ToggleGreen Is Live… And Here Is An Invitation

ToggleGreen is live.

3 simple words… not so simple.

I’ve been sitting in the cheap seats as an advisor watching a bunch of dedicated, smart, sometimes frustrated people finally… FINALLY get here.

The ToggleGreen “Alpha” is live.

#whew

Sound the trumpets. Crack open the beers. Time to take a nap.

Of course… since I am typing this, tech gremlins could be messing with us and I have no clue. I can hear their voices yelling, “Dude, you should have waited!!!”

That’s the thing about life in a startup… it changes. All the time.

And sometimes you just have to go live and see what happens.

The hard part about being an advisor is other than advice, introductions and some cheerleading I’m not a lot of help. Not yet.

Saying “You’ve got this” only does so much.

Maybe now I can earn my title.

If you are an IT or Creative pro (Doer) in Minneapolis you should be using ToggleGreen.

This is not some bullshit hype thing… I’m convinced of it to my core.

Paul DeBettignies Speaking At Social Media Breakfast: Get Recruited

 

Next week… May 22nd, 2015 I will be making my 5th (I think appearance) at Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis St Paul. I always look forward to speaking to the group and once again did not let Mykl Roventine finish asking the question if I would be interested before I said yes.

These are my people.

And this is the group that took me in many years ago when the Recruiter and HR community was still anti Social Media. I knew it was going to matter and the SMB folks were speaking my language.

Event: First All Women Hackathon In The Twin Cities

 

This coming weekend (May 16-17, 2015) is what I think is the first all women hackathon in the Twin Cities, Hack The Gap (@HackTheGap)

Twin Cities Geekettes (@TCGeekettes) and Gr8Ladies (@Gr8LadiesMSP) are teaming up to put on the event and LeadPages (@LeadPages) is hosting at their new office space in the Warehouse District.

Around 100 women are coming together to connect with other like-minded women to build out their ideas with software, hardware, any technology. The group aims to elevate the women of the Twin Cities tech community and empower them to lead, innovate, and make as well as inspire other groups in the area to do the same.

A Minnesota Recruiter’s View On Rebranding Minnesota, The Startup Community

Luke asked what is the difference between Silicon Valley and Minnesota startups. I tweeted something like, “In Silicon Valley, they stand up on their chairs and scream. In Minnesota, they whisper.”

Minnesota Startup Community: The Time Has Come For Less Talk and More Walk

That is part of an article I wrote on Minnov8 in 2010.

And this from 2012:

Most, however, are doing nothing more than they did two years ago, and it will not surprise you that I think that is a losing strategy.

So take a step back… think about how your company is doing in recruiting new team members and ask yourself this question… how are you doing?

Are you competing and being aggressive?  Or are you sitting back, waiting for folks to come to you?

If the former, congratulations and keep it up.

If the latter, good luck. You will need it.

The War for Talent: Are Minnesota Tech Companies and Startups Ready?

Why am I going down memory lane?

This weekend at MinneBar 10 there will be a couple of conversations I am looking forward to:

Twin Cities: The startup capital of the “North" | 9:15 – 10:05 Theater

The State of Startups | 11:15 - 12:05 Minnetonka

Presentation At MinneBar: Managing Your IT Career v7 - (Why do recruiters suck so bad?)

 

MinneBar 10 is in two weeks, April 11^th at Best Buy, and I will be doing my annual career maintenance presentation conversation.

You may be wondering about the title:

“Why do recruiters suck so bad?”

Two years ago we had a video malfunction and while that was being fixed and before I started talking about what was on my mind I asked:

“So whaddya want to know?”

First question:

“Why do recruiters suck so bad?”

And the room broke out in laughter. No really, everyone laughed.

Presentation At MinneWebCon: Proactively Managing Your Career

 

MinneWebCon (@MinneWebCon) is around the corner, April 13-14 at the University of Minnesota. I will be speaking and attending for the first time.

This event attracts 300+ attendees, good speakers and great content.

This year’s keynote speakers are Karen McGrane (@karenmcgrane) and Steve Krug (@skrug).

Sessions include content on coding, code reviews, online behavior, Google Analytics, design and what may be the best title of a session I have seen in a couple of years, “All I Ever Needed to Know About Social Media I Learned from the Muppets”.

For more event, speaker, sessions info and history of the conference click MinneWebCon 

To register click MinneWebCon 2015

I have been asked by a couple of developers if I think they should attend and my answer to them was simple… heck yeah.

My presentation is career related and given the news in Minneapolis the past months this is good timing:

Target Layoffs 2015 - Thousands Of Minnesota Jobs Lost

This day, this announcement was coming... I don’t think anyone expected the number to be so large.

Last week Target CEO Brian Cornell had a conference call announced that over the next two years thousands of jobs will be cut as part of a $2 billion a year cost saving program. Most of those cuts will be in the corporate offices of Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park.

Below is the Target press release.

There has been a lot of speculation of who, when, where, what this means for Target and the city of Minneapolis.

It looks like starting this morning and through the rest of the week we are going to find out. I am told some Directors were notified today with Managers and Staff finding out tomorrow and through the week.

As I type this Governor Dayton is giving a press conference following his meet with Brian Cornell.

I was interviewed by Angela Davis of WCCO TV for a story this evening.

Here are some articles from the past week that I think answer most questions that people have at this point. I will try and take on some others tomorrow as we get a better idea of what is going on:

Event: Midwest Capital Call 2015

The next Midwest Capital Call hosted by TECHdotMN is March 5th, 2015.

This is a great event for entrepreneurs who are thinking about or in the process of looking for funding.

One part panel conversation and one part individual Q&A.

Investors attending include:

• Seth Levine, Foundry Group
• Joy Lindsay, Star Tec Ventures
• James Burgum, Arthur Ventures
• Daren Cotter, Angel Investor

Target Layoffs 2015 - 550 Minnesota Jobs Lost

UPDATED:

Target Layoffs 2015 - Thousands Of Minnesota Jobs Lost (Mar ’15)

Target Rescinds Offers (Jan ‘15)

Thoughts On 2014 Target Layoffs (Jan ‘14)

 

The speculation can end now in Minneapolis regarding the impact on Minnesota jobs following the January announcement that Target was closing it’s Canadian stores.

This released from Target this morning:

In January, Target announced the company had made the difficult decision to end our Canadian operations. At that time, we shared there would be a headcount reduction at our U.S. and India headquarters as well. Today we informed impacted team members that approximately 550 positions in Minnesota and 170 in India will be eliminated over time.

That includes approximately 350 Minnesota-based positions that are being eliminated today. The majority of the remaining team members are needed through the closure of the Target Canada stores and their positions will be eliminated following the liquidation period.

All affected team members will remain on the payroll for at least 60 days. In addition, comprehensive severance packages are being given to team members based on their years of service. Additionally, each team member will be provided with career outplacement support. Target will also pay the employer portion of their benefits coverage for the next six months.

This is a difficult day for the Target team but we continue to believe that the steps we are taking are the right ones for the company.

Minnesota Morning… Amazon And Facebook Recruiting In Minneapolis and SportsData Partners With NASCAR

The previous two winters in Minneapolis have not been kind to recruiting pros. Between snow days, wind chill days and school closures interviews were occasionally postponed causing havoc in interview cycles.

A couple of weeks ago I joked with a recruiter in Boston that karma was getting him… he poked fun at me last year about our weather. And now he is dealing with it.

And then karma swung back at me today with the perfectly timed (sarcasm) freezing rain/pellets/hail whatever the heck that was that postponed some interviews today.

I will sit quietly mumbling to myself now…

Amazon Recruiting In Minneapolis

 

This is the third time in the past 15 months that I am aware of with Amazon holding a “job fair” like event. There was this article a couple of months ago:

Amazon’s cloud-computing arm shops for Twin Cities talent