I met Jeremiah at the PASS Summit last year and since then I’ve looked in on his blog from time to time. He has an interesting mix of content covering his local PASS chapter, SQL, and one of my favorites, his Links of the Week where he aggregates good stuff he has read. Usually I’ll have seen some of it but not all, and one of the best things about following a few different blogs is the discoveries that wouldn’t happen otherwise. Check out his blog, and maybe we can get him to tell us how he wound up with goat as a blog tag?

I’ve written a few posts now about LinkedIn, and for now still find it be the best fit for me as far as a networking tool. If you prefer something else, that works too! But if you’ve decided to use LinkedIn, groups should be a part of your strategy, and I want to cover why and how.

Right now I’m a member of only a few groups; the Orlando SQL group, PASS, SSC, and a couple others. Orlando has about 50 members, SSC over a thousand. I don’t participate much in the few discussions that happen within the groups (so far anyway), but I like it as an easy way to keep up with news about and within the group because I get a weekly digest (which you can disable). Once you’re a group member:

• It gives you a way to post a message to a targeted audience. In general I see this used badly, but maybe I’m over critical. If you were going to say something to 1000+ people, make sure it’s relevant and succinct, and don’t repeat it every two days!
• It is another way to introduce yourself when making a connection. You can pick any group as a reason for the connection, and while I still take a quick look, I get little spam from the group as far as connection requests
• It has a built in job board, almost perfect for user groups as a way to support their sponsors and members. Almost perfect because no direct way to charge those placing the position openings, but I guess that isn’t all bad.

Some groups are open, some require ‘approval’ to join. Decent management tools if you want to start a group, and they just announced sub groups which might be interesting for a larger group like PASS or SSC.

Bottom line is that joining groups is a way to reach a much larger network without diluting your personal network. I suppose you could join 100 groups or more along that line of thought, but I think it’s reasonable to join groups that interest you. For example, I’m also a member of the Space Coast Users Group group (group squared?) so I can keep up with their news, and the same for Tampa.

If you explore this, look beyond just the pure SQL groups. I see lots of groups here in Orlando that just facilitate networking, and I’m waiting to hear back from a couple people about how well that works out, but I think it’s worth trying – especially if you need to practice your networking skills.

My favorite bad movie is The Master Gunfighter starring Tom Laughlin of Billy Jack fame. It’s a Western, and he’s a gunfighter armed with two 12 shot revolvers (each with two cylinders if you’re interested, quite the idea) and a katana – a samurai sword. What more do you need for an action/western movie?

The plot is strange. A village of people is killed by his extended family as part of stealing some gold, and he leaves rather than fight with his family. Time goes by and they decide to do it again, this time he returns to intervene and winds up fighting what you could call his blood brother. Nothing wrong with that as a plot, but it rambles some. In between he supports himself by showing off his skills and of his tricks….maybe I should make you watch the movie…is slicing a fish in half. That’s half of it anyway!

It’s cheap at Amazon, watch it and let me know – would you watch it again? Or am I the only one?

Enjoy the weekend!

Ran across the Levenger site while researching laptop bags and it’s branded as ‘tools for serious readers’. Some of it perhaps over done, but some of it looks interesting. They’ve got some beautiful pens and while reading about them realized I had never tried a fountain pen, so I wanted to try one and the cheapest I could find locally was $20. Turns out for about $20 I could build my own – so I did – and they are … interesting. Somehow it does feel elegant/old school, and one thing I didn’t expect was that when you write on a napkin, it just sucks the ink right out into a blob. Anyway, they’ve got some interesting stuff that you might want, or might find a good idea for a gift.

I’m not affiliated with them, no financial interest at all.

Back in January I posted about purchasing a Dell Mini 9, wanting to see what how it worked and a certain amount of cool factor to it. In the months since the popularity of netbooks has definitely increased (you think my blog caused that?) and I could be wrong, but I think that price rather than form factor is the driving force. Having had the Mini 9 for a few months, I don’t use it as much as I had hoped, for a couple reasons; one is that the keyboard is just too small for me, maybe even a inch or two wider would make a lot of difference, and the other is that I’m still anchored to my main laptop – all my tools are there, I’m used to it.

But…

All is not lost. It’s a great machine for kids. Though it’s now missing 3 key caps, it still works fine and it’s child sized. At $300, it’s almost child priced too. I won’t be happy if it gets broken in half, but it’s not going to be a huge event either. It’s been so popular that we may buy a second one so that they each have one.

If you’re considering a netbook, I think you have to think hard about how you work. If you’re using web based mail, document creation, etc, then I think it would work very well. Or if you commit to loading it up and treating it a like a “real” laptop. The hard part is if you want both – when you travel can you live without all the stuff on your main machine? Think through how you’ll keep docs & data in sync.

Ultimately I wonder if it won’t be the straw the drove down the MS licensing costs for the OS. Just not much room in a $300 machine for an expensive license, and the same for MS Office.

As happens occasionally I had a stack of books on my desk that needed to be put away, and as I went to do that ran into a small challenge – no more space on the shelves. I need to get another bookcase, but as I looked at what I had realized it was probably time for a pruning session. I went through and pulled out some books that I had but didn’t really like, plus some on SQL 2000 that I don’t much use for anymore, and then went through a bunch of back issues of magazines, setting aside some of the SQL Server Standards and putting most of the rest in the ‘gotta go’ stack.

I could perhaps sell some of this stuff online, but I doubt I’d make enough to justify the time. Or I could recycle them, at least give the paper another go around. But before I do that I’m going to offer them to the attendees at the next oPASS meeting. Plenty of people still on SQL 2000, magazines still have good content, hoping that someone – maybe everyone – will find some value in things that I don’t use on a day to day basis anymore.

It would be great if user groups could support a true ‘library’, but I don’t know if the logistics would work out very well – anyone tried this in formal fashion?

Saw this in email this morning, Clear has ceased operations after failing to negotiate with its senior creditor. I’ve written previously about trying it for a year and deciding that the benefit didn’t align very well with the cost, and maybe I wasn’t the only one that made that decision. Too bad, was nice to see a private company competing with the government (TSA) and driving some improvements in the process.

I think the hardest part about the job search is interviewing and not being selected. You keep saying “why” with rarely a good answer. It’s not fun to be rejected. I don’t think I can change that with any spin, but it helps if you understand that there are a lot of factors at work and your technical skills are just one small part of them. To show this, let’s imagine that you have decided to hire a lawn service. We start with a job description:

“cut the grass!”

You’d think that anyone could do that, but in truth what you want is probably a little more complex than that. For me, I want:

• Sidewalks and beds edged
• Driveway and sidewalks blown clear
• Don’t blow debris under the front door
• Bag or stack debris that needs to go for garbage/recycling
• Make sure any gates that were opened get closed
• Tell me if there are things I need to look at – sprinkler not working, weeds in one area, tree that needs to be trimmed
• Reliable – I don’t want to look out and see the grass a foot tall and have to track someone down

I’d like to think all of that is fairly reasonable! I also expect to pay somewhere in a range of x to y dollars. Above Y and I might give up something to keep the price where I wanted it.

Then I post the job to Craiglist or the local paper or bulletin board, and I get five applicants. I schedule interviews, and here are the results:

• 1st candidate – large commercial company, lots of references, interviewed the sales guy, price is right at Y
• 2nd candidate – teenager from down the block, neighbor as a reference, price is X
• 3rd candidate – owner operated company, does the interview and is the guy that cuts the grass, can see all his equipment on the trailer behind his truck, price is Y
• 4th candidate – another large commercial company, has references, price is Y + 10 but includes fertilizer/weed control
• 5th candidate – independent guy trying to start a business, hasn’t purchased equipment yet, price is X -5

Now to be fair you might list different attributes about them, but the goal is to show you that the decision is pretty arbitrary. Who would you pick and why?

• Was it just price?
• Did you like the large companies knowing they have insurance and redundancy, can provide one stop shopping if needed
• Or do you support the neighborhood kid, recalling fond days of pushing a lawn mower yourself?
• Or do you go with the entrepreneur (along with low cost)?

If you think about how you arrived at the decision, you could go back and amend the job description. Here’s mine:

• Sidewalks and beds edged
• Driveway and sidewalks blown clear
• Don’t blow debris under the front door
• Bag or stack debris that needs to go for garbage/recycling
• Make sure any gates that were opened get closed
• Tell me if there are things I need to look at – sprinkler not working, weeds in one area, tree that needs to be trimmed
• Reliable – I don’t want to look out and see the grass a foot tall and have to track someone down
• Must have liability insurance
• Price for services cannot exceed $Y
• Prefer smaller company or individual owned

Now imagine that I had posted that to start with. If you were the commercial companies, would you still apply? What about the teenager who can’t get/afford insurance? I might get one interview, or I might get all five, but odds are that I get less than five. As a consumer I want some choice, do I really want to just have one interview?

That’s how it works. Job descriptions rarely include everything, and sometimes they discover more as they go from the very people they interview. All you can do is show them that you have the ability and willingness to solve their problem, and how your skills would help them. Looking back at the above, what if:

• 3rd candidate said that he tries to offset his carbon footprint by setting up a compost bin (which he manages) for each client
• 2nd candidate states in his opening email that he does not have insurance (being a teenager) but has a contract that releases you from any liability and that it was written by a local attorney

Would those change your mind? For some of us they would, for others it wouldn’t. See how damned arbitrary it is? None of the 5 candidates lacked the core skill, and maybe they even interviewed equally well. One or two things tipped the balance, and it might have been something you would never see or guess. Now stack on how my might feel if you got follow up emails from some – but not all. Maybe one person offered a slightly different price, or a free pressure wash – would that alter your decision? Maybe?

None of them is going to win by telling you how great they cut the grass, or how long they’ve been cutting it – for our purposes they are all equal. We need to validate skills, but we assume that whoever we hire has the skills – it’s the other stuff that matters!

I’ll be curious what you think about my scenario. I can see places where I might improve it, and it might make a heck of a good training video! But hopefully what you see is that it’s skills + presentation + follow through + luck that lead to a job. You do the things you can do.

My friend Robert Cain was kind enough to include me on his list of big thinkers along with my business partner Steve Jones, Paul Randal and Kim Tripp, Pinal Dave, and Brent Ozar. Distinguished company to be sure! Thanks Robert:-)

Getting a job is hard. If you’ve been lucky enough not to struggle for a job, don’t make the mistake of thinking it will always be easy. Equally, finding a good job is harder still. Some more tips for you to consider:

• Leverage your recruiter. They know the companies you’ll be interviewing at, ask what to expect – is it a hard technical interview? Panel interview? Do they want super stars or dependable workers (or both?). Are they free thinking and forward looking, or stuck in a rut. Note that none of those is necessarily bad, but understanding the game going in reduces tension and gives you a chance to prepare.
• Potential employers are not going to tell you why you weren’t hired. Maybe your interviewing skills suck, maybe you were up against someone better – regardless, they aren’t going to tell you. But…they will probably tell your recruiter! Your recruiter wants that feedback because they want to either place you or put you on the back burner. If you don’t interview well they can help. If your skills aren’t there, they should recommend a correction – but could be back burner time. Ask your recruiter every time for the feedback.
• It’s old school, but send a follow up email after the interview. If you’re still interested, let them know. If you flubbed a question, go find the answer and reference it in your email – candidly. Remember to spell check! If you see wiggle room on benefits that might make it work for you, mention that too (though be careful about negotiating too soon if you think you’ve got a good chance).
• Pay attention to how they treat you. Interviewing is stressful on both sides, so it’s a chance to see their corporate ethos under pressure. Are the interview questions fair and challenging? Do they appear to be targeting what the job description defined and at the right level? Do they treat you as a potentially valuable employee, or just a number? Don’t let one misstep cause you to write them off, but it may well be something you want to talk about at the second interview if that happens.
• Have source code and/or projects ready to show off, and to talk through how/why it works. Obviously you can take a lot of time and care in putting those examples together, is it a real world example of your abilities? Yes! Managers get that not all work is done to superlative standards due to time and resources, but they would like to see that given time you know how to do top quality work. It doesn’t need to be a a ton of code, say 2-3 pages.
• If you’re transitioning to a new product/skill, show that you’re already working on it. Download SQL, Oracle, My SQL, Crystal, Perl – whatever – and do something with it that you can show/talk about. I’ve been using SQL for more over 10 years, if I was going on an interview for an Oracle job I would want to install it, create a database, create a table, create a job, back it up – and be able to talk the things I had noticed that were the same or different. Yes, both require a DBA and both require similar skills, but the products are different. As an employer I want to see that you get that, that you’re willing to put in sweat equity on your own time, and that you care enough to try.

One more post on this tomorrow!

I currently write the editorial for the PASS Connector which is published every two weeks as part of my role on the Board of Directors. I'm cross posting those editorials here as well as to the main PASS blog.

Before we launch into the big news of the week I’d like to remind everyone that our schedule for the 2009 Summit has changed from previous years – Monday will be pre-conference sessions, the main conference will be Tuesday through Thursday, and then we will have a day of post conference sessions on Friday.

This week we announced 23 spotlight sessions, awarded to speakers that have previously presented one more sessions at the Summit and received excellent evaluations. You can click here for the full list, but I thought I’d demonstrate the kind of speakers the Summit attracts by listing their names here – I suspect you’ll recognize many of them!

Itzik Ben-Gan, Grant Fritchey, Klaus Aschenbrenner, Peter DeBetta, Paul Nielsen, Greg Low, Erin Welker, Brian Knight, Erik Veerman, Andy Leonard, Warren Thornthwaite, Joe Yong, Kimberly Tripp, Maciej Pilecki, Paul Randal, Peter Ward, Adam Machanic, Thomas Grohser, Gail Shaw, Kalen Delaney, Andrew Kelly, Joe Webb, and our own President, Wayne Snyder

We’ve also announced the pre-conference and post-conference sessions as well as a special 2 hour networking (as in people) class on Monday by author Don Gabor.

So click on the links and start thinking about attending! As always, if you have any questions about PASS, please email me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org.

Note: The full schedule of speakers ended up also being announced between the time I wrote the editorial and it being published – visit the Summit site to see all of the sessions for this year.

Part 1 discussed ways to find opportunities, Part 2 was about how to get more interviews, and today we’ll cover some tips from the employer perspective.

• Don’t use an AOL.com email address. Seriously. Gmail, Live, Yahoo, all are good, but AOL.com makes it seem like you’re stuck in the 90’s. Don’t use your current job email either!
• If you’re not a perfect fit for the job make sure you show that you know that in your cover letter, and then explain why you are an interesting candidate. For example, 10 years ago you were a senior developer and you left the field, now returning – maybe you know that coming in at a junior position could be a win-win, you get to rebuild skills and you’ve got some real history to show aptitude. Or maybe the salary range is $20k below what you had in mind, take the chance and ask if you can work a 32 hour week for the published salary. Will it always work? Probably not, but you are trying to get into an interview where you would have been screened out anyway. As an employer give me a reason to spend time interviewing you.
• Expect a phone interview first, and this works out good for you and the interviewer. Good for you because you don’t have to dress, good for them because it’s less formal. Be in a quiet place that is inside (wind noise outside is bad) and be ready to take notes for follow ups. Don’t use a speaker phone. Don’t try to search for the answers while on the call. As an employer I hope to hear confidence, calmness, solid answers to the questions you know, a candid and unapologetic “I don’t know” or “I haven’t tried that” to the ones you don’t know. Make sure you have a way to follow up before ending the call.
• Interviewers expect you to know something about the company. Try to understand their business from the web site, what their recent accomplishments are, if they are public or private. If you’re not interested, why should they be?
• In most companies HR is a team that no one loves. That said, their opinion often counts. Treat HR like they have the keys to the safe. Fill out their forms cheerfully, have all the documents ready that they have requested, dress well, be extra nice when they call to schedule the interview, try to remember names so you can say hello when you check in prior to the interview. As a hiring manager, it’s harder to hire someone that HR didn’t like…seriously, it is. Plus, their assessment will be part of the overall decision about who comes back for round two. From a manager perspective if you can’t take the time to be nice to these people now, how will you be after being hired?
• Plus, my super secret bonus tip: be polite to the receptionist when you arrive, and know that the manager will be asking afterward for impressions. As a hiring manager it was always my practice to keep candidates waiting about 5 minutes in the lobby just for that purpose. You’ll be surprised how people reveal themselves – my favorite story is about a candidate who requested a cup of coffee..well, more of a demand. When it was time to interview gave the cup back to the receptionist to throw away. Hired? No! Be polite, make small talk if they are not busy, sit well, be cautious about phone calls, wait patiently – don’t read any Dummies books!

It’s important to understand that interviewing and hiring is painful for a manager. They have an obligation to try to hire well, they have budget constraints, it takes a lot of time to review resumes, do phone screens, and then first and often second interviews. Plus, if hiring from a staffing company there is usually a fee of 15-30% of your first year salary – they don’t get that back if you leave or don’t work out, just a promise that they will place someone else at no cost. On top of that, having tried any number of technical questions and interview techniques my own success rate at hiring “good” employees is about 50%. Knowing that just increases the pain and dread. Can you change that? No. But you can do all the things expected by the system and that keeps their time investment to a minimum.

As far as screening, HR often makes the first cut. Staffing companies have to walk the fine line, because they are only supposed to send qualified candidates. Sending someone who isn’t can cause them to lose that position and future ones too. Managers spend about 1 minute per resume doing their initial cut, throwing all out the ones they don’t like for whatever reason. Then a slightly longer second pass where they informally rate the remainder to reduce the pool size further and to prioritize who to interview first.

Yesterday I posted Part 1 containing five ideas for those looking for work. Today I’m going to focus on what to do when you’re struggling to get interviews. Your chances of getting hired for any given job once you interview are perhaps 1 in 10 (an unscientific estimate). If you’re not interviewing, you’re not in the game.

• If you’re not getting a couple interviews per week ask your recruiter why not. Do they not have openings that fit you? If they don’t, try to figure out why they don’t – are they more .net or Java or whatever focused, lacking clients that use your technology, or just not trying for you hard enough? Or are there truly few openings that fit? Or, are they showing your resume to employers and you’re not being picked? The question to ask is how many times a week they are presenting you as a candidate to someone actively trying to fill a position.
• I’m all for an updated and interesting resume, but having looked at a few hundred I can tell you that there aren’t many that will make an employer go ‘wow’. Read the books on building a resume and get someone to review it (recruiter is ideal), but you can only make it so good. Employers are looking to see if you appear to have the skills and experience they are requesting and filtering based on that to see who they interview.
• If possible submit a cover letter with your resume. I rarely see this done, but it’s a missed opportunity for a couple reasons. One is that so few people do it you will stand out as someone that tries to do things the ‘right’ way and is trying hard. Another is that it gives you a chance to sell the employer on why you would be a good fit. They don’t want a sales pitch, they want you to show them something that they won’t see on the resume. Remember that it’s often less about what you have done in the past than what you can do for them now. The cover letter is the perfect place to include a link to a personal web site or blog that contains code samples, links to articles, etc (make sure it looks good and is current!).
• Make sure you have an online presence and know what it looks like. Set up an account on LinkedIn or Plaxo or Facebook, fill in the major blanks. This can be your only presence, or in addition to the blog/personal web site. Both is better, but if you can only do one participate in one of social sites because you leverage your time. Make sure you search for your name and know what they will find, they will look if you start to appear interesting and what they find might tip the scales either way.
• Don’t turn down any interviews unless you wouldn’t consider the company or location. I have a friend that changed jobs quite a few times during the early part of his career and one of the side effects was that he interviewed a lot – successfully. Practice makes perfect, but most of us get very little practice. Plus, even if it turns out you weren’t a good fit for that position, it’s not uncommon for them to keep you in mind for other openings later on.

Remember, if you’re not interviewing, you have just about zero chance of getting hired. Interviewing and not getting a job doesn’t hurt you, no black mark on your resume!

Tomorrow some tips from the employer perspective.

I wasn’t able to attend this event, but did participate as a sponsor and I had this follow up message from MVP Arnie Rowland:

To All Portland Code Camp 2009 Sponsors:

Our sincere appreciation for your trust, your support, and your generosity!

We had initially planned and communicated to you that our goal for the event was to host 300 attendees –and we substantially exceeded that goal. We had asked you to trust that we could create a well attended and well received event. We believe that we delivered.

The early returns coming in, are that the event was quite well received, and 412 folks attended at least part of the day. Your Sponsorship was noted in the participant materials handed out to all attendees, and on the website, which was seen by, at the minimum, the 655 folks that registered. Your Sponsorship and support has been well noted, and Portland Code Camp 2009 will go down as one of the the largest volunteer events to date in the Portland tech community. It would not have happened without your generous support!

If you provided products and services for the door prize drawings, a list of prizes and winners is located here.

We sincerely thank you for your support to Portland Code Camp 2009, and to the greater Portland tech community. We hope that the venture has been, and will continue to be, equally successful for you.

Regards,

The Portland Code Camp 2009 Planning committee.

412 attendees is impressive! I’ve only been to a couple free events that have been bigger. On the .Net side I consider anything over 400 an indicator of two things; a great local community that has learned the value of these events, and a management team that works hard to get the word out. Takes both for it to happen.

I was recently asked for advice about seeking a job, a request we all get from time to time. In this case it was someone who had been very technical for most of their career, but then changed direction and was now seeking to return to technology. Nothing wrong with that, but it does present it’s challenges and a slow economy doesn’t help. I’ve got a few tips to share that maybe go beyond checking your resume for spelling errors.

• Use two staffing companies. Think of them as your network by proxy, they know far more people in your area (or the area you want to move to) than you will, and they have a profit motive to find the job openings. Use more than one because not every staffing company will work hard for you, and by their nature they tend to have exclusive agreements with potential employers, so having two – in theory – doubles your chances.
• Search Monster, Dice, and the local newspaper for openings that might fit. Some of these are recruiters trolling for long term prospects, but many are valid jobs. When you’re out of work, you can’t afford to ignore opportunities. Don’t expect much feedback from this, just think of it as buying a lottery ticket and maybe you’ll win and get a call for an interview. While this seems obvious, it’s important to not rely solely on staffing companies.
• Let your personal network know you’re looking – tactfully. No need to go into the details of whether you were fired, downsized, quit – just a short message that you are looking for opportunities doing X in area Y. I wouldn’t send this message more than once every three months. You can do a broadcast to the group or email people individually, or a mix of the two. LinkedIn makes it easy to set a status message and that’s a great low key way to get the message out.
• Increase the size of your personal network. It’s not just the people in your network, it’s also the people they come in contact with that might open a door. If you don’t have the ability to reach 100 people (not all will be technical) start scouring through your email, thinking about previous jobs, and building up the list. This is one area where doing the work now before you need it works out a lot better.
• Leverage membership in existing groups and join new ones. A common theme at user groups is for new members to show up when they are out of work. It’s worth doing, but it works better if you were participating before you need work. Consider attending some other user groups, there is often a lot of crossover between .Net and SQL, and Oracle and SQL. Even more social groups (LinkedIn is a good place to find these also) often have value, I see a lot of staffing and HR professionals participating in them, making it an interesting place to be seen and get to know people. If you’re on LinkedIn (or similar), joining virtual groups is also a nice way to meet more people. Use a light touch!

Nothing very original there, but I rarely see candidates doing all five of them. Given the small amount of time required, are there any you would not do?

More tomorrow!