Recently in Job hunting Category

Next time you apply for a job, the hiring manager is going to Google your name and see what she finds. Do you know what people say about you? About things you've written? You should.

Google Alerts is a fantastic little tool that I don't hear people talk about enough. Google Alerts lets you enter a Google search once, and Google will update you whenever the Googlebot finds new matches for your search, often within only an hour or two of the page's publication.

The most obvious Alert search is your name, as a phrase in double quotes, but that's just the start. Here are some more ideas:

• Your name ("Andy Lester")
• Your nick ("petdance")
• Your email address ("andy@theworkinggeek.com")
• Your company's name
• Resumes related to your job market in your area of expertise (I have an alert for "resume Perl Chicago" (but without the quotes)
• Titles from blog postings you've made
• Links to specific blog postings you've made using the link: syntax

Keep an eye on the results. It's not vanity, it's understanding your personal brand.

For more of my suggestions of how to improve your working life in 2010, see the January 2010 issue of PragPub magazine. It's a free download in three different electronic formats: PDF, ePub and mobi.

These links are collected from The Working Geek's Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@theworkinggeek.com.

• A great question to ask in your job interview (askamanager.blogspot.com)
• Webcast of @berkun's talk Confessions of a Public Speaker available (oreillynet.com)
• Yet another tale of how being a jerk works against you in the working world (askamanager.blogspot.com)
• Laurie Ruettimann digs up the issue of the privacy of your salary history. Again. Read and decide yourself. (punkrockhr.com)
• What everyone with a job can learn from Groucho Marx (sethgodin.typepad.com)

On January 21st, 2010 at 6pm, I'll be presenting my talk "Effective Job Interviewing From Both Sides of the Desk" at a Chicago Nerd Social Club meeting.

The meeting is at OfficePort Chicago, 9 W. Washington, Chicago, IL. Doors open at 5:30pm, and I'll be presenting at 6pm. Afterwards they are hosting a Tech Thursday meetup for socializing and drinks.

One lucky attendee will win a free copy, either electronic or paper, of my book Land The Tech Job You Love.

I hope to see you there!

About my presentation

Interviews have too long been treated like interrogations, probing and testing candidates like they were fruit at a grocer. Effective interviewing reframes the interview as what it really is: the candidate’s first day on the job.

For job-seekers, topics include:

• How to prepare an effective portfolio that says more than words about your skills.
• Your primary goal at the interview.
• Using the power of stories to tell what self-description cannot.
• Understanding the process through the interviewer’s eyes.
• How to turn the interview into a working meeting.
• Five dreaded questions you must be able to answer, and how to answer them without fear.

For managers, you’ll learn:

• Effective pre-interview research
• How to increase your chances of choosing the best candidate.
• Increase your odds in judging cultural fit.
• Why you must ask the dreaded questions like “Where do you want to be in five years,” and how to ask them without asking them.

These links are collected from The Working Geek's Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@theworkinggeek.com.

• The BBC shows why you want to bypass HR when going after a job: (publius-ovidius.livejournal.com)
• Great review of "Land The Tech Job You Love" from @mstine (java.dzone.com)
• Fans of "Land The Tech Job You Love" can upvote the DZone review here: (dzone.com)
• New issue of PragPub is out, with article from me on keeping your crappy job (pragprog.com)
• A prime example of why objectives are worthless: (hiringhorror.com)

You wouldn't think I'd be advocating hanging on to a job you don't love, but in today's economy it may make the most sense. In the latest issue, #6, of PragPub, the free magazine from Pragmatic Bookshelf, I talk about how to make the most of the time you're spending in a job that you have to keep. It's also the first in my new monthly column for the magazine.

PragPub is published every month in three different formats, so you can read in the format that works best for you. I admit, I print mine out. Sorry, trees!

Finally, from last month, there's an article with me in the blog Interview Mantra.

These links are collected from The Working Geek's Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@theworkinggeek.com.

• The four-day workweek is winning fans (time.com)
• Look for the job no one else wants (usnews.com)
• Keeping a job you hate (karenburnsworkinggirl.com)
• Don't optimize for yourself in communities (perlbuzz.com)
• Dismal failure at furthering one's love life via LinkedIn (jasonseiden.com)
• How Employers Choose From Among Many Great Candidates (usnews.com)
• Building your career in open source (itworld.com)
• My interview with Sridhar Jammalamadaka of Interview Mantra (interviewmantra.net)
• Five reasons to turn down a job offer (#1 is "your gut") (usnews.com)
• Six things you can learn about a company at the job interview (usnews.com)

You're out looking for a job, and you want an edge over the rest of the candidates out there. Your experience in open source should count for something, right? It just might, but the key is how you sell it to the person who reads your resume, and to the interviewer in an interview.

First, think of each project as a freelance job that you've worked on. Just as different freelance gigs have varying sizes and scope, so too does each project to which you contribute. The key is to not lump all your projects under one "open source work" heading.

Explain in your resume the contributions you've given to each project. Don't assume that someone will understand what your project is, or immediately grasp the importance of what you've done. For example, on my resume I might have:

Perl programming language (www.perl.org)

Created the prove command line testing tool. prove allows the programmer to interactively and selectively run tests in a test suite without a Makefile, making test-first development much easier. I wrote prove in 2005, and it was immediately embraced by the Perl testing community. It has been part of the core Perl distribution since 2006.

As with anything you put on your resume, explain what you did and why it was good that you did it. The only difference between project work and a "real" company is that instead of explaining the value to the company, you're explaining the value to the project or to the users.

Wags familiar with prove may say "But all you did was write a couple hundred lines of code around the standard Test::Harness module." The key to someone looking to hire me isn't what I did, but why I did it, and that I took the initiative to do it at all. I saw a need for a tool, created it, and released it to the world, to much appreciation.

So what have you done to contribute to help open source projects? It doesn't have to be as big as a deal as you might think. Submitted a code patch? Explain the bug, how you fixed it, and what you did to get the patch into the system.

As with any project, make sure you explain what the project if there's any chance someone reading might not be familiar with it.

(Thanks to Esther Schindler for asking for comments in her article "What To Include In Your Open Source Resume", which prompted this posting.)

These links are collected from The Working Geek's Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@theworkinggeek.com.

• Five ways companies mistreat job seekers (usnews.com)
• Video of @seiden on TV this morning talking about job hunting (jasonseiden.com)
• I'm a guest expert at JavaRanch this week in their jobs discussion forum! (coderanch.com)
• Resume tactics from the grocery checkout lane (theworkinggeek.com)
• I Just Want a Job; Words That Will Crush Any Interview (resumewonders.com)
• Todd Nilson on email openings and closings (talentline411.com)
• "I consider it part of the benefits package for other employees not to have to work with asses." (evilhrlady.blogspot.com)
• Four biggest myths about job references (usnews.com)
• How to boost your career by contributing to open source projects (theworkinggeek.com)
• Today's absurd interview tactic: Intentionally showing up late (askamanager.blogspot.com)
• Two projects for civic-minded student programmers (blog.jonudell.net)
• Gushing review of "Beautiful Teams" (speedofmeme.blogspot.com)
• Max Kanat-Alexander on the Engineer Attitude: "I can solve this problem the right way" (codesimplicity.com)
• If I call to set up an interview, don't ask "Why has it taken you so long to call me" (askamanager.blogspot.com)
• A software project is code delivered at a specific point in time (theworkinggeek.com)

Next time you're at the grocery store checkout lane, take a look at the women's magazines and see what they do to get you to read them. There's a valuable lesson there for your resume. No, it doesn't involve including a photo of Jessica Alba's cleavage next to your work history.

There's always a blurb on the front for an article inside that offers a specific number of items inside. They're of a form like:

• 17 hottest celebrity couples
• 23 ways to keep your man happy
• 37 quick and easy meals for summer
• 684 new looks for under $100

The magazines' editors know that numbers attract attention. If you're like me, those numbers may be the first thing you notice after the cover photo. The numbers also promise a level of service. It's not just "an article about celebrity couples," but a promise of seventeen of them.

You should use this approach on your resume as well.

First, we know that numbers attract attention. When scanning your resume, the reader's eye will be drawn to the numbers naturally.

Moreover, numbers make your story more interesting and give the reader a sense of the size of your accomplishments, or the troubles you've solved in the past.

Consider the difference between these two bullets:

• Ran the help desk. Answered trouble tickets, responded to phone calls and tracked spare computer parts.
• Ran the help desk for 200-seat office. Staff of 3 answered average of 50 phone calls and 27 trouble tickets per day. Maintained 200-unit inventory of spare computer parts worth $10,000.

These two bullets describe exactly the same responsibilities, but the addition of specific numbers draw the attention of the reader, and add the details that give a much fuller picture of your responsibilities.

Without the numbers, the reader might also logically assume that the reality is more like this:

• Ran the "help desk" in a four-person real estate office. Answered questions a few times a week about Excel. Kept a spare PC in a closet in case something tanked.

Remember, your awesomeness is not self-evident, and part of your job in telling the story of your awesomeness is giving the numbers to support it.

For more on the power of numbers, see chapter 3, "Résumé Content: Getting The Words Down" in Land The Tech Job You Love.

These links are collected from The Working Geek's Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@theworkinggeek.com.

• OSCON slides for Effective Job Interviewing up on slideshare (theworkinggeek.com)
• RT @lruettimann I've been giving out free career advice at #blogher. Stop bringing all your emotional baggage 2 your career.
• "Am I a back-up candidate?" I suggest the answer is irrelevant: (askamanager.blogspot.com)
• Job interviewing PDF is now downloadable from OSCON site (en.oreilly.com)
• Don't leave Track Changes on when editing your Word resume: (askamanager.blogspot.com)
• How to work with headhunters (theworkinggeek.com)
• Why do some people get hired and not others? (punkrockhr.com)
• If you're not proud of where you work, go work somewhere else. (sethgodin.typepad.com)
• RT @angelaharris72: Seeking a web developer to assist with JobCamp Chicago website. This is a high profile volunteer opportunity!
• Why don't geeks hunt for their jobs like they hunt for their toys? (theworkinggeek.com)
• A dozen sites for helping job hunters, from @punkrockhr (punkrockhr.com)