Thanks for not buying popcorn from my son

(This an article adapted from Mr Trey Tompkins article at linkedin. I was feeding to my regular dosage of Linked in articles when this one struck me.)

If you declined my son's offer to buy popcorn from his Cub Scout Pack yesterday, I owe you one. I'm serious.

I spent yesterday afternoon outside the exit of a local home improvement store with my six year old son and two other father / son pairings from his Cub Scout Pack. They were performing the seasonal ritual of selling popcorn to help raise money for their Pack's activities.

Through their efforts, they raised about $200 in about two hours. That seems to be pretty good production for three elementary school kids.

In watching my son and his friends "work", I was struck most by two different but ultimately related things.

First, many individuals who they talked to seemed so uncomfortable in saying "no". Everyone was very polite and many offered reasons for not handing over money to the kids. However, it was obvious that saying "no" made some of them uncomfortable.

Looking back on it, they needn't have felt any remorse or guilt at all. Those folks were doing my son and his friends a great service in teaching them valuable lessons about sales and achievement.

In sales, no matter how good your cause is (or no matter how cute you are in your little scout uniform) people don't owe you anything. They have to have a reason to want your product or "service". Most people who donated or bought popcorn told the kids that they wanted to support the scouts because they themselves or their children had been scouts. My guess is that they knew the good works that scouting does for kids and it made them feel good to make a small investment in that.

Also, even if someone values your product service, they might not be in a position to buy at that moment. Maybe they aren't carrying cash or they already bought from a kid in their neighborhood. Which leads to my second "aha" observation. Those kids heard a lot of "no" responses and yet they just kept on asking people exiting the store if they would like to support their Pack. They were so excited when someone eventually said yes.

After the Popcorn Sale, I took my son out for a quick dinner at a local restaurant. Over dinner, he told me that selling is hard work because you have to let so many people tell you "no" before you ever get someone to tell you "yes".

If you politely refusing to buy popcorn from him yesterday helped teach him this lesson at age 6, I owe you a debt of gratitude.

Thanks again!

The best sales advice I ever got was from a surfer dude.

I have always loved the outdoors. Hiking, camping, rafting, the ocean sports, all of it, I’m in. I see a Bass Pro Shop or REI and can’t help stopping to check things out. One day I did just that and ended up relearning a crucial lesson on selling and the art of persuasion in general.

My local REI store is in Manhattan Beach, California and on this particular day I did my usual and stopped in to “look around.” The problem with me and “looking around,” is that I’m like a kid in a candy store and always end up buying something. So there I am, looking at an entire wall of backpacks and thinking about my last experience hiking, when I hear a voice behind me ask “Looking at backpacks?” I gave a slightly snide answer of “Why yes, I am.” Mr. Eager Beaver sales associate then said “Well, let me show you what we got,” he then pointed out a beautiful external frame pack and began to explain its features; Several cubic feet of storage, incredibly light exoskeleton, waterproof compartment, lumbar pad, self-tightening shoulder straps, and on and on. As my eyes glazed over I realized I did not want to listen to this guy anymore and cut him short with a “let me look around a bit,” then left. No purchase, no sale.

A few days later I stop into a much smaller specialty-hiking store in Redondo Beach. I sat gazing at the wall of 6 or 7 models of packs when I heard a voice from behind, “Looking at backpacks huh?” Truth is, I smelled him coming before he got there. Ocean, patchouli, a clear hint of marijuana; his scent announced him before he got there. I was about to send Mr. Obvious on his way when he said “dude, I love to hike, you too?” The voice called me dude. I was 40 years old at the time so it gave me a chuckle. So I turn around to see a youngish, quintessential California surfer guy. “Where do you go?” he asked. “Well,” I told him, “my last trip was to Yosemite.” I told him how beautiful I thought it was and about the bears I saw, and the story about the night I left my beef jerky in my backpack. “Dude, I love Yosemite, they have some gnarly hikes.” So he asked me what I liked, where I went, how my equipment fared and, finally, why I was in his store. “My backpack shifted all over the place when we were bouldering. I could never get comfortable when I was using my hands and feet to climb” I explained. “Dude, I get it. You have an external frame right?” he asked. “Yep,” I said. Then he said “check this out” and took out a backpack that was shaped like a taco and didn’t appear to have a frame. “This is the s**t, fits like a glove and moves with you when you boulder” he explained. He was right and before you knew it I had dropped a cool $250 on a new pack.

As I was checking out I said to the surfer dude “you’re good at this.” “Good at what?” he asked. “Selling!” I said. “I have been selling for years and you are really good.” He looked confused, “I don’t sell” he said, “I just took my fathers advice and find out what people want. What they love about hiking or the outdoors, what their interests are, then I show’em things that work for what they want.”

Boom, there it is. I realized, in that moment, that I had forgotten one of the oldest and most important tenets of sales, persuasion and even of leadership. How could I, a man who owned two businesses that relied on client sales have forgotten something so elemental? It freaked me out honestly. What we think, feel or say about our idea, product, or anything is largely irrelevant. We do not convince people to buy an idea or thing, but rather we simply uncover and relate to their needs only. What I had forgotten is that, whether you’re selling backpacks, advice or fractional ownership of a jet, people buy emotionally, then use facts and data to back up the decision to buy. I never forgot it again.

Are You Good Enough For Google?

Exactly one month ago I gave up the golden handcuffs keeping me at Google. I left to build full-time, and I haven't looked back. Except when people have asked, and it happens almost every day. To be exact, 118 people have questioned why I quit and just as many have sought my guidance on getting in. If you want a job at Google or other top companies, here's my take.

It's a wonderful life if you can make the cut.

Volleyball, olympic size pools and personal trainers. Rock walls between floors, slides instead of steps and bowling alleys to pass the time. Breakfast, lunch and dinner on demand and masseuses in multitude. Really, it’s Disneyland for adults.

For four and a half years, I worked at Google. First, partnering with websites on AdSense and then building the North American sales strategy for Google’s Ad Exchange. After moving to New York City, I led my team’s east coast recruiting efforts for almost a year.

I’ve reviewed at least 500 resumes, screened more than 100 candidates and hired 12 superstars. In most instances, the candidates didn’t have a fighting chance.

Truth be told, neither did I. You and I have a better shot at being struck by lightning (576K:1) or winning an Olympic medal (660K:1) than getting into Google. What no one will tell you is this:

The odds will never be in your favor

Let’s do some simple math. Google receives more than two million applications per year for roughly 5,000 jobs. Off the bat, your chances are .0025%. And that’s assuming all things are equal, but they rarely are. Politics, people and yes, processes get in the way. Even for a company filled with the smartest people in the world, Google relies on technology to search applicants, surface the best candidates and slot them in the right role.

Learn how to beat the system.

Most of us fill out a form and click submit, completely unaware of how deep the black hole runs. Applying for a job online is akin to playing the lottery. It might work, but chances are you’re just wasting time.

Here’s how you stack the deck…

Forget going to Google. Make Google come to you. It’s a little known fact, but a recruiter’s role isn’t to find talent. Real recruiters only screen qualified candidates.

Let me explain.

If you have 2 million applications then choosing the right one is like finding a needle in a haystack. The task is nearly impossible. Walmart reportedly receives more than 5 million applications a year and Microsoft processes 50,000 resumes a week. Competition at the top is crazy, but don’t think small, lesser known companies are any easier. Although it varies with the company and the job, the Electronic Recruiting Exchange (ERE) reports that on average 250 resumes are received for each corporate job opening.

Even if you had 200 or say 150 resumes, would you review each one? Would you give the 149th candidate the same time and attention as the first? I’m sure most recruiters mean well but, by themselves, they’re not set-up for success. So they leave the heavy lifting to something else.

A Helping Hand

The first person to review your resume isn’t a person at all. It’s likely a software program known as an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). To recruiters, ATS is the greatest thing since sliced bread: it saves them time and the company money.You submit your application, ATS scans your credentials and gives you a score. You’re then ranked against other candidates and a decision is made based on “data.” More about this later.

All good right? WRONG.

For you and me, ATS is a weapon of mass rejection. Job search services provider Preptel reports that 75 percent of candidates' are instantly unqualified as soon as they submit their resumes. In a matter of milliseconds, a computer makes up its mind and most likely passes on your potential. Like I said, we never had a fighting chance.

Big Data

You’ve probably heard of web analytics, but what about people analytics? Today, human capital is measured by resume robots and social media scores. This is not to say we’ve taken the ‘human’ out of human resources, but the nature of recruitment has changed.

Everything is tracked, including social media activity and the degree to which you’re already ‘connected’ to the company. Did you respond to an email? Were you late for an interview? Algorithms already predict World Series championships (Go Giants!) and fluctuations in the stock market. Why not forecast the success of one candidate over another?

Success is relative so it can be measured by almost anything, including:

• Internet Presence - Articles, blogs and social media mentions, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+
• Past Performance - Employment background, work history, native talent and earned credentials from the applications and resumes you submit
• Personality Tests - Skill sets and behaviors can be modeled from your answers to scenario based surveys and tests

Once the data is collected, ATS goes to work. Like Google’s super secret search algorithm, no one knows how data sets are organized and analyzed, but you can bet it differs by employer and role.

Beat the Bot

The gatekeeper blocking your application goes by the name ATS. To beat the bot, you must optimize the keywords in your resume. Google popularized the analysis of keywords to understand the content of web pages. That concept is then placed into context, relative to the competition. The most relevant results appear on top. To this day, the quantity and quality of keywords is still a major factor in Google’s PageRank. Your resume must work the same way.

Every industry has its jargon, slang and colloquialisms. What matters most to ATS is the use, uniqueness and relevance of keywords. To stand out in the system, consider the following tips:

• Selection - Include keywords, phrases and skills repeated in the job description. You can also review the company’s career website, the professional profiles of current employees and similar jobs. The keywords you discover are likely the same exact keywords a recruiter has programmed ATS to pick-up.
• Density - Focus on no more than three keywords, and keep the frequency between 2% to 4% of all words. We call this keyword density. If you find yourself repeating the same keyword over-and-over again, you can always use synonyms.
• Formatting - ATS might not understand fancier fonts so stick to Arial or Times New Roman. Also, avoid white text and shades of grey. Black is perfect. And, unless otherwise instructed, submit a Word doc instead of a PDF. In all ways possible, you want ATS to read what you wrote. Otherwise, what’s the point?

When everything is said and done, what recruiters receive is a list of qualified candidates. From here, they go to work screening potential hires. I told you recruiters don’t focus on finding talent! They focus on vetting the cream of the crop, and they look to the world’s largest professional network for further help.

The One Stop Shop

This may come as a shock, but LinkedIn is the largest ATS around. Think about it. You and I create online resumes in the form of a profile, they’re searchable and then we connect. Mostly with other people looking for a job, but then there’s this secret matrix reserved for recruiters interested in reaching top talent.

Remember when I told you to make Google come to you? Well, LinkedIn is your number one tool for turning that dream into reality.

94 percent of recruiters use LinkedIn to vet candidates. They’re checking your professional background and gauging your level of online activity. More than anything else, they’re direct sourcing. They’re fishing for talent, and when they catch wind of a candidate it’s time for the approach.

Tell me you’ve received a similar message in the past:

Hi Michael, How are you? I hope you don't mind me reaching out to you directly, but your profile looks great! We are searching for a "rock-star" performer for our team and your background is stellar. Do you have time to chat on the phone tomorrow or this week? Your background is stellar. Thanks!

As spammy and generic as it sounds, companies are paying LinkedIn up to $8,000 per user per year for the right to message you. Recruiters are combing through your work experiences, skills, education and other credentials. Sound familiar?

Just like ATS, LinkedIn looks at the keywords in the headline, job titles and summary sections of your profile. Then, you’re given a score and that score determines your rank. If you want to appear on a recruiter's radar you need to think about keyword relevance, the quality of your connections and whether LinkedIn is worth paying for.

Premium Positioning

LinkedIn first offered premium accounts to sales professionals and then recruiters. As the professional network has evolved they were gracious enough to offer similar services to you and me. Now job seekers near and far must ask themselves one question: should I pay for LinkedIn?

Yes!

LinkedIn promises to bump your profile to the top of search results. Just like Google’s sponsored ads, your profile will appear at the top as a ‘Featured Applicant.’ If LinkedIn search behavior follow’s Google, 75% of recruiters will never visit the second page of search results. So it goes without saying that it’s even more important to be on top.

No!

It’s flattering to be contacted, but why wait for an opportunity? Go get it! If you believe in taking the proactive approach to LinkedIn, you can ask for introductions from mutual parties, join groups to contact any member and network your way to new connections. Plus, you’re saving $48/month. Sometimes, the “scrappy” approach inspires a level of creativity that money can’t buy.

Like most things, there is no right or wrong answer. Personally, I pay for LinkedIn but it’s not for everyone. Try the free way first and, if you find you want to be featured in front of recruiters, give premium a try.

From HR to Sales

For LinkedIn, premium accounts are apart of their business and a key component of how they make money. For recruiters, you are their business and they pitch you like any other product or service. In that sense, think of recruiters as saleswomen and what they’re selling is you.

Like more traditional sales, recruiters have quotas. Their performance is judged by the number of hires they get through the door. They’re looking for the best candidates to pitch to hiring managers. Ultimately, it’s the team's decision who they hire. Your recruiter is only making an introduction. It’s up to you to close the deal.

In the case of Google, hiring decisions are made by a hiring committee that includes the CEO. After 4 to 9 interviews, on average, feedback is submitted and a candidate is further vetted. Those that pass face a final review by the hiring committee, consisting of senior managers and directors. They review every candidate that’s hired into Google, taking into account interview feedback, work history and the infamous hiring packet.

The hiring packet is your portfolio: it’s all the reasons why you deserve the job. It’s your final pitch.

The Brand called YOU

You are a brand, and like any business, it’s your job to sell yourself accordingly. From the moment you make your first contact to the final round interview, promote yourself. If Google is the end, then you are the beginning. You, Incorporated.

What do you have to offer a company? How will your colleagues benefit from having you around? Your brand is more than the impression you leave behind. It’s the fruit of your labor, and nothing speaks louder than your work. Henry Ford said it best, “You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.”

They key to building your brand is doing work that creates value and strengthens credibility. To measure your meaning, consider the following:

• Market - Who is your audience? Who stands to benefit from your skill set?
• Message - What makes you unique? What is your dramatic difference?
• Medium - How do you share your story? In what ways are you standing out?
• Messenger - How does your online and offline persona match your brand?
• Money - How do you measure and capture your value?

Software engineer, graphic designer, or AdWords account manager, when it comes to Google, or any any top company, you’re an All-Star. What you’re selling is beyond your capacity to work well. It’s intellectual curiosity and a desire to overcome business challenges and solve problems.

Hiring managers are looking for solutions and it’s your job to come up with an answer. The first test is ATS and those that pass move to the front of the line. We’ve always thought of friends and former colleagues as sources of referrals, but recruiters refer candidates too. In fact, they’re the number one source of referrals to hiring managers. Get on their good side.

The way to get noticed by Google and other top companies is simple: be the best and sell yourself at each stage of the game. It takes competence and confidence, and no one can market your brand better than you can. Start today!

The Fault in Our Stars film review

Director: Josh Boone
Cast: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern

“The world is not a wish-granting factory” doesn’t have quite the resonance of “What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?”. However, that’s not for the lack of trying. Forty-four years after that opening of Love Story and the ailing woman at the centre of it surged the book and movie to a monster success, here’s another film trying to make the best of a bestseller that was saved from being mawkishly exploitative only because of the spunky, raw and brutally honest notes it managed to strike at regular intervals.

But even John Greene’s book The Fault in Our Stars was transparent in its almost obsessive philosophising, realising that in the well-endowed market of young adult fiction, cancer isn’t enough to get romance love. However, where Greene brought in ethical theories, Venn Diagram, maths, metaphors and a very unlikable author with an equally verbose bent of thought, he also let his teens be teens in a world where few saw beyond her cannula plus oxygen tank and his prosthetic leg, including overindulging in video games.

Despite a readymade audience that comes with such gigantic bestseller, translating all of the above from the romance and the loving to the disease and the dying was never going to be easy. If Boone even gets halfway there, it is on account of Woodley (last seen in Divergent), who truly gets the unlikely Hazel Grace Lancaster that’s at the centre of this story.

Diagnosed with cancer when she was 13 and a death experience later, Hazel is now 17, breathing with the help of a nose cannula, quiet, more tired than cynical about her circumstances, and quite adult in her reactions. That’s clear from even the book she swears by, An Imperial Affliction, about a girl dying from cancer, which ended mid-sentence. The only subject that gets Hazel animated is a reflection on what happens later, after the girl, Anna’s, death.

When an impossibly charming 18-year-old Augustus Waters appears to take a liking to her, at a mutual cancer support group, and equally to the book – which is way out of his normal zombie reading – their fates are but sealed together. Augustus lost his leg to osteosarcoma but now appears on the bend.

To anyone familiar with the book, the film is faithful to a fault from the dialogues to the clothes, the setting and the food, even while skipping over some of the unpleasant details including what would have been an awkward sex scene. It also throws in a limousine for apparently no reason at all.

However, while these dilute the film of some of its essence, the more unpardonable flaw is how insipid all the other characters are, particularly Augustus who exists merely to fulfill Hazel’s dreams unlike the contrast-ridden dreamboat he was in the book.

The film also labours to underline the connection between Hazel’s search for an afterlife for Anna’s story and her concern for her own parents after her death – unlike how it flowed quite naturally in the book. And that’s nothing compared to how it uses Anne Frank’s story to illustrate Hazel’s struggle.

That Woodley even walks away from that last scene — struggling for breath and hauling her oxygen tank up impossible flights of stairs in the Amsterdam house Anne Frank took refuge in, ending it with her first kiss with Augustus and an applause – unharmed, is to her credit. She makes it all seem plausible, pulling along a mostly overwhelmed Elgort with her.

“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities” is another favourite line of The Fault in Our Stars – the point being about time being what you make of it. The film may not stand that test of time but, something tells us, the line will. That may be infinite enough.

The Secrets of a Waiting Room Jedi

It happens all the time. It’s happened to us, and it’s happened to you. More than once, guaranteed. It goes like this:

You’ve finally scheduled a meeting with that prospective client you’ve been after (or maybe a first meeting with a new client—where you’ll set the tone for your relationship).

And you’re ready.

You’ve done your research, both online and off. You’ve consulted with your analysts and your colleagues back at the shop. You’ve thought about what you can offer that your prospect might value. You’ve refined and rehearsed a short script or two. You’ve got your initial questions lined up. You’ve left yourself ample travel time to compensate for unexpected traffic. You’ve even used the facilities by the elevators, just in case.

You arrive at reception, you give your name, and you’re told by the employee behind the desk that unfortunately your meeting will be delayed because Ms. Bizzee is still on a previous call.

So far, not unusual. The question is, what do you do next?

If you’re like 99% of your competitors, you take a seat and do one or more of the following:

• Review your notes for the meeting
• Flip through a waiting room magazine
• Pull out your smart phone and check your emails
• Check your mobile contact manager
• Listen to your voice mails
• Check Facebook
• Make a call
• Complete your half-finished Sudoku puzzle
• Check your email again

Hey, you’ve got some time to kill. Why not kill it?

Really?

One of most important sales skills we address in our book Never Be Closing is art and science of discovering what’s useful to your client. In our experience, your potential usefulness is the most important thing you can communicate—and the thing that will most likely win you the sale.

But the concept of usefulness goes way beyond your conversation with your client. It’s threaded through everything you do in the sales process. In fact, we suggest asking the simple question, ‘Is this useful?’ about every aspect of your own sales or business behavior. If your answer is ‘no’, ‘maybe’, or ‘not sure’, we suggest you seriously consider deleting that behavior from your repertoire.

Behavior Testing

Let’s use this simple test on the list of behaviors above.

Reviewing your notes for the meeting could be useful, but if you’re not familiar enough with them by this point, another few minutes probably won’t do you much good.

Flipping through a two-month-old waiting room magazine is decidedly unuseful. The exception here might be the possibility of finding a relevant article in a recent industry or corporate publication.

Checking your emails, your contact manager, or your voice mails? Psychologists would call these conditioned responses to having time on your hands. But useful? Who are we kidding?

Checking Facebook? Ditto.

Making a phone call? Maybe, but chances are you’ll have to say a quick good-bye, so is it really worth it?

And re-checking all of the above is about as useful as finishing that Sudoku puzzle. In other words—not.

So if none of these behaviors are particularly useful, the next question becomes, what could you do that would be useful?

Seeing with Jedi Eyes

Your clients’ offices—including reception and common areas—are their habitats, filled with clues about the company, its culture, the people you’ll be meeting. Sure, you’ve done research online and with your colleagues, but where better to begin to truly understand the people you’ll meet than where they spend the majority of their working—and waking—lives?

Being in your clients’ territory affords you the best possible opportunity to get to know who you’ll be meeting. You’re exposed to information and resources that simply aren’t available in company reports or on the internet. That’s pretty special, considering all your competitors have access to that same internet information.

Once you appreciate the value of spending time in your clients’ space, you’re ready to practice the art of the Waiting Room Jedi.

The first thing a Jedi needs to understand is the power of the Force. And in business, the Force is Connection. Anything and everything you can do to increase the connection between you and your potential client is a step in the right direction—a step toward the sale.

Finding Hidden Connections

If you had a first appointment with an important potential client and a friendly leprechaun offered you the opportunity to meet someone who knew your prospect, and who might be able to give you some useful information about them, you’d be delighted, wouldn’t you?

Well, today’s your lucky day. Because have the opportunity to do just that—every time you arrive early for a client meeting and every time your client is late.

Introduce yourself to the receptionist. We mean really introduce yourself. There’s a good chance the receptionist knows your prospect. If they’ve been with the company a while, receptionists can be a great source of useful information. They know who comes and goes. They know the culture of the organization. They know if times are good or times are bad. They know if executives and managers are part of the team or if they ride above it. They know when it’s an up day or a down day. Furthermore, receptions are often invisible in the waiting room, treated as just another piece of furniture. If they’re not too busy, they may really appreciate a chance to talk. Imagine standing face to face with a resource like that and deciding to check your email instead of talking to them!

How do you probe for information from the receptionist? Just ask. Clearly, your chances of getting under the sheets are limited (nor do we suggest you try; you risk coming off as inappropriately nosey, and even sleazy), but you can open the tent.

Here’s a list of simple starter questions that most receptionists should be able (and often happy) to answer:

• How long has the company been at this location (or on this floor)? What was the reason for the move?
• How many people work here? What kinds of jobs do they do? This can often lead to great follow-up conversations. If the location has both engineering and marketing in it for example, you can observe that that’s an unusual combination. Any reason for that?
• What’s the biggest department or division in this location?
• Is everyone always this (relaxed, friendly, energized, busy) around here, or is something special going on today?
• What do you like best about working here?
• Are the principals usually around, or mostly on the road? Do you get to see or talk to them much?

These are the kinds of questions you can work into almost any conversation and which can provide you with useful ways to make connections later in your meeting.

Imagine in your meeting with your prospective client being able to say something like, “I understand you’ve only been in this location for 18 months and you’re already bursting at the seams. Sounds like things are going well. Must be challenging to manage that kind of growth.”

Searching for Other Threads

Aside from these general starter questions, there are clues to the personalities of the company and its employees literally littering the walls. The artwork, the trophy case, the plaque, the photo of the ribbon cutting, the mission statement, the free (or maybe not free) soda machine, even the building itself if it’s company owned. All of these are data about the founders, the principals, the charities, the activities, the culture of the office and the organization. Each is a conversation starter with the receptionist or others you may meet. And each is a thread of a possible connection to your client. The more threads you discover, the better your chances of weaving them together into the beginning of a relationship.

Curiosity Killed the Can’t

The skill of being a Waiting Room Jedi is to transform a series of waiting room habits—checking email, posting on Facebook, and flipping through magazines—into a deliberate process of exploration and discovery.

More than anything else, being a Waiting Room Jedi is about being curious. The more genuinely curious you are, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the more likely you’ll be able to make connections with your client.

The attitude and skill the Waiting Room Jedi is one of a series of interlocking steps that form what we call the Productive Selling process. It starts with knowing who you are and why you’re selling. Then moves into finding, making, and developing connections. The next step is earning the credibility required for your clients to feel comfortable answering the tough, probing questions you’ll need to ask so that you can understand their situation. Once you truly understand your clients’ issues, itches, and challenges, the next step is to demonstrate your usefulness. Once you’ve done that, you can start developing a productive business relationship.

And after all, isn’t that what the best selling is all about?

Here’s Why Good Employees Quit

Sure, there are many reasons why people quit, such as: employee mis-match, work/life balance, co-worker conflicts, relocation, family matters, lack of good communication, micro-managers, etc. I could go on and on but here are my top four reasons why good employees leave the workplace:

1. Poor reward system. It’s not always about having a big paycheck (although it doesn’t hurt either!). Rewarding an employee can be shown in many ways, such as corporate recognition both internally and externally (company website or press release), an additional paid mini-vacation, an opportunity to take the lead on a new project, a promotion, a donation in their name to a charity they support or the most popular form of reward, a bump in pay or an unexpected bonus. While these represent some of the ways an employer can reward workers, they don’t work without one key element; communication. What money represents to one employee may be of no concern to another. The key here is to find out what your employee’s value most and work from there.

2. Management. You know the saying: “People don’t leave companies, they leave their managers”. There is truth to this! Here’s my reasoning. When there is work to be done, its management’s duty to enforce, engage, and often times implement reward systems to keep employees satisfied and loyal. Sure, the supervisor, middle manager or team leader may implement recognition on a small scale for workers who have reached goals or helped the team in some way, but that doesn’t replace the recognition and reward employees need from upper management to stay committed.

Not everyone is skilled enough to manage processes or lead people. Just because someone is good at what they do does not mean they will be a great manager, and that’s perfectly OK! When people who are not fit to lead are put into positions of leadership it can create a catastrophic circumstance in the workplace leading to high turnover and low employee morale. So please, stop slapping “Manager” on every good worker’s name and put people in those positions only if they have the characteristics necessary to influence workers to execute the company vision and those willing to work together to get the job done.

3. Hiring/Promotions. When good workers see people who do not contribute as much as they do or they see schmoozers who do little but socialize a lot land positions they don’t deserve, it’s much like a slap in the face. Especially when those workers are busting their butts, not taking vacation, rallying the team and exceeding expectations the last thing they want to see is some Joe Schmo just waltz in and take a senior position, one they are clearly not qualified to do. You have to expect good employees will leave if you decide to hire your best friends’ cousin who has no idea what the heck they are doing, and then you have the audacity to put them in a leadership position over experienced workers. Come on! Hiring and promoting for favoritism is a major way to alienate good workers.

4. Too much work! The moment employers see employees who have good work ethic or are great in performing or rallying a team of people they begin to slap on more projects, more responsibility to those who they believe can handle it. And maybe good workers can handle more work but it becomes a problem when they begin to feel that they can’t escape from work because of the amount of responsibility and attention they receive from management. Being an excellent worker can be a blessing and a curse. It’s great for a boss to recognize employees are good, but the reward for that shouldn’t always be to pour on the workload. Since good employees tend to have a higher workload, it’s important to ensure they don’t feel overwhelmed causing them to burn out.

Ultimately the culture of an organization determines the scope of employee retention efforts which requires strategic decision making and planning. But to get good employees to stay, it’s simple; ask them what it will take. If you see someone doing great work, recognize it and reward it but don’t’ forget to find out how you can empower them to continuously deliver.

Google Wants Kids to Search the Darndest Things

Kids say the darndest things — and what they do say may make Google's search engine something of a mind reader.

Search engines already finish your sentences. Start typing "president" into Google or Bing or Yahoo and you're immediately presented choices you may have been thinking of. But, as you see from the examples below, the choices vary widely:

They also assume some pretty non-obvious things, like I am interested in politics, or in a particular president — or, as in the case of Bing, that I am a Turkish national?

Also, that I am probably an adult.

What if Google knew more about me before I touched a key?

A newly-revealed initiative by Google may be an important building block for an enhanced search engine that could further zero in on what I really want to know. In a lengthy interview with USA Today, Google VP of Engineering Pavni Diwanji talks about a "Google for Kids" initiative that would tailor some products for the under-13 set.

While she talks about protecting and serving kids (and their parents) it's not hard to connect some dots. This is a powerful way to achieve something it failed to do with Google+ — learn who its users are.

Diwanji recounts a story involving her own daughter, who pointed out the biggest flaw in the world's most-used search engine. It happened when she Googled 'trains.' "She came to me and said, 'Mommy, you should tell Google about Thomas the Tank Engine, because Google obviously doesn't know about him.'"

The secret to robust search is context, but greatness in search is requiring the searcher to provide as little ad hoc context as possible. It's a good first guess that you might be searching for something others are — hence those predictive type ahead suggestions.

But with more implied context, search can serve up better results. And nobody wants to craft Boolean sentences to refine the yield. We all want to live by the motto: "Do what I mean — not what I say."

Children are a great focus group. Kids searching the darndest things could inform other customizations that will yield results based on the data about me and only me: that I am a fireman, don't eat meat, or own a classic car. Relevant things that I wouldn't even think to mention in any given search session.

Backchannel Editor in Chief Steven Levy, author of "Inside the Plex," sees this as a natural fit. "What Google seems to want to do for children is very much in the spirit of what it wants to do for all of us — show us personalized results," he wrote in reply to an email.

Sure, there are privacy concerns (which Diwanji acknowledges), especially when it comes to targeting children. Google's entire business model is about looking over our shoulders to profile us for marketers, which is why special care and special laws are required when children are involved.

But I think this is a right-headed effort that doesn't exploit children. It leverages their unique thought processes to come up with answers for questions we wouldn't know to ask without them. The array of Google products tailored for children (not clear yet what they will all be) will be controlled by a parental dashboard, not by little Billy and Mary.

Is this right-track / wrong track? Will — should — the other search engines do something similar?