Welcome to my personal homepage! As a business consultant, writer, entrepreneur and tinkerer who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, I never have a boring day.

Actually, I cannot remember ever having one, in my life.

Of course, things can get slow sometimes. The way I see it, that's a great opportunity to add a dose of excitement, by learning something new. Don't you love a challenge?

The added knowledge, refined skills, or newly acquired tricks of the trade come in handy when things heat up again. They always do.

How to Write For Results

Why this page may upset you, you ask? Well, I hope it doesn't. But what if I told you that the headline was solely designed to draw website visitors or readers in? To draw you in!

If you have read on to this point, you likely agree that a headline, text or "landing page" should grab the site visitor's attention, and not let go. Would a headline like "Welcome on my homepage!" have piqued your curiosity? Probably not. Kindly forgive my playfulness, and if you are looking for a writer who can help you draw in new business, contact me!

How I get things done...

Recruitment
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Hiring for a business that is active both in the U.S. and in Germany?

The GERMANY-USA Career Center provides recruiting and career services and useful resources.

It has grown into the premier online recruiting source for companies with operations both in North America and in Germany.

Consulting
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Recent consulting assignments mostly involved

  • online / offline recruitment
  • career site development
  • business-to-business (b2b) & business-to-consumer (b2c) marketing
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • eCommerce & Social Media integration

Writing
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Professional writing (and research) has been a part of my life for more than three decades.

The basic rules of the craft, in my view, remain the same in the age of web publishing, Social Media and Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

  • Know your reader! (...in order to achieve the intended results...)
  • A good writer is always learning.

As a former journalist who got his start as a copywriter for mail order catalogs, I learned a thing or two about writing copy that sells.

My company biography "SAP - Inside the Secret Software Power" was published in the U.S. by McGraw-Hill, to critical acclaim, and also in Germany (Hoffmann & Campe Verlag) and China (IDG). I have worked as TV reporter, news magazine technology editor and senior editor, and my technology and business stories have been published by media in the U.S., including The New York Times, in Europe and in Asia.

Later, as Director of Public Affairs for the Silicon Valley / San Francisco Peninsula branch of America's largest trade association, I oversaw print and online membership publications, PR and marketing efforts, and contributed to the real estate sections of print and online media in Silicon Valley, the East Bay and nationwide.

The GERMANY-USA Career Center, a specialized niche recruitment platform, was launched in 1997. It grew out of an early online "social network" that I had started with friends. Today, it serves U.S. companies doing business in Germany, and German companies active in North American markets.

Affiliations

As an instrument-rated pilot, I enjoy flying my personal aircraft for business and pleasure. The photo at the top of this page was taken from the left seat, one beautiful San Francico Sunday morning in 2009. I am also a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), and support General Aviation, because General Aviation Serves America.

In Rotary International's Centennial Year 2004/2005, I was honored to serve as President of the University Rotary Club of Palo Alto (Stanford) in California, and later also served as President of the Falmouth Rotary Club on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.


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Links / Resources

Some links you may find useful, interesting or - hopefully - amusing, in no particular order:

How to contact me
Drop me an email!
Email:

Skype Meâ„¢!

Client Testimonial

We hired Gerd to work with us on copy for our new US website. He had excellent ideas, worked well with me and my goals and made suggestions that improved the project.

He is excellent and we will hire him again in the future."

Frank Simon
Ecce Terram USA

What I've Been Working On

Career Center Solutions

Industry publishers reclaim a revenue source: online job advertising. This is bad news for 3rd-party job board networks and resume database aggregators.

To add revenue, trade publishers and associations deploy turn-key, industry-specific resume database and job advertising solutions under their own brand.

Background: Since 2008, many employers have turned their back on "one size fits all" recruitment sites. They demand better value and industry focus from their online recruitment solution providers.

Re-enter the trade publishers, with strong brands and industry focus. Due to my background both in publishing and online recruitment, I was approached to help develop a turn-key, ecommerce-ready Career Center solution.

It combines "best practices" in online publishing and online recruitment, and can be flexibly deployed as a microsite "out of the box" on trade publication and association websites.

Other specs: Easy to configure and maintain by non-IT staff, dynamic search engine optimization (DSEO), Social Media recruitment tool integration.

That's what I've been working on lately. Where to get it? Ask me!

Been There. Done That.

My historic museum of irrevocable words and deeds.

  • SAP - Inside the Secret Software Power (McGraw-Hill Business Publishers, 2000)

    Gerd Meissner: SAP - Inside the Secret Software Power