Job Hacking

You wouldn't write a bad resume, would you?

Everyone needs a resume.

Before you write, or re-write, your resume, what's the key consideration?

Your audience.

You have to ask yourself, "Am I writing this resume for me, or for the recruiter/hiring manager?"

This sounds like a silly question. Why would I write a resume for myself?

Probably 80 - 90% of the resumes I see are Vanity Resumes. They tell the reader a lot about why the resume's owner thinks they are great. They do not tell the reader why they should hire the resume's owner.

The first indicator of a Vanity Resume is an Objective Statement that looks something like this:

I'm looking for a technology leadership role that will provide me with an opportunity to continue to improve myself and further my career. The ideal role is at a well-funded, leading-edge startup where I can apply my current skillsets and make an impact while working with a group of bright, talented people who will continually challenge me.

Vanity is all about the self, so count the number of times "I", "myself", "my" and "me" are used.  Second, if you think this objective statement looks O.K., think about this: How does this help the hiring manager know that you are the ideal person for their key role? From a needs-based selling perspective, how does this so-called objective statement meet the needs of the reader? Finally, if you're not convinced yet, think about why this text could not be applied to everyone, so at minimum, it does nothing to differentiate yourself from any other candidate.

A better objective statement:

VP of Development

With this, the reader clearly knows what you've applied for, and possibly, how you'll help them.

Bad resume = Vanity resume

HR Laws: The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

Today, the NY Times has a nice article on a proposed civil rights law, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, that will likely be signed by President Obama in the near future.

If you 'came of age' as a technology leader during the GW Bush Administration, this is a mandatory read.

From the aforementioned article, "It was the second time in four months that Congress has rejected restrictive interpretations of civil rights laws by the Supreme Court. In September, Congress repudiated several rulings that had undercut the Americans With Disabilities Act."

What you should be reading into this Mr./Ms. Leader is that Congress is pushing back on the Supreme Court and letting everyone know who establishes the laws in this land, and it doesn't cotton to narrow interpretations. So, it's now getting easier for those with civil rights grievances to win in court, unlike the previous 8 years where it was getting progressively harder.

BTW, if you ever wonder why salary ranges for roles are not freely available in a company, this is one of the reasons why.

Your Valuation

Ever wonder what you should do to stay employed in this economy?

Constantly prove your value.

That word, 'value' has been bandied about a lot over the last decade, and is a recurring biz-speak word. I hate it because most people who use it don't define what it means.

Here's what it comes down to: Your work needs to improve the financial position of the business. This is illustrated most clearly by tracking your performance. Did you beat your sales quota? Did you save money? Did you improve profitability? These are the big three: Sales improvement, Cost reduction, Profit improvement.

For those of you who do not have access to financial data, then the next best thing are operationally focused metrics. The classic 'widgets created per hour' concept. Basically, anything that can be stated as an operational improvement: Saved 40 hours per month of administrative time; Improved data through-put by 100%; reduced failure rate by 20%; improved customer satisfaction from 60% to 90%.

If you aren't tracking your work vs. measurable goals, it's time to start (You know, SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-based). If you are already, and good for you, then the next step is to figure out how to improve what you're doing.

While you're at it, when you go home tonight, go grab your resume and do a quick read-through. If your previous roles do not illustrate accomplishments that have quantifiable impacts, you need to go through the process of remembering them. After you're done with that, write up a new section for your current role, and in that state the major things you accomplished, and the impacts they had to the business.

Why should you do this?

Because every company in the U.S. is probably working up a rank-order list of the most valuable to least valuable employees. The higher you are on that list as evidenced by your work result, the better. And, this same information makes for a better, more attractive resume.

Checking out a potential employer

Last Saturday, my favorite HR Director and I were talking a bit about companies that are still hiring despite the obvious cost-cutting that's going on.

Why would a company be hiring right now?

• Could be that they have a new project that they think is great, and they need to add a few people. (good)
• Could be that a person or two has left the company, and they need to replace them. (good)
• Could be that they really suck, and they constantly have to add new people to keep up with the churn. (bad)

We were talking principally about that last one, because, let's face it, it is way more interesting.

You, as a job hunter would probably want to know if a company you're considering is in the latter category. You may really need the job, but at least you would know what you're getting into.

What would you look for to identify this type of company?

Easy: Regular replacement of their HR team members. Particularly those roles that are providing the interface between employees and management, like HR Manager and HR Generalist.

The thing about most HR-types in most technology companies is that they like people, and they like helping people. They hate situations where they don't get to help people. So, when they get into a caustic culture, or one that doesn't value the people in the company as evidenced by the decisions and actions the execs make, they tend to burn out fast.

Who will be the 4,999th laid off?

Having lived in this town for the better part of 20 years or so, I've developed my fair share of friends who will/are/did work at Microsoft.

None of these folks are able to make sense of these layoffs. Too few, not the right roles, why didn't the execs take pay cuts, etc., etc. The posts by MiniMicrosoft, one and two, and the resulting comments speak to this confusion with a high level of authority.

So far, I've only seen one writer who has a post up on this situation that makes any sense at all, and that's Robert Cringely, with Bob the Impaler. It's a great, thought-provoking read.

One thing Bob and I agree on is that Ballmer needs to go, if, for no other reason than the complete mess that Vista is, and the negative impact this has had on Microsoft. Let's call him the 4,999th entry in the one-dimmensional array MSFT has created (Programmers start counting at 0). The issue I have with this is that it's far too easy to be the critic. That is, who cares if Ballmer should go since that part is obvious - who do you replace him with?

Given the glacial pace that large companies consider movement, and let's say that Microsoft announcing non-layoffs in late January instead of Q4 of last year like all the good, nimble, quick startups did is indicative of this, you've got to believe that the board is thinking about a replacement.

The way this will play out is that within 18 - 24 months, Ballmer will step down, and a replacement will be named from outside Microsoft. Because Microsoft, while it is a software-ish technology company, is also a Fortune 500 company, 44th on the current list (a list which is going to go through some revisions this year and next methinks). Also, Microsoft Execs do not typcially go on to run other Fortune companies; they go on to run a startup, or they want to be an Angel, or part of a VC firm, or some-such. So, it seems to me that Microsoft is not such a great place to develop a career as a F500 leader. But, there are other F500 companies that DO create great F500 leaders. GE comes immediately to mind for most. And maybe, as a dark horse at the moment, Carol Bartz at Yahoo (currently 353rd on the F500 list).

A warning for job seekers: Is that Job Ad Real?

One of the questionable things that people do is post a job ad when the job does not exist.

Now, this sounds a bit extreme, and there can be mitigating circumstances around this. If you're a hiring manager at a larger corporation, you've undoubtedly seen some of these behaviors:

• A VP has a pool of headcount, so they spread them amongst their teams. But, the pool is not as big as the total needed roles, but in the spirit of competition, all the direct reports are charged with filling their roles as fast as possible.
• You have the headcount, you post the ad, and 4 weeks into the search, the headcount is pulled back as the company goes through a re-budgeting process.
• Etc.

And yes, there definitely are firms that post ads for jobs that don't exist so they can build up a pool of candidates with certain skill sets.

But for you, the job hunter, this is not necessarily good news.

How many ads fall into the 'not real' category? Figure that between 30% - 50% of ads represent jobs that don't really exist one way or the other.

A warning for job seekers: The Ladders

I woke up this morning to the news of layoffs at both Microsoft and F5 Networks. Big bummer, especially given all the people I know who work at these two companies.

With this in mind, you should be warned that all is not on the up and up in job-hunt-land.

Nick Corcodilos has a great warning post about The Ladders. And here's a link to his blog too, because it's a good read for all you job hunters out there.

You know The Ladders, don't you? Advertising that they focus only on jobs with salaries over $100K? Yeah, them.

Washington Unemployment Report, December 2008

I read through the initial post regarding Washington's state employment/unemployment, and man, it was depressing. Anytime the news comes with the notation that a governmental agency has added more capacity to their phone system, you know that there is high interest in what they do!

And then I dug into the numbers:

• Overall, Washington State Unemployment was 7.1%, up from November's 6.4%. Big jump, no doubt.
• County with the highest Unemployment rate: Longview MSA (Cowlitz) @ 11.5%.
• County with the lowest Unemployment rate: King @ 5.7%. That's not that bad, though it's still an increase from 5.3% from November.
• For the Software Publishing Sector, Employment increased. It stands at 53,200, up from 52,700 in November.
• In Telecom (wired + wireless), Employment decreased a touch from 25,500 in November to 25,200 in December.

Does anyone else find it strange that we've had reports of layoffs in the software/internet/telecomm spaces, yet employment across those same sectors is, in aggregate, holding steady?

The lesson, again, for technology leaders: Stop focusing on the bad news, look towards the good stuff that's happening out there because it's not all bad! This sector is going to be one of the leaders of our next economic recovery.

I bet you don't know how to describe organizational success...

Last Thursday, I had lunch w/a long-time friend/colleague of mine, Brad. During the course of our conversation, we spoke about some of the differences between the good ol' days of the early '90s and now. Particularly as it relates to starting up a company, and making great stuff happen.

What does this have to do with your ability to describe organizational success?

Back then, it took a LOT of money to get a venture off the ground. Multiple millions of dollars. Tens of Millions. This was reflective of the state of hardware/software technology and infrastructure of that time, and the challenges in getting it all to work together well.

Now, you don't need that much. Shoot, for some web startups, it's easily possible to do this with less than $1MM, and it's within reason to get something going for far less - under $100K (or under $10K in certain circumstances).

Still want to know what this has to do with your ability to describe org success?

You need to illustrate that you can not only grow a company, but you also need to illustrate that you can do so efficiently. Especially now!

If you're a leader of some sort, the ante to get into the game is being able to grow a team's headcount. What the hiring manager wants to know is what this growth looked like in the context of the business. If your org's growth was linear and parallel to the growth of the business, that's sort-of O.K. If your org grew at half the rate of the business, that's more interesting. If you managed to increase team size linearly while the business grew exponentially, then that's great.

That kind of result might just get you an interview.

And, if you're having trouble making your resume shine like this, let me know. I can help!

Why your resume sucks

A colleague of mine, who is an amazing recruiter, was waxing eloquently about the problems he sees with candidate's resumes.

This is a recruiter who has recruited across a number of industries, has been an in-house recruiter, and an agency recruiter, so he's been there, done that, and has at least 3 t-shirts.

He even did his rant one better by stating key attributes that a resume should have:

• 2 pages max.
• Focus on milestones/quantifiable results.
• Don't ramble.
• Focus is on what you can do for the hiring manager/group/company.

Two further bits. First, everyone thinks these don't apply to them because they are 'special'; they would be wrong. Second, in this economy, you can't afford to make this mistake.

If you're looking for help with your resume, and your on-line profile, let me know. It's one of the services I provide!