WorkBlast Signs NY Giants Kicker Lawrence Tynes as Spokesman

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We announced our exclusive arrangement with WorkBlast a couple of months ago, and we were hoping to have video resumes online prior to the new year. It turns out that Nick Murphy and his folks at WorkBlast were on a path to not only bring us the capability to have video resumes, but much, much more.  These other amazing capabilities will be coming during the first week of February - to Hi-Res Kills and Hireskills.com.  Candidates will be able to not only generate video and/or audio introductions to themselves, but a couple of MAJOR capabilities are going to be made available in addition to these.  Stay tuned.  And watch that Superbowl game - NY’s kicker is a WorkBlast spokesman!

When I tell you that we’re going to change the way graphic arts companies hire people, I am not kidding.  We are very excited and when you see what we unveil the first week in February, you will be, too!

Lawrence Tynes’ NFL affiliation notwithstanding, GO PATS!

MrHillEcoSkis

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Hireskills.com Database Snapshot - 1/18/08

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We have been receiving record numbers of resumes each day.  I took a quick snapshot of the most recent 100 we received this week, and 31 US states were represented.  We see fluctuations in the numbers of resumes we receive from around the country, and we receive resumes from every state, but today our sampling was strongest in California (11%) followed by Florida and Pennsylvania (8% each), Michigan (7%), Illinois (6%), Missouri, Texas and Virginia tied at 5%.  The other 63% was split between AZ, CT, CO, DC, DE, GA, IN, KY, MA, ME, MD, MS, NE, NC, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OH, RI, TN, WA and WI.

That is a pretty darned good mix!

MrHillEcoSkis

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Videos and Rants

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Some videos are rants - like Pazazz’s video on YouTube, thoughtfully sent to me by Jenise.  I’ll rant about her in a minute.  The Pazazz video is entitled Printing’s Alive - it is pretty funny - there are a couple of F Bombs thrown but they’re bleeped out.

Some videos are not rants - and there are YouTube videos all over the place about the Patriots (who are on their way to a perfect 19-0 season, but I digress again). If  you’re a football fan, check out Go Gillooly - it’s pretty funny.

Okay, now to my rant.   Imagine a world where a company offers to post internships FREE to every printer in the US and not a single printing company takes them up on it.  Well that world is here.  We have offered free internship postings on this site for months and we know people visit this site - but no printer seems to think that getting first shot at them is important.  Some printers with whom we spoke said things like ”we talk to the schools in the spring, the students will come and we’ll get interns, we do every year”.    Here’s the problem:  people like the interns we have posted in our Internship section may not be available when the printers go to visit the schools.  They may have already signed with another printer that visited Hi-Res Kills or is a subscriber to Hireskills.com.  Have you seen the GPAs of these people? 

And then there are the seniors who are looking for jobs - like Jenise, our First Round Draft Choice (see Draft and Free Agency in our menu) who has been looking since November for a job in Colorado either when she graduates or she can transfer credits and get a move on now - she’s a FIRST ROUND DRAFT CHOICE.  Somebody take a look at her!

Okay, I’m done.

MrHillEcoSkis

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‘Coolest’ Awards Begin. First Up: Coolest Values

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Within two weeks we’ll announce Hireskills.com’s Coolest Company in Printing.  We’re going to announce that when we unveil three incredible new technologies to Hireskills.com and to this site. 

Before we do that we’re going to announce the winner of another title we decided to award as we undertook this analysis of Printing Companies.  Anyone who has started a company from scratch knows that the most important thing to have at the outset is a clear vision of what the company is going to do, what the company is going to be (the company’s core values), where the company is going to go, and the kinds of people and resources you need to get there.   Once all that is established in one’s mind, the next step is to write a plan around it, get money, hire the people, generate the products, sell them to an adoring public, and become famous. Only it never works like that – nothing ever goes 1-2-3.  There are always snags in the process, flies in the ointment, muck on your shoes that has the potential for being tracked around, adding to the mess. Taking over a company that has been doing business for a long time is just as interesting a process.  You have to worry about most of the aforementioned stuff, but you also have to worry about the people that are in place, their families, their aspirations and dreams.  Well, at least enlightened leaders worry about those things.  We can point to a bundle of companies in our industry that were taken over by new management and those things weren’t worried about.  I would venture to say those companies will have no lasting legacy and something that might have been great might have been destroyed.  But I digress.

The topic of which is more difficult – starting a company from scratch or taking over a company that has been in business for a long time – is open for debate.  I’ve done both and I would say despite the nightmare of raising venture capital, it’s easier in many ways to start from scratch.  Neither task is without significant pain if you are trying to do something really important and trying to leave a legacy that is worthy and substantive, and every new owner has ideas that might or might not be embraced by the existing culture.  It is a strong company that gracefully goes through management change and stays on course, with consistent revenue and without loss of the core workforce.

Having said all this, in the process of talking with dozens of companies and reviewing many more with the goal of identifying the coolest company in the printing industry, we came across some very interesting people, some enlightened and some still operating in the Jurassic Period.  Some of the coolest companies didn’t respond to our call for entries in the ‘Coolest’ competition and so we couldn’t consider them for the title since the companies that did answer our call provided us with numerous examples of coolness that we could not get from those that didn’t apply.  But we could and do consider what these companies have done noteworthy and for this reason we reasoned that there are a few things that are really important that showcase a company’s coolness, things that might not seem, on the face of things, to be extraordinary but as people who have lived through the rigors of making and re-engineering companies, we know they are.

The first of these things we’re singling out today is the Company Identity.  Not the logo or the tag line, and not the marketing message that might bring new customers because of their drive to embrace new technology or leave no customer behind – everyone has stuff like that.  I’m talking about the articulation of the soul of a company; the clear statement that tells employees and customers who they are, what they are all about – the baring of the corporate soul for the world to see.  There are several companies we considered when trying to identify the coolest Core Values statement but ultimately it is the Core Values statement by Harty Integrated Solutions of New Haven, CT that won us over.

When a customer goes to Harty’s website they are not greeted by tons of Flash or animation.  The web site says who Harty is in its design – it is functional, informative, easy to navigate and not intended to wow a customer. It is clearly intended to give the customer confidence in their products and capabilities, and its elegance speaks of Harty’s history of over 100 years.  Harty Integrated Solutions is a grounded company with strong leadership and management, a family approach to business, and their Core Values Statement (found under The Harty Difference prominently posted as the lead page in this section) says it all.  It’s not miles long – the fundamentals of their values are in bullet form – and we favor brief but substantive in this regard.

The Platt family is the fourth set of owners of Harty, which was founded in 1900.  They recognize their roles in the continuation of something special, they honor their history and they took a company with a history of goodness and didn’t destroy it - they have allowed the company and its people to flourish.
So congratulations go to the Platt family for having Hireskills.com’s Coolest Values Statement of 2008.  Strong management is apparent everywhere in your company and the longevity of your staff is a testimonial to your values and your adherence to them. MrHillEcoSkis

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What Frank Thinks

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I can’t take it any more.  Has anyone seen Frank Romano’s Dec 18th ‘Happy 564th’ posting on WhatTheyShouldn’tWrite?  Are you kidding me?  Bad enough these guys pimp their consulting services on every page of the site, but they actually publish Frank saying  that printing survived war and peace, automation, boom and bust, ‘interminable technology upheaval’.  Hey guess what?!? Most of those are things from which printing derived benefit and gain as an industry.

As for the statement “you cannot achieve with pixels on a screen the look and feel of ink on paper” - well how self-serving do we want to be today?

I’ve suffered this guy since their site came on line and I’ve been in prepress since before CTP - if I have to suffer this guy and his specious slide shows and chest thumping any more I fear I’ll explode.

And that won’t look pretty on paper……..but it can be wiped off my desktop monitor!

BigIron05

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Caveat Emptor

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Caveat Emptor

If you are with a company that is considering acquisition of another company in our industry and you are responsible for conducting due diligence relative to such an acquisition, consider the following:

1) A company looking to be acquired is likely to begin by stripping down their overhead so as to make profitability look better than it has previously been. In doing so, such a company may, in the stripping down process, eliminate overhead that has historically been vital to new business development. The consequences of such a move would not necessarily be apparent to a potential acquiring company, but could have disastrous longer term drawbacks.

2) If a company looking to be acquired has been postured and promoted for acquisition for a longer period of time, such a company may be obligated (relative to the interests of potential suitors) to provide demonstration of their growth potential via the securing of contracts with newly acquired customers. When this is the case, the company that is eager to be acquired may enter into new business contracts that virtually give the business away in that the newly acquired business involves substantially compromised, if not non-existent profitability. This too may not be apparent to those conducting due diligence but could prove to be disastrous to the acquisition investor.

3) Based on the conventional purchasing practices of customers in some sectors of the graphic arts, it is sometimes customary, when entering into contracts with graphic service suppliers, to mandate or accept a “preferred customer” contract clause, which stipulates that the supplier will not provide lower pricing to any other customer. Typically, supplier compliance with such contract clauses are “taken on faith” and continual proof of supplier compliance with “preferred customer” contract clauses are not required.

4) The language of “preferred customer” contract clauses is often vague and does not address supplier work-around tactics such as the offering of “rebates” to newly acquired customers based on annual volumes of business. Although the annual volumes of supplier business for newly acquired business may be substantially lower that those of “preferred customer” contract customers, “rebate” pricing tactics with new business customers can result in graphic services pricing for newly acquired companies that is notably lower than is the case for service receiving companies with many times the new business customer’s volumes of business.

5) Graphic services receiving customer companies, who have mandated or accepted “preferred customer” contract terms should require their service providers to continuously prove their compliance with “preferred customer” contract terms and should require their service providers to provide addenda to such contracts which stipulate that “rebate” schemes and other forms of contract term work-arounds do not and will not exempt service providers from providing lower pricing to other customers.

6) In the event that a graphic services provider has been found by its customer to have violated its “preferred customer” contract clause via rebate pricing or other similar schema, the customer company should demand retroactive adjustment of its received pricing, relative to the pricing provided to other service receiving companies.

7) Graphic services companies considering the acquisition of other graphic service companies should consider the future revenue of the company they wish to acquire relative to the potential retroactive pricing adjustment of “preferred customer” contract clauses due to “rebate” or other similar schema. Particularly in the case where the duration and volume of business of the company whose pricing is to be adjusted constitutes significant retroactive, current and future profit losses.

Caveat Emptor.

Mercurius Wotan

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