On the map

PeopleMaps Facebook Application - Psychologist in a Box

The PeopleMaps Facebook application was launched last week - it's called Psychologist in a Box.

Facebookers complete the very same questionnaire that ever other PeopleMaps visitor does - and they get to display a set of 5 specially created mini-profiles on their Facebook home page. They're able to see their friends' profiles, and can vote to "agree" or "disagree" with them.

Well over two and a half thousand Facebookers have installed Psychologist in a Box already - and we're hoping to release some new features soon to increase value for them. It's a truly useful Facebook addition, in a landscape of thousands of time sucking activities, and we believe it's the only personality-based application on there derived from a professional psychology base.

Do you Facebook? Download Psychologist in a Box and add something useful to your FBProfile.   

Running for Our Lives - Donations Wanted

Get your plastic out, please - we're looking for donations. All in the name of charity, of course.

Yes, Martin G and Julie have formed a small team of 2 called PeopleMaps Athletic. We''re tackling the Meadows Half-Marathon in March in support of Sport Relief. The Meadows Marathon is run voluntarily by students of the University of Edinburgh, and 2008 will be its 2nd year. Last year they raised a whopping £10k for Sport Relief - their largest donation from a student body.

We've been running in atrocious conditions every morning with the goal of completing the route before the sun sets. This week we tackled extreme snow blizzards, flooding, torrential rain, hail storms, gale force winds and one day the sun even shone upon us.

But we don't want your sympathy - we want your CASH! Please click now and make a donation - and here comes the sales pitch : Sport Relief harnesses the power and passion of sport to change lives for the better. By doing sport, having fun and raising money, everyone can do good and feel good. Comic Relief spends the money to help vulnerable people living incredibly tough lives both at home in the UK and in the world's poorest countries.

You can make a difference - Donate Here

Online Recruitment Awards Finalist

A great start to the New Year!

PeopleMaps has been shortlisted as a Finalist in the Onrec Awards 2008 Best Technical Innovation Award category. A great big thanks to all of you that took the time to nominate us.

Winners are announced at the Awards Ceremony on 5th March.
Fingers crossed everyone please ...

Yule Tidings and Christmas Cheer

If you're just counting down the minutes until you break for the holidays, you might like  this small amusement. From left to right - Martin, Julie, Martin J Smith and Craig. (Speakers on helps. Suitable for any age. Takes a minute or so to load. Worth waiting for - you'll want to do your own.)

Anyway, we're sending you all very best wishes at this special time - and we've made a donation to Oxfam in lieu of Christmas cards.

Wherever you are, and whatever your plans, we do wish you and yours a peaceful holiday and a very prosperous New Year and look forward to speaking to you again in 2008.

Mindplay. Another aspect of psychology.

Friday night saw our friend and super star, Drew McAdam entertain and amaze us. No spoons were safe, nor secrets, nor numbers, nor wee squiggly pictures. If you get a chance to catch his show I urge you to take it as it will open up your mind as to what psychology can achieve. Drew does Mindplay, please check out his web site for a more detailed explanation. All I can tell you was that were were all amazed and intrigued.

Psychology comes in many forms and is applied in many ways. PeopleMaps helps people understand themselves and others with Jungian psychology, drew uses it in another way entirely. An amazing evening. Thanks Drew.

A great big thank you

PeopleMaps enjoys a diverse range of clients that sign up each day. From online sweet shops to safari parks - with businesses in South Africa and our own home town of Glasgow, employers are recognising the value of psychometric testing and personality profiling for staff recruitment and development.

We just wanted to take a little time out to say a great big thank you to all those customers, far and wide. Here's just a few:

Independent special secondary day school for girls

Improving and maintaining the UK's roads

Management consulting and technology advisory group

Deep clean your carpets like a pro!

Recruitment solutions

Business focused database systems

Make your friends' day..... with Zubka

We're loving this from PeopleMaps' Partner, Zubka:

A brand new way for companies to find great staff, Zubka asks people like you to recommend friends and professional contacts to a huge range of UK and international jobs.

If the person you recommend takes the role, Zubka pays you a BIG cash reward.

As the world's most rewarding referral recruitment service, Zubka's rewards are huge - ranging from £1,200 to £12,000, with an average reward of £3,600 - for each and every job! These rewards are in addition to the £100 introduction fee Zubka referrers receive each time someone they introduce makes a successful referral. With over £2 million of rewards currently waiting to be claimed on the site, now is a great time to sign up and see how much you could earn.

Zubka is a great way make your friend's day by referring them to vacancies on Zubka - and earning you some extra cash in the process! If you want your friends to worship you forever and are currently looking for work, get them to sign up and recommend you for roles - but make sure they buy you dinner with their reward!

Click over to www.zubka.com today to explore and sign up.  Easy to use, fast and free, Zubka tells you the minute an interesting job pops up that would suit someone you know, and guides you step-by-step through the process. With jobs currently advertised by FT.com, New Look, Claire's Accessories, L'Oreal, Tesco.com Capgemini, and GlaxoSmithKline, it's a great time to join Zubka's referral recruitment revolution.

How to recruit the right person for the job

One of the biggest problems in industry is making sure everyone is doing the job they're best at. To solve this problem once and for all, the government set up a task force to conduct a comprehensive study of companies and come up with a way of matching job candidates against jobs. After months of research, the taskforce formulated an ingenious way of doing this.

What you do is: put a big pile of bricks in a room. Then put a few candidates in the room and observe them till 5pm and see what they get up to.

1. If they count the bricks, put them in the accounts department.
2. If they count the bricks, then recount them. Put them in auditing.
3. If they've separated out the chipped or broken bricks, put them in quality control.
4. If they've hidden all the chipped and broken ones and categorically deny their existence, put them in PR.
5. If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, put them in engineering.
6. If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order that defies logic, put them in planning.
7. If they have broken the bricks and come up with a reason no one can understand, put them in IT.
8. If they say they have tried everything, yet not a single brick has been moved. Put them in sales.
9. If they have already left for the day. Put them in marketing.
10. Finally, if they've had a long meeting but can't decide what to do with the bricks, give them a huge bonus and make them the board of directors.

Happy Friday! And thanks to Sunil Sharma for sending us that little ditty.

Great teams make great companies make great profits

Personalities play a big part in team dynamics - we don't have to tell you that!

Understanding those personalities and how they can work together most successfully can take quite a bit of work.

What's that? PeopleMaps has just released a personality profile report that can tell you all of that in minutes?

A report specifically for Team Building? Yippeeeeeee....

PeopleMaps on the Radio

Martin was up very late last night, being interviewed by Richard Bacon on Radio 5 Live. A light-hearted interview, it was prompted by the Association of Graduate Recruiters 6 monthly HR Survey which suggests that 92 per cent of leading graduate employers thought personality tests were a "useful" or "very useful" tool in selecting candidates.

PeopleMaps provided the panel members with their own reports, and of course, we were delighted to hear the reports were spot on.

I also stayed up late to listen to the interview, fell asleep and thought I'd missed it, but woke up just in time. If you'd like to "listen again", you can select the "latest show" Monday  show for Anita Anand (whom Bacon was substituting for) on the BBC Radio 5 Live Programmes website (fast-forward to 2hr 45m).