The Working Geek

As you work through life, and especially the job hunt, never forget that what you say may not be what others hear. Your message often has unintended side messages.

This article from the Wall Street Journal discusses how job candidates trash their chances of landing jobs by using overly informal communications.

After interviewing a college student in June, Tory Johnson thought she had found the qualified and enthusiastic intern she craved for her small recruiting firm. Then she received the candidate's thank-you note, laced with words like "hiya" and "thanx," along with three exclamation points and a smiley-face emoticon.... Workers in their 20s and younger are accustomed to online and cellphone messaging, and the abbreviated lingua franca that makes for quick exchanges, [David Holtzman] says. "It's just natural for them. They don't realize that it's perceived to be disrespectful."

Sometimes it's not even the medium or the message, but when you send the message.

Executive recruiter Hal Reiter recently received ... a thank you from a chief financial officer candidate sent by BlackBerry just minutes after the interview. "You don't even have time to digest the meeting and you're getting a thank-you note," says Mr. Reiter, chairman and chief executive of Herbert Mines Associates, a New York-based search firm.

In this case, the very method of sending the communication told the recipient that it wasn't worth much of the candidate's time. The candidate was on his way somewhere else and dashed off a reply, as if he was getting an odious task off his checklist, rather than giving a respectful letter that matched the gravity of the communication.

It's all about respect, and the ways that we can easily show our lack of respect or interest in others. Unintentional messages are messages none the less.

The slides from my OSCON 2008 presentation "How to speak Manager" are now available at slideshare.net.

There was a lot to cram into those 30 minutes. I wish I had more time. :-(

Penelope Trunk posted this in her Twitter timeline:

I set an interview for Monday. Candidate says he has kid stuff. I suggest Saturday night. He says Why don't you have a date? No job for him.

Nick Corcodilos has an article about a new site called Dayak that lets employers bid to see how cheaply they can hire talent. As he points out in the article, you get what you pay for.

I think this page from the Dayak website is all you need to know about them. That much cheesy stock photography is never a good sign.

Seriously, this is just bad news for everyone. When you're treating people like eBay items, like interchangeable commodities, you're going to hire the absolute most average people, or worse.

"Is being negative or bitter or selfish within reason in face of how extraordinarily lucky we were to have been been born here and born now?" -- Seth Godin in Is it worthy?

The always-insightful Seth Godin writes in Not so grand about the silliness of grand openings on a business.

Most overnight successes take a decade.... [T]he best way to promote something is consistently and persistently and for a long time.

The same holds true for your personal brand, and your relationships with others in the working world. The term I like to use is "time and repetition."

An article in the Wall Street Journal, says that panel interviews are gaining popularity in the private sector, with companies finding them "an efficient way to measure applicants' mettle under fire."

As with most interviews, preparation is key. Research who will be in the interview, and make a cheat sheet of who's who and what they do for the company. If you don't know ahead of time, keep track as you're introduced to each person. Notice where the power lies within the group.

You also should closely monitor the group dynamics. How screeners introduce themselves, their initial banter and the seating arrangement speak volumes about who wields the most clout.

Panel interviews may be the best predictor of cross-company dynamics, however. "You're not always going to be on the same page with everyone in the room," the article notes, and so it will be with your life on the job.

I've enjoyed Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist blog for months now, and I finally picked up a copy of her book Brazen Careerist the other day. It should be no surprise that I love a lot of it, and disagree vehemently with plenty as well. It's more a collection of related columns than a cohesive whole, but I'm enjoying it.

Since I'm working on my Soon-To-Be-Officially-Titled book on job hunting, I turned immediately to the chapter on job interviewing. This phrasing caught my eye: "Prepare to close the deal." It's common advice to specifically work to get a job offer in the interview, and it's one I hammer on in my book. From the current draft:

You must ask for the job, explicitly. It may feel awkward, or seem like it's pushy or egotistical to come out and say "I want this job," but not doing so leaves things vague in the mind of the interviewer. You can blow an otherwise fantastic interview by seeming uninterested in the prospect of working for the company. Don't delude yourself into thinking "Of course he knows I want the job, or else I wouldn't be here." What you see as obvious may look like indifference to the interviewer. Don't worry about being too enthusiastic by asking to move forward. Part of what you're being interviewed for is your enthusiasm and interest in the company, the department, the team.

Trunk puts it in more sales-oriented terms in her book: "Prepare to close the deal. Leave nothing open-ended at the end of the interview." I can't disagree, but I know that for many of my technically-oriented brethren that that's a level of assertiveness, and salesmanship, that may be tough. Maybe the way for geeks less accustomed to closing a sale to think about it is like nailing down requirements on a project. Programmers hate to work on a project milestone without knowing what the milestone is, and so it is with an unknown interview outcome.

It's worth practicing, out loud before the interview, how you'll ask for the job. Train yourself to get over any discomfort of asking to close the deal. Write out a few sentences that you can practice saying. Try something like this:

I wanted to thank you for the time today, and I'm very excited about working here at Football Town. My expertise in scrum and XP methodologies fit where you've told me the IT department is going, and working in the sporting goods industry would be a dream for me. What are the next steps?

Does that feel weird to say? Practice until it doesn't. You're not memorizing the exact words, but getting used to expressing something that direct. When you're in the interview, if you follow that structure, the words should come out naturally. If it's true, and it comes from your heart, that's gold.

On the other hand, if your practice deal closing isn't true, that will come out in the interview. It won't just be in your closing, but throughout the entire encounter. Lack of enthusiasm stinks, and interviewers can smell it a mile away.

In a job interview, it's crucial you don't pretend to know things that you don't, but you don't have to just say "no, I don't know about that." Here are three responses that are better than "no", in order of preference.

1. Discuss something you've done similar. "I haven't used LDAP, but back in 2006, when I was at Yoyodyne, I set up and administered Active Directory for a 2,500-person company.

2. Show that you're at least familiar with the name. "No, I haven't. Are you doing some sort of enterprise-wide directory integration?" You're showing that you have some understanding of how it's used, and getting more information and it may turn out that you have a different, similar experience, and can turn this into Answer #1 above.

3. Ask what it is, and how it's used. "I'm sorry, no, I haven't even heard the term. What is LDAP, and how are you using it?" You'll show interest in learning more, and may find out that it's similar to something you've done before, and can upgrade your answer to Answer #2 above.

Please don't use the clichéd answer "No, I don't, but I'm a quick learner!" It's good to try to turn a negative into a positive, but "I'm a quick learner" is meaningless because anyone can say it. Use one of the three above.

Finally, don't think of it as a pass/fail quiz and worry that you're doomed for not knowing. I once asked a candidate, out of the blue, if he knew anything about LDAP, because I had been thinking about it as something my department might use. I thought he was going to have a heart attack as he stammered out his "Uh, uh, no, but, uh, I can learn pretty quick!" I reassured him it wasn't something we were using, but I was just curious. Chances are if you've been called in for an interview, you've already the core basic knowledge that truly is pass/fail.

This brilliant list comes from http://www.execupundit.com/2006/12/career-manifesto.html.

1. Unless you're working in a coal mine, an emergency ward, or their equivalent, spare us the sad stories about your tough job. The biggest risk most of us face in the course of a day is a paper cut.
2. Yes, your boss is an idiot at times. So what? (Do you think your associates sit around and marvel at your deep thoughts?) If you cannot give your boss basic loyalty, either report the weasel to the proper authorities or be gone.
3. You are paid to take meaningful actions, not superficial ones. Don't brag about that memo you sent out or how hard you work. Tell us what you achieved.
4. Although your title may be the same, the job that you were hired to do three years ago is probably not the job you have now. When you are just coasting and not thinking several steps ahead of your responsibilities, you are in dinosaur territory and a meteor is coming.
5. If you suspect that you're working in a madhouse, you probably are. Even sociopaths have jobs. Don't delude yourself by thinking you'll change what the organization regards as a "turkey farm." Flee.
6. Your technical skills may impress the other geeks, but if you can't get along with your co-workers, you're a litigation breeder. Don't be surprised if management regards you as an expensive risk.
7. If you have a problem with co-workers, have the guts to tell them, preferably in words of one syllable.
8. Don't believe what the organization says it does. Its practices are its real policies. Study what is rewarded and what is punished and you'll have a better clue as to what's going on.
9. Don't expect to be perfect. Focus on doing right instead of being right. It will simplify the world enormously.
10. If you plan on showing them what you're capable of only after you get promoted, you need to reverse your thinking.

My favorites are #6 and #9. I'm devoting a chapter in my upcoming book to the ideas hidden within #6, which technical people are notoriously bad with.