LINKEDIN; and a job
Finding a job by using all the possibilities Internet provides us with is a need. One of the main tools we (headhunter) will come across for this is the LINKEDIN network. Last Monday the newspaper EXPANSION interviewed me to get my advice to help people look for and find work by using this tool. Read the interview in EXPANSION: Read More
UNEMPLOYMENT
It is more 
difficult for people who have been unemployed for over six months to find a job than for those who have just lost one. Such is the conclusion of a recent study carried out by Rand Ghayad and William Dickens for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. They observed that despite the fact that job offers have been increasing in theUSAsince 2009, there are in fact two labour markets. One is where people who have been unemployed for less than six months find work more easily, and the other where people who have been unemployed for over six months find it much more difficult. Read More
from FACEBOOK to MANAGEMENT COMPETENCE
Were I to ask if we can predict the future, many people would answer that it is impossible. I personally think that we are about to get there. I am not referring to insight marketing analyses, or examples like DCM Dealer which based on indices generated by specific alerts or events generated by social network users assess investors on their decision making. I am referring to predicting the future of groups of people, maybe even individual prediction.
It is possible now, as we have (or rather the Americans have) the greatest updated data base that has ever existed, with our desires, preferences, concerns, family, data, studies, photos, activities etc, 1,000 million active users every month, about 14% of the world’s population. We have never seen this before, it is really incredible. If we conjugate this information with, for example, quantum mechanics studies, dynamic equations and systems and/or traditional prospective methods (Delphi, cross impact, Monte Carlo…), we could eliminate the principle of uncertainty for groups of people. We should not forget that we know the beginning and the end of people, although not the exact time of the latter. A new deterministic chaos that enables free will, but not random group pathways. A farewell to the unforeseen butterfly effect? After all, we are only little particles in the universe. From this perspective FACEBOOK is scary, especially when we are in the hands of just a few. Read More
From GLENGARRY and the GRÖNHOLM METHOD
to LARA and RUIZ MATEOS
Any salesman who takes pride in his position should see Glengarry Glen Rose and all head-hunters should see The Grönholm Method; seeing them together is compulsory for any manager.
This thought came to me when I recalled two old anecdotes, the fact that companies are offering jobs in sales and the recent premieres of these plays, whose plots are very similar.
The former premiere stars Al Pacino on Broadway in Glengarry Glen Rose; it was written by David Mamet and won the Pulitzer Prize. The play shows us how professional salesmen try to survive in the American real estate market during the grave recession in the 1980s, similar to the current situation in Spain. These salesmen, impelled by the recession and the unique incentive method implemented by management (the loser gets fired), reach unsuspected limits in order to close sales and survive. Read More
What is more beneficial or harmful to the economy; a rich person who believes he is poor or one who believes he is rich but is actually poor?
Housing has always been for Spaniards the best method of saving; it generates a feeling of wealth par excellence. A few years ago we were felt rich depending on what we thought our assets were worth; in the case of most Spaniards our house, and we spent in proportion to the increase in its value, either not saving or getting into debt. All this was based on its re-evaluation and not on depreciation of this kind of asset, given that the Spanish economy, and therefore popular knowledge, had never suffered so virulently until the current recession. But if when house prices were on the rise they generated a sense of wealth in consumers, why shouldn’t they create a sense of poverty when they don’t stop coming down? Read More
If I really and effectively want to find a job, I should work thoroughly on the only thing over which I have control: myself.
At the moment, my recommendation if you are looking for a job is to develop yourself and change your perceptions, since in order to change and adapt yourself to this new situation you should also change yourself together with the paradigms that have governed your behaviour and attitude so far. In the current situation of unemployment and scarcity of activity, the search for employment has turned into a process that should be planned, followed and corrected, becoming a discipline. It is in itself an activity that includes all this and it is, in the end, your current job. Read More
FOR A WAY OF BANKING?
Whoever believes he has seen everything in the financial world should wait to see the coming tsunami that has just broken in the UK with the manipulation of the LIBOR and EURIBOR. This will certainly reach us and with the question of whether the interest rate that I paid for my mortgage or loan was legally correct, even the bank vaults will tremble. For the time being in Spain we have not paid too much attention to this, but get ready and let’s fasten our seat belts.
This was the last straw, it never rains it pours, and this will not be to the liking of certain financial institutions that have not yet recovered from subprime lending, not to mention the tight liquidity and solvency that our economy in general and the financial system in particular are suffering. This is bad news in itself, since it undermines the very essence of the financial system: TRUST. The good news is that the financial system will have to reform and innovate so that it becomes safer and more transparent … or so we hope.
Does this mean that with these practices, focused for the time being on Barclays, consumers, companies and entities have been paying more than they should for the interest rate on their loans, as they were fixed fraudulently? Will this give rise to massive lawsuits and claims throughout Europe? Everyone should reach their own conclusions, but it might just become the largest fraud in financial history. Read More
I don’t know who is responsible for Bankia’s current situation, the people who thought it up, those who induced to it or those who channeled it. What is clear is that the investor who responded to Bankia’s IPO received bad advice, he has lost part of his savings. According to the experts, roughly 400,000 people have already lost 50% of their investment up to now. Now the lawsuits will follow and rightly so. Although it is clear that it will be difficult, since if these 400,000 shareholders would have read the 83 pages of the informative brochure of the OFERTA PÚBLICA DE SUSCRIPCIÓN Y ADMISIÓN A NEGOCIACIÓN DE ACCIONES DE BANKIA, S.A. [PUBLIC OFFER FOR SUBSCRIPTION AND ADMISSION TO TRADING OF SHARES OF BANKIA, S.A.,] I don’t think that they would have invested in it: it is a manual for the risk-taking investor. Whose fault is it? I’ll skip this word. Read More
Why not? This is my suggestion, if each of us believes that it is possible and we begin to contribute ideas with an attitude of achieving this, why not? In recent month we have received more search requests for professionals in the tourist sector than in other fiscal years. This is good news not only because it reflects the healthy position of this sector within the Spanish economy, where it represents roughly 12% of the GDP, but also because it indicates that the sector is becoming even more specialized and more professional. In the year 2011, activities in the tourism sector employed a total of roughly 2 million active persons. This represents 10% of the active persons in the whole of the economy (23.1 million) and 15% of the active persons in the service sector. Our challenge is to be able to achieve 3 million active persons in the sector. This might seem like a fantasy, but movement creates the path, and every person makes his contribution. Read More
If an investor would ask my advice about the next asset to acquire, I would not doubt it: land with high levels of groundwater. I am aware that rural land in Spain is devalued as a form of investment, but I would recommend that anyone who owns real irrigated land and not land with transferred water, should take care of it, and not sell it no matter what. The big food corporations continue to acquire land in Spain, among them the Pascual group or the Ebro, and the large landholders continue to expand their ownership in hectares. It is a silent trend that is not commented on in public. In fact, if someone wishes to find out about the composition of ownership of agricultural land in Spain, he will find out that there are not many reliable sources. Isn’t that strange? Read More