5 Easy Steps: How to Write a Thank You Card

December 30, 2011 by  

Many people find writing thank you cards as enjoyable as having a tooth pulled, but here are five easy steps to writing a great thank you card:

1. It Is Never Too Late

A common way to deal with thank you cards is to procrastinate until weeks, or months, have passed. At this point you figure it’s too late to send a card. It would probably be rude to send one now, right?

Wrong. Get your butt in that chair and start writing. It will be quick. It will be painless. You’ll have built up several relationships, working ones or otherwise. You can reward yourself with chocolate or SportsCenter afterward.

2. Be Brief

Length does not always equal sincerity or thoughtfulness. Start with “Dear So-and-so: Thank you so much for…” A rambling opener such as, “Dear Bob, I decided I wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know how much…” is not necessary. Those cards don’t have much space, you know!

3. Acknowledge the Gift Specifically

What delicious chocolates, beautiful flowers, great party! The only exception, of course, is money, which is always a “generous gift”.

4. Explain Why the Gift Is Useful

Everyone in the office loved the chocolates. The flowers brightened your day and made customers smile. The party was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect.

And if it was a “generous gift”? I recommend something like, “As you can imagine, it will be very useful to our small business/busy family/hard-working group of volunteers.” Some recommend describing what you’ll use the money for, but I find the Tackiness Potential much too high in that. “I think I’ll spend the money on Farmville, Mafia Wars or lottery tickets. I haven’t decided yet.” Thank You Card Fail.

5. End with the Future

End your thank you card with something about both yourself and the reader. The easiest way is to mention an event or time in the future you will meet at, or hope to meet at. For thank you cards written in the holiday season, this line is easy: “Happy new year and a successful 2012″.

image by asenat29

Who “Owns” Twitter Followers?

December 27, 2011 by  

From the Guardian comes the story of Phonedog, a mobile phones website, and former employee Noah Kravitz. Kravitz gathered 17,000 Twitter followers while tweeting for Phonedog, and took all of those tweeps with him when he left the company in October, 2010. Phonedog is suing Kravitz for $340,000 — $2.50 per tweep per month for 8 months.

It’s a sticky situation likely to become more common as more companies sign on to social media. Robert Booth examines what the case could mean for laywers, businesses and social media here.

Video communication makes people honest?

December 23, 2011 by  

Make what you will of this Vancouver Sun story about a study which claims business people are more likely to lie via text than face-to-face.

The study, conducted by the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, followed the actions of students role-playing as brokers or buyers in mock stock transactions. The pretend brokers, having received inside information on the pretend deal, lied to their pretend buyers more often through text than through video.

Looking at Sauder’s own information, I was surprised that the ranking of liar-friendly communication went: text, audio chat, face-to-face and then video. I would have thought face-to-face would be the hardest way to lie to someone. Find the rest of Sauder’s announcement here.

image by Lars Plougmann

Death by a Thousand Pointless Meetings

December 19, 2011 by  

image by EditorB

You’ll know the true test of a group’s communication skills by how well the meetings run. The best and worst meetings I ever encountered were in the same organization, oddly enough.

The worst was a rambling multi-hour gong show, where the two people in charge of the meeting (first mistake) decided a warm and fuzzy collective approach was important to build trust (second mistake). The scope of the meeting was couched in jargon so incoherent, nobody knew what was supposed to be decided. In an effort to “prioritize”, they wrote everything everyone said on giant pieces of flipchart paper.

By the end of the meeting (and by end, I mean at the point where it was actually dark outside so they decided to call the meeting quits), chart paper was everywhere and nobody knew what was going on.

So imagine my surprise when several months later I sat in on a meeting of a different group of people in the same organization. This meeting dealt with staffing and operations for a large project. No one spoke for more than two minutes at a time, and every point was immediately addressed. It was like one of those movies where the president of the United States is in a tense discussion with advisors in the Situation Room.

The entire meeting was 20 minutes long, which is how long they told me it would be before it started.

Alison Green at Askamanager.com gives one frustrated employee some advice on how to run a structured, effective meeting. This column clearly struck a nerve — read on for the comments to Alison’s post to see how other readers deal with the “time suck” of a wasteful meeting.

Should Your Business Use Social Media Background Checks?

December 12, 2011 by  


image by English106

We’ve heard about the trouble employees and job hunters can create for themselves with social media, but Googling a prospective employee’s social media output can be a Pandora’s Box for employers and HR managers. An employer or manager may find useful information, but will also come across personal information prohibited from being used in the hiring process.

“For example, if you see that a candidate ”Likes” a page on mental health issues, the CNIB or a women’s right organization, it could be discrimination to pass the candidate over on that basis,” writes Lisa Stam on the blog Employment and Human Rights in Canada.

And given the tendency of many women to instantly change their Facebook avatars to belly photos, ultrasounds or positive pregnancy tests, even a casual Facebook search for a candidate can put an employer in a vulnerable situation.

Social media background checks by third party companies

Social Intelligence is one of several companies now offering social media background checks. As the California-based company explains on its website, the benefit of a third-party search isn’t finding out more information on a potential employee, but less.

Search engines provide unstructured, ad-hoc results that expose everything there is about a given applicant, including personal information not legally allowable or not relevant in the hiring process. Examples of this include race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, gender identity, disability status, veteran status, and genetic information.

Does it work?

Social Intelligence promises to keep US employers on the right side of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, basically. As Gizmodo found out, this even extends to obscuring any image that might identify someone’s ethnicity. (Despite the fact that if a candidate has already been interviewed in person, the interviewer already knows what he or she looks like.)

One Gizmodo employee who failed the check examines the process here. Mat Honan found that despite his results, hiding an embarrassing social media past can be pretty easy. The company wants to guarantee that they have the correct person, so they only rely on information, such as email addresses, that you have given to your employer. Anything not openly accessible, like a private Facebook profile, is not looked at.

What will Social Intelligence reveal? Companies choose from a list of filters. According to CIO.com, the top concerns of employers are illegal, racist, discriminatory or potentially violent activities. Will it protect employers from discrimination lawsuits? The FCRA requires employers to tell candidates if they’ve lost out on a job due to a flunked background check, so it’s probably just a matter of time before we find out.