The Mheda Journal

The most recent issue of The MHEDA Journal was mailed out earlier this month. Hopefully, by now you’ve had a chance to take a look at it.

This issue was all about technology, in particular social networking sites like LinkedIn or YouTube. These sites and others like them have rapidly grown in popularity over the last several months. Since we published though, a colleague of mine spoke to David Gewirtz, an author who cautions about the downsides of using such sites. We added a link to the homepage of The MHEDA Journal Online (under the “just In” graphic in the left-hand column) to make sure everyone had access to such timely and important information.

“When communicating information online, says Gewirtz, don’t post anything that could potentially damage your employability: confidential information, company gossip, presenting your employer in a negative light—any of these posts could land you in serious trouble,” the article states. Valuable advice.

Keep reading this blog and checking out our home page for further updates on this and other topics.

Earlier this week, the U.S. International Trade Commission issued a unanimous finding that there is “a reasonable indication of material injury to the U.S. industry producing wire decking caused by unfairly traded imports from China.” This finding is the first step toward a finding of illegal dumping of wire deck imports by China.

The initial petition was brought by domestic wire decking manufacturers and MHEDA members AWP Industries, ITC, J&L Wire Cloth, Nashville Wire Products, along with Wireway Husky, on June 5. On June 25, the Commerce Department initiated an investigation, and the preliminary ruling by the Trade Commission was handed down on July 20. You can read more about the specifics of the investigation here.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. China has denied the claims of dumping, while the companies who brought this petition have been clamoring about it for years. (See the sidebar at the bottom of this article about “The Dumping Problem” that was published almost two years ago.) The findings in the International Trade Commission’s report say that the Chinese imports are priced up to 315 percent lower than their domestic counterparts. That’s pretty significant.

The next step in the process will be another ruling by the end of August as to dumping and subsidies by the Commerce Department.  Look for continued updates in this space and in future issues of The MHEDA Connection and The MHEDA Journal.

A recent CNN news piece talked about how the retailer Best Buy is insisting that job applicants already have a minimum of 250 followers on Twitter. One job opening for a senior manager required at least “two years of mobile or social media marketing experience, a year of active blogging experience, a Bachelor’s degree and 250 Twitter followers.” That’s a lot of cyberspace activity, even in today’s world. But that goes to show that as the job market becomes more competitive, anything that can set a candidate apart can be helpful—for both the employer and the applicant.

Twitter, by the way, is among the fastest-growing Web sites on the entire Internet, and it’s only one of a handful of social networking sites that have a legitimate business purpose. Read the latest issue of The MHEDA Journal Online to learn more about other sites, including LinkedIn, wikiMHEDA, YouTube and more. Use of these sites can help greatly with networking and marketing, and best of all….they’re free!