Recruit Veterans for Aptitude and Train for Skills

The good people at Bizzeness.com took the time out on Veterans Day to suggest to their subscribers that veterans are a great candidate pool to recruit for aptitude and train for skills: http://bizzeness.com/veterans-this-ones-for-you/.

Many employers are afraid to take the chance on training new hires because they fear a competitor will just hire them away once they have been trained. That is a risk but I believe it is a worthwhile one with veterans because these candidates typically have a high degree of loyalty.

If your company needs an objective assessment tool for recruiting veterans for aptitude then join the Guaranteed Interview Program (guaranteedinterview.com) and receive unlimited free job postings and Clearfit™ assessments of veterans candidates.

2 Minutes of Silence is Not Too Much to Ask.

Today is Nov. 11th. I am in Philadelphia, PA, birthplace of the Marines 236 years ago. This is the first time I have been in the U.S. on either Veterans Day or Memorial Day. I have found out that this day has lost most of its original meaning for the American public. It has been co-opted to be a sale day for merchants and there seem to be minimal ceremonies for the fallen. I am saddened to see this because Remembrance Day in Canada is a big deal and bonds us with our fallen as we take 2 minutes of silence to honour them. I don't know the cultural reasons why Americans chose to make this day one for buying and selling rather than remembrance, but I feel terrible for the American veterans on this day knowing that they are largely the only ones who are remembering.

I wish for our American cousins a greater remembrance of the great sacrifices their brother and sisters have made in their name, and the minimal sacrifice of 2 mins they can offer in return.

Thoughts on "Be The First Mover".

Brad Feld, one of the founders of the Foundry Group put out this post this morning: http://bit.ly/ntrG2j

While the post is very good and reminds me of the Positioning concept, one of the comments from a reader struck me as a huge insight "I have found that you cannot predict the future, nor react to it. The only way to success is to direct the future to your strategy". This insight reminded me of a quote by George Bernard Shaw when he said "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man". Only the most unreasonable man would think the world's rules don't apply to him, and yet that is what world changing entrepreneurs do. They assume that the world's rules don't apply to them and have the guts and determination to face the consequences for that thinking.

This adapting the world to one's strategy is also why most others don't see what the visionary is talking about, they think that the rules of the world are immutable and therefore the vision is flawed. Only the visionary can see it because they are actively adapting the world to their vision and changing the future.

First New Epiphany in Awhile.

It's been roughly 7 weeks since I last posted. Only excuse, I had nothing important to say. Well now I do. Arrived in Santiago, Chile last week Thurs. as part of the Start-Up Chile program and have been settling in and building up momentum trying to break out into a run again.

My first epiphany of this renewed period of startup activity is that it takes a village to raise a child, more correctly in this case, a community to raise a startup. CiviSide/GuaranteedInterview.com is a a social enterprise that solves a problem that civic minded people in Canada, the U.S. and around the world want to see solved, the reintegration of their warriors into society. I need to simply facilitate their efforts and help them achieve their desires. To this end I am seeking out community leaders that want to do their part in reintegrating warriors. I am going to spend less time trying to persuade individual companies the benefits of giving veterans a hand up, and instead put my effort into mobilizing civic leaders in industry and government to tap their networks and spread the word of how the recruitment of veterans is being democratized through the Guaranteed Interview Program. This program is a tremendous tool in the hands of those with the will to see the end of veteran unemployment/underemployment.

UWO CFLC's "Most Supportive Employer".

http://communications.uwo.ca/western_news/stories/2011/May/western_honoured_for_reserve_force_support.html

Google helping veterans.

http://iava.org/blog/google-steps-new-veterans

Two Kinds of People in The World.

THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

You’ve either started a company or you haven’t. ”Started” doesn’t mean joining as an early employee, or investing or advising or helping out. It means starting with no money, no help, no one who believes in you (except perhaps your closest friends and family), and building an organization from a borrowed cubicle with credit card debt and nowhere to sleep except the office. It almost invariably means being dismissed by arrogant investors who show up a half hour late, totally unprepared and then instead of saying “no” give you non-committal rejections like “we invest at later stage companies.” It means looking prospective employees in the eyes and convincing them to leave safe jobs, quit everything and throw their lot in with you. It means having pundits in the press and blogs who’ve never built anything criticize you and armchair quarterback your every mistake. It means lying awake at night worrying about running out of cash and having a constant knot in your stomach during the day fearing you’ll disappoint the few people who believed in you and validate your smug doubters.

I don’t care if you succeed or fail, if you are Bill Gates or an unknown entrepreneur who gave everything to make it work but didn’t manage to pull through. The important distinction is whether you risked everything, put your life on the line, made commitments to investors, employees, customers and friends, and tried – against all the forces in the world that try to keep new ideas down – to make something new.

http://cdixon.org/2011/04/26/there-are-two-kinds-of-people-in-the-world/