yet there seems to be more media attention for Tibet, while it might be much more viable to focus on the former as this happens to be closer to home (for me that’s Europe).

I guess commercial stakes do play a part in here. As China and Tibet are more well known, and people have created more sympathy for them across a broader audience(the movie “seven years in Tibet” has probably contributed substantially), and it simply isn’t lucrative to focus on other cases, think of Diego Garcia,  And I think that’s hypocryt, and for this reason I refuse to be part of any organization that stands for good causes. I even believe the efforts they put in are too trivial. As for the street recruiters who approach strangers to become members of their “good cause organization” ask them the simple question “why give attention to this specific cause, rather than others?”. I’m sure they lack well founded reasons and motivation to persuade you. Can’t blame them as they’re just trying to earn their money, right$$$???

“So-called sentimental” Commercial Rubbish