Best & Worst Gadgets of 2007

You can see what Business Week believe to be the best and worst gadgets of 2007 here It's interesting when you think of the way MS tried to create artificial demand to boost sales for the doomed "Zune". If it was me, I would buy out a proven player in the mp3 market such as the excellent iAudio and iRiver

Speaking of iAudio, they have released their new flash mp3 player you can check it out here It makes my X5L look a little antiquated. . . It still has the in line recording - jet effect etc. and features up to 60 hours of battery life. I know what I'm asking Santa for this year

In the mobile area, there has been a lot of talk about the iPhone but this has been well documented at this stage, and personally I'm not hugely impressed. What is worth mentioning is the new Skype phone from 3 It allows you to call any other skype user in the world from your mobile, for free (providing you top the phone up by 10 euro per month in the ready to go package). Quality is quite good too, and in early 2008 you will be able to call landlines at a huge discount too, similar to the way in which a traditional pc based skyper can. You can read a full review on the skype phone here.

MAC OS X - Leopard

So it seems Apple have "done a Vista" with their OS, releasing the Mac OS X Leopard. You can read a review here

How not to recruit

It seems pretty straightforward that as a professional, you should treat everyone well and this is especially important in our industry, it's a small one after all and if you develop a reputation for behaving in a less than favourable manner, you won't enjoy the benefits of having a good reputation and building up a powerful network.

Take, for example a recent mail I received from a recruiter who spammed me yesterday for a job in a well known Multinational CRM Organisation.


Here is the mail he sent me;

Hello ,
My name is *** ****, I'm a Contract Recruiter working for ***** in Ireland. I found your information on Monster.com and wanted to contact you about an opportunity that looks like a great match to your skills. I have appended the job description below for your review.
Please feel free to call me anytime at +44-207-100-****; if you prefer, let me know the best time and phone to reach you and I'll call you then.
Thanks and I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Best regards,
*** **********

Pierpoint

-----------------------------------------------------
Office: +44 207 100 ****
Email: **********



And here is the reply I sent;


** ** **** **,

I have been contacted by 5 different people in your company about opportunities in *** and I can tell you what I have told your predecessors – I am not interested. It concerns me that you, as recruiters do not seem to maintain any records of who you have contacted. You say you found my details on Monster.com – I find this intriguing – considering I don’t have a profile or any personal details on Monster… You mailed me on my work email – how did you get this address? I can only assume you found it on Linkedin.com, and in which case you should have not contacted me about Career Opportunities as I have specified that I do not wish to be contacted about Career Opportunities.

Furthermore, I live in Dublin – the role you mention below is in Galway which is on the west coast which would mean commuting 430 kilometres each day. Not exactly the ideal work-life balance is it Francisco?

Don’t spam me again, remove me from your database immediately.

Noel

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

After reading blogs for the past number of years - I figured it was about time I started to contribute something other than comments. I am going to be speaking about general technical recruiting topics - as well as other industry-related topics that impact my role and that of my counterparts and peers.

Please feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date on what's hot, and maybe what's not.

Comments are welcome.

Noel