Tag Archives: Product Review

Republic Wireless: I’m a Convert

Today I’m doing the raving fan thing and bragging on my new cell provider. I love these guys and have been recommending them to people around me for weeks!

I just passed one month with Republic Wireless, and I’m definitely a convert. When I left Pinnacle to join the Brandon Hall Group recently I had to transition to a new phone. My wife was with Verizon and I was with T-Mobile for work, and I knew two things:

  1. T-Mobile coverage is awful where I live
  2. Verizon is entirely republic wireless logotoo expensive

So I started looking at other providers and found Republic Wireless.

The company offers an amazing price (my plan is $25/mo), unlimited talk/text/data, and the service is pretty darn good where I live/work. Win-win-win!

How it works

  • Republic uses the Sprint network to provide cell coverage, but you never actually interact with Sprint. It’s seamless.
  • The phones Republic offers are hybrid phones: they can use wifi for texts and calls. That allows them to keep costs down.
  • No contracts or bait and switch pricing. The phone is yours.
  • They have 4 simple to understand plans. No tricky options or other gimmicks.
  • You buy a phone. You pick a plan. You smile as you cut off your gigantic cell phone bill.

My favorite features

  • The Moto X is an excellent phone. Easily the best phone I’ve ever owned.
  • Change plans up to twice a month with no penalties. For instance, while at the SHRM conference in Orlando I was able to upgrade to the 4G plan to ensure I had the best/fastest service possible. Now that I’m home I changed it back to my regular 3G plan. I’ll be charged the 4G rate only for the days I had the service active.
  • Wifi calling! I work a few days a week from a small office near my home. Signal is spotty in the building, but I’ve held calls on wifi up to 30 minutes without issue.
  • My wife has the less expensive Moto G and likes it. She is more of a casual user, so we settled on that one and dropped her old $100 a month plan for the $25 Republic option.

As I said, I’m a convert and would encourage you to check them out if you are paying an arm and a leg for your cell service. Any questions? :-)

ZipRecruiter-My Test Run

I like recruiting. For those that know me well, it’s funny, because I really am not that outgoing or verbose in person.

So why do I love recruiting? Maybe it’s because I get to talk about the place I work. Maybe it’s something else. But one of my biggest frustrations with recruiting is the time it takes. As a generalist I have a thousand other things to take care of at any given moment. I usually get off pretty easy, because I can get enough interest from a simple post that I don’t have to actively source candidates, but sometimes due to the position or location I have a harder time than usual.

That leads to more time spent searching and less time to devote to the other day-to-day activities I have to manage. If I could just get more applicants from a single post, that would save enormous chunks of time for me.

A potential solution?

The other day I received an email pointing me to ZipRecruiter. I’d never used or heard of the service, so I checked it out since I had a new position to post that day. I have to say that I really liked the interface and the ability to post to multiple job sites (including Craigslist). If you are looking for a tool that lets you post your jobs instantly to multiple sites, I recommend checking out ZipRecruiter to see if it might help you save some time and effort. I set it to automatically send people to our job posting in SmartRecruiters so I didn’t have two places to monitor applications.

My experience (your mileage may vary)

After more than a week of having our job posted through their service, I have not noticed an increased number of candidates from our usual flow. That could be due to the position type/location, but those are the facts as far as our job posting goes. Anyone else used ZipRecruiter before and have an experience to share?

CAREEREALISM Club and Getting a Job

I’m running a series on some of  the companies I’ve interacted with that I think are worth mentioning. It’s not exhaustive, but I’ve been meaning to share these things for a while now. With that, let’s roll…

careerealismCAREEREALISM

Who they are

CAREEREALISM is a company that was founded by the career coach J.T. O’Donnell. J.T. is a fantastic person who I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with, and I’ll never forget the first thing she said to me that showed me her true character. I asked her who the “head honcho” was at her company, and she replied with this great quote:

“I’m the founder… So, while I may be technically ‘in charge.’ the company is actually governed via the team’s efforts.”

I knew right away that she was going to be a great person to interact with. The company as a whole is made up of a small team of people working on their website and other programs.

What they do

So, they obviously have a website, but what else is there? Well, for a long time, there was a cool program called “TAP” where a few trusted people (somehow I weaseled my way onto that list) would give advice via Twitter on different career questions. Eventually that played itself out (after we ended up answering over 500 questions!), and they moved onto other way cooler programs like the CAREEREALISM Club.

This thing is amazing. There are hours and hours of videos, recorded webinars, and other resources to help job seekers find their dream career. Plus, the free eBooks, personalized career coaching, and interaction/support from other job seekers are nothing to laugh about. Every week there are live chats on the private network where you can ask questions, share war stories, and learn more about getting a job than you could ever use.

In short, check it out.

Why you need it

If the features above don’t sell it for you, let’s look at a few more. If you are looking for a job, there are so many things that you don’t know. It’s not like you spend your time finding out the best ways to apply for jobs or where to go for networking tips that are more than “here’s a resume/business card/something to throw in the trash.” The CAREEREALISM Club is described by J.T. as a “Career HMO.”

Another neat benefit is that it takes it further than just getting a job. It gives you help with what to do once you start the job like managing your boss, setting expectations, and making a great impression on your new coworkers.

If you are looking for the career resource to help you find and get that next job, then I highly recommend that you check out CAREEREALISM Club today.

Stay tuned, because I’ll be bringing you more recommended resources in the coming weeks!

What the heck is a Gruzzle?

So… What is a Gruzzle? That\’s what I said the first time I spoke with G.L Hoffman, a brilliant blogger and entrepreneur with a penchant for word puzzles that stimulate surprisingly deep thinking. Actually it\’s fairly simple. A Gruzzle is a combination graph and puzzle. And they are fantastic for generating conversation and new ideas.

Leadership Lessons via Gruzzle

Leadership Lessons via Gruzzle

G.L. is working to spread the word about these things, and I enjoy them more than enough to share a few with you. He has created dozens of them and incorporated them into a few packages that are targeted toward HR professionals. The first ones I saw were the onboarding group, and that\’s when I knew he was onto something special. If you are looking for straight talk, then look no further. He helps you to tell employees like it is, and it can help to develop some desperately needed communication.

Stuff you need to know

Stuff you need to know

Sometimes it\’s hard to say what really needs to be said. It can be awkward or just plain weird. Want some help? How about this one?

Starting the hard conversations

Starting the hard conversations

If you\’d like to know more or order your own pack of HR Gruzzles, contact him on Twitter or via the contact page on his blog. I’m going to do another post on this in the future, but don’t you want to grab one before they’re everywhere?