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Hello! I didn’t expect such a quick reply …. :-) Well, obviously I wouldn’t post my job interview experience straight after the interview. First, I would wait until I would know whether I have the job or not and at a later stage I would post it. It would also require a big commitment from the jobseekers’s side to post this reviews otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense. I believe people would share their experiences …. why would they not do it? Nowadays they share pictures, videos, advice, knowledge, other shopping experiences and so on in the internet already. So I wouldn’t worry about that…. once the website would be popular I’m sure it would spread the word easily and quickly. If I would have the technical skills and resources and the financial means I would do it …..

I would suggest you write an email to a potential employer when you are able to solve the employer’s problem (whatever that might be, e.g. they are loosing clients). So don’t just send out CVs via email, try to differentiate yourself by impressing them. You can tell them how you would add value to the company and gain and retain new clients …. My ending in covering letters was always “Motivated regards” .... By the way, in July 2008 you will find a free eCourse on Email Etiquette with an interactive quiz on my website “www.poshmonkey.com”. Good luck!

A dream job (I consider myself of having it as a Business Etiquette Trainer) is the following…. you get up in the morning and look forward to the job and get excited about it…. on Fridays you already look forward to Monday ….. well, actually even at the weekends you try to do something because you are simply so passionate about it ….. you would do this job even if you wouldn’t get paid for it …... you don’t even consider it as a job because it’s pure enjoyment, passion and satisfaction that you feel. I think that if you can turn your most favourite hobby into your profession you can consider yourself as one of the luckiest people in the world. There are so many job-frustrated people out there …..

Get a free Self-Confidence eCourse with 48 tips from my website www.poshmonkey.com. I’m sure it will help you. (In general I would say practice autosuggestion on a daily basis (by saying for example “I’m damn good because …..”) and imagine yourself succeeding at the interview.

Hi JohnPhilip, first of all, writing emails is considered as a less formal medium. “With kindest regards” is recorded in 1830 in the Oxford English Dictionary, but “best regards” isn’t recorded. It could be that it is tranlated from German “Beste Gruesse”. Furthermore, I would say that “kind regards” sounds a bit warmer than “best regards”. By the way, I found out that in Canada “best regards” is more used than “kind regards”. But generally the less formal approach (which is the case when it comes to emails) would be to write: sincerely, kind/best/warm regards, best wishes. As long as you close your email….. since there are also people who don’t even do that! In comparison to the more formal approach in which you would use: sincerely, yours, yours sincerely. “Cheers” I would say is a bit less professional. Wishing someone a good weekend surely doesn’t do any harm to anyone. I would say it could even help you to improve the relationship with the person you write to. When I applied for jobs in the past I used to write in my covering letter “Motivated regards” this just to differentiate myself (again) a bit from other candidates….

My experience in 2005 when I was teaching business subjects to Indian students was that the Management Team (also Indians) asked me to give them a call to make sure that they show up …. otherwise sometimes (not always!) I would have been sitting in the lecture room alone …. how motivating! I’ve been told that this kind of behaviour would be normal. Well, at that time I was not married to an Indian yet, so now I understand that culture a bit better. But being from (a German speaking area in Italy) I could see similarities in terms of reliability with the Italians. Even though I consider myself more German, in terms of language, culture and work ethic.

Dear John Philip!

First of all, thanks for joining my community!!! But also for the topic of debate you’ve chosen which is very interesting. I must say that in the past I also had a picture of myself on my business cards. This for 2 reasons: #1: Without doubt it STANDS OUT ….. and you notice it instantly. If you collect business cards and look at all of them you might wonder why people are not more creative in terms of designing and creating their business cards in order to differentiate themselves. More or less they all look similar and disclose the typical information. A real lack of creativity I would say is the main reason…. #2: Having a headshot on it makes you – I agree fully with you – MEMORABLE to other people you got in touch with. Let’s say you go to a conference and exchange business cards with 40 people …. you come home and realise that you might remember 5 or 6 of them but the others are just names and details that you have. Unless after the conference you took some notes on the reverse side that remind you of what you were discussing with that person.

With regard to your question ‘why not everyone does it’, there are some explanations that I can think of: a) they haven’t thought about it or have never seen one before which showed a person’s face on it b) they are not as fortunate as you by having a nice appearance (they might not be really proud of it and even think it might be more harmful than helpful for their business) c) they might still want to keep some privacy d) they might want to keep it simple and not invest too much money e) they might not want that the picture might be misused for other purposes f) they might want it, but company’s policy might not approve it (This happened to me in 1998 when I suggested to the board members of a Finance Company I was working with. They just wanted to keep it traditionally (boring).

But generally I would say that people lack creativity when it comes to business cards. By the way, it doesn’t always have to be made of paper … have you ever thought of creating it on a piece of fabric, wood, plastic etc.? Obviously it would be more expensive but it could pay off to get other people to spread the word about your business …... Thus, be creative, be different!!!! It gives you the edge!

John Philip, I look forward to hearing from other topics you might find interesting.