Are you an Office Eccentric? If so, you’re amongst the small but vocal minority that makes up 3% of a typical office.New research from Office Angels, no doubt driven by a desire to put people in boxes, identifies six types. Which one are you?

1. Liberal Mediators (31%)- typically middle management types, they’re balanced folks who believe everyone has a right to their say.
2. Bandwagon Opportunists (21%) - , spotting opportunities early with a passion for new ideas.
3. Shop Stewards (19%) - Not quite the “down tools” brigade, they’re found in roles that require dedication and tenacity where a strong sense of self belief comes in handy.
4. Pinstriped Traditionalists (16%) - grafters who look are looking for their next step on the ladder, they’re not big fans of change and are motivated by personal reward.
5. Office Environmentalists (10%) - a growing proportion of workers, they combine professionalism with personal passion and strong ethics, which makes them highly trusted colleagues.
6. Office Eccentrics (3%) - you know who you are!

In the US, it’s all about the money. Well, you’d always had a suspicion, hadn’t you? Go on, admit it. You’re amongst friends here. In this interesting piece from BusinessWeek.com, Keith McFarland gives his top tips for how small business can hang on to staff.

In passing, he mentions that a new, and potentially worrying statistics has cropped up, particularly if you’re a small business. For the first time, a survey has shown that the 71% of top performers in US corporates list salary as one of the three reasons why they’d quite their current post. On the other side of the fence, only 45% of employers thought staff were bailing based on cash.

Thought provoking, particularly as multi-nationals will no doubt be taking their US experiences and applying them this side of the pond. Farland’s final suggestion is possible the most prescient, in summary, “work for a company that knows what it’s doing and where it’s going.” Sounds sensible.

In a recent survey, 38% of respondents who were offered a job, felt that this resulted from searching and applying online. According to a survey from The Conference Board, others felt that they were offered a job, through networking (27%) and via employment agencies (30%).

Unsurprisingly, print didn’t fare well in the survey with only 24% of respondents citing print ads as the source of their offer. The survey was conducted in the US, but the picture is likely to be very similar in the UK. So, there couldn’t be a better time to have a look through the latest vacancies and apply for your next dream job.

The closing date for nominations for Freelancer of the Year Award is drawing close, get your nominations in by the 20th November. This is the third year of the Xchangeteam Freelancer of the Year Awards – the only awards dedicated to freelancers in marketing and creative services.

To nominate a freelance consultant – someone you’ve hired or someone you’ve worked with – or yourself please complete the nomination form on the Xchangeteam website.

We’re also helping to sponsor the event, and will be there on the night - so best of luck and hope to see some of our lovely candidates getting the recognition they deserve.

A very lovely lady wrote to us from Brasil with some questions, and I asked her about our presence in Brasil, here’s what I got back:

Tks Thayer!

I will apply! There’s a lot of interesting jobs!

Well, a friend told me about the site. But, I know that a lot of advertising / web people in brazil knows about you! And the market here (specially in São Paulo) is very big.

So there you go, Chinwag Jobs, big in Brasil!

Wired News had an interesting post today - to summise:

A new startup, ReputationDefender, will act on your behalf by contacting data hosting services and requesting the removal of any materials that threaten your good social standing. Any web citizen willing to pay ReputationDefender’s modest service fees can ask the company to seek and destroy embarrassing office party photos, blog posts detailing casual drug use or saucy comments on social networking profiles.

Now obviously, the immediate advantages personally from something like this are quite obvious. You don’t want your mates to see you in That Bar, or you wouldn’t really want your friends to see what your thoughts were on right wing politics when you were 16.

Now also, think from a recruitment and professional point of view - makes you actually think how much information people do put out there and then regret.

Say you’re going for a job interview, and the company is, as you’d find on us, a web savvy type. They Google your name. What would they find?

Try it. You might be surprised by what you find.

In the days of social connectivity, blogging, shared photos, music and networks, what does your online profile say about you? Or perhaps, what doesn’t it say…?

Behold it’s time for the annual recycling of dire warnings about Christmas party excess. First out of the fate are the PRs at Croner Consulting have with their, “Top Ten Rules of the Yule”, who build on their “Top Ten Rules of the Yule” from 2005, and, oh, “Top Ten Rules of the Yule” from 2004.

Still, it’s all good sensible stuff including avoiding “Tipple Tattle” and poisoning the staff. Strangely, wiping down the photocopier after the inevitable late night ‘accidents’, doesn’t make their top ten. Maybe next year.

According to a recent article in Recruiter magazine, smoking, exercise and shopping are the way we workers combat stress.

I smoke, gym and online shop a fair few times a week, and I think they all add to my stress, rather than help tame it. I’m wondering if smoking on the treadmill, whilst being on the ‘phone to the nearest computer game stockist for a latest fix might be my cure…

… that or the pub of course

Apologies to anyone who has had problems accessing Chinwag, Chinwag Jobs or getting emails through to us over the last 24 hours. A Distributed Denial of Service attack has been hammering the DNS servers that we use. Unless you’re a geeky type who knows their DNS onions, we’ve put together a quick guide to what’s going on: Distributed Denial of Service Attack Information (pdf)
The effects are rather strange, whilst one PC in an office might be able to see a site, others may not. Both Chinwag and the DNS hosting company have taken steps to resolve this. It may take 4-6 hours for the full details to spread across the Internet. Sorry for the hassle.