Conversation with Bill Odell of Helpstream

Posted on October 13, 2009. Filed under: Social Business Strategies | Tags: , , , |

Bill is the Vice President of Marketing at Helpstream and he was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule to chat with me about his company.  While I have been critical of what I have seen from Helpstream in the past, this conversation answered some important questions about the company, the customers it [...]

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Behind the CRM Thought Leaders: Esteban Kolsky

Posted on August 26, 2009. Filed under: CRM, CRM Thoughts | Tags: , , |

Esteban is another one of my favorite CRM Thought Leaders and he recently took the time for this interview.
Q.  Esteban, you spent some time at Gartner, what did you focus on in that role?  How has that shaped your current opinions of CRM?
I came to Gartner with the idea of creating a research agenda for [...]

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Behind the CRM Thought Leaders: Prem Kumar Aparanji

Posted on August 17, 2009. Filed under: CRM | Tags: , , |

With extensive experience in CRM, business process management, quality assurance, and solutions & innovations management, Prem Kumar Aparanji leads the Social CRM/CRM 2.0 initiatives at Cognizant Technology Solutions. In addition to his deep interests in the social web and the free/libre and open-source technology movement, Prem also writes frequently on rice. On Twitter, where he [...]

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Offshoring updates: Getting rolling

Posted on August 10, 2009. Filed under: Random thoughts | Tags: , , , |

After a couple of months of negotiating with a potential off-shoring partner we were finally able to come up with a reasonable agreement.  It’s one that I hope is mutually beneficial for both of us and I wanted to share with you some of the key points to get your feedback. 

We have a six month pilot period [...]

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Hiring, getting back to basics

Posted on August 5, 2009. Filed under: Hiring Process, Jobs, Random thoughts | Tags: , , , , |

This week I shifted into hiring mode as I have several positions that we are trying to fill.  These positions have been open at Swimfish for a little while and filling them is now becoming a critical need.  With the high unemployment rate you would think we would have easily filled the support, development, project manager, [...]

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Interviews gone bad: Forcing a hire on the team

Posted on May 14, 2009. Filed under: Hiring Process | Tags: , , |

Interviewing is imperfect.  You will make mistakes in hiring, sometimes passing on the right candidate, sometimes hiring the wrong candidate.  I wanted to take a minute to share a true story with you, one that provides a few examples of the process gone wrong.  Don’t worry, the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Bill, the [...]

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How to interview, and hire, great developers

Posted on April 25, 2009. Filed under: Careers, Jobs | Tags: , , |

In order to answer this question you must first define what a great developer is.  I won’t rehash my earlier post on the topic, you can read my thoughts in this older post if you are interested.  Answer the question for yourself, then:

Identify the superstars you have worked with in the past.  Keep in touch with [...]

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Find the right recruiting partner for your startup

Posted on March 18, 2009. Filed under: startup | Tags: , , , |

The economy is terrible and you are fortunate enough to have a couple of positions that you are looking to fill.  If you’ve let anyone know about the openings you are probably overwhelmed by a sea of recruiters promising that they can deliver the right candidate to match your needs. How do you cut through [...]

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What makes a great developer?

Posted on February 26, 2009. Filed under: Random thoughts | Tags: , , |

I was following along with a great thread in the .NET People group on LinkedIn that was discussing the differences between good and bad developers.   I’ve thought alot about this as I’ve hired developers for startups and here are the qualities I always look for:

Understands that they must learn about the direction the product is [...]

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Can Twitter make you a better communicator?

Posted on February 18, 2009. Filed under: Random thoughts | Tags: , |

Absolutely yes.  While the limit of 140 characters can sometimes drive you crazy it forces you to be very concise.  If you want your message read you must quickly make your point, there is not much room for fluff.
Over the course of the last few years I have often seen people struggle with getting their [...]

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