Life in the Blue

I work for a local business and frequently use hiremizzougrads and other career services that the University of Missouri proudly offers. We are often looking for college students or recent graduates to fill positions within our company.

Every time we post a job, we are flooded with great candidates for the position. I respond to them via their Mizzou webmail, and wait anxiously to meet them. However, many times there is one snag. “Mail from um.umsystem is temporarily unavailable. Please try again.”

Students go to Mizzou for four years, with hours of studying, test taking and work. They sit thru countless lectures on the importance of great resumes and interview techniques. They do internships, volunteer and network, all with the hope of someday landing a great job. Yet, here is their opportunity, and their email is not working correctly.

Being a Mizzou graduate this is really no surprise to me. I remember the frustrations of dealing with webmail, IATS and its employees. I remember days of sitting in the computer labs, having problems with my work, and then having to deal with someone who probably wouldn’t be smart enough to throw water on me if I were on fire. Generally they would provide no advice, resources or help, stare blankly and tell me to restart the computer. So, generally speaking, other than the fact that they had no computer knowledge or training whatsoever, they were very helpful.

The point here is that despite the countless time, money, resources and energy devoted to helping Mizzou students get jobs after college, the single most important tool flat out doesn’t work.

So this year, take a small percentage of the career services budget and overhaul webmail. Hire at least one person with the knowledge of how to run an email service. Allow Mizzou students the opportunity freely send and receive emails to prospective employers that don’t get lost in the abyss of the deep corners of the Internet. Surely, if we all work together, this could be fixed.

Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.

Sincerely,
Bryan Rahn

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An interesting study was released today by some researchers from the University of Chicago. That’s right, from the fightin’ Flames of the Horizon League. The study consisted of surveying people from a variety of professions and determining their happiness at work.

There were two categories, satisfaction (this would be like your fulfillment from coming to work everyday) and happiness (how happy you were at your job everyday.) The bottom of the list wasn’t very surprising, low skill professions like waiters, labors and handlers seem to have some unhappy folk. You could probably throw in Hardee’s burrito maker and local donkey trainer in there as well.

However, the top results were somewhat surprising to me. Check out the percent of people in these professions who say they are very happy with thier profession.

• Clergy—87 percent percent
• Firefighters—80 percent percent
• Physical therapists—78 percent percent
• Authors—74 percent
• Special education teachers—70 percent
• Teachers—69 percent
• Education administrators—68 percent
• Painters and sculptors—67 percent
• Psychologists—67 percent
• Security and financial services salespersons—65 percent
• Operating engineers—64 percent
• Office supervisors—61 percent

Strangely, it seems that my fellow SEM’s and I were left off the lists. Surely we have to be happier as a group of people than say, painters, physical therapists or office managers. What is an office supervisor anyway? Is that like the real life Bill Lumbergh? And financial services salesperson? Is that like a life insurance salesperson? I thought that’s what ended up happening to people who flunked out of college from snorting too much coke before breakfast.

So, by all means, let me be the first to conduct the SEM’s happiness at work survey. Leave a comment or post on your blog 3 things –

1. How would you describe your job satisfaction? (Very Satisfied, Satisfied, Indifferent, Dissatisfied, Very Dissatisfied)
2. How would you describe your happiness at work? (Very Happy, Happy, Indifferent, Unhappy, Very Unhappy)
3. Estimate what percent of SEM’s that you know would be in the very happy range.

I will gather the results and publish them later. Let’s see if we can’t at least beat out security salespersons. But hey, maybe I am wrong. I have been hearing lots of rumors that Lumbergh is going to be doing a little “housecleaning” around here. So then I could end up as a clergy (no, I would want to smite people all day) or firefighter (no, I can’t even open a can of pickels). I’d have to be an author. I don’t think that the human race as a whole can go on without knowing my memoirs.

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SES in New York this week. Be sure to keep an eye on my boy Enviseo. He will be providing us with a Bill Simmons style rundown of the proceedings.

He makes a great point about the names on badges situation. I don’t know why SES doesn’t print those titles. Nothing gets my eggs cookin’ like when I am involved in a Quality Score discussion with someone whose tag says Owner/Founder/CEO while he stares at mine that says ‘Janitorial Services’ or ‘Color Commentary.’

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Very informative post from sitening today. The quick jest is Google will allow advertisers to bid to pay per action (conversion) on the content network. Publishers will only be paid when the traffic they send converts on the advertisers website.

This is obviously a huge advantage for the advertiser, but I don’t know why any publisher would like it. I mean I have gone on rants about worthless websites on this blog before. Those that exist for no other reason than to generate clicks on AdSense ads, so I am all for it. But from a publisher standpoint, most people have websites and conversion rates that blow. And like a wise man once told me, if you can control the conversions on the site, I wouldn’t want to be sending traffic there to get lost in the depths of websites with text over images or something.

It was also be interesting to see how Google determines who ‘wins’ the bidding. If I pay $100 for a really valuable conversion but happens so very rarely, while someone else pays $1 for a conversion that happens all the time, I don’t know how they will decide who wins. Hopefully we get to put up the dukes and fight each other at 12 AM in the street, Double Dragon style.

I am sure Google will set up some sort of quality control to prevent this somewhat. Just like AdWords. Ads with very few conversions and low payouts will lose out to better performing ones.

On a related note, the 1991 World Series Championship defending Minnesota Twins had their game in Chicago cancelled today due to bad weather. Apparently cold and wind. I have received reports of 17 degrees in Minneapolis today? I just find it hard to get into baseball when I have to wear a parka to work in the morning. Looks like it will be an NHL weekend.

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