The Temple of Bacon is a Powerful Snack
What do you think about a snack like this? Does it tempt you or is a Temple of Doom? Let us know in the comments.Photos: Christina Harrison Share This!Over at Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar at Disney Springs, they’re serving the Temple of Bacon, a Stonehenge-like configuration of five candied bacon strips covered in chocolate and presented in a smoke-filled dome, all for just $13.00.The bacon is thick-cut and applewood smoked; the milk chocolate comes from around the corner at The Ganachery and has a chipotle ganache. Those are many of our favorite words, all in one sentence. We wanted to love this, truly we did, and we might have been blissfully happy, if not for the smoke.The smoky flavor is so strong that it overpowers everything else. We learned that they pump smoke into the dome via a rubber hose immediately before presentation, which just puts unpleasant pictures in our heads. Both the bacon and chocolate are masked by what tastes like a dump of liquid smoke flavoring. Sigh, we mourn for what might have been.
Wireless sensors and the Internet of Things, WordPress Q & A session, and protecting your creative assets are a few of the events you’ll discover in the October 2015 events calendar.If you’re in southeast Michigan and looking for user experience and web professionals meetups, learning opportunities, or networking events, my curated calendar offers you a quick summary of a wide range of events to learn from and meet colleagues and professionals. While I don’t attend every event on the calendar, I usually make it to one or two events each week. I’d love to meet you. If you see me, stop by and say hi!Importance of BrandingDate: October 7, 2015, 6:00pm to 8:00pmLocation: Bamboo Detroit in Detroit, Michigan (map to Bamboo Detroit)Cost: Free, pre-registration requiredAt this month’s Detroit Design Talk, learn about the importance of branding from Scott Rutterbush of Dine, Drink, Detroit and Tara Gardiner of Gardiner Connections. Intended for local business leaders, entrepreneurs, and startups, the Detroit Design Series is an informative series focused on the importance of design within your business. Enjoy sandwiches from Russell Street Deli during the discussion. WordPress Q&A: Get Your WordPress Questions AnsweredDate: October 12, 2015, 6:30pm to 8:30pmLocation: First National Building in Detroit, Michigan (map and directions to First National Building)Cost: $5.00, pre-registration requiredGet your WordPress questions answered at our Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup quarterly workshop. This is an informal meetup where we’ll have several members available to help troubleshoot and answer your questions for both self-hosted WordPress and WordPress.com sites.Wireless Sensors; Changing IndustriesDate: October 12, 2015, 6:00pm to 8:00pmLocation: TechTown Detroit in Detroit, Michigan (map to TechTown Detroit)Cost: Free, pre-registration requiredFor their October meetup, Mobile Monday Detroit hosts presentations on sensors, how they’ve been used in the past and how the Internet of Things has rekindled interest in using sensors in applications. Gerry Roston, CEO of Civionics and Executive-in-Residence at TechTown Detroit and Al Juarez, Director of Business Development, RX Networks are the guest speakers.PHP DetroitDate: October 15, 2015, 6:00pmLocation: Nexcess in Southfield, Michigan (map to Nexcess)Cost: Free, pre-registration required Learn PHP form validation and how to maintain an open source project at this month’s PHP Detroit meetup. Presenters include Sharon Eddings, who is working on developing a social networking site and mobile games using MIT’s app inventor. Aric Watson, currently working on Nexcess projects, will discuss open source project maintenance.Congrats to my colleague Frank Laszlo and PHP Detroit on re-launching the PHP Detroit group! Lunch & Learn: Intellectual Property for Creative EntrepreneursDate: October 20, 2015, noon to 2:00pmLocation: Bamboo Detroit in Detroit, Michigan (map to Bamboo Detroit)Cost: $15, pre-registration requiredEvery business has intellectual property that needs to be protected. Learn the basics of intellectual property law from Maxwell Goss, an attorney at McDonald Hopkins, PLC. Additionally, you’ll learn how you can protect and maximize your creative assets while avoiding costly conflicts with others.The educational session will cover trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and patents. Intended audience is anyone working in the creative industry from graphic design, architecture, web design and development, social media, writing, publishing, photography, etc. Everything You Need for Killer SEO & Website ConversionDate: October 27, 2015, 6:30pm to 8:30pmLocation: Bamboo Detroit in Detroit, Michigan (map to Bamboo Detroit)Cost: $15, pre-registration requiredAt this evening session and workshop, Scott Kloustin will help you learn the basics of converting website visitors into leads, phone calls, or sales.You’ll learn how to set up your website for key search terms, get better search rankings, and convert traffic, and walk away with the knowledge to conduct your own search engine optimization.Scout Kloustin has worked on the web for over 20 years. He works at Quizzle and MyBankrate, leading search engine optimization and conversion,Share EventsIt’s impossible to include every event happening in our area. Do you know of any metro Detroit events not on the list? Share them in the comments. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading…RelatedJanuary 2016 User Experience and Web Professional EventsWhat to expect from the latest WordPress version, a day in the life of a user experience professional, and tips for meeting your blogging goals are a few of the events you’ll discover in the January 2016 event calendar. If you’re in southeast Michigan and looking for: User experience events…In “Calendar”October 2017 User Experience and Web Professionals EventsA WordPress Q & A workshop, practical tips for accessibility talk, and an evening of lightning talks are a few of the events you’ll discover in the October 2017 events calendar. Each month I compile a calendar of user experience and web professionals events in southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio…In “Calendar”August 2019 User Experience and Web Professional EventsWhat user experience (UX) and web professional events are happening this month in southeast Michigan? Find out in my monthly events calendar! If you work on the web, you know it’s a challenge to keep your skills up-to-date, learn about new methods, and network with fellow web workers. And it…In “Calendar”
As HR and talent acquisition leaders, we are always looking for cost effective and creative ways to make your recruiting dollars go the extra mile. The market for best in class experienced candidates will remain extremely competitive as unemployment rates continue to drop, which leaves many companies looking to new options to fill their hiring needs. Because of this an increasing number of companies are adjusting their work environments in order to attract and train professionals, especially those who have recently graduated from colleges and universities, in an effort to develop raw talent. Inexperienced recent grads can provide a clean slate that a savvy employer can mold into a fantastic employee over time. If you’re serious about looking to recent graduates to fill your hiring needs, consider these four tips to raise the odds of finding long term success with your hire.Leverage Inexperience to Your AdvantageRecent grads are hungry to gain experience, and they also know that their lack of it is their biggest downside. Find tasks or areas of a job that don’t require the new hire to have a wealth of previous experience, but do require that they learn and adapt quickly. Based off how the new hire tackles these tasks you can gain insight into how they would likely learn and perform over time. What’s more, jobs that don’t demand a lot of experience can easily start as low-cost internships and turn into full time opportunities, giving the company the benefit of screening future job candidates on-the-job to get a feel for how they work.Get the Right Culture Fit FirstWhen recruiting recent grads remember you aren’t hiring solely for experience. Focus instead on interviewing and assessing the right personality to fit into your company culture with the end goal of interns becoming permanent full time employees. By looking for a good culture fit, you get to train the candidate exactly how you’d like so they can learn about the business from the ground up. You will build a candidate pipeline and peace of mind knowing you have a candidate who has already proven him/herself and is familiar with your company culture and team, and the candidate will be trained exactly as needed to make sure they thrive in their role. By matching the goals and personality first, you also have a better chance of retaining people longer, simply because they like the organization and know they are supported as a professional.Give a project to them and see how they receive feedback.If you’re still wary of hiring someone with little experience, don’t be afraid to test them with a small project. This can be sent to them via email or hand delivered after an interview. Provide them with a time constraint that would be similar to a current employee (but not too strict, they are likely full time applying and won’t have all day to work on it, a two hour turn around isn’t enough) and see how their work comes in. Does it seemed rushed and sloppy? Is it incomplete and without critical thought? It’s up to you to determine what the most important factors you’re looking for are and how you want to score the project. Just remember that you’re not always looking for the candidate who does it perfectly, but for the candidate that holds the most raw- potential and ability to bring the most long term value to the table.Schedule Your Feedback.Schedule a focused time on engaging and sitting down with recent grads and those you are most interested in hiring, recruiting, promoting and developing especially when it comes to transitioning those interns to permanent positions with your company.While it can be a scary proposition to hire a college graduate with little experience, the upside can be tremendous if you need to scale your team quickly and on a budget. Be sure to give your recruiting efforts real thought ahead of time so you know exactly what type of person you are looking for, and most importantly, what type of company you are. Use this information to formulate a profile of the type of person you’re looking for, the candidate “must haves”, and what type of exercises you think would best convey if the potential hire has the skills you need. It’s not a perfect science, but by keeping these three tips in mind when looking for a new, recent graduate hire, you’ll significantly up the odds of finding someone great that’s ready to join and make an immediate and noticeable impact.
Building a successful career in loss prevention has always been predicated on the commitment to professional growth and development. Working in a business as dynamic as retail, it is essential that we remain flexible in our methods and progressive in our approach to a global retail market. As the business moves forward change comes quickly, and our skills and abilities must evolve to meet the needs and expectations of a new professional standard. But true growth must be built on a solid foundation. Especially when we consider the pace of change, we find that success is largely based on the refinement of the fundamental principles that anchor our skills and our decision making. By expanding on our foundation of knowledge, we give ourselves a stronger and more stable base to build upon. We reinforce our futures by broadening our opportunities.Continuing Education We live in a fast moving world, and both the retail workplace and work force are constantly changing, and changing rapidly. Ideas, information, processes and technologies that seemed to be “cutting edge” not long ago may now appear to be outdated as we continue to move forward at a vigorous pace; and it doesn’t appear as if it will slow down anytime soon. The entire atmosphere of the retail climate is evolving as companies try to keep up with the challenges of a volatile economy and a shrinking world. And if we hope to survive, we have to learn to adapt. The velocity of today’s business world won’t allow us the luxury of falling behind, and we can no longer assume that we’ll be able to find shortcuts that provide a means to catch up with little effort or sacrifice. We have to commit, and continually work for the knowledge and skills necessary to keep in stride. When it comes to managing our careers through these challenges, each of us is faced with a simple choice: We can stand on the sidelines and watch the parade go by, or we can get out front and lead the way. As professionals we have a responsibility to practice our trade with a commitment to excellence. In order to do so, we must continuously enhance our expertise and develop the skills that keep us moving forward. Continuing education further provides us with the opportunity to acquire new and necessary information, demonstrate a conscious, self-directed effort toward personal and professional development, strengthen our qualifications for professional growth, meet the changing demands of the business, explore new roles and responsibilities, and responsibly perform the duties entrusted to us by our companies. Today there is just simply no expectation that we can train for one job (or career) and expect those educational tools to carry us throughout our professional lives. Through continuing education, we allow ourselves the opportunity to learn new approaches to our chosen course of study or specific career path. We can expand our minds and our possibilities into new and exciting areas, stimulating our creativity and enhancing our career options. It provides us with choices, offering a vehicle for change and growth.Making the Investment An education is an investment that we make in ourselves; adding value that provides us with many professional advantages. And while the primary benefits may be fairly clear, there are also several other returns on our investment that can be just as significant:- Sponsor – • It heightens awareness and perspective, allowing us to see things from a different point of view. • The knowledge and information that comes from education is empowering and helps to build confidence. • It helps to make us more adaptable. By providing different choices it teaches us that alternative ideas and approaches might not only work, but might work even better. • It demonstrates a level of commitment. It validates our dedication to growth and self improvement. • An education provides us with options. Expanding our minds will help to expand our professional opportunities.There are many different methods that can be used to help expand our educational opportunities. But by exploring both formal and informal educational options, we can balance our choices based on particular needs, resources and availabilities. These choices should be made based on individual circumstances, finding a balance that works best for you. In the Loss Prevention profession, you have to grow in order to survive. But if you want to do more than survive, you have to cultivate that growth, and make it count.Expand Your Limits When building our educational resume we need to reach beyond the traditional limits of Loss Prevention and expand our learning into other areas of the business—as well as areas beyond the business. When it comes to learning, narrow paths only lead the way to ignorance. By limiting your scope of learning, you’re only limiting your own opportunities. You’re limiting your value and your future. Get creative, and make learning an experience as well as a commitment. You never know what you might find out about yourself. If information opens doors, education provides the key. Regardless of our particular academic venue, we have to be willing to dedicate the requisite time necessary to complete the program and remain committed to the educational process. We can always find dozens of reasons not to continue our education, but none of those reasons will provide you with the answers that you’re looking for. A commitment to learning drives the commitment to career. Find the vehicle that works best for you, and get the engines started.By capitalizing on opportunities to enhance our knowledge and education, we are making an investment in our own future. To learn more about developing your leadership skills and the certification process, visit losspreventionfoundation.org. Stay UpdatedGet critical information for loss prevention professionals, security and retail management delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now