How to Change the World

Pure Evangelism: How to Get Great Candidates

Any article that starts off by advising you to tell potential employees that working at your company is a stepping stone to great jobs in other companies is okay by me. Penelope Trunk does this in "Memo to Human Resources: New Ways to Get Great Candidates." Her recommendations include:

• Tell people where they'll go next. No one works at one company forever, so if you can show how a candidate can get ready for a career leap, you'll make your company attractive.

• Use your public relations team to prop up the manager. By this Penelope means that you should advertise that the job reports to a cool/great/influential manager. (Hopefully, this is true.)

• Get some respect for speciality recruiters. Good employees develop loyalty to recruiters. These recruiters place the same candidate in ever better jobs. Ergo, make nice with recruiters.

• Advertise in niche communities. Here's an example: Want to catch women as they return to the workplace after child raising? Duh, advertise in mommy blogs via Blogher.

• Leverage social media. There's no doubt in my mind, for example, that you can recruit using Twitter. You can do a lot with 140 characters if you know what you're doing. If you want a quick introduction to the best of Twitter, click here. Just being on social media sites says something about your company.

If you're having problems getting great candidates, be sure to read Penelope's counterintuitive ideas before you conduct the next interview. Remember: recruiting is one of the purest forms of evangelism because you are truly "bringing the good news" about working at a company.

How to Not Hire Someone Via Craigslist

After reading my posting about how to get a job on Craigslist, my buddy Danny Kay sent me a link to illustrate what employers do wrong. I was amazed by the example that he sent me from the New York edition of Craigslist:

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We seek a talented, highly motivated & resourceful individual skilled/experienced in web and print design. Minimum 1-2 years professional experience and examples of work done are mandatory for all applicants.

Requirements:

• Degree in Graphic/Web Design with minimum 2 years of Web/Graphic design experience with both print materials and web site design/development.

• Exceptional portfolio that showcases solid conceptual, color, layout graphic design skills as well as fully functional web projects.

• Proficiency in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe ImageReady and Macromedia Dreamweaver.

• Solid experience with hand-coding HTML, CSS and basic JavaScript knowledge required.

• Experience in InDesign and/or QuarkXPress and good understanding of requirements, specifications and concept of the print production design.

• Experience with Macromedia Flash and action scripting is a plus.

• Must be a highly self-motivated team player, able to work independently and with direction as part of a team.

• Work on PC based platform.

• Supervisory experience.

Compensation: Commensurate with experience.

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First, let’s analyze the compensation. I bet it pays $15-20/hour based on the line, “Compensation: Commensurate with experience.” This is recruit-speak for “we think we can hire someone great for peanuts, and we’d rather hire cheap, lousy people than expensive, good ones and risk screwing up our out-of-touch pay ranges.”

Second, let’s examine the desired qualifications. I don’t think that even The Russell Brown of Adobe would qualify for this position:

1. Proficiency with Photoshop, Illustrator, ImageReady, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, InDesign “and/or” QuarkExpress, and Flash. Only the kids of John Warnock who were suckled at the breast of Adobe could know all these applications.

2. “Exceptional portfolio,” experience with graphic and web design plus familiarity with print production. Sounds like someone who’s been in the business for twenty years to me. But how hard could it be to master these skills?

3. “Supervisory experience”—so in one to two years the successful candidate has learned those applications and processes as well as supervised people? In my first two years at Apple, all I did was carry Mike Boich's (the first Macintosh software evangelist) bags.

Oh I almost forgot, the candidate should have gained all this expertise while using the PC-version of applications. What self-respecting candidate is going to admit that? What candidate is going to want to do this kind of work on a PC?

This job posting is fundamentally flawed. It casts far too big a net, so it will intimidate or exasperate the little fish (ie, people starting their careers), and the big fish (ie, people who truly qualified) either aren’t reading Craigslist or will smell a rat: “Compensation: Commensurate with experience.”

This is my advice:

• Use the right tool. Craigslist might not be the best place for senior positions and for senior candidates at established companies. Better places are Creativeheads.net, Creativecircle, and I.D. However, it is great for contract work and entry- and mid-level positions.

• Write honest job descriptions for honest job titles. Don’t try to entice candidates with promises of greater responsibilities or opportunities than is true. And don’t delude yourself: If the cat drags in over-qualified candidate, are you really going to expand the job?

• Match the job and the background requirements. If you have an entry-level job, then write entry-level specs. If you have a mid- or upper-level job, then write more demanding specs such as five or more years of experience. Unfortunately, most help-wanted ads contain unrealistic demands for the position.

• Sell. Almost every help-wanted ad focuses on buying, not selling—that is, the qualifications that candidates have to meet and the fences that they have to jump over. However, in the war for talent, this is ass backwards. This ad, for example, should mention things like “award-winning shop,” “work alongside famous designers,” “interesting projects for Disney, Apple, and Audi.”

• Give young people a break. In the past of great employees are managers who gave them a break. Maybe they didn’t have the ideal educational or work experience—for example, an ex-jewelry schlepper. What’s more important than what’s on screen is what’s in the mind, soul, and attitude of candidates.

By the way, if you’re a wunderkind and want to apply for this job, go for it. $20/hour can add up.

How to Get a Job on Craigslist

I recently ran a help-wanted ad on Craigslist. The position was a photo-editor job for a site that I dare not mention because some people will complain that I promote it too often. Here’s what I learned a lot from this experience—much of which you may apply to a job search if you respond to a Craigslist ad:

• Apply fast. I posted the job at 11:19 pm on Thursday, August 2nd. The first response came in thirty-one minutes later. Fifteen more responses came in the next day. Therefore, 43% of the responses came in the first day or so. If you wait a few days, employers who advertise on Craigslist may already fill the job. Indeed, looking for a job is a job, so don’t take a few days off (for example, the weekend) from your search.

• Write a cover email that addresses the position. Two people simply attached their resume to their response. I pushed back on one and suggested that he write a cover email. He copied and pasted my job description to, I guess, let me know which job he was applying for. Needless to say, both candidates didn’t get serious consideration. I don’t know about other employers, but the thing I can’t stand the most is laziness. Although, to be fair, the ad was for a position at the worst website in the world.

• Rise to the occasion. The vast majority of the candidates were highly-qualified professional designers, photographers, and photo editors. My response to the first thirty-one applicants (who were diligent enough to write a cover email) involved a test to find pictures that illustrated five sample stories. Twenty-six (94%) of the twenty-nine immediately completed the test. Now you know that there are highly-qualified diligent candidates in the Craigslist talent pool.

• Apply well. You should jump right on an opportunity because if the position is filled there’s usually nothing you can do. However, the three people that we hired did apply on the fifth and seventh days after the listing. The reason is that they simply picked the pictures that we liked best—which is to say either our tastes were similar or they figured out what we liked, both of which work for me.

• Apply really well. The person who was the most obvious “right candidate” did something that no one else did: He not only chose good pictures, but he also resized them to approximately 140 x 105 pixels. This is the size of the pictures that we use on our site. Thus, he figured out what kind of pictures we liked and what size we used.

  Several other candidates said something to effect of, “These aren’t the right size for your site, but I figured you just wanted to check my taste, not my ability to resize photos.” Actually, we wanted to see how much initiative candidates had too. Most companies would love to find the one candidate that stands head and shoulders above the others, so be that person by applying really well. Ask yourself this simple question: “If I were hiring for this position, what would impress me?”

• Don’t be stupid. I mentioned in the ad that Macintosh expertise was highly desirable—specificially with a handful of apps. One person wrote back, “Quite frankly, I’ve never even heard of FlySketch, Skitch or MarsEdit (or Ecto or Qumana).” Honesty, is not the best policy: either don’t mention your lack of qualifications or spend ten minutes to go figure out what these applications do. My conclusion from the candidate’s response was that he was lazy, and laziness wasn’t in the job description.

By the way, the ad cost $75, and it yielded approximately thirty-seven good candidates—therefore, at a cost of a mere $2 per candidate. I’d heard from other companies about the extraordinary effectiveness of Craigslist, but now I “know” this is true. And if you’re a candidate for a job on Craigslist, now you “know” what you’re up against, so apply fast, write a good cover email, apply well, apply really well, and don’t flaunt your lack of qualifications.

Ten Questions with Jeffrey Pfeffer

Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of twelve books.Dr. Pfeffer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. from Stanford.

He began his career at the business school at the University of Illinois and then taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and he has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School, Singapore Management University, London Business School, and IESE in Barcelona.

Pfeffer currently serves on the board of directors of Audible Magic and SonoSite (SONO) and writes a monthly column on management issues entitled “The Human Factor” for the 650,000 circulation Time-Warner business magazine, Business 2.0

This interview is based on his latest book:What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management.

1. Question: Why do companies do stupid things?

   Answer: First, they ignore feedback effects. There has recently been a lot of interest, and apparent surprise, that programmers in India now cost a lot and their wages have been rising rapidly. Did people forget supply and demand? If everyone moves work to India, what did companies think would happen? Or, to take another example, when companies cut their retirement benefits, and people can not afford to retire, guess what, they won’t.

   Second, companies often ignore the interdependence or connections between actions in one part and those in another. So, even as some departments are trying to cut the costs of benefits, others are worried about recruiting and retaining enough qualified people. Maybe the parts should work together.

   Third, many companies presume that incentives are the answer to everything, and have a very mechanistic model of human behavior. That is also incorrect.

2. Question: What can companies do to get smarter?

   Answer: Companies learn just like people learn—by trying new things and seeing what happens. That requires, first, a tolerance for failure, since by definition, learning means doing things you aren’t very good at.

   Second, it requires structured self-reflection—after-action or after-event reviews so that instead of having one year of experience repeated 20 times, people and companies actually accumulate learning over time.

3. Question: How do you stop the misdeeds (for example, Enron) in organizations?

   Answer: What is interesting is that there are few social sanctions—as contrasted with legal or financial ones—for bad behavior. Executives who have served jail time are back on TV and are still celebreties. More to the point, they aren’t shunned by their colleagues.

   The prevailing mood seems to be, as long as people retain enough wealth, they can buy their way back by donating time and money. If we are serious about enforcing norms, then there have to be real sanctions. In the military academies, violations of important norms are met with expulsion or social ostracism—eating alone, for instance. Not so, not yet, for the most part in the corporate world.

4. Question: How do you get a company to behave in a truthful manner?

   Answer: You start by having leaders tell the truth—which includes admitting what they don’t know and what they have done wrong. It is impossible to manage successfully if you don’t know what is actually going on. But a lie takes two people: the person who tells the lie and the individual who signals that s/he wants to hear it. So, you don’t want to punish people for surfacing problems or telling you bad news. You don’t want to “shoot the messenger,” but thank them for bringing issues and concerns to light.

5. Question: What’s the best way to improve customer relations?

   Answer: This is almost too simple—actually take care of customers! I am sure we have all heard the recorded message, “you’re call is very important to us.” Well, if the call were important to the company who has recorded the message, maybe they would answer it in some reasonable time instead of either playing music or bombarding the caller with advertising messages. When you make a mistake, fix it and admit responsibility. Tell the truth. By the way, the airlines seem to be the worst at all of this, with a few exceptions.

6. Question: I think I know what you will say, but what’s more important: CRM software or recruiting and training?

   Answer: Before you can manage customer relationships through some software product, you first need to build those relationships. And relationships are still largely built through people. That’s why the most important three feet of real estate in retail—or in many industries—is the distance between the customer and the sales associate or individual who is serving that customer. Hiring the best people who are likely to stay, and investing in their training, will build relationships that CRM can manage. Without taking the first steps, there is nothing there.

7. Question: What is the key to global competitiveness?

   Answer: The data on this are clear—companies choose to locate their R & D facilities on the basis of the availability of talent. This is more important than tax abatements and certainly much more important than rates of pay. If location was determined by cost, Silicon Valley would be empty. The best way to build human capital is through education—both elementary and secondary as well as higher education that is truly world class. This costs money, but it is worth it.

8. Question: What is the proper role for a CEO?

   Answer: To develop others and their talents and to create an environment in which people can do their best and want to. It is not to make all the decisions or, like some kind of “sun king,” absorb all the light and the attention.

   In fact, sometimes, as the Grammy-award winning Orpheus Chamber orchestra shows, the best leadership is less leadership. No seed can grow if it is dug up and examined every week, and for people to innovate and get things done, sometimes they need some time and space and resources.

9. Question: How do you turnaround a company?

   Answer: As the late Peter Drucker said, there is no business without a customer. Turning around a company is mostly about providing people a great value proposition—giving them more than they expect. Better products, services, more attention, than the competition. It is hard to do any of this if you lay people off. People—the best people—will head for the exits. And you can’t cut your way to success, because it’s a strategy that’s too easily duplicated. Look at Singapore Airlines—they are able to charge more for the same flights because they provide such a superior product and experience. I wish more companies would figure this out.

10. Question: But what if it’s no fault of the company and people just aren’t buy, flying, etc…then what do you do?

    If you are going to lay people off, do it once, tell the specific people who will be let go, do it with compassion and generosity, and get on with it. But often organizations can find ways of avoiding layoffs, such as reducing everyone’s work hours a little, reducing variable components of pay, or finding ways to capture market share from competitors.

    If Southwest Airlines could come out of 9/11 without doing layoffs in an industry, airlines, that was devastated, then I am not sure they are ever necessary. But the typical way they are done—announcement of a number so that everyone is worried and distracted, and often doing the layoffs by escorting people out the door so they can’t say good-by, leaves “survivor guilt” and demotivated people.

11. Question: What are the characteristics of a good work week and vacation policy?

    Answer: We live in a world where ideas and innovation are paramount. But people can’t be creative if they are exhausted. And when people work when they are tired, they make mistakes. If we have learned anything from the quality movement, it is that the cost of finding and fixing mistakes is greater than the cost of preventing them. So, give people time off. And, by the way, the younger generations want a life as well as work. Work-life balance is a great way to attract—and retain—great people.

12. Question: What are the characteristics of a good incentive plan?

    Answer: Incentives should be large enough to provide an occasion for celebrating success but not so large as to distort behavior. And incentives can include recognition and things other than money. Companies get themselves into trouble all the time by being too clever with their incentives.

    Stock options did reward leaders for getting the price of the stock up—it’s just that it was often for a short period, and was accomplished by distorting earnings. Be careful what you pay for—you might just get it.

13. Question: What does it say about a company if it asks a candidate with twenty years of experience to submit school transcripts?

    Answer: To tell you the truth, neither hiring on the basis of a resume—the positions people have held and the credentials they have acquired—nor hiring on the basis of a transcript makes much sense. In the first case of the 20 years of experience, you need to ascertain not just what the person has done but also how well s/he has done it—something that is difficult to do in a world in which lawyers will tell previous employers not to say much—and more importantly, what they are capable of doing in the future.

    Every CEO was CEO for the first time, which meant that some company had to decide that “previous experience”—in this instance, in the CEO role—was not a requirement, and similarly for every other position. In the second case, transcripts mostly reveal whether people can succeed in school. There is little evidence in the one area I know best, business schools and MBAs, that grades in school predict subsequent career success, and to the extent there are positive correlations found in some studies, they are incredibly small.

    The answer, in terms of hiring, is to first of all be clear about the relevant behaviors and then test for those behaviors, either using work samples or else interview questions that probe how people have handled or would handle relevant situations.

14. Question: What role should budgets play in the management of an organization?

    Answer: Budgets should be general guidelines. As hard and fast rules, they become subject to “gaming.” People delay doing sensible things, push expenses around, hide sales, etc. And also, budgets often just reward the best forecasters and negotiators. It is possible to make “budget” as you lose market share and go broke, as long as the targets are set low enough.

15. Question: How should people judge a company’s results?

    Answer: By comparison to its peers and by comparison to what its own aspirations are. Companies, as the balanced scorecard notes, depend on customers, employees, investors, suppliers, and others in the ecosystem. It is wrong to give one of those groups priority over the others. Brand loyalty and employee loyalty are both real assets, even if not reflected on balance sheets and income statements.

    Just look at Apple Computer with respect to products and DaVita, the kidney dialysis company, which has few open nursing positions because it is a great place to work. As Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines recognized long ago, if you take care of your people, they will take care of the customers, who will keep coming back, which will make the shareholders happy. It is all interrelated.

16. Question: What role should strategic planning play in the management of an organization?

    Answer: Doing the right thing is important, which is where strategy comes in. But doing that thing well—execution—is what sets companies apart. After all, every football play is designed to go for a huge gain. The reason it doesn’t is because of execution—people drop balls, miss blocks, go to the wrong place, and so forth. So, success depends on execution—on the ability to get things done.

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Here’s more info about the book and a video link.

The Nine Biggest Myths of the Workplace by Penelope Trunk

I liked Penelope Trunk's interview so much that I asked her for more material. Here's her list of the nine biggest workplace myths:

1. You’ll be happier if you have a job you like.

   The correlation between your happiness and your job is overrated. The most important factors, by far, are your optimism levels and your personal relationships. If you are a pessimist, a great job can’t overcome that. (Think of the jerks at the top.) And if you have great friends and family, you can probably be happy even if you hate your job (imagine a garbage collector who’s in love).

2. Job-hopping will hurt you.

   Job hopping is one of the best ways to maintain passion and personal growth in your careers. And here’s some good news for hoppers: Most people will have eight jobs between the time they are eighteen and thirty. This means most young workers are job hopping. So hiring managers have no choice but to hire job hoppers. Ride this wave and try a lot of jobs out yourself.

3. The glass ceiling still exists.

   The glass ceiling is over, not because people crashed through, but because people are not looking up. Life above the glass ceiling is 100-hour weeks, working for someone else, and no time for friends and family. And it’s not only women who are saying no to the ladder up: Men are as well. People want to customize success for themselves, not climb someone else rungs. So if no one is climbing to the top, the glass ceiling isn’t keeping anyone down.

4. Office politics is about backstabbing.

   The people who are most effective at office politics are people who are genuinely nice. Office politics is about helping people to get what they want. This means you have to take the time to figure out what someone cares about, and then think about how you can help him or her to get it. You need to always have your ears open for when you can help. If you do this, you don’t have to strong arm people or manipulate them. Your authentic caring will inspire people to help you when you need it.

5. Do good work, and you’ll do fine.

   For one thing, no one knows what the heck you’re doing in your cube if you’re not telling them. So when you do good work, let people know. It is not crazy to toot your own horn--it’s crazy to think someone will do it for you. Also, if you do good work but you’re a jerk, people will judge your work to be sub par. So you could say that good work really only matters if your co-workers enjoy hearing about it from you.

6. You need a good resume.

   Only ten percent of jobs come from sending a blind resume. Most people get jobs by leveraging their network. Once you have a connection, the person looks at your resume to make sure there are no red flags. So you need a competent resume and an excellent network. This means you should stop stressing about which verb to use on the second line of your third job. Go talk to someone instead.

7. People with good networks are good at networking.

   Just be nice, take genuine interest in the people you meet, and keep in touch with people you like. This will create a group of people who are invested in helping you because they know you and appreciate you. Use LinkedIn to leverage those peoples’ networks, and you just got yourself a very strong network by simply hanging out with the people you like.

8. Work hard and good things will come.

   Everyone can put in a seventy-hour week. It doesn’t mean you’re doing good work. So here’s an idea: Make sure you’re not the hardest worker. Take a long lunch. Get all your work done early. Grand thinking requires space, flexibility and time. So let people see you staring at the wall. They’ll know you’re a person with big ideas and taking time to think makes you more valuable.

9. Create the shiny brand of you!

   There is no magic formula to having a great career except to be you. Really you. Know who you are and have the humility to understand that self-knowledge is a never-ending journey. Figure out how to do what you love, and you’ll be great at it. Offer your true, good-natured self to other people and you’ll have a great network. Those who stand out as leaders have a notable authenticity that enables them to make genuinely meaningful connections with a wide range of people. Authenticity is a tool for changing the world by doing good.

Ten Questions With Penelope Trunk: Career Guidance for This Century

Penelope Trunk is the author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. She is a career columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance. Her syndicated column has run in more than 200 publications. Earlier, she was a software executive, and then she founded two companies. She has been through an IPO, an acquisition and a bankruptcy. Before that she played professional beach volleyball.

My two favorite answers in this interview are #7 and #10. If I had a nickel for every time I had to answer questions regarding getting an MBA and a first job out of college, I would own my own ice rink by now.

1. Question: How much money does it take to be happy?

   Answer: It takes about $40,000. It does not matter how many kids you have or what city you live in—that’s splitting hairs because peoples’ happiness levels are largely based on their level of optimism and the quality of their relationships. So as long as you have enough money for food and shelter, your optimism level kicks in to dictate how happy you are.

2. Question: Is it more important to be competent or likable?

   Answer: People would actually rather work with someone who is incompetent and likeable than competent and unlikable. Most people nod in agreement when they read this. It’s the unlikable people who form arguments in their head.

   But there’s more. At work, if you are unlikable, people start thinking you are less competent. So stop thinking you can skate by on your genius IQ because you can’t. You need emotional intelligence as well. This situation is so pronounced that there are special-education classrooms rife with kids who could read when they were three. Social skills matter as much as intelligence when it comes to long-term success, even for the geniuses.

3. Question: Should I sue a boss who is sexually harassing me?

   Answer: In most cases, you will destroy your career if you report sexual harassment. So unless you are in physical danger, you should not report harassment. The laws governing sexual harassment don’t protect women who report. The law protects companies from being sued by the women who report. Human resource professionals are trained to protect the company, not the woman who reports.

   When you report harassment it is usually the case that you lose your job through retaliation. Retaliation is illegal but nearly impossible to prove in court. And, even if you could prove it in court, you would go through emotional hell, with no salary, and high-profile drama that makes you unable to get another job. All this for a settlement that will almost certainly not enable you to retire.

   This is simply how the legal system works. I am not saying this is okay. But I’m saying that if you care about your career, you’ll do everything possible to not report. Most women are not in the position to sacrifice their career—and their earning power—in the name of trying to bring down one harasser. The legal system needs to step in and take care of this.

4. Question: When should I ask for a promotion?

   Answer: Maybe never. The average salary increase is four percent. Is that going to change your life in any meaningful way? On top of that, someone is promoting you up their ladder, but their ladder is not necessarily your best path. So stay focused on where you want to go instead of the paths other people have created for you.

   Getting a promotion is so last century. Instead of letting last century’s carrots dictate your workplace rewards, figure out what will be really meaningful to you: training, mentoring, flex time, whatever it is that means more than four percent more money. These are all things that can really improve your life and your career.

5. Question: Is being a generalist or a specialist the path to the executive suite?

   Answer: In Hollywood, the best way to get your pick of any role in the industry is to become a specialist—funny guy, tough girl, action hero—get known for being the best at something, and then use that star-power to branch out. The same is true in business.

   Jobs that don’t require a specialty are low level. To move up you need to be great at something, and you have to let people know what you don’t do. No one is great at everything. Even if your goal is not to get to the executive suite, you should specialize. When you want to take five months off to hike in Tibet, if you are easily replaced, you will be. If you have a skill that is hard to duplicate, your job will be there for you when you get back.

6. Question: What do I do about the gaps in my resume when I traveled or couldn’t find a job?

   Answer: Talk about them well. A gap is really bad if you spent your days on your sofa watching cartoons. But if you watched cartoons to prepare for your next career move into children’s programming, then you sound focused and driven. Same TV, same sofa, two different stories.

   People don’t want to hear your life story. This is good news for people with sofa stints. In almost all cases, you learn something during a gap. Tell a great story about what you’ve learned and where you’re going, and your gap won’t get center stage. Leaving out details is not about lying; it’s about telling good stories.

7. Question: Will getting an MBA or any other type of advanced degree be a good use of time and money since I can’t find a job?

   Answer: No. If you can’t find a job, then you should invest in something like better grooming, or a better resume, or a coach for poor social skills. These are the things that keep people from getting jobs. Instead of running back to school, figure out why you can’t get a job, because maybe it’s something that a degree can’t overcome.

   Grad school generally makes you less employable, not more employable. For example, people who get a graduate degree in the humanities would have had a better chance of surviving the Titanic than getting a tenured teaching job.

   Unless you are going to a top business school at the beginning of your career, you should not stop working in order to get the degree. Go to night school because you will not make up for the loss of income with the extra credential.

   Law school is one of the only graduate degrees that makes you more employable. Unfortunately it makes you more employable in the profession where people are more unhappy. Law school rewards perfectionism, and perfectionism is a risk factor for depression. Lawyers have little control over their work and hours, because they are at the beck-and-call of their clients, and many are constantly working with clients who have problems lawyers cannot solve. These two traits in a job—lack of control over workload and compromised ability to reach stated goals—are the two biggest causes for burnout in jobs.

   [May I interject here? I went to law school for two weeks and quit when I was young! Guy]

8. Question: What’s the ideal length of a resume in a world where every resume is electronic and not viewed printed out on paper?

   Answer: A page. Still. Your resume is a marketing document, not a summary of your life, so every line should be about an accomplishment. The more amazing your accomplishments, the fewer you need to list. For example, if you can write “Evangelized Macintosh and made it one of the most beloved brands in the world,” then you don’t need any other sales and marketing bullets on your resume.

   If you have totally lost perspective, and you think you have two page’s worth of incredible and relevant achievements, consider that hiring managers spend ten seconds evaluating a resume, and a scanner looks for ten keywords, which certainly fit on one page.

   So unless you have a great connection with the hiring manager, and you know he’ll look at both pages, don’t bother sending them. And if you do have that great connection then you are probably going to get an interview even if your resume sucks.

9. Question: How should I prepare for an interview?

   Answer: An interview is a test you can study for. So memorize answers to the fifty most common questions. Most interviewers ask standard variations on standard questions, and there are right answers to these questions.

   Whether you are a stripper or a CIA agent, the answer to the question, “What is your weakness?” is a story about how your weakness interfered at work—in a specific situation—and you overcame it. Most of your other answers should be stories, too. This means you need to make them up before you get to the interview. Stories of your life are memorable. Lists of your life are not. Be memorable if you want to be hired.

   Another way to prepare is to go to the gym right before the interview. It doesn’t matter if you never go to the gym—although you should, because people who workout regularly are more successful in their careers. You should go right before an interview because people judge you first on your appearance, and if do heavy lifting with your back and stomach muscles you will stand up much straighter in the interview. This will make you look more confident, which is half the battle in being judged by appearance.

10. Question: What’s the right strategy for the search for a first job out of college?

    Answer: Don’t place too much importance on your first job. You’ll have a lot more. Most people have eight jobs before they turn thirty, and that’s fine. It is nearly impossible to know what career will be a good fit for you until you start trying things. So give yourself the latitude to try a lot. And don’t get hung up on a big soul search. To land a great job, you don’t need to know the meaning of life, just the meaning of hard work.

11. Question: Do only losers live at home after college?

    Answer: On some level it would be insane not to move back home, which is why more than fifty percent of graduating seniors do it. Moving back to your parent’s house is a smart step toward finding a career that’s right for you.

    Entry level jobs typically cannot cover the cost of rent, college loan payments, and insurance premiums—all of which are rising faster than wages. If you don’t have to worry about paying rent, you have more flexibility to wait for the right job and to take a job that feels very right but pays very poorly. The rise of the prestigious but unpaid internship intersects perfectly with trend to move back home.

12. Question: What should I do if I work for a jerk?

    Answer: Leave. I know there are classic Bob Sutton examples of revered jerks like Steve Jobs, but I wonder about the people who put up with him. Can they not find another visionary to work for who is not such a jerk?

    Staying in a job like this makes you look bad. People wonder why you put up with it. And, frankly, you should too. It’s like being an abused wife. The wife who stays always defends the relationship by how much she gets out of it, but to everyone else it is obvious that she should leave. The problem is a loss of personal perspective.

LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover

My source at LinkedIn, Kay Luo, tells me that my profile is in the 99.99th percentile of profiles viewed. She insisted that I should make it good—or at least suck less. So I enlisted her and LinkedIn’s designer, Mike Lin, to do an “extreme makeover” of my profile. This is what was wrong with my original profile:

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One of her strong suggestions was to ask a question at LinkedIn Answers to activate my network. Please click here to answer it.

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My New Profile

This is my new profile now that I’ve seen the light: If you’re going to use LinkedIn, you should put some effort into your profile. My original one reflected a minimal amount of effort. For example, many of my current and past affiliations were missing, and I did not craft good descriptions of what I stand for. This incompleteness made my profile ineffective for networking. Hopefully, my makeover will provide some ideas to help you.

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While we’re on the topic of networking and linking, my buddy Gayle Hallgren-Rezac told me about an entrepreneur in Ottawa offers a hockey ticket to Senators games to people he’d like to meet. Here’s the story. Something like this would work on me. :-)

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Recruit Kick-Butt People

I added a “Recent Jobs” section to the sidebar on the right side of this blog—I know: monetization is so “Web 1.0.” :-) If you want to advertise a position in this jobs board, it’s only $49 for thirty days (this is an introductory special).

I have a highly-qualified readership of people with entrepreneurial, evangelistic, and technical backgrounds that should appeal to companies trying to kick butt...at least that’s my assumption. For you analytical types, I get approximately 8-10,000 page views per day, and there are 20-23,000 RSS subscribers. These are my audience’s demographics as of September, 2006.

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So What Do I Know?

Stephanie Tate is the university relations manager for Yahoo!. (This is not her picture; it’s a stock photo from iStockphoto.) She took a look at my cover email and resume and critiqued them. Just to prove that I’m not easily embarrassed—and to provide the most value to my readers, here’s what she said:

I’ll pretend that I know nothing of you for this exercise (difficult as that may be) and just look at it through a recruiter’s eyes. :)

First, I’d like to see what you did most recently not at the beginning of your career—the more recent and relevant the better. I had to read to the bottom of both the cover and the resume to find the most recent and relevant. Recruiters have to read hundreds of resumes every week so I may not get through it to know that you are important.

The point of the cover email is to catch the attention of the “recruiter” and make me want to read further. It should call out items of interest that would otherwise not be covered in the resume. Your resume does some of that, but there are areas that are redundant to the resume.

The resume calls out the positions held and a brief description of the responsibilities. What it lacks is the “so what.” What I mean by that is that it needs to call out what the impact/benefit was to the company when you held those roles.

A couple of examples:

• You are the managing partner at Garage. I want to know that you were wise with the companies you backed and what happened to said companies. As far as I can tell you may or may not be a successful VC.

• At Apple you were the Chief Evangelist. I don’t see from the resume that it mattered. There are no achievements to speak of. Did it really make a difference for Apple to have a Chief Evangelist?

You are clearly overqualified for a Brand Mgr 2 position and if it came through the normal resume process I would consider it as such. However, because it is tied to a particular position of interest it has a very good chance of being read and forwarded on to the appropriate executive recruiter. If the position was not called out and just submitted into the database it would take a query to be found.

Overall, you could do quite a bit to improve your resume. Everything from the basics of resume writing to the finer points of telling me why you matter over the thousands of resumes I read.

I guess I won’t be getting this interview. I should have taken the interview when the company was looking at me as a CEO candidate. Timing is everything in life. :-)

By the way, this is the end of career week in my blog. Next week is gadget week.

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Dear Libby

Guy Kawasaki
3300 Hillview
Palo Alto, CA 94304
kawasaki@garage.com
650-354-1854

August 16, 2006

Dear Libby,

I read your interview in Guy Kawasaki’s blog (To show I’m digitially hip enough to have read a recent blog item.), and your responses sparked an interest (A little bit of sucking up to show her that I thought that her interview was compelling.) in working at Yahoo!. I would like to apply for job #RX1000016867 (To show that I read her interview, so I know that I should apply for a specific job.), Brand Marketing Mgr2, located in Sunnyvale, California.

The breadth (To show that I got her key positioning against Google et al: Yahoo!’s breadth of opportunities.) of Yahoo!’s business is very attractive, and I would relish competing with a company like Google (To show that I got the code that Yahoo! likes people who want to compete with Google.)—the new Microsoft, if you know what I mean (To show a sense of humor.).

I’ve listed my qualifications and background in the one-page resume that’s attached. My career was forged at Apple where I worked for Steve Jobs, the Herb Kelleher of computers (This is taking a risk: I figured out she worked for Southwest Airlines by reading the Yahoo! web site. I'm betting that she will find this comparison amusing, but it could backfire. Finally, it also shows that I'm diligent enough to figure out she worked “for peanuts.”). My experience and expertise that matches up (To make it obvious that I’m perfect for this job I matched up to what the job description says.) with this position include:

• I managed the third-party evangelism program for Apple Computer. In a nutshell, this position involved the creation and implementation of programs to build buzz (I never describe what I did for Apple as “building buzz,” but I’m applying for a buzz marketing job, so I use the job description’s terminology) for Macintosh in the developer community. This position required interfacing with internal resources and business units(Again, lifting terminology from the job description.) as well as external events, promotions, and stunts to convince companies to write software for a computer that had no installed base.

• In a subsequent position at Apple, I was responsible for “maintaining the Macintosh cult” (I use the word “cult” because the job description indicates an affinity to evangelism/guerilla/word-of-mouth marketing) during the mid nineties when Apple, according to the experts, was supposed to die (again) (To show a sense of humor and personality.). This broadened my buzz marketing experience from the developer community to all of Apple’s customers and constituencies (I don’t want to create the impression that I can only do technical evangelism/marketing.).

• It’s one thing to build buzz with the might and force of an Apple (or Yahoo!) behind you. It’s another to do so with a small startup. I learned the lessons of guerilla marketing and buzz creation without million-dollar budgets by founding three companies. (To show two things: first, I understand that even though Yahoo! is a huge company, that doesn’t mean everyone has unlimited marketing budgets; second, that I don’t need unlimited budgets.)

These references will attest to my ability to generate buzz, work with partners, manage vendors, and create programs (Again, lifting a list of functions from the job description.):

• Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm (email address) (How could someone who provides Geoffrey Moore as a reference not at least get an interview?)

• Steve Hayden, vice chairman, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide (email address) (More reality distortion: Steve Hayden is a legend in advertising—he wrote the script for 1984 commercial for Apple. The job description mentions working with vendors, so I put this in. Finally, I’m betting that someone of Libby’s seniority at a media company like Yahoo! would relish the opportunity to make contact with the vice-chairman of Ogilvy.)

• Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (email address) (Andy is less well known, but he has a great title. He also has a book coming out soon, so he might get real famous soon. Also, it can’t hurt my career for Andy to find out that I mentioned him in my blog in case I don’t get the job at Yahoo!.)

In addition, I’ve asked Seth Godin, the author of Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Idea Virus, and other books as well as a former Yahoo! employee to call you on my behalf. (Dropping another big name and alumnus.)

If this really matters, I have an MBA from UCLA (The job description says Yahoo! prefers an MBA, but I’m betting that this gal from Texas isn’t that impressed by MBAs even though she has one so I threw in “If this really matters.”), and I have written eight books and given hundreds of keynote speeches on the subjects of marketing, evangelism, and entrepreneurship (You can’t be afraid to toot your own horn, and I mention, again, the key functions from the job description). The bottom line is that I am excited about this position, and I believe I have all the background, experience, and connections to achieve success at Yahoo! (To provide a nice, upbeat close with an expression of real interest.).

Sincerely,

Guy Kawasaki

kawasaki@garage.com (She doesn’t even have to look back up to the top of the page to email me.)

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This may seem like a long cover email, but you have to factor out all the text in blue. It’s on the long side, but I have to compensate for my short resume. :-)

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Some people who read this will say, “Sure, Guy, if I had this track record and connections, I would do this too. But I don’t. So what do I do?”

And the answer, albeit evasive, is that getting a job is not about competing on an even playing field. You use everything you can to tilt the field towards you: friends, relatives, hours of research, school alumni connections, vendors, service providers, whatever.”

If you don’t agree with my line of thinking, send me your PayPal account name, and I might transfer $.50 to you so that you can call your mama and lament about how unfair the world is.

The key is to get in. Then the hard work really begins: delivering results.

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This is the Yahoo! job posting.

Brand Marketing Mgr2, Job No. RX1000016867. Description: Buzz Marketing Sr. Manager - Business Unit Specialist Connected Life, Communications, Network Products

Yahoo!, the World’s #1 internet destination and its unique, corporate Buzz Marketing team are seeking a dynamic, creative and strategic thinker to join its cross-functional team.  This team member will have the opportunity to work with multiple clients within Yahoo! as well as key sales and strategic partnerships.

Position Summary / Roles and Responsibilities:

• Responsible for supporting the Buzz Marketing Team in the creation and implementation of local and national press worthy, marketing programs involving events, stunts, guerrilla and grass roots efforts, promotions, entertainment marketing, co-branding partnerships for Yahoo!

• Interface directly with senior-level marketing, product management, engineering and PR staff inside your target Business Unit(s).  Partner with management teams to identify key strategic initiatives for Buzz Marketing.

• Manage and own the entire Buzz Program life-cycle: concept ideation, budget and planning, sales cycle and co-marketing partnership development (as relevant), event execution and results/findings/business analysis.

• Act as a liaison between Yahoo! corporate marketing, business units and assigned Yahoo! sales teams. As part of Global Brand Marketing team, consistently represent Yahoo! master brand values, goals and key strategies.

• Proactively develop program ideas for key sales areas, business units (BU) and corporate.  Persuasively pitch these concepts to various stakeholders, iterating as necessary to meet strategy and objectives.

• Manage, directly or indirectly, in-house and outsourced staff for creative, on-line and in-market tasks. Source vendors as necessary.

• Travel as needed to execute in-market events and sell-through partnership programs.

Qualifications and Skills / Experience Required:

• Outgoing, energetic and enthusiastic:  independent thinker, driven, takes initiative yet works well with others

• Team builder: can easily bring people together from different backgrounds, skills and reporting structures and create a coherent, cross-functional team

• Has the ability to be creative, quickly and strategically.  Must have talent for translating an outlandish buzz idea into a strategic, defined brand communication.  Experience with creative development essential.

• Detailed yet flexible thinker: must be nimble enough to respond quickly to changing circumstances, but careful and detailed in thinking, strategy and execution.

• Has an understanding of a sales organization needs and basic marketing fundamentals such as marketing strategy, advertising basics and media terms, brand positioning and identity.  The ability to strategize, pitch and sell advertising and marketing programs to clients.

• Solid presentation/communication skills:  ability to persuade others about what’s needed to get buzz projects done

• Extremely organized and willing to implement down to the smallest detail

The ideal candidate must be extremely organized with the ability to multi-task.   BS/BA degree (or equivalent) and 10+ years of experience in public relations, agency, brand marketing, event marketing and promotions required.  Previous Internet and/or Consumer Electronics industry background a plus.  Must have good written and verbal communication skills as well as excellent knowledge of PC including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, email and a strong understanding of the Internet.  MBA preferred.

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This is my one-page resume. It is what I would use for this particular position.

Guy Kawasaki
3300 Hillview
Palo Alto, CA 94304
650-354-1854
kawasaki@garage.com

Education

1972-1976. Bachelor of Arts, Stanford University. Major: Psychology.

1977-1979. Masters of Business Administration, University of California, Los Angeles. Major: Marketing.

Work Experience

1977-1983. Vice president of marketing, Nova Stylings, Inc. Los Angeles, California. Managed all marketing and sales functions for a fine-jewelry manufacturer.

1983-1983. Director of marketing, EduWare Services. Agoura Hills, California. Supervised all marketing functions for an educational software company.

1983-1987. Software evangelist/director of software product management, Apple Computer, Inc. Cupertino, California. Proselytized the Macintosh operating system to third-party developers and managed the Apple-labeled software products.

1987-1989. CEO, ACI US. Cupertino, California. Directed the operation of a Macintosh software publisher.

1989-1993. Independent author, speaker, and Forbes columnist. San Francisco, California. Starting at this time, wrote eight books and keynoted several hundred conferences about the topics of entrepreneurship, evangelism, sales, and competition.

1993-1995, CEO, Fog City Software. Directed the operation of a second Macintosh software publisher.

1995-1997. Chief evangelist, Apple Computer, Inc. Cupertino, California. Supported and maintained the Macintosh cult.

1997-Present. Managing director, Garage Technology Ventures. Palo Alto, California. Founded and led an early-stage venture capital firm.

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This is my three-page, holy moly, this guy is clueless, “this is the kind of resume many people believe they should create” resume. The scary thing is that some people are going to tell me that they think this resume is better. :-)

Guy Kawasaki
3300 Hillview
Palo Alto, CA 94304
650-354-1854
kawasaki@garage.com

Objective

To find a position in a dynamic, high growth company that enables me to use my broad range of marketing and management skills to achieve success for the company and its shareholders. I desire a fast-paced environment that provides continuous challenges and enables me to grow as an individual contributor, team player, and manager.

Areas of Expertise

• Marketing (positioning, branding, pricing, and promotion)

• Sales (direct and indirect sales including consumer and enterprise markets)

• Evangelism

• Partnering

• Conference management

• Entrepreneurship

• Intrapreneurship

• Product management

• Product demonstration

• Public speaking, panel moderation, and panel participation

• Writing

• Blogging

Education

1972-1976. Bachelor of Arts, Stanford University. Major: Psychology. Graduation with departmental honors. Additional coursework in biology and economics.

1977. Attended U. C. Davis School of Law.

1977-1979. Masters of Business Administration, University of California, Los Angeles. Major: Marketing. Additional coursework in statistics, operations research, and entrepreneurship.

2003. Honorary doctorate, Babson College.

1990. Billy Graham School of Evangelism.

Work Experience

1977-1983. Vice president of marketing, Nova Stylings, Inc. Los Angeles, California. Managed all marketing and sales functions for a fine-jewelry manufacturer including branding, positioning, pricing, sales force management, and key account sales.

1983-1983. Director of marketing, EduWare Services. Agoura Hills, California. Supervised all marketing functions for an educational software company including branding, positioning, demonstration, and tradeshows.

1983-1987. Software evangelist/director of software product management, Apple Computer, Inc. Cupertino, California. Proselytized the Macintosh operating system to third-party developers and managed the Apple-labeled software products. Responsible for outreach, technical support, developer tools, and documentation.

1987-1989. CEO, ACI US. Cupertino, California. Directed the operation of a Macintosh software publisher including sales, marketing, fund raising, key account sales, and corporate governance.

1989-1993. Independent author, speaker, and Forbes columnist. San Francisco, California. Write r for Macworld, MacUser, and Forbes. Keynoted several hundred conferences about the topics of entrepreneurship, evangelism, sales, and competition beginning in 1989 to present.

1993-1995, CEO, Fog City Software. Directed the operation of a second Macintosh software publisher. Responsible for overall creation and management of the company.

1995-1997. Chief evangelist, Apple Computer, Inc. Cupertino, California. Supported and maintained the Macintosh cult through the use of guerilla marketing techniques, press relations, and employee motivation.

1997-Present. Managing director, Garage Technology Ventures. Palo Alto, California. Founded and led an early-stage venture capital and investment bankingfirm including branding, conference speaking, deal flow, due diligence, negotiation, and fund raising.

Achievements

• Ranked in the Technorati 100

• Author of eight books: The Macintosh Way, Selling the Dream, Hindsights, Database 101, The Computer Curmudgeon, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Rules for Revolutionaries, and The Art of the Start.

• Frequent appearances on television and radio including CNBC Power Lunch, CNN, and Bloomberg.

• Give approximately 100 keynote speeches per year to companies such as Audi, Boeing, Nike, Yahoo, HP, Dell, and Churchill Club.

• Frequent baccalaureate and graduation speaker including Palo Alto High School (three times), DeAnza College, Harker School, and Babson College as well as industry events such as Demo and D.

Board Participation

• Board of directors: Razz

• Board of directors: FilmLoop

• Board of directors: BitPass

• Advisor: Kaboodle

• Advisor: Coghead

• Advisor: Simply Hired

• Advisor: TripWire

• Former board of directors member of the Stanford Alumni Association

Not-For-Profit and Community Activities

• Board of directors, Hawaiian Islands Ministry

• Board of trustees, Bowman International School

Technical Expertise

• Macintosh Operating System

• Word

• Excel

• PowerPoint

• Entourage

• BBEdit

• MarsEdit

• TypePad

• Safari

• Firefox

• iPhoto

• iTunes

• FilmLoop

Other Qualifications

• Passed Series 7 NASD test

• Passed Series 24 NASD test

• Passed Series 63 NASD test

Outside Interests

• Parenting

• Hockey

• Digital photography

References

Available upon request

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Ten (Okay, 13) Questions with Libby Sartain, Chief People Yahoo!

This is HR and recruiting week on my blog! This is an interview with Libby Sartain of Yahoo. She is responsible for leading Yahoo! Inc.’s global human resources efforts and managing and developing the human resources team. Prior to joining Yahoo! in August 2001, Sartain was “vice president of people” at Southwest Airlines. She holds an MBA from the University of North Texas and a BBA from Southern Methodist University.

1. Question: At any given moment, how many jobs are you trying to fill?

   Answer: Our number of open requisitions fluctuate, but if I had to average, I would say about 1,000 at any given moment and 2,500 or so total per year.

2. Question: On average, how many applications do you get per job?

   Answer: For the last few years, we have received more than 120,000 resumes a year. So, we start with about 50/1 ratio, but when we narrow that down to actual qualified candidates, we see about ten for every job.

3. Question: How can a candidate break through the noise?

   Answer: The biggest obstacle for a candidate is if they send in a resume but don’t map it for a specific open position. With so many resumes, and recruiters looking to fill what is open today, they might be missed. So the best thing is to apply to the one or two jobs that are open and for which your skills are a direct match. It is also helpful to be referred by someone inside the company. But, be sure it is someone who can vouch for you and your work.

4. Question: What makes a cover email and resume “pop” for you?

   Answer: In the cover email, or summary when submitting your applications through an online jobs site like Hot Jobs, we look for your personality to show through. You should be able to come up with a succinct summary of who you are, what you bring to the table, and why we should hire you...but your unique personality should “pop.”

   I suggest that you write an “elevator pitch” for yourself to have at the ready while you’re looking for a new job. You can summarize in your cover email/online submission: Who are you? What do you stand for? What is your next big personal objective? How would you like to contribute in your next role. Sitting down and writing a fifty to seventy-five word elevator pitch for an imaginary listener is a wonderful experience of self-discovery. To be able to boil down your entire existence into such a short package is one way to discover your essential personal statement to the world. At least, what you’d like your essential personal statement to be. Getting comfortable with the pitch also helps when you are interviewing.

5. Question: What do you dread seeing in a resume?

   Answer: I dread seeing resumes that don’t tell me where you have worked and what you have accomplished there. Many people have taken to writing capabilities statements but most don’t have any meat to show how and where they developed the capabilities they claim they have. Over-inflating your jobs and experience also works against you. And, when you have seen as many resumes as our recruiters have seen, this over inflation is completely obvious.

   This sounds strange in the Silicon Valley, but i also like to see some stability. If someone held every job for two years or less, alarm bells go off in my head. I wonder if the candidate has worn out his or her welcome.

6. Question: Does a resume that’s over one page long hurt a candidate’s chances?

   Answer: We are looking at resumes electronically, so the pages aren’t really the issue. They should be succinct, but if they are two pages, or three pages...and great, that works. Anything over three pages is too much.

   (Editorial comment from Guy: God help us, Libby is unleashing three-page resumes on us. Nota bene: she said “and great.” Of course, every candidate believes his resume is great and requires three pages just like every entrepreneur believes he needs sixty PowerPoint slides.)

7. Question: How would you stack rank education, experience, and enthusiasm as desirable qualities of a candidate?

   Answer: You have to have the whole package, but enthusiasm goes a long way with me. I look for people who will fit in our culture and who are smart, fun, friendly, and are passionate about what we are doing.

8. Question: How does your criteria differ from other Silicon Valley companies like Apple or Google?

   Answer: We offer a distinct opportunity. We can usually offer a candidate a variety of different experiences because we have so many different products and services and the largest audience in the world. People select us over the competition because we offer them a role that fits their interests and objectives. They also like the fact that the can move to another area in the future, so they like the prospects for their career development.

9. Question: What’s the effect of a candidate saying that she wants to help Yahoo kick Google’s butt?

   Answer: We love people who want us to win against our competition, and we have competitors in every product and service we offer. (Editorial comment from Guy: This is HR-speak for, “It’s a good thing.”)

10. Question: How can candidates increase the probability of a great interview?

    Answer: Be prepared! You should have at least researched the company and the business/products that you would be working with on the Internet. You should know what you bring to us and convince us that you can do the job. Once again, we want to see your personality too.

11. Question: Can an “art history major” with no technology educational or technology work experience get a job at Yahoo?

    Answer: Sure, but not a technology job. We have folks with art history backgrounds working in a number of areas like surfing (Editorial comment from Guy: this refers to editorial work), user experience and design, marketing or maybe even human resources. It helps if you have experience in a prior company with such a degree.

12. Question: If a candidate doesn’t hear back, at what point should she try to initiate contact—or do people basically “send and pray”?

    Answer: Praying might help, but I suggest that candidates always check back if they don’t hear. But if they get a response that says we have found another candidate, they need to move on.

13. Question: By approximate percentages, how do successful candidates for non-officer level positions come to you?

    Answer:

    • Candidate found listing on Yahoo Jobs page—30%

    • Yahoo employee referred the candidate—30%

    • Yahoo internal recruiter contacted a prospect (that is, the person wasn’t looking)—20%

    • Yahoo retained headhunter contacted a prospect (that is, the person wasn’t looking)—2%

    • Conversion from contractor or temporary—10%

    • Hot Jobs and other jobs sites—7%

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Everything You Wanted to Know About Getting a Job in Silicon Valley But Didn't Know Who to Ask

Many people ask me for advice about getting a job in Silicon Valley, so here’s the inside scoop. Not everyone will agree with this advice, and some will outright deny what I’m saying, but if you use these tips you will stand head and shoulders above most candidates.

1. Love what the company does. Passion for what a company makes or does is the most important factor in getting a job in Silicon Valley. Companies here are built on passion—indeed, perhaps more passion than reality. Hence, they hire passionate people who are already in the Reality Distortion Field. The question is, How do you show your passion?

   The best way is to profess your love of the company’s product or service, and I literally mean “love” not “read about,” “have used,” or “looked at the web site.” If the company is at all enlightened, passion can overcome the lack of a “perfect” educational background and work experience.

   The second best answer is to “know” the company. There never was, but there certainly isn’t now, any excuse for not knowing a great deal about the company. Hardly rocket science, right? But you’d be amazed at how many candidates show up with very little knowledge and sink their chances by asking something as stupid as, “What do you guys do?”

   Corollary: Rather than hoping that the openings that you like are at companies that you like, find out if the companies that you like have openings that you like. (Forgive me Harold Keables, for this sentence sets a new record for the number of “thats.”)

2. Create a solid pitch and bring it with you. In Silicon Valley, you can tell that a person is pitching because her lips are moving. Think of your resume as a “PowerPoint pitch” for you, the product. Hopefully you’ve heard of the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint...here’s the 1/2/3 Rule of Resumes:

   • 1 page long. When some job candidates read this, they will think, “Guy is referring to the hoi polloi and unwashed masses, not me. I have ten years of experience at four different companies covering five different positions. My resume needs to be two—maybe even three-pages—to adequately explain the totality of my wonderfulness. And the more I mention, the more the company might see things they like.”

     As a rule of thumb, if you can’t pitch your company in ten slides or pitch yourself in one page, your idea is stupid and you suck, respectively.

   • 2 key points. Your resume (and interview) should communicate only two, perhaps three, key points. Key points include pertinent work experience, applicable education, or a love for what the company does. One key point is too few, and three is at the edge of too many.

   • 3 sections. “Two key points” means that your resume should only have three sections: contact information, work experience, and educational background. This specifically excludes “objectives” (do you really think that a company cares what you want to be when you grow up?), “references available on upon request” (duh, of course you’ll have to give references if you’re asked; more on this later), and “outside interests” (that Lamaze class training will come in really handy when the company stops delivering software by C section but not right now).

   While I’m at it, here are some additional resume tiplets:

   • Have some fresh eyes take a look at it. Fresh eyes will always find mistakes that you missed.

   • Begin each line item of the experience section with an active verb such as “created,” “designed,” “wrote,” or “sold.”

   • Follow this active-verb description with what you accomplished. The best “whats” are quantifiable results such as sales, cost reductions, or shipped products. The worst “whats” are the number of people you managed and the amount of budget you blew through. The key is not the size of the staff or the the size of the budget—it’s what you accomplished with them.

   • Bring copies of your resume to the interview. Suppose that one of the interviewers asks for a copy of your resume. It would be nice to have it with you because much of Silicon Valley suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder, so once you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind.

3. Know—or better yet—dislike the competition. Another form of passion is a dislike of a company’s competition. Don’t take this too far because no company you’d want to work for will hire a psychopath but expressing the desire to defeat Microsoft at Apple, Google at Microsoft, or Nintendo at Sony is a positive thing. If nothing else, it shows that you understand the competitive marketplace.

4. Expect the funny farm. Most likely you’ll go through a group grope of interviews by four or five people. Most likely only one of them has hired and managed people before. Most likely this is the cast of characters that you’ll meet. Use these stereotypes to prepare answers to their questions and concerns.

   Stereotype	Description	Key Question	Key Answer
   Wunderkind	Dropped out of Stanford while getting an advanced degree. Scored 1600 on the SAT. Still a virgin. Needs a regression equation to buy a pack of gum. On his way to being farmed out (that is, made CTO), but he doesn’t know it yet.	How did your PhD orals go?	Fine, how did yours go?
   Mom	Maybe the only adult on the team. Part office manager, part psychiatrist, part mother, and part school principal. Easy to dismiss as “clerical staff,” but she’s the go-to lady when the wunderkinds need real-world advice.	Besides work, what are your passions?	I have lovely children. Would you like to see their pictures? Or I'm at that stage in life where I concentrate on my career, but I eventually want a family.
   Mr. CPG	Brought in by the wunderkinds to fix marketing even though they think the company’s gizmo is so cool that it doesn’t need marketing. Can’t do a demo of the product but believes that everything is a consumer packaged good. MBA. Worked for five years for Playtex marketing tampons. Leases a Cadillac.	What do you think of Kotler’s Four Ps of marketing?	They are still important, but the Internet and online communities have made life much more complex for marketers. I’m glad you’re running that function here because I can learn a lot from you.
   Sunil	Veep of engineering. After six months of searching, the wunderkinds finally settled on someone who they thought could scale the infrastructure and had room temperature IQ. (How hard could it be support six million simultaneous users?) The venture capitalists were very happy when he was hired. Brother-in-law runs an outsourcing programming shop in Bangalore that the company uses.	What do you think of Squid web proxy caching?	I think that good architecture makes proxy caching unnecessary.
   Jasmine McGuire	The sales expert. Finally, the wunderkinds found a sales person that they could stand for more than fifteen minutes. Pissed off that there aren’t more women managers in the company. Worked for ten years at an established Silicon Valley firm where she exceeded quota every year. Sporadic guilt pangs about not seeing her kids enough.	What do you think is the key selling proposition of our product?	There are so many possibilities: ease of use, speed, scalability, world-class tech support... But you’re the expert: what’s worked for you?
   Lifer	Started at the company when computers were as big as a room and “partner” was a noun, not a verb. Only person in the company who uses a RPN calculator. Wants to make sure that the company never forgets its roots. Perfectly happy just to be a great engineer. Drives a second-hand Prius.	Did you watch the History Channel special about Arpanet?	Yeah, I sure did; in fact, I recorded it on my Betamax machine. I still think the Beta format is better than VHS.
   Grecian Gray	A Mr. CPG who lasted. Knows everyone in the industry but only an inch deep. Too old to go to another startup but too young to retire. Schedules offsites wherever there’s a great golf course. Has had several affairs with employees in the company. Leases a Boxster.	What do you think of the 7 Series BMWs?	They’re nice, but that’s for a family man. Give me a sportscar anyday.
   HR Professional	Loves the company. Loves her job. Been there and seen that. Bull-shiitake proof. You may think she’s “just an HR person,” but she’ll torpedo you if you piss her off. One of the first people you’d recruit if you leave the company to start something.	What would you like to be doing in five years?	I would like to grow into a management position at this company by further developing my skillset.
   Ms. CEO	Proof that ice water can run in people’s veins. Tough, talented. Shattered the glass ceiling into a thousand pieces. Sports a trophy husband. Makes the Merrill Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada look like a girl scout. Friends with Carly Fiorina.	Did you see that article in Forbes about me?	“Seen it?” Are you kidding? I have a copy right here. I was going to ask you to autograph it.
   Don Corleone	Executive with the company for twenty years. Feared by employees who don’t know him. Loved by those who do. Net worth exceeds $50 million. Empty nester but got his kids summer jobs at the company when they were still in the house. Board member. Secretary answers his email.	What makes you think you can conribute to this company?	I’ve read about how much you contributed to the company over your career, and I can only hope to make a contribution as large as yours.

   
   

5. Show up early. Get to your interview at least thirty minutes early because (a) you might hit traffic; (b) it make take a while to get signed in and badged; (c) you might learn something from the receptionist; and (d) you don’t want to be rushed and flustered when you start your interview.

6. Overdress, or, ask what to wear. Tech companies are notorious for t-shirts-and-jeans dress codes, but whether this is appropriate dress for an interview depends on the position and on the interviewer (it might just be your luck that the interviewer recently joined from another organization that had a much stricter dress code). A good rule of thumb is to dress one level above the company norm: for example, for a t-shirt style company, wear a collared polo shirt. If in doubt, ask what’s appropriate for the interview.

7. Answer the first question, “How are you?” with a great response. For example, a great response is, “I feel great. I’m really anxious to learn more about this job and tell you about myself, so that we can determine if we’re a good match.” In other settings, this question is an unimportant formality. In an interview it’s an opening to blow away the interviewer with your enthusiasm.

   Whatever you do, don’t answer the question with the truth: “I’m stuck in a dead-end marriage, my kids have chronic diseases, so I need a good medical plan, and the credit card companies are calling.” Tech companies do not hire out of sympathy, and this is a job interview, not out-patient psychiatric counseling.

8. Get the scoop from the first interviewer. A job interview is a sales call: Listen to what the customer says she wants and then explain why you are the solution. Many interviewers will tell you how to sell to their company. The sooner you get this information, the better.

   These are good questions to ask to get the ball rolling:

   • “What are you concerned about in filling this role?”

   • “What are the company’s greatest challenges?”

   • “What are the hot buttons of the other people I’ll be meeting?”

9. Think: Plug and play, plug and play, plug and play. Sorry, but Silicon Valley companies do not develop employees. (“Management trainee” is an oxymoron in Silicon Valley.) Metaphorically speaking, we like to open the box, plug in the gizmo, and be up and running, so you should always be answering the question: How can I immediately help this company? If you can’t help the company immediately, then maybe this isn’t the right company for you.

   This isn’t to say that you need five years of experience to get a job in Silicon Valley. For example, someone straight out of college (or high school) can help by testing software, answering the phone, answering tech support questions, whatever. But don’t expect the luxury of a long training program before you start contributing to the bottom line.

10. Take notes. I wouldn’t whip out a Windows tablet PC if I were interviewing at Apple, but taking notes is a good idea for three reasons: first, you can use what you learn in follow-on interviews; second, if an interviewer asks, “Who have you talked to here so far?” it would be good to be able to answer; and third, it will make you look like a serious, attentive candidate.

11. Confess your sins. If you did something stupid in your past, the company will find out, so it’s better if it finds out from you rather than from a search on the Internet. A tech entrepreneur once told me how he rented out his chest as a billboard and made $2,500 (it’s a long story). A woman that he met on Match.com found this out, and it was an issue. If a date can find this stuff from your past, you can bet an interviewer will. Hopefully, this makes you think twice about the stupid things you’re tempted do on MySpace.

12. Retract your mistakes. If you screw up an answer in an interview, it’s cool to say, “That was a crappy answer. Let me try again.” If nothing else, it shows that you can realize and correct a mistake in real time. It’s better to retract a stupid answer than to leave a permanent impression of cluelessness.

13. Prepare five ways that you think the company could improve. If you are new to Silicon Valley, you’ll quickly learn something: We’re just as clueless as any other place on the face of this earth. Here the blind lead the blind, and in the valley of the blind, the one-eyed candidate is very attractive. All this means you should prepare five good ideas about what the company can do to improve its product, fix its marketing, and increase sales. When all the dust settles, it would be great if the interviewers remember you as “the guy with the good ideas.”

14. Provide your references on the spot. Print your list of referencs so that you can provide them in the interview—as opposed to providing them later. In general, try to anticpate every possible request that would turn into a follow-up item: providing references, sample work, examples from your portfolio, software that you’ve written, whatever.

    One more thing about references: Provide only people who will swear on a stack of bibles that you’re great. Before you use a person as a reference you should ask the $64,000 question: “I don’t want you to provide a reference unless you feel 100% comfortable doing it: Are you 100% sure?” This accomplishes two things: you eliminate the references who will “damn you with faint praise” and you secure a committment to a great reference to the extent that such a thing can be secured.

    If you really want to play the reference game at the highest level, ask your best reference to proactively call the interviewer. This works well especially if your reference is famous.

15. Tell the interviewer you see a good fit and want the job if this is the truth.You’d also be amazed at how few candidates go for the close. You should clearly communicate that you want the job because aggressiveness counts for a lot in job interviews in Silicon Valley. Then ask what else the company needs to learn about you and what the next steps are.

    If you don’t think there’s a good fit, say so too. At least you’ll be remembered as an honest person. Perhaps the company will have a position in the future that is a good fit.

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Addendum

If you’d like to forward this posting, please send people this URL:

http://snipurl.com/siliconvalleyjob

Here are some related topics:

• Nine Questions to Ask a Startup. In case you’re interviewing at a startup.

• The Art of Schmoozing. This will help you line up interviews.

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The Art of Firing

A few weeks ago I covered the topic of laying people off. In a sense, this is an easier process because it usually happens in bad times, and it doesn’t single a person out. A firing, by contrast, can occur in good times as well as bad times, and it’s highly personal.

I’ve fired people a few times in my career, and I hated everything about the process. I’m not sure I did it well when I did it, but I’ve thought a lot about how it should be done. Here is my best shot at “The Art of Firing People.”

1. Consult impartial people. As soon as you have misgivings about a person, talk to one or two people who can give you an impartial appraisal of the situation: Is the person truly at fault? Is she a scapegoat? Are the people calling for her firing any better?

   (In my career, I have been blessed with three people who acted as my sounding board in issues like this. All were women because women are much better at this than men, but I digress...)

2. Get professional advice. It’s a bad sign if you get too good at firing people because this means you’re doing it too often (see below, “Look in the mirror.”) As soon as you begin the process of devising an action plan to prevent a firing or you think it’s necessary to fire a person, consult someone who understands employment law. This is usually a human resources person, but it could also be outside legal counsel if you don’t have a human resources person.

3. Search your soul. You should be able to articulate exactly what you think is going wrong. Could it be your fault? Have you established clear goals? If sales were going well, would we be having this discussion? The most telling question you can answer is:

   Are you (and the rest of the folks who are calling for the employee’s termination) judging his results against your intentions?

   For example, are you judging his sales results against your intentions to ship the product on time? In a perfect world, you would do the opposite: Judge the employee’s intentions against your results. In a realistic world, you would judge his results against your results. Unfortunately, the only people who usually receive the benefit of the doubt are the people calling for his termination.

4. Give people a second chance. I don’t care if you live in an “at will” state in which you can terminate anyone at any time or what the search of your soul revealed, it is still immoral to fire people without helping them understand what they need to improve and providing the opportunity to do so.

   There is a line of reasoning that goes like this: “Nobody ever got fired too early...don’t put off a difficult decision because everyone is wondering why you’re keeping the bozo around...you should have fired him long ago.”

   I believed in this “rapid fire” theory until I saw a management team act like piranha attacking a drowning calf when it considered firing an employee. No one wanted to give the employee the benefit of the doubt and a chance to turn the situation around. Luckily, the CEO interceded and kept the employee; subsequently, the employee turned into a great contributor.

   There are three problems with rapid-fire firing: first, it may not be the employee’s fault that things aren’t going well. Second, the employee can improve—people do change. Third, although some employees may rejoice, the smart ones will be thinking, “So this is how this company works. There’s no warning. If you’re not popular, you get taken out.”

5. Document everything. Ideally, you’ve already got a paper trail describing the employee’s job performance but the moment you think that they might be fired, start keeping detailed records. There are two reasons to do this. First, frankly, to cover your ass. Second, writing things down forces you to clarify your thoughts. When you read what you’ve written, it should be obvious that you’re doing the right thing.

6. Do it yourself. You probably hired the person. Even if you inherited the person, you managed him. So you fire him. This isn’t something you can delegate or evade. Conduct a brief (fifteen minutes maximum) one-on-one meeting and tell the person your decision. Be as calm and rational as possible. Do not alter your approach even if (or, more accurately, especially if) the person isn’t calm and rational.

7. Be firm. Never go into a “final” conversation thinking that if it goes well, you might not fire the person. Decide and then implement. If you get talked out of it, the odds are that you’ll simply fire the person later. However, don’t confuse being firm with being mean. You should be firm in your decision, but kind in how your decision is communicated and implemented.

8. Don’t be guilted into anything. For example, a common request is to provide job references. Don’t promise anything like this because you’re feeling guilty. Your personnel department can provide a reference—like the dates of employment—but that’s all you should commit to do. You can always decide to do more later, but you can’t do less than what you committed to do.

9. Show people the door. The day you fire someone should be the last day that person is in the office. This is even more true for firings than layoffs. There is very little to gain by having a fired person hang around for a few days or weeks, and there is a lot to lose: ill will, sabotage, and theft. Give the person a chance to collect their personal items and data from their computers and then get keys, delete accounts, and change passwords.

10. Don’t disparage the victim. There are three good reasons for this. First, it’s the classy thing to do, and you want to show the remaining employees that you have class. Second, you could be tipping the karmic scales to be on the receiving end of the sword the next time. Third, the person you’re firing could end up in charge of purchasing at your biggest customer—as my mother used to say, “Don’t shiitake where you eat.”

11. Look in the mirror. Ideally, the situation should have never come to this. You should have hired the right person. You should have set and communicated the right goals. You should have provided course corrections. Some of the “fault” probably belongs to you. It’s too late for the case at hand, but it’s not too late to prevent this from happening again, so take a good, long look in the mirror.

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Marketing and Employee Handbook Examples

Last week I made a speech in Des Moines, Iowa for my friends at Channel Bio Corporation. This company sells four brands of corn and soybean seeds: Crow’s, Midwest Seed Genetics, Wilson Seeds, and NC+. Rather interesting stuff...lots of technology to what the company does.

In preparation for the speech, the company sent me a brochure called “Channel Answers” and its employee handbook called “ChannelDeal.” I’ve uploaded them here because you will probably find them useful for your organization’s efforts in the same areas.

Channel Answers.pdf

ChannelDeal.pdf

The inside story is that the CEO of Channel Bio, Aline Funk, wrote “ChannelDeal” and co-authored “Channel Answers” with a fellow named Chuck Kuster. It definitely helps when the CEO is this involved in corporate marketing and human resources!

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Nine Questions to Ask a Startup

Most of the information that you can find about recruiting is for the employer, not the employee. (I'm as guilty as this as anyone: for example, The Art of Recruiting, I and II.)

Let's turn the tables, switch modes, and balance the scales by discussing what a hot candidate should ask a private, venture-backed startup before making the leap to “infinity and beyond” as Buzz Lightyear would say. Nota bene: there is a definite order in how to do this: First, get the job offer, then ask these questions!

1. How many outstanding shares of stock are there?
Most companies make offers of dazzlingly large amounts of stock options. After all, 100,000 shares sure sounds like a big number--especially if the company goes public at, say, $20/share and then googles on up to $400/share like you're being led to believe. That's $40,000,000--you could buy Larry Ellison's house with that kind of money!

The number of options that you're offered is a meaningless number unless you know the total number of outstanding shares of stock. With