Morning Brew | Last Call on Wipes | Our Favorite Switch | I Hired Your Resume But Got You | News to Start Your Day
Happy Tuesday!
(October 27th is National Black Cat Appreciation Day…Appropriate for Halloween this weekend.)
Good morning, friends! Have you had your morning brew? As I was making my coffee a day or two ago I had a realization … I think I am a coffee snob.
A few years ago, Craig was telling me about French pressed coffee being his favorite. At that time we had a Keurig. It was a fairly new addition to our kitchen, as up until that point neither one of us drank coffee regularly. Once we bought the Keurig (mostly for when we had other people over), Craig started drinking it more often. He had French pressed coffee while at a restaurant and enjoyed it. He loves strong coffee, black. Give me the creamy, sweet stuff.
>> I like this graphic, coffee + pantones. I’m somewhere between Basically Milk Still and Day Four Tan Line and Craig is Dead of Night. Which one are you? <<
Because of my fondness for cream and sugar, I avoided coffee becoming a regular thing for me. I would enjoy a pumpkin spice frappuccino while out shopping or coffee at Thanksgiving with family with plenty of creamy goodness. Then I bought Craig a French press and conical burr coffee grinder for Christmas one year. Game changer.
French pressed coffee is delicious. Strong, creamy, flavorful. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out the French press here. (It was technically patented by an Italian man, go figure.) To make coffee this way, your biggest investment is the grinder. We have this {relatively} economical conical burr one. We own this French press in 34oz and 50oz (the larger one for when we have guests).
A friend of mine posted about cold brew a while back, and I filed the info away for another day. She makes her cold brew concentrate overnight, keeps it in the fridge, then adds hot water to dilute it down a bit and warm it up for her morning coffee throughout the week. Hot cold brew. Genius!
As we’ve been working through changing Craig’s diet because of his Crohn’s disease, I started to wonder if there was a better way for him to do coffee. Cold brew is less acidic and bitter than hot brew, more versatile (hot, cold, latte, cocktails) and may have higher caffeine levels than hot brew (you’ll find differing information out there about the caffeine levels). Last week I bought this contraption to make cold brew. I have to say, it has been a win for me. I still try to only drink coffee a couple of times a week. Being able to just pour and go has been nice. I also tend to make just half a cup or so when it’s readily available and will keep in the fridge.
Right now we’re using a giant bag of a Starbucks dark roast whole bean coffee from Costco. I plan to get some Peete’s next. We started our grinding journey with Peete’s, and I think it is still my favorite.
What’s your favorite morning (or afternoon) brew?
Christin
Today’s Product Updates from Rebecca:
As you know, we have been selling our PPE at rock bottom prices, which means many products are selling out!! We are down to less than 500 Clorox Wipes Packs so consider this as last call! Grab them now because chances are they won’t be here by the end of the week!
We are also down to less than 200 bottles of our Clorox Disinfecting Spray with Bleach! Again, I recommend that you stock up now as these won’t last long!
We currently have two excellent non-contact thermometers available for purchase! I have seen similar thermometers in stores for over double what we’re charging for these!
Reminder: Get free shipping on your PPE orders by using coupon code PPESHIP at checkout!
Main Safety Supplies Landing Page: https://www.cablesandkits.com/c/safety-supplies
One of the most popular switches we offer is the Cisco Catalyst WS-C3750X-48P-S. This layer 3 switch features (48) Gigabit Ethernet ports with (1) network module slot, IP Base software, and Stackable Data & Power! These switches are highly customizable as you can choose from a variety of network modules and redundant power supplies. Here at CK we try our best to be a one-stop-shop for all your networking needs so you can find all compatible accessories, modules, power cords, power supplies, and stack cables right on the product page!
If you are uncertain whether a PoE or PoE+ switch better suits your needs, be sure to check out our Learning Center article to help you understand the difference and when to use each!
I Hired Your Resume But I Got You – by Gary our Chief Administrative Officer
In the early days of moving pictures marketers quickly discovered the power of subliminal messaging. The human mind could subconsciously register a single image embedded within a movie projecting 24 frames per second. This advertising method gained favor among marketers, because it induced higher response rates among viewers than overt advertisements. The Federal Trade Commission deemed subliminal messaging deceptive advertising and outlawed it in the USA during the 1970s.
Repeated studies suggest that hiring managers are often heavily influenced by the subliminal power of first impressions.
Too many of us will unconsciously make a go / no-go hiring decision in less time than it takes to watch a Super Bowl commercial. At that point, Confirmation Bias kicks into gear, and we spend the interview looking for things to affirm our initial subconscious impression.
Of course, you are smart enough to avoid that trap, or at least that’s what you tell yourself. However, unless you have a solid plan, you will end up looking at all the wrong things in all the wrong places when the time arrives to make your next hire.
Over the years I have often joked that a hiring interview is like a first date. We instinctively know that first impressions are important. We stand in front of the mirror to make sure we have the look just right. We apply extra diligence to observing social courtesies. We tell stories about our respective pasts with a focus on the positive. We talk about people we know, places we’ve been and events we’ve experienced. These fact-oriented discussions often do not tread into more sensitive topics; such as, why we act the way we do and what drives us.
Resumes reinforce this backward-looking, surface-level focus. In fact, the Latin root of resume means “to summarize” and “take back.” In other words, a resume summarizes the “what” of my past. When and where I worked. What I accomplished. A typical resume provides no sense of context; i.e. the external business environment, internal culture or surrounding talents and resources in which the candidate worked. The resume also gives no insights into the innate talents the candidate may have leveraged to deliver the results.
Granted, it’s important to understand the external/internal environments in which the candidate formerly worked, if for no other reason than establishing context for evaluating past accomplishments, but your environment is different to some extent than the candidate has previously experienced and changing all the time. However, the constant in this equation is the candidate’s talents. These raw abilities follow the candidate everywhere. When you hire a candidate you don’t get their past. Rather, you get their talents.
Unless you recognize this crucial distinction you may risk repeating the mistake of the hiring manager who lamented, “I hired your resume, but unfortunately what I got was you.”*
So, what talents are important? Most unique hiring factors are usually acquired skills (software coding) or related experiences (startups, R&D, finance, consumer goods, etc.). Talents typically have more universal applicability across projects, jobs and time. To illustrate the point, here’s a list of targeted talents I developed during my last startup:
- Integrity. Managing becomes easy when I can count on people to say what they mean and follow through on their commitments. You don’t need lots of policies and rules if you hire people with integrity. You can trust them to do the right thing.
- Intelligence. Experience is a weak substitute for raw intellectual horsepower. The business environment is constantly changing, and we wanted people with the smarts to solve the problems we don’t even know about yet.
- Initiative. It is always easier to guide something in motion. Organizations waste tremendous amounts of energy just overcoming static inertia and moving into action. Besides, it is just plainly more fun to work with people who are willing to pitch in to solve problems.
- Inquisitiveness. It is the best “I” word I identified to describe people who are curious about life and constantly looking for better ways to do things. Without people like this on the team, continuous improvement remains a theoretical concept.
In closing, here are some tips for integrating “hiring for talent” into your own culture:
- Identifying the core talents and traits most important to your business culture takes time and careful thought; This may require researching the traits of successful people who have done similar work
- Describe your target talents in writing–make your target hiring profile tangible; if not, we subject every hiring decision to the vague and subconscious biases of individual hiring managers
- Develop methods for identifying and hiring people with your target talents…that’s the topic of the last blog post in this three-part “Hiring for Talent” series.
- Talk about your target talents often; make them a visible part of your culture
- Publicize and celebrate the linkage between those talents and the extraordinary results they produce
- Align your reward system with your target talents
* Source, Jay Jordan in “Who” by Geoff Smart and Brad Street, pg 6
News to Start Your Day With:
- Right at 48,878,100 cases worldwide, with 32,239,700 people who have recovered, with 1,166,174 deaths AND 8,964,300 cases in the US with over 5,835,200 people have recovered, with 231,129 deaths.
- Major brands, including Hertz, J.C. Penney and Neiman Marcus, doled out millions in executive bonuses just before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to a Washington Post analysis.
- Fewer than a third of New York City’s 1.1 million public school students have returned for in-person learning, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.
- With airlines imposing mandatory mask requirements on flights amid the coronavirus pandemic, Delta, United and Alaska Airlines have banned more than 900 passengers for not wearing masks.
- Amy Coney Barrett is expected to start work Tuesday as the newest member of the Supreme Court. The 48-year-old federal appeals court judge was confirmed by the full Senate on Monday in a largely partisan 52-48 vote.
- Strong demand and very limited supply of homes have caused home price gains to accelerate dramatically. The 10-City Composite posted a 4.7% gain, up from 3.5% in the previous month. The 20-City Composite rose 5.2% year-over-year, up from 4.1% in July.
- Semiconductor designer Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday said it has agreed to buy Xilinx in a $35 billion all-stock deal. The acquisition will intensify AMD’s battle with Intel in the data center chip market.
- Amazon is hiring 100,000 seasonal staff for the holidays. The employees will help pick, pack and ship customer orders across Amazon’s network of warehouses in the U.S. and Canada. Amazon said California, Texas, Maryland, Georgia and New Jersey are the top states where it will hire employees.
- Scientists said on Monday lunar water is more widespread than previously known, with water molecules trapped within mineral grains on the surface and more water perhaps hidden in ice patches residing in permanent shadows.