So Spain was in the global news yesterday

February 5th, 2010 by jgiliriu

Honestly I don’t get all the buzz.

US deficit is currently standing at $1.4Trillion, 9.9% of GDP and it was around 3% in 2008 it . Please see figure.

US Deficit. Source: Congressional Budget Office

UK’s budget deficit is GBP178Bn, or 12,6% of GDP (Source:BBC)

Well, Spain’s deficit  is standing at 11.4% of GDP, coming from a 3,82% of GDP in 2008.

I do not see that much of a difference the behaviours of all developed countries that would justify the panic.Or are Spanish issues of less relative magnitude than the ones in other countries?

We’re all commiting to gigantic efforts in programs to minimize the credit crisis impact and incentivate consumer spending.

I’m not saying that all programs have been on point, but we have to agree that the increase in expense is not disproportionate in Spain.

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Why you don’t need a Linkedin Premium account

December 15th, 2009 by jgiliriu

Let me share with you a little story: I decided to upgrade to a Business Account on Linkedin basically because I had a business reason. I wanted to contact a freelance professional that I found on the site that was apparently available, to propose a really interesting business project as an interim professional.

The professional was not sharing contact info and was not open to contacts from anyone. This preference set-up is very common and is particularly not good if you are willing to be found (if you are contractor). I thought about not contacting him since his set-up does not seem very mindful of his environment and may speak very little about his attention to detail. On second thought, I decided to give him a second chance and consider that the professional was not really social network savvy and had just posted his profile but not really knowing what he was doing or why it was useful or could benefit him.

The only way for me to get in touch with him was via the mysterious – almost mystical – InMail. I didn’t think it over much (since I was very interested in contacting the freelancer) and upgraded my account.

This is what I received:

Benefits of a LinkedIn Premium Account

Hi Jordi,

Thank you for upgrading to a LinkedIn Premium Account! Your LinkedIn account now contains five benefits that aren’t available to free account holders.

As a premium subscriber, you get these perks:

  1. InMail™ messages to get the conversation started. No need to wait for an introduction: with InMails™, you can send a message to any of the 50 million members on LinkedIn.
  2. View the full profiles of all LinkedIn members. Be fully prepared with background information on potential clients, hires, and business partners.
  3. Find the right people, faster. Sharpen your ability to find decision makers, experts and leads with three times more search results. Try our advanced search.
  4. Save and organize new contacts into folders of your choice. You can save important profiles into your Profile Organizer, a workspace that makes it easy for you to keep track of them, and stay up-to-date with notes and contact information. Get started with Profile Organizer.
  5. See who’s viewed your profile. Get more information on who’s interested in you from customers, to suppliers, to recruiters and more. View the complete list.

To see some of these services in action, sign-up for a complimentary training session on how to get the most out of your Premium Account.

We hope you enjoy your new powers on LinkedIn!

Sincerely,
The LinkedIn Team

After a little bit of trial and investigation of the benefits of the upgrade, here are some comments:

1. InMail™ messages to get the conversation started. – NOT

I have already used one of the three InMails to contact the professional, and it has been ignored. InMails are just e-mails. Basically you don’t need something with a new name that does exactly what e-mails do.  There are several ways to get around not knowing the target professional’s address. Amongst them, you can always “Send him an Invite”. The target will get quite an odd message, that’s true, but with the right wording, you should overcome the initial awkward impression by including … “I thought it would be of professional value to be connected I’m also sending a Linkedin invite to stay in touch…”

2. View the full profiles of all LinkedIn members – NOT

Not True either. You can and will only see the professional profiles of those who make their profiles public. On top of that, a lot of people still have incomplete profiles, so this won’t allow you to see any more of them … since it’s just not there. Disappointing feature.

3. Find the right people, faster with advanced search

Honestly, I have to say that I cannot see “any “difference of value between the standard search and the premium search.  Further disappointment.

4. Save and organize new contacts into folders of your choice – Profile Organizer

Interesting feature for corporate accounts with more than two people looking at profiles, with specialised tasks (for instance ‘profile searcher’ and ‘approver-manager’) may be of certain value. Organizing the Prospecting in this sense is the only value that this new functionality may provide, and it is definitely not very valuable for the rest “not so complex” users.

5. See who’s viewed your profile – NOT

I have to admit that this was one of the most intriguing and fascinating features of the upgrade. Since I’ve had my Linkedin account I have been (I guess we all have … please admit it!) fantasizing about who and why someone was taking a look at my profile, with no rationale behind – you never know what’s on people’s mind but my guess, at this point, is that it would just be curiosity, after all. I was also fascinated by the intriguing message: “To see more people, upgrade your account”.

I felt that actually knowing the name of the people that has taken a look at my profile may give me a clue on why they would spend any time staring at my profile – a potential client? A potential provider? A potential job offer? ….

The report on this feature is that the information that you get is exactly the same as the one that you get with the free account, which nothing else than “Someone at Hewlett-Packard”, “Project Manager at Ericsson”, “Sales Manager at T-Systems” and so on. You get to see all the people, but only in those vague terms.

It is VERY disappointing … I radically support Linkedin (by itself or in comparison with the rest of tools out there), but this time I cannot help them make more money.

I will positively note that the look and feel of the premium account is better. It has a good lay-out, with the important tabs on top (the ones that the basic account has on its left-hand-side column: “Home”, “Groups”, “Profile”) and a better use of the screen space.

Overall my recommendation would be that small firms, independent recruiters, networkers, job seekers … need not to upgrade their account to a Premium service and just take full advantage of the potential of their basic account, which is, by the way, enormous.

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There will be a new “war for talent” in Spain

December 7th, 2009 by jgiliriu

… at least in some sectors and professions.

After all the turmoil, the size of the Spanish economy will not have significantly reduced. Overall, since its peak in Q42007, there has been a total destruction of 9.4% of GDP. The figure is impressive but the economy is not that badly hurt. It’s just -5.4% since Q42006, before the last leg of the housing/finance boom; and one could argue that it’s the speculative hype that has been wiped out.

I could not resist from expanding a little bit on my previous post due to some recent news on the newspapers. It read: 2 out of 3 young professionals who are currently unemployed have professional aspirations of becoming a public sector employee. In some regions, public sector employment represents over 25% of active population.

Investing several years in preparing for the exams to obtain a job in the public sector is very attractive, popular and more affordable in Spain/Italy/Portugal/Greece than other central/northern countries. Twenty and thirty-something are still living with mum and dad and some of them are unemployed, so the cost of opportunity is significantly lower.

Risk aversion has increased exponentially since the crisis settled in the hearts of the young and old. That again is something that may have a cultural explanation, but part of it may also be of the government educational and labour policies, subsidizing sectors that are not those of the future and cutting budget in R&D, perpetuating the economic structure of the country.

We’ll also see an additional effect caused by the age pyramid structure: there will be more retirees than young entrants in the labour system. This also combines with the thousands of youngsters that drop out of the educational system before choosing going to university or professional education.

All this facts and figures are a symptom of the stagnation of the situation. Young professionals, who should fuel the sectors that should take the country out of the economic black hole where we are, are thinking about security, comfort and zero risk and no professional aspirations.

That is not the solution and most economist still don’t agree with what sectors will take the country out of the recession and put it back on the economic map. The old model is exhausted and the new blood that should take us out of it is distracted.

(Side note: That may be cynically good: If the government does not have a roadmap, then it’s good not to have too much wood on the steamer.)

A side effect may ironically be a new “war for talent”. Even though the quantity of highly qualified positions to be covered will dramatically decrease, so we’ll see a decrease in the number of potential candidates available.

My rationale is that there will be some spaces where salaries will go up and there will be continued demand for highly skilled professionals. The few that hang up on the traditional professional career or that explore consistent professional steps will see a relatively healthy pipeline of opportunities.

The moral of this tale is: keep doing what you do best; keep investing in education, show a consistent career path, try to differentiate from the rest, … and it will pay off; maybe not short-term, but it will in the mid-term. You may be a winner of the new “war for talent”.

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Posted in New Job Marketplace | 1 Comment »

… in the news

December 1st, 2009 by jgiliriu

My latest conference about interim management options in the Merger & Acquisition area with some best practises and examples had some media impact. Here’s the note from the Diari de Sant Cugat.

Press Release Diari de Sant Cugat

Nota de Premsa Diari de Sant Cugat

Press Release Diari de Sant Cugat

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On how we can fix the broken labour marketplace in Spain

November 11th, 2009 by jgiliriu

There is something structurally broken in the labour marketplace in Spain. On one end, we have one of the most worker-protective legislations in the world (not yet as protective as the French or German, though …) On the other end, we have one of the worst unemployment rate in Europe, close to 20%. How are we going to fix this situation?

Reality is that regulations are not working and are not doing what they are supposed to do, which in this case is protect the employment. Companies that have human resources needs are not using salaried employees as their main sources. There are several items that have led to this point:

1. Corporations have taken advantage of the global economy situation to seek massive cost reductions through layoffs. It has been an opportunity for them to make those changes that were needed without taking social responsibility for it: It’s just the economy, fool! … and at the same time, they have saved the Social Image of the firm.

2. Once they have gone through this major relief and got rid of labour passives … who would want to make the same mistakes again? Why should they hire salaried employees and incorporate these so-difficult-to-eliminate-when-not-needed fixed costs?

General acceptance is that the less the salaried work force looks interesting to the employer, the more of a structural damage will be done to the labour force in the coming years … right! … Or wrong?

Officials mention that unemployment rate will probably not go down for a couple of years, but climb well up above 20%.

Well, the way I read those numbers is very different. Flexibility of the resources is a key strategy that main consulting firms are advising their clients. I’d add the flexibility of human resources to the mix. This strategy has been discussed in one post before.

Today, on the labour side, professionals are facing less opportunities on the salaried or traditional side and more and more on a temporary basis. These professionals would be willing to convert to temporary assignments in exchange for a better share of the profits of their work. Better retribution would also compensate them for the un-security of their career choice.

On the employer side, if there is no work, there is no fixed costs; and when there is work there is a benefit to be gained and employers will need to compensate for the flexibility and pay a premium, which should be seen as “sharing the profits”.

I also consider this mechanism to be more efficient in distributing the generation of wealth as well as a solution to the current situation of the Spanish labour dysfunction.

Potential roadblocks are sometimes self-imposed like the comfort of a permanent-job-for-life mind-set. Some others really have to do with the employability of the workforce. The brick and mortar policy of the last governments on power has not helped much in this sense.

For those with a good professional track, employability should not be an issue and, from my point of view, the sooner they embrace this job market change, the sooner they will start gaining from shared profits.

Thoughts?

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