2011 July

Bullet Points: How to Sink That IT Job Interview; Google Worker #59; Should Women Bother with Tech Conferences?

The Hired Guns on July 29, 2011

Susannah Breslin’s experiences at TechWeek made her wonder if women should even make the effort to go to tech conferences at all: bottom line, “it makes them depressed.” As you’d except, lots of discussion about this….
Mashable celebrates its six-year anniversary with an infographic of the developments in tech during that time.
Lying and being unprepared—they’re but a few of the ways you can 86 yourself from the IT job you’re after. [InfoWorld]
“… college graduates who enter the labor force during a recession make significantly less money—in their first year and over the course of their careers—than grads who walk into an economic boom.” [NationalJournal]
Douglas Edwards’s book about being Google brand manager—the 59th employee to be hired—is shaping up to be one of the major tech reads of the summer. The WSJ recently ran an excerpt from “I’m Feeling Lucky.”

Weird Job Interview Questions and How to Deal with Them

The Hired Guns on July 28, 2011

For lots of job candidates, the interview is a make-or-break event. You should always be ready to answer standard questions like “What is your greatest accomplishment?” and the dreaded “What is your greatest weakness?” But there’s also the possibility that the interviewer will hit you with a random question from out of left field, like asking why manhole covers are round, a question supposedly used at Google and Microsoft.

Another example is a question asked by AT&T: “If you could be any superhero, which one would you be?” And Google has been known to ask, “How many basketballs can you fit in this room?” Goldman Sachs, perhaps revealing a bit about its corporate culture, asks, “If you were shrunk to the size of pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?”

But questions like these can be useful, at least from an employer’s perspective. The way candidates answer them can reveal aspects of their personality, how they handle stress, and how sharp their critical thinking is. Questions like the superhero one may be designed to gauge your personality. And the basketball and the pencil-in-the-blender scenarios test critical thinking. Read More →

Good Sleuthing: How to Crush the Competition and Land That Job

Allison Hemming on July 27, 2011

Here at The Hired Guns, candidates we send on interviews get links to the company website, LinkedIn pages of the people who will interview them, the “Press” page, and any other news we know about the company. So it always kills me when a client calls me after an interview and says, “I loved the guy but I can’t hire him…he didn’t do his research on our company…who else do you got?” GROAN.

For me, it’s back to square one, but for the candidate it’s the loss of a potentially career-changing opportunity. Inevitably, when I make the “come-to-Jesus” call to discuss the flub, I’ll get an excuse like, “Well, I was too busy in my ‘real’ job to study up on the company.” When I hear this, I get perplexed. Really?!? This was a chance to get a real promotion and see a substantial increase in your title and your salary.

The thing that really makes me crazy is how few people look at the research process as a chance to get under the hood and see if a company is really for them. Not doing so could hurt your career by leading you to the wrong organization and to working for the wrong boss. Read More →

Bullet Points: Optimize Your Energy; Career Management 101; New Grads Face Growing Pains on the Job

The Hired Guns on July 25, 2011

Are you a small business owner? DailyCandy’s Start Small, Go Big contest will award four entrepreneurs with a workshop on growing their business and also get them introduced to movers and shakers in the fields of fashion, beauty, and food and drink. The deadline to enter is 5 August.
Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project writes in the New York Times about our personal energy crisis: Time is “finite, and most of us don’t have any more hours left to invest. The solution is staring us in the face. We need to learn to manage our energy rather than our time.”
The more things change. . . . . Graduates have unrealistic expectations of what their first job will be like, and bosses don’t have much of a clue what the graduates value in jobs. [People Management]
Speaking of grads, Business Insider has seven tips to help them get the most out of working with headhunters.
10 books your boss supposedly doesn’t want you to read. [Business Insider]
“Perpetual career management” is the name of the game these days. Bobby Sisk of the Charlotte Observer has 10 ways to ensure that you’ll be a viable candidate for future jobs, even if you have a good thing going right now. Especially important for good karma: “Offer to help people in your network even though they may not be in a position to help you back right away.”

Bullet Points: Dodging Job-Hunting Land Mines—and Getting Hired

The Hired Guns on July 21, 2011

Slate’s readers tell how they landed new jobs after the “Great Recession.”
Despite her name, Evil HR Lady is more about tough love than true evil. And she wants to make sure your job-hunting effort isn’t “lazy.”
Multiple job offers are par for the course again for “superstar” workers, says Fortune.
Enterprising companies are now looking into the social-media flotsam and jetsam of potential employees. Mat Honan ran a background check on himself for Gizmodo: “Basically, I may never work again.” The New York Times looks into the phenomenon, too. Evidently some job seekers have given these companies lots to document. The chief executive of one of these online sifters says that the “[sexually] explicit photos and videos are beyond comprehension. . . . We also see flagrant displays of weapons. And we see a lot of illegal activity. Lots and lots of pictures of drug use.”

On the Job Hunt: Beating Incumbents at Their Own Game

Allison Hemming on July 20, 2011

You’ve made it through the interview gauntlet, and now you’ve found out through the grapevine that it’s down to you and the other guy (or gal). The only problem is that your competition is already working at the company, and landing the job for them means a fat promotion. We’re not going to lie to you: going up against an “incumbent” is a big challenge. But don’t throw in the towel yet—it’s time to go on the offensive.

Size up the competition. Use some deductive reasoning (and internal connections, recruiters, etc.) to try to figure out the identity of the other contender. This isn’t the easiest task, but LinkedIn sure as heck makes it a lot easier to get the skinny on your competition once you know who they are. If there’s still another interview round to go, you may be able to score still more insight by asking how you stack up against the other folks who’ve made the short list, even if you don’t know treheir name. Be direct and ask the hiring manager what the other person’s background is and how you stack up vs. them.

Draw a clear differentiation. Do a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) to assess where you stand against the other player. Don’t disparage your competitor’s experience; instead, play up how your skills are equal and specifically match the needs of the job, then point out where you over-deliver. Often, existing employees don’t actually have the skills to “check all the boxes” needed for the new job they hope to get, but companies are willing to give them a pass because they are a known quantity. Insiders almost always trump outsiders because they bring institutional knowledge. So it’s your job to show the hiring manager why that may be a liability—especially if they fear departmental calcification and adore agility and ideas. Convince them that this open role actually requires fast-moving, innovative thinking, and that bringing in an outsider with new approaches is exactly what the company needs to get it to the next place. Hopefully this will put a wedge between you and the other guy. Read More →

Make Something Every Day. And Change Your Life.

Noah Scalin on July 20, 2011

Noah Scalin is the creator of the Skull-a-Day project. He’s also the author of 365: A Daily Creativity Journal and part of Another Limited Rebellion, a socially conscious design firm. In this new series for The Hired Guns, Noah talks about what he learned from making his projects and how its lessons can be broadened to help everyone get their creative side back on track.

On June 4th, 2007, I started a blog, posted a small orange paper skull on it, and wrote, “I’m making a skull a day for a year.” The entire process took less than twenty minutes; the hardest part was probably coming up with the name: Skull-A-Day. By the time the year was over, I had developed an international following, with tens of thousands of fans visiting the site every week, gotten a book deal, and begun to do workshops on creativity for corporations and universities. Not bad, considering that none of those things were goals of the project… initially.

Most days, my biggest goal was to just get through the day having completed a unique piece of art, however I could manage it. There were days that I finished mere seconds before the midnight deadline (this was imposed by the fans of the site); there were days that I spent nine hours working on the project (a bit of a jump from the initial twenty minutes); and there were days that I found myself doing things that I would have been previously embarrassed to try (yes, that was me with my hand in the trashcan on the corner of Broadway and 10th). But there was never a day when I didn’t make something. Read More →

The Career Switch: Learning from the Underpants Gnomes

Miss Education on July 19, 2011

When embarking on my journey to change careers, I needed a plan of action. I couldn’t just quit and expect to find a brilliant new job right away. As my mentor always says, “Don’t quit the old job before you have a new one.”

I knew this advice was wise and practical—and because I wanted out of the job like a snowman wants to get out of hell, I resented the wisdom and practicality of the idea. I didn’t want to wait to fall into my dream career. I was Veruca Salt. I wanted it NOW.

Then I calmed down and thought of the Underpants Gnomes, who appeared in an episode from the second season of South Park. The boys are in the middle of researching a local business for a class project. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny have to work with Tweek, the twitchy, hyperactive son of a local businessman who owns a coffee shop. Tweek is scared of gnomes, which he says are stealing his underpants.

The boys soon discover that Tweek isn’t paranoid: gnomes really are stealing his underpants, and in fact, the creatures have an entire business built on stealing underwear.

The boys ask the gnomes to explain their business plan, which is this:

Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit!

The gnomes know their plan, they have their end goal, but they have no idea how to connect Phase 1 to Phase 3. Read More →

Bullet Points: Resumes, CVs, and Job Applications That Get Noticed

The Hired Guns on July 18, 2011

“Insanely Cool Resumes That Landed Interviews At Google And Other Top Jobs” [Business Insider]

“7 Ingenious Resumes That Will Make You Rethink Your CV” and tips on how to make your digital resume sparkle. [Mashable]

If just making your resume pop isn’t enough, consider interactive videos, billboards, and the infamous Google Ad Experiment:

The Guardian has its own examples of what it calls “extreme job hunting“—our favorite is the guy whose CV used to claim that he was raised by wolves. (Note that he was applying to work on a comedy series, not be an analyst at Bear Sterns.)

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Bullet Points: How to Sink That IT Job Interview; Google Worker #59; Should Women Bother with Tech Conferences?

Weird Job Interview Questions and How to Deal with Them

Good Sleuthing: How to Crush the Competition and Land That Job

Bullet Points: Optimize Your Energy; Career Management 101; New Grads Face Growing Pains on the Job

Bullet Points: Dodging Job-Hunting Land Mines—and Getting Hired

On the Job Hunt: Beating Incumbents at Their Own Game

Make Something Every Day. And Change Your Life.

The Career Switch: Learning from the Underpants Gnomes

Bullet Points: Resumes, CVs, and Job Applications That Get Noticed

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