Julio Garcia

Standout // June 18th, 2007

Finally, a company is looking to change how recruitment is done. Standout Jobs records, edits, and posts company recruitment videos.

Recruitment videos better be the next big thing, rather than yet another job board. This format is exponentially better than job boards because candidates get an idea of what to expect from the start. What to expect from the position, team, managers and company. If there had been recruitment videos from each of the companies I have worked for, I am certain I would not have taken some of those jobs.

Companies really need to jump on this format of recruitment because their current method leaves them and the position indistinguishable to candidates. I often find very similar job postings for similar companies on many job boards. Since most of the jobs and most of the companies appear to be the same, why would (or should) I take a job in Palo Alto when it appears the exact same job and environment and pay rate can be found in San Jose? I wouldn’t.

But if that Palo Alto company created a unique job posting that stood out from the crowed and at the same time had a way for me to see they had a great, relaxed work environment with a knowledgeable and respected team that I wanted to be a part of, then I would take the Palo Alto job, over the dull, generic San Jose one.

The best part of recruitment videos is that even if all companies moved to this format, each video ad will still be unique.

I honestly hope that companies move to this format because it would make the recruitment process, and life much easier, both as a potential candidate and potential fellow employee.

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Defeat Comment Spam // June 8th, 2007

If you use WordPress for your blog or CMS and experience a lot of comment/trackback spam even with Akismet, you may want to check out a new plug-in, Comment Timeout.

I added Comment Timeout to my site because Akismet was not catching some obvious trackback spam. Also, I was getting tired of checking my queue and see hundreds of obvious spam and wondering why they could not be deleted instantly & automatically in WordPress. Akismet doesn’t delete the spam for 15 days. Why wait two weeks? Get rid of it now. Comment Timeout does just this with the following options

• Reject all comments that contain BBCode links (WordPress does not normally use BBCode so genuine comments are very unlikely to contain these, although they are common in spam comments)
• Reject all comments that contain more than X hyperlinks
• Reject comments when the user agent differs from the original page request

And like that, zero comment/trackback spam. Comment Timeout has even more options than those listed above. You can also close comments by how old the post is or by how many days have passed since the last comment to name just two. If you’re on Wordpress, check out Comment Timeout.

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Encouraging // June 5th, 2007

It has been about two months since I started handicapping horse races as a new hobby, and I am encouraged by the results so far. This past weekend I took part in round one of the National Handicapping Championship Qualifying tournament. The winners of round one contests face off in round two, where the winner will head to the national tournament in Las Vegas. In this year’s tournament, the winner won $400,000. Next year’s prize money should be a lot higher.

In this tournament, players must pick one horse to win each race. There are 10 races and you have a mythical bank role of $40. When a player chooses a horse, it is actually a Win/Place wager, meaning $2 to win and $2 to place. If your selected horse wins the race, you receive the fictional winnings for both win and place bets. If the horse comes in second (place), you only win the place bet, which is less what the win bet paid. But you still win something, which adds to your fake profit. Higher the profit, the higher your ranking. All things considered, I did pretty well (see image).

To advance, I needed to place in the top 20. I finished in 68th place.

I am certain I would have advanced if the horse I picked to win the last race did so, but ended up losing by a nose instead (see image). A win would have paid out over $50 dollars total, pushing me to over $80, enough to make it to round 2.

There is another tournament I am playing at Public Handicapper. This tournament has a different format, you only have to pick the winner of 4 races. If you are incorrect, you lose a mythical $2. The goal is to get the highest profit after 60 races. At Public Handicapper I am currently placed #661 out of about 4,130 participants. This tournament and ends in October.

I’m ready to try again this weekend in the other first round contest with NHC. I am encouraged enough to believe can improve on this past weekend’s results. While 68th place out of 200 entries and #661 out of 4,130 might not sound encouraging, I think it is very much. Remember that I have only been handicapping races about once a week for 2 months. As well as competing against other that have a lot more experience and they have most likely been handicapping this for years, if not decades. I missed advancing closer the national tournament by just a nose. And I’m still learning.

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