Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year! ⛄🎄🕎 Tips on Taking Better Photos

Tips on taking better pictures this holiday season -

Just walk. Stroll with confidence toward or past the camera to catch some natural movement.

Hold something in your hand.

Relax your body by casually leaning against a wall.

Wear comfortable clothing: Choose outfits that fit well and make you feel confident. 

Relax your body language: Avoid stiff postures, slightly turn your body to the side, and shift your weight naturally. 

Engage with your surroundings: Interact with people around you, look at something interesting, or use props to feel more relaxed. 

Natural smile: Focus on smiling with your eyes, not just your mouth, to appear genuine. 

Find your best angle. Take photos of yourself. Use the idea of a clock and turn your head while taking selfies. Find your best angle. Mine is at 10.  

Don't overthink: Embrace the moment and let go of trying to perfect every pose.  

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy New Year! ⛄ 🎄🕎

New Roof, New Office and New Market!!

 

The new roof is on!  It’s truly a relief to have a solid roof over our heads. I’m excited to build out the damaged room into my new home office.  I’ll have a lot more room and a quieter location.   My town is slowly cleaning up - homes and businesses are being fixed.

The people of Florida are resilient and incredibly strong-willed, and we’re excited to work with them. Our firm is continuing to expanding into the Florida market. We’ll always work with our client/candidate base in California, but it’s been exciting to connect to new companies and people.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends, family, clients and candidates from Coast to Coast. May your Thanksgiving Day be filled with love, laughter and joy.

Progress

 

Progress! On the home front we have the shingles dropped for the roof and are waiting for the permits to be approved.  It’s nice to see progression and a relief to get this process started. Our neighborhood is getting cleaned up slowly and everyone is in the process of repairing their homes.   

Workwise we felt a slowdown a few months before the election and heard about a lot of real estate construction projects being put on hold or scrapped and sold. Now I’m hearing that the market is freeing up. I’m hopeful that since we are past the election cycle we can all get back to work! 

Helene and Milton

 

Whew - we made it through Helene and Milton. Most of our clients and candidates were very understanding about our situation.  Getting prepped for a hurricane is a lot of work and the clean up after is a lot. We were lucky that there was minimal damage to our property.  My sons patched the roof and added a tarp until we get a new roof put on. Our neighbors got hit hard with two rounds of flooding – all their possessions were on the curb. My town hadn’t been hit by a hurricane in 100 years.  

We’ve all been trying to show grace to everyone. We’ve been helping neighbors and they've helped us. Thank you to our clients who understood our situation.  Interestingly, we discovered some people don’t have any grace. One of the people we were working with at The AG with was upset that we couldn’t get back to them during this emergency. I found their lack of empathy shocking and it’s not anyone we’ll be sending to a client. 

Dave always had a saying framed and it was the only picture on the wall that got wet. Here's what it says - 

“It’s easiest enough to be pleasant,

When life goes by like a song.

But the man worth while is the man,

With a smile when every thing goes

Dead Wrong.”

2024 Hiring Trends

 I’m seeing a few trends in hiring right and it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out –

  

A big push back with working from home, especially for anyone in the finance and accounting world. Employers want them back in the office with little to no work from home.

Hiring people over 35 is trending.  Yes, ageism is in reverse. I’m hearing the younger generation doesn’t want to work. They are on their phones more than working and have challenges with communication and interpersonal skills.

Employers don’t want to hire anyone who’s moved around a lot. Understandable if it’s been 10 – 15 years of constant change. But if they had movement during Covid it’s a hiring mistake not to talk to them. The average person moved 3 times during Covid.  A lot of people had to move jobs due to issues with their industry/company and it wasn’t by choice.

Fear – people are fearful right now because of the economy and the political climate. It’s been putting a damper on hiring. 

No Notes and a new recruiter at our firm!!!

 

The last two months I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a lot of Dave’s clients and listen to their stories about him. It’s been awesome to hear how many people he’s helped over the last 30+ years.  Dave has helped people since they first graduated from college until now!  A funny musing anyone he knows well he never kept notes on them – he’d just remember everything about them. So, it’s been an interesting process with no notes – I’m interviewing people that the firm has known for years just to complete their file – we like to get as much detail as possible, so we place them at a great company!

Exciting news - we have a new recruiter at the firm, Sharon Ryder. She has over 25 years of experience recruiting and is excellent with sales, marketing and biz dev people.   Call us, she’d be happy to assist any of your recruiting needs.

 

Dave is retired from The Ankenbrandt Group. We’ve spent over 30 years working together recruiting, arguing, negotiating, and laughing about work while managing the firm. I remember my first recruiter job description written on a napkin from a local coffee shop, my first deal closing and all the months of work to get to that point. Since then, there’s been lots of deals and many ups and downs, but we’ve always held our standards high at the firm and continued our good work.  The family company has been a challenge and a pleasure for me.  I’m excited to take the helm and continue to recruit for our amazing clients.

Dave will be missed but for us he’s just a phone call away – unless he’s offshore fishing.