Everyone in college, who has been to college or who is working should watch this video.

Wow.

I ordered a new pair of batting gloves for softball season since my stuff is in storage and I won’t have it back in time (Packrat). The order arrived the day that our team was removed from the league for too few players (pre-season injuries).

Obviously, I planned to return the item. I went through the normal steps of starting that process and this happened.

Way to exceed my expectations Amazon! I’m sure there is some element of shipping cost vs. purchase price, but this is pretty awesome.

How would your company have handled this issue?

Use cases are tough.

You have to take the product or service you love and condense all of that goodness into a few quick stories or proof points. Many companies are doing a use case per feature these days.

To me, that doesn’t always work because you may have 10 “use cases” and only 2 appeal to the average user.

Google just nailed this. Google Now / Search is powerful. Maybe even all-knowing. It is easy to describe, but difficult to grasp.

Enter a well done use case and experience:

Now, all we have to is emulate this experience with all of our products. :)

It is time to review your privacy settings.

Specifically, your Facebook Likes and activities. 

Facebook Graph Search is pretty awesome. Imagine nearly endless pivots for search criteria.

Now imagine all of the data captured through your Facebook use since you joined. Crap.

In college, tons of people liked (at least on Facebook) drinking, hooking up, smoking weed, partying, sleeping late, etc. Now, Facebook has given users the power to find which of those poor saps left that information public.

Here’s an example that could ruin marriages. A recent app, Bang with Friends, has been going viral on Facebook and in tech press. Imagine Hot or Not except you’re picking folks you would like to hook up with – by folks, I mean friends. Don’t worry… they’ll only see it if they want to hook up with you too. A little panic, but many are okay with that. For single folks, go for it. But, that would be too easy.

Suppose someone is married. They add Bang with Friends and remove it from their activity feed so their spouse doesn’t see it. Whew. Close one. They carefully prune through their friends to pick the potential hook-ups that would use discretion to protect the sanctity of their marriage (cough). Not so fast. Most relationship statuses are public. Facebook shares your app usage. Want to see what that looks like?

Search women, men, location, religion, etc. This ain’t gonna be pretty.

At the end of the day, don’t be stupid. Don’t do stuff like this. Here is a detailed guide to make sure you don’t get caught with your pants down.

Sorry Lebron, you don’t have 7 years experience.

What if Cleveland would have said that before they drafted Lebron? Clearly, you have talent kid! But, we’re really looking for someone who has done this for a professional team for 7 years or more. Also, a certification or professional degree is preferred.

You just passed up on the most talented person!

Job descriptions drive me crazy.

They drove me crazy before I had experience. They drive me crazy with experience.

As a company, you should want the best talent. The world is changing. While the best choice at the time could have tons of experience and meet all of your requirements, you may be missing out on the candidate who can make the larger long term impact.

What if professional sports placed a higher emphasis on a body of work than they did potential? Think about that for a minute.

Stare at this while you think for a minute.

Experience can often times be the safest choice. You can grab a veteran who has been there before. But, things start to get interesting when you take someone with a decent amount of experience and a much higher upside. Do you grab the veteran and milk them for a few years or do you try to foster and groom the potential franchise player?

Sticking with sports, this can burn you. There are flops. Some picks don’t pan out. But, if you stay in your risk averse world, you’ll miss out on Lebron, Kobe, Durant, Kyrie or any other young star.

Look for passion. Look for natural talent (even if raw). Look for someone willing to bust their ass for you. The filters you build into the job requirement could eliminate the person you need.

Here are some of my favorite job descriptions, the best job descriptions in my mind:

• Cowpoke / Intern at Lowercase Capital – “Tony Hsieh calls you when he is feeling unhappy”
• A reddit engineer - “prove or disprove that P = NP”
• Any job description at Woot - “It’s not just a job – it’s paid employment”
• Any job with ze frank – “You should have sent at least one email to someone you have never met telling them that they should stop using tables.”

They’re looking for talent. Plain and simple.

Don’t misinterpret me.

There are *incredible* hires with *tons* of experience. My point is that you should not create restrictive requirements if you’re looking for the best person for the job. Throw an incredibly bright 26 year old in the room with an extremely experienced candidate and see what happens. Hire slow, fire fast. Note: I am much older than 26.

Talent is hard to find. It is even harder to retain. Keep that in mind (please).

Spoiler alert: Cleveland hired, but couldn’t retain Lebron.

Image via usfbps