Craig and Lars welcome 2017 and discuss Amazon Echo Vs. Google Home, some killer app, and great tunes. Plus Lars talks about writing his new book Employer Branding for Dummies available now on Amazon!

This podcast is a follow-up to an article Craig Wrote for SHRM prior to the 2016 annual conference about how background checking can challenge your candidate experience. Gerry Crispin and I talk with Richard Seldon at Nick Fishman of Sterling Talent Solutions to discover just what is the right approach to the background screening process to ensure a great experience for job candidates.

Craig and Lars dish tech on this mid-summer 2016 episode of The Cool Tools Show featuring mobile text scanning apps CTRL-F, Scannable, and more reviewing which are the best and features of each as well as blog and research paper writing apps WriteWell and Grammarly. We mix in a great website forum tool called Muut as well as an email helper called MixMax.

As usual we have lots of fun and silliness with some cool tunes at the end. Can you say Yacht Rock? Join us, won't you?

Craig and Lars kick off 2016 with a list of their top 16 apps for 2016. Learn what's interesting about Evernote, Wonderlist, Sunrise, Balanced, Hootsuite, PhotoShop Fix, Headspace, Suggestions, IceCream, Podcasts, Facebook Pages App, Kindle, Font Candy +, TuneBox, and more.

More job seekers are applying for work from their cell phones. Employers who are trying to push mobile recruiting say that in the tightening job market, it's important to be on the small screen. http://www.npr.org/2015/12/08/458889853/mobile-recruiting-is-the-new-way-to-reach-job-seekers

Marcus Buckingham chats with Craig Fisher at the 2015 SHRM annual conference about his research that shows performance management is broken and that we determine promotions and raises in the workplace based on bad data. He also discusses how he rebuilt his company, TMBC, to better address these issues at a team leader level by strategically combining technology and coaching to help organizations know and grow.

Meddle™ is a content marketing tool for subject matter experts

What if you could become an industry influencer by simply offering perspectives on content you read, without quitting your day job?

Or even better, what if your entire workforce became influencers and ambassadors for your company? Imagine the reach and impact you would have; the market share you would win.

Cool Tools Show hosts, Craig Fisher and Lars Schmidt talk with Meddle founder Vidar Brekke and CMO Ted Coine in this fun exploration of the tool, plus much more.

We end as always with more cool tool recommendations plus some cool tunes as well. And in this one there is some bonus material you won't want to miss.