2011 September

Job Hunting? Get Ready for Q4 and the Hiring Bump It’s Bringing

Allison Hemming on September 29, 2011

The gloom and doom about the state of the job market, the economy, and the political sphere are enough to send even the most optimistic job hunter over the edge these days. Well, friends, I am here to tell you to get back on track and to tune into what’s happening in your field. Today in Digital, hiring is what’s happening. Now that Q4 is here, it’s going to get a little nutty. Why?

The great standoff in Washington basically slowed the hiring process in August and much of September to a standstill. Our politicians are to blame, not the companies. Businesses did what they needed to do to survive — they were cautious, putting roles on hold and taking a wait-and-see attitude. But jobs are slowly getting reapproved, and we see conditions improving all around.
Read More →

Where Are All the Mid-level UX Designers?

Jeff Gothelf on September 29, 2011

I became a user experience designer in 1999. Now, with over 12 years of experience, I consider myself a senior practitioner. I know many other designers with similar levels of experience. As a hiring manager, I see many resumes and meet a large number of designers in person. The overwhelming majority of them have less than five years’ experience. With business’s ever-increasing demand for user experience designers, the growing understanding and appreciation for the benefits of UX design, and the fact that the discipline is in its prime, why are there so few mid-level designers?

I define mid-level as someone with five to ten years of actual work experience. They are designers on the cusp of becoming managers or team leaders. They are designers who have explored several domains (commerce, social and financial services to name just three) and who have worked in a variety of environments. They are the designers you can bring on to a team and who can hit the ground running, asking mostly process and politics questions while delivering top-notch work. They are also, in most major cities, incredibly difficult to find. Read More →

Bullet Points: Demystifying Design; Are Robots After Your Job?

The Hired Guns on September 27, 2011

Our own Jeff Gothelf on why keeping design a “mystery” can actually hold its practitioners back. [A List Apart]
The pain of job interviews: An employee’s perspective [Smart Company]
Computer programs are getting better and better at writing for the web. But as Farhad Manjoo points out in a new series at Slate, very few jobs are safe from the robots these days.
The IRS continues to clamp down on deciding which workers can be declared independent contractors as opposed to employees.
An infographic from Careerbuilder on how to work from home without wasting time. The survey claims that “30% of telecommuters tend to work in pajamas” — get dressed, people!
Hallmark targets a new audience for its cards: those who recently lost their job.

To Stay Creative, Let “Preciousness” Go

Noah Scalin on September 26, 2011

Next Monday, October 3, Noah Scalin will teach a Hired Guns Academy class on ways to stay creatively productive.

Are you a perfectionist like me? If you aren’t, I can almost guarantee your company or boss would like you to be one. This is a shame, because perfectionism is probably the biggest roadblock to innovation that you will ever encounter. In fact, letting go of perfectionism, or as I like to call it, preciousness, is the key to unlocking your creative potential.

Over the years we’ve been taught that it’s unacceptable to try out new things that could potentially fail because they will:
A. Waste Time
B. Waste Money
C. Get You Fired
D. All of The Above

So we’ve gotten into the habit of working safely within our comfort zones in order to avoid creating anything that’s less than perfect. This is fine for just getting by, but terrible for moving forward. Read More →

Stand Out from the Crowd with a Visual Bio or Resume

Todd Cherches on September 23, 2011

We’d like to welcome Todd Cherches to the blog. As a co-founder of the BigBlueGumball training firm, he has a lot to say about ways to help your career through the power of visual thinking and learning. In his first post, he shows a simple tool you can create to help your job application break through the sea of text that floods hiring managers’ and recruiters’ in-boxes.

As we all know, the traditional resume is an important and essential part of the job search process — a way to efficiently tell your career history on a sheet of paper or two.

But after a hiring manager has sorted through thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds of candidates, your text-based black and white resume can easily get lost in the crowd and buried in the pile (“I forget… who’s the guy who used to work for Disney and CBS?”).

This is why I recommend that you consider creating a visual bio or visual resume, a colorful, image-based version of your text resume. It’s a personal branding and marketing piece that you can take along on your interview, use as a visual roadmap to tell your story, and then leave behind. It will give you an opportunity to demonstrate your creativity and help you stand out from the crowd. Read More →

Check Out What The Hired Guns Academy Has in Store for Fall

The Hired Guns on September 22, 2011

Summer’s over — it’s time to hit the books.

We have a full roster of classes planned for the fall semester at The Hired Guns Academy. Take a glance at the list below and choose the ones you need to get inspired; learn new, highly marketable skills; or shake up your career and take it in a new direction:

Monday, October 3
Get “Unstuck”: How to Get (And Keep) Your Creativity Flowing
Noah Scalin, the author of Unstuck and 365: A Daily Creativity Journal, will show you how you can keep your creativity going fast and furious.

Thursday, October 27
What’s Your Story? Master the Art of the Elevator Pitch and Harness the Power of Short-Storytelling
Larry Smith, of Smith Magazine and Six-Word Memoirs fame, reveals how telling your story in a concentrated, well thought-out burst can help you stand out from your (much more tongue-tied) peers. You’ll never ever need to break out in a sweat when someone asks you, “So, what do you do?” again.

Wednesday, November 9
Digital Reinvention for Journalists: Transfer the Skills You Already Have to a Career in Digital
Charlie Rogers, who has launched many a publication and website, gives guidance on the traditional skills that translate most easily into digital—as well as the new skills you’ll need to turn yourself into Journalist 2.0 (or 3.0).

Wednesday, November 30
Nail That Presentation! Adding Strength to Your Professional Talks, Appearances, and Job Interviews
This high-energy class by the speech and presentation master Joel Schwartzberg is what you need to make your speeches, presentations, and interviews of all sorts be the powerful, persuasive tools they should be.

Wednesday, December 7
Get Your Blog On: Increase Your Visibility Through Online Publishing
Blogging veteran Bill Brazell gives the lowdown on what it takes to make a new blog succeed rather than flounder.

Bullet Points: “Negative Selling,” and the Dangers of Being Too Picky When Hiring

The Hired Guns on September 22, 2011

Negative selling—talking down rival companies who might steal away potential talent—has always been something that a few law-firm recruiters engaged in, but how effective can it be? [Above the Law]
A study finds that the median male worker earned less in 2010 than he would have in 1973, once wages are adjusted for inflation. [NPR]
“Sometimes you make the mesh so fine, nothing gets through.” Yes, it’s possible to be too picky when hiring. “Don’t take it upon yourself to reject candidates for ridiculous reasons, even if you think it will make you look better. Don’t consider only cookie-cutter candidates with cookie-cutter qualifications.” [HR Reporter]
CFOs have reason to worry about social media, with pitfalls that include employees oversharing in public forums, the loss of confidential info, and increased exposure should an issue go into litigation. [Big Fat Finance Blog]
Hewlett-Packard’s CEO, Léo Apotheker, who is likely to be let go after less than a year on the job, was hired without ever having met most of the members of its 12-member board. There’s more in the Wall Street Journal. [NYT]

Getting Unstuck and Keeping Your Creativity Flowing

Noah Scalin on September 21, 2011

On Monday, October 3, Noah Scalin will teach a Hired Guns Academy class on ways to stay creatively productive.

“In every creative person’s life, we arrive occasionally at a place where creativity stops flowing. For a while we’re happily riding a creative wave and then out of the blue—nothing. For a terrifying few hours (or days, or weeks), we think the next idea will never come. We become afraid that our ideas are not good enough and probably never really were good enough. At worst, some of us just give up completely.”–designer Peleg Top from the preface to my book, Unstuck: 52 Ways to Get (and Keep) Your Creativity Flowing

Does that sound familiar? It’s definitely a place I have found myself many times over the course of my 17 years as a creative professional. And while I always managed to find the way back to my creative path eventually, it took the unusual commitment of making a skull every day for a year to finally figure out some practical (and reproducible), ways for generating creative energy at a moment’s notice.

Since I can’t put you in a time machine and have you do your own yearlong project, I’ve created the Get Unstuck class as the next best thing. We’ll cover The Big Seven, a set of basic tools for stretching your creative muscles, which I learned during my own creative journey. And then we’ll put those tools into practice, with a hands-on exercise that will get your creative fires stoked and give you some experiences that you can apply to your own work right away.

There’s no need to wait for the muse of inspiration to show up once you learn to turn on your own creative tap. And this is the class that will give you the tools to you get (and keep) your creativity flowing.

To register for “How to Get (And Keep) Your Creativity Flowing,” click here.

Bullet Points: Working from “Anywhere”

The Hired Guns on September 19, 2011

Thinking of getting one of those trendy standing desks to avoid dying while in the saddle at work? It’s probably just as healthy to move around more. [Lifehacker]
It’s fun to talk about visual vs. auditory vs. movement-based learning styles, but now at least one psychologist has pointed out that evidence for such distinctions is thin on the ground.
Lots of rhetoric paints small businesses as places that effortlessly bubble over with new ideas and lots of growth, but few small businesses are really that innovative, says a new study from the University of Chicago: they “start small and stay small.” [Slate]
Entrepreneur and author John Warrilow comes up with seven tools he uses to work from “anywhere”—although most of the applications listed will only be truly useful in locations with a speedy internet connection.
Check out this animation that a student made using a year’s worth of his homework:

[via HuffPo]

Bullet Points: Recruiting in the “New New New Economy”

The Hired Guns on September 15, 2011

“Hunting for UX talent is nothing short of finding a needle in a haystack,” writes the recruiter Addison Carpenter at UX Booth. “… job boards aren’t working and UXers are bad at marketing themselves.” (But not all candidates agree! Read the comments, too.)
Crain’s looks at One Wire, a LinkedIn competitor targeting financial services companies and their employees.
And the Times looks at Direct Approach, a site that swipes a few tricks from dating sites like eHarmony in hopes of getting a better match between employees and the soon-to-be-employed.
What’s ahead for corporate recruiting? Andrew Gadomski of Aspen Advisors predicts the return of the general manager and increased specialization of all sorts.
The job-seeker’s paradox, according to economist Arnold Kling: “A job seeker is looking for something for a well-defined job. But the trend seems to be that if a job can be defined, it can be automated or outsourced.“ And related thoughts on “The New New New Economy“ from Megan McArdle, at the Atlantic.

When It’s Your Company, How Big Is Big Enough?

The Hired Guns on September 14, 2011

We’re proud to announce that Hired Guns pals Adelaide Lancaster’s and Amy Abrams’s new book, The Big Enough Company, comes out from Portfolio tomorrow. Their guidebook was written to help small business owners navigate the challenges that come up when they try to run the kind of company they want to run, at the size and level of complexity that makes sense to them. The bottom line is that despite what some experts imply, there’s no one size that’s a perfect match for every entrepreneur out there.

To find out more, check out the book trailer below — and look for more from us about the book and its authors over the next few weeks.

Bullet Points: Bacteria That Advertise; Overshooting Your Salary for Profit; the Fake Review Epidemic

The Hired Guns on September 13, 2011

Like other scientists, Richard Feynman had a way of looking at the world that was different than the rest of us, writes his biographer Robert Krulwich in “A Deathbed Story I would Never Tell.” [NPR]
Wondering how to make sure you get the best salary? Try overshooting on what you will accept, advises Lifehacker. (And for other tips, check out our own Salary Tutor, Jim Hopkinson).
Amazon, Yelp, and Priceline are drowning in fake reviews, causing an “arms race” between those trying to game the system and those hoping to make sure that online reviews actually mean something. [NYT]
We feel a fever coming on: a billboard for the bio-thriller Contagion was built from bacteria and fungi. [The Frisky]
4 Million Microloans Visualized in 4 Minutes [Mashable]

The Hired Guns Book Club: Any Questions for The Accidental Creative?

The Hired Guns on September 12, 2011

Just a reminder that over the next few days, Todd Henry, the author of The Accidental Creative, will be happy to take any questions you may have about his book or about creativity in general.

You can post questions and comments for him on Twitter, in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.

If you’re just joining us, here’s where to get up to speed:

Announcing The Hired Guns Book Club: The Accidental Creative
The Hired Guns Book Club: Part 1 of The Accidental Creative
The Hired Guns Book Club: Part 2 of The Accidental Creative
The Hired Guns Book Club: Part 3 of The Accidental Creative

Want to Speak Well? Look to the Pros.

Joel Schwartzberg on September 8, 2011

In this new series, experienced speaker, teacher, and consultant Joel Schwartzberg breaks down for us the best ways to improve your presentation skills, whether you’re still in school, in mid-career, or in upper management.

With just over a year before the next presidential election, we’re about to be deluged with political debates, speeches, pontification, and more passionate punditry than any human not employed by Fox News or MSNBC can stand. But whether those speakers are conservative, progressive, or somewhere in the middle (or just trying to be) their goals are always the same: to make their points clearly, concisely, effectively, memorably, convincingly, and credibly.

And that should be your goal, too. Whether you’re speaking in front of a vast audience or a prospective employer, you want to make your own points clearly, concisely, effectively, memorably, convincingly and credibly.

In this blog and in my upcoming Hired Guns Academy course, we’ll be looking at ways to do just
that. But for now, while there’s so much speech-making all around you, it’s a good idea to examine how politicians do it. Remember two things: One, good speakers aren’t born; they’re trained. Two, when it comes to strong public presentations, how you say it as important (if not more important) than what you’re saying. Read More →

Bullet Points: Low Morale Costs a Lot; Say Hello to Weekly Performance Reviews

The Hired Guns on September 8, 2011

What’s the point of Yahoo these days? Hardly anyone knows. [NPR]
For software developers, the jobs are pouring in, recession or no, and the salaries are keeping pace, too. [NPR]
Some companies are dropping year-end performance reviews and moving to weekly ones instead, the Wall Street Journal reports. It’s providing that instant feedback that the Twitter-addled kids need and love! Evil HR Lady: “Back in prehistoric times people used to call this conversation.“
Studies have shown that low job satisfaction may cost companies as much as “$300 billion in lost productivity annually,” write the researchers Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer in the New York Times. “Promoting workers’ well-being isn’t just ethical; it makes economic sense,” they argue.
“Copyright troll” Righthaven has been lying low for the past couple months, presumably because judge after judge has ruled against them (and, implicitly, its business model). [Wired]

In the News: Diane Vadino’s Intricate Paper Works Take Over Bendel’s

The Hired Guns on September 8, 2011

Today, the artist, novelist, and Hired Gun Diane Vadino will be showing and selling her art as part of the Hester Street Fair’s takeover of Bendel’s, at 5th Avenue and 56th Street. All told, this Fashion’s Night Out event will cover an entire floor of the classic haute-NYC department store.

To sweeten the pot, Diane will be making free “mini-neighborhood maps” — letter-sized cut-paper versions of your nabe, with your home address at the center. Here’s a sample of her work: a detail from her intricate, hand-cut map of Brooklyn neighborhoods:

Bullet Points: Help for the Shapeless Resume

The Hired Guns on September 7, 2011

“Charlie Brown” words to avoid in your resume [business2community]
The Haiku Resume: Boiling Down Your Career into One Line [The Hired Guns]
How Not to Write a Resume [Kansas City Star]
6 most violated resume writing rules [Penelope Trunk]
5 resume basics [Careerealism]
Resumes, CVs, and Job Applications That Get Noticed [The Hired Guns]
24 “best practices” for the modern resume [The Ladders; requires registration]
Top 10 Ways to Rock Your Resumé [Lifehacker]

Bullet Points: Tremors at TechCrunch; Product Designer Must-Reads; Square Pegs Who Work in Round-Hole Offices

The Hired Guns on September 6, 2011

Bust out the credit card: 5 Ways to Revamp Your Workspace [Inc.]
Books Every Product Designer Should Read, from Zoë Ryan, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. [Designers & Books]
Will Steve Jobs earn a place in history beside Edison and Ford? [NPR]
The Magnificent Seven, a movie with true Hired Guns cachet, gets a new Blu-Ray release after its 50th anniversary.
Is the end of TechCrunch “as we know it” in sight? [TechCrunch]
“[The world] must be filled with people who have to make an offbeat personality fit into a very very non-offbeat job and workplace, and I’m curious as to how they do it.” [Offbeathome.com]

The Hired Guns Book Club: Part 3 of The Accidental Creative

Allison Hemming on September 5, 2011

Welcome to part 3 of The Hired Guns book club, which covers chapters 8 through 10 of Todd Henry’s The Accidental Creative. This week’s section is about helping you keep hitting your “creative rhythm” by showing you how to tie together the practices that were covered earlier.

(Just joining us? Head to our introductory post about the book.)

In the video below, Todd talks about the use of “checkpoints”—periodic check-ins you schedule with yourself to ensure that all the practices you started are still working. It’s also a time to see if there are any new practices you need to add to your routine. Hint: it’s not about deciding whether or not to take on a new organization system you’ve happened to hear about—it’s about thinking about all the new projects on the horizon and figuring out to make sure you have enough time and energy to accomplish everything that’s important, in your personal as well as professional life.

After you check out Todd’s video, you can post questions for him on Twitter, in the comments below, or on our Facebook page. He’ll be checking in from time to time, and he’d love to hear what you have to say!

Next week, on Monday, September 12, Todd will wrap up the book club by answering any questions you may have, and also talk about ways to extend the lessons in his book.

Previously:
Announcing The Hired Guns Book Club: The Accidental Creative
The Hired Guns Book Club: Part 1 of The Accidental Creative
The Hired Guns Book Club: Part 2 of The Accidental Creative

Also by Todd:
“Be a Laser, Not a Lighthouse” & Other Creative Leadership Essentials
The Accidental Creative: Are You Taking Ground or Just Maintaining It?
“Every Hero Needs a Bad Guy”: Who Are You Fighting Against?

Bullet Points: The Freelancer Surge; Uninsured Workers and the Law; Former Wall Streeters, Starting Over

The Hired Guns on September 2, 2011

Writing for the Atlantic, Sara Horowitz of the Freelancers Union says that the ongoing shift from full-time workers to freelancers with bunches of gigs is a change with effects as major as those that occurred during the Industrial Revolution.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are lots of uninsured workers who don’t know much about the federal government’s healthcare provisions—or at least the ones that won’t even start until 2013–14. NPR has the story about a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
If you get fired, it’s important to get used to answering the questions it will raise in future job interviews: “You’ve got to be comfortable with that question. Ask yourself that question in a mirror 15 different ways and be comfortable with the response and turn it into a learning experience and a positive response for the person who wants to hire you,” says the recruiter Debbie Millhouse in the Charlotte Observer.
Just like everyone else, management needs to keep up with the current downtown and not act as if it’s the same as the one we faced in 2008: “Don’t fight the last recession’s war. You’ll lose.” [Fortune]
Some Wall Streeters looking to get back to work are getting the sort of retraining and reinvention more commonly given to blue-collar workers. [CNBC]

Bullet Points: LinkedIn’s Hires; Post-It Wars in Paris; Performance Reviews Are Broken But Fixable

The Hired Guns on September 1, 2011

“There are only three interview questions in every job interview… Can you do the job? Will you love the job? Can we tolerate working with you?” More on what to ask job applicants from Fortune. Related: the seven most common interview mistakes and how to survive a bad job interviewer. [BNET]
“Let’s face it: Traditional performance reviews just don’t work for the modern worker.” Morgan Norman has some tips for getting reviews back on track.
5 Signs Your Competitors Will Steal Your Best IT Workers [CIO]
Paris office workers are taking up valuable company time to create amazing “pixelated” scenes on their windows using Post-Its. (Is it our imagination, or are the French colors better than the ones in our supply closet?) Many many more at postitwar.com.
LinkedIn wants to hire 1000 more people. How’s it going about it? [Fins.com]
A petition that aims to stop Monster.com and other job boards from accepting wants ads that exclude the unemployed from consideration has gathered over 90,000 signatures. (President Obama has indicated he’s in favor of a bill that would make this practice illegal, by the way.)

The Good Guns: Help UX Talent Get Noticed

The Hired Guns on September 1, 2011

The NYC Usability Professionals’ Association (NYC UPA) will be running a “Resume Speed Dating” event on Tuesday, September 20, from 7:45-8:15. The group is looking for talent spotters to help applicants make their resumes more targeted and useful to potential employers.

Good Gun Profile:
Are you an experienced UX hiring manager or recruiter? Want to help some talent get a leg up—and maybe get first crack at some promising workers? Ideally, NYC UPA is looking for people with at least 10 years of experience—enough time to know your way around an acronym and be comfortable estimating salaries and other aspects of typical UX jobs.

Nitty Gritty:
It’s going to be clear to candidates asking for a take on their resumes that you’re there to help, so don’t worry about getting cranky follow-up emails. That said, you’ll be able to reach out to anyone you think might be a good fit for a current or future job.

Net Net:
This is a great way to get your name (and the name of your company) out there and to connect with a deep pool of UX talent. It’s also a proactive way to help keep your industry productive and engaged. Interested? Email Jennifer Pugh at The Hired Guns.

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