Friday, August 20, 2010

Helping out a local company in Edmonton that makes long things roterra.ca

Dear Barb,

It defeats the purpose of saying company confidential in the job boom site if you have a true URL email address.  I am not sure why you want to remain confidential anyway.  Your website compared to most in your industry is well done except for one small detail.  A 16x16 pixel favicon which makes your website brand stand out in a browser.   You will find that a lot of small web design companies take for granted the favicon however if you used a tabbed set up in a browser a website without a favicon looks rather ugly. 

I am also curious as to why you do not use any social media?  I know you might say it is not needed however if you get clients via the web it very much because search engines archive video and microblogs now.  Of course if you have no competition then It is not a big deal I guess.  I would still suggest creating a presence in Linkedin.  Start a group there and invite your clients.  Often training will bring like people together where they can talk about things, become friends online and then they checkout the groups you are part of.. then bam you get a new client.

Now I would apply for the job but I know how engineers are.  They think only someone who has gone to school can possibly sell the magic they create.  I find this mostly amusing because you will rarely find a good sales person that went to a technical school.  Sales is about people and social people tend not to become engineers.   I am not saying that to be mean or disrespectful.  I see engineers as the artists of an industrial world.  It is just an observation from never having met an engineer in my life who was better with people than with engineering.

Anyways I wish you the best of luck with your search..

wild eye willy

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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Fountain Tire is the most unprofessional company I have ever applied at.

Dear Fountain Tire,

Like many people who had jobs that were dependent upon the US economy I lost my job selling software to large industry worldwide last year.   Our main market in the US had dried up faster than something that dries up very fast.  This meant that I got to join the unemployed which really sucks.  Nothing worse in this world not having a job.  It is like some part of you is missing each day when you get up and don't have somewhere to go.  Even worse is you don't have any money.  I know people make EI seem like this wonderful thing but it is not.  You have to remember where you got all your student loans from to get interest relief status.  It is a headache to say the least and the most horrid aspect of not having a job is it doesn't really help with dating.  For someone reason women don't think McDonalds to share a happy meal is a good time, particularly when you have to get them to pay. 

Forgive me I use humor to deal with stress, this last year has been hell.  You send out resumes and cover letters to any company that might have a job that fits your skill set and then nothing.  You wake up each morning hoping that someone will call or email you to say we have a job for you but it rarely happens. So far only twice have I got a call back.  The first time with AMA with their web marketing department.  Few people can match me when it comes to understanding the social and mobile webs.  Unfortunately at the time they were looking for someone who had a strong understanding of PPC and SEO which at the time I didn't. I have since rectified that problem teaching myself both, although I would still suggest outsourcing it because SEO is a lot like data mining.  It doesn't take a genius to do, it just takes a lot of hard work and time.  By outsourcing this to companies that specialize in it you should be able to lower your cost per hour in doing that work, get more accurate data since all these companies do is SEO/PPC and have really dynamic software to make it easier.  Not to mention they give you pretty graphs which allow you to make sure you are getting the desired results.  Even though I did not get the AMA job, the interview taught me the area I was weak in.  I figured companies would only care about social media and I was wrong. 

The second job was selling tires at fountain tire.  It might not seem like a glamorous job selling tires but for me it was an opportunity to learn.  I have previous retail experience selling shoes.  I have extensive sales experience traveling the world selling software.  I even worked in a parts warehouse back in the day.  Not to mention my experience in the social web exceeds most marketing companies.  Anything I didn't know about tires and cars I am more than willing and capable of learning.  Not that it matters too much when it comes to sales.  Selling is about creating a rapport with the client.  If a person has a positive initial first impression they will see the good things about the product you are offering.  If they have a negative first impression then they will find the flaws.  It is just basic psych which is also something I have a strong understanding of.  I am not being arrogant either because the one thing about me is I like learning and love physics.  If I got hired at fountain tire I would of made a point of understanding every single thing you never wanted to know about tires.  

In terms of being a leader playing college basketball and spending 7 years in the Naval reserves more than qualifies me from that standpoint. 

So naturally when I heard the message on the phone from fountain tire I was pumped.  Usually a call back means a job interview.  So I called the guy at fountain tire back and punched in the extension.  Only problem is the answering machine software said no such extension existed.  Needing a job badly I then tried the spell by name and again it didn't work.  After that I left a message on the group message board which said the company fountain tire recruitment center would call me back within 24 hours.  Sadly this did not happen as the next day after trying multiple times I finally reached the guy who called me.  He said he needed some time to check things over because he had been out of the office and would get back to me shortly.  Shortly never happened as nobody called me that day and I had to call back and leave a message the next day.  The annoying part being half the time the extension would not work.  Finally the guy calls me back and asks me a few generic questions about sales experience making it seem like you needed a ton of experience to work at a sales counter in fountain tire.

At this point I am getting annoyed because he called me and all this information was available in the resume and cover letter I used to apply at monster.ca.  All this information was also sent to fountain tire when I clicked the link in an email sent to me after I applied at monster that took me to fountain tires website.  In my eyes it seemed redundant to ask me questions that he should of known the answer to.  Still needing the job I was polite as I always am until I am not.

He then says to me that he wants me to go to the website, find some obscure page to fill out some more info on my previous sales experience.  I am thinking what the heck do they need to know now.  I felt like I was back applying for the Navy with the amount of paperwork they were asking me to do for a job selling tires.  Still being the good little trooper I went to the website and followed the guys instructions.  Guess what I had already done what he told me to do. 

This is funny cause he called me based on me filling out an application on the website.  Yet he had no idea I actually had filled out the longer info form which was really baffling.. and believe  me I followed his instructions to a tee... the website said I had already applied for the job of inside sales. 

So he said once I did that call him back.  So I called him back about 4 times throughout the day and left 3 messages.   3 because the first message was cut in half cause the answering machine cut off for no reason.  He said he would call me right back after I left a message.   He never called me back.  I even left another message the next day.  You would think he would call me back to say hey we are not interested in you.  Just seems like the polite thing to do because he called me first.  He told me to call him back after I filled out the form which I had already filled out.  I did everything he asked and he did nothing he said he would.

What am I hoping to accomplish by sending this blog post to every fountain tire exec email address I could find?

1.  Angry:  It was exciting getting a call back.  You tell your friends that you got a call back.  So yah I am pissed off and frankly if they do this to me then likely they do it to other people.

2. Lesson in social media:  It amazes me how there are still companies, legit companies that have no understanding of social media.  You can't afford to ever give a bad impression when you are representing a brand because that person has the ability to reach many other people online and geo based review apps are the rage.  It doesn't matter what you think of social media, if your clients are on it then you better have a presence on it. 

Would you consider working at Fountain Tire still?

Not a chance in hell.  This experience makes me question if they have a clue about what they are doing.  It is more there loss than mine because I am over qualified to do inside sales when I clearly have a far better understanding of the social and mobile web than their marketing department.  This is evident in the website they have and the fact they are not integrating foursquare, twitter, facebook, groupon and a number of other services which would allow each store to market themselves using the geo based features  of the software I mentioned above. 

Plus I really don't like people saying they will call me back when they don't.  I have better things in my life to do than wait around for someone to call me about a job like going out and looking for work.  I lost a whole day waiting for that idiot to call.

What message would you like to leave fountain tire?

None.. other than you don't fuck with the pirate and people's emotions in this tough time.  Not having a job is hell and treating me like a yo-yo.. just makes me mad.  I want a job, I need a job and don't really understand why you would call me for no apparent reason.

wild eye willy

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Friday, April 16, 2010

madness

I yell at websites...
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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Have enough time to spam me but not respond to my complaint....

I just want to thank sunwing.ca for reminding me to yell at them again with their weekly spam.  See sunwing is this big travel company that sells all inclusive vacations.  The problem is there website does not always accurately reflect the resorts they cell.  Sometimes you end up booking a resort on the beach and then you get there and you are actually in a hotel which is next to one on the beach.  Now they claim to make this clear but if you look at the attached picture you can see they keep it very confusing. 

Would you assume that this is two hotels?  How about if you look here http://www.sunwing.ca/HotelDesc/en/PVRPPG.asp  Seems like the hotel has different types of rooms which is normal.  You pay more for certain amenities.   This I get but to arrive at a place, find out they are two separate hotels and the one you booked is not on the beach.. well now that to me is an utter lie.. if I new anything about the law I might call it fraudulent.. If there are any lawyers who read this and feel like suing the hell out of them for lying to the igebadia I might be game...

There response by the way a month later was the hotels have the same owner.. so the fact the club room is another hotel.. funny how a room became a hotel.. means that they can consider it beachfront because it is next to a hotel on the beach.. and you can walk through the other hotel to the beach..

I say fuck this because when I pay money for a hotel on the beach I expect to be able to see the beach from my hotel which you could not..

To me this is the same crap that hotels, resorts and travel websites continue to pull on people like me.. but they screwed up cause each time they spam me... the crazy man will come out and say I hate you sunwing.. give me a full refund and I will stop... I even go on twitter and make sure my anger goes there..

Keep ignoring me if you want sunwing...

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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

More spam from the company I hate sunwing.ca

You would think a company would get don't spam someone you fucked over.. but apparently sunwing.ca wants to keep making me write these blog posts where I tell the world be careful about using their website cause beachfront can mean the hotel next to yours has a beach so by default your hotel has a beach.. then when it comes to having to deal with a pissed off client they make you wait months to get back to you.. can you imagine you pay for a vacation.. which doesn't happen often.. you select beachfront.. you pay for it thinking you are going to have a nice beach to relax on and then you get there and the hotel you thought you booked is another hotel they mix together in sunwings website to make it look like the same one.. but it is not..

My advice to people is never book with sunwing cause if things don't go right they will make it next to impossible to get ahold of them... they could care less about you or your family.. all they care about is your CC.. you want to find a company that is willing to work with you to solve problems and SUNWING has no interest in actually talking to you.. they are an example of what is wrong with corporations..

but they will change cause over time as my stuff gains popularity... they will start to see how one person can hurt there bottom line.. It should never take 4 weeks to get back to an unhappy client..

they call me igebadia..

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Monday, March 22, 2010

Little things like a repetitive task online makes me screammmmmm....

Little things in this world make me scream... the good news is I get to vent online.. and then I can skip happily along..

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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A different girl in every port....

one night stands.. the memories... a different life.. a different reality

I yell at websites...
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one to rule them all...
http://gebula.com
(all blogs feed this one)

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