Thoughts On Job Search 3.0

Since we have now stated that a great economic expansion is upon us, we turn our heads to that great conundrum attached to any expansion: the Job Search. Our job, as usual, is not to point out the obvious; that you can find on the bookshelf and through the Job Search Establishment. Herewith some thoughts and observations:

• You may be tempted to portray yourself as an "interesting person." Don't. Creating resume-like web sites, sending clever post cards and generally attempting to "stand out" from the pack backfires almost every time. Corporations do not want interesting people; they want people like them: ordinary, results-oriented, focused on growth, etc.
• Why? The whole point of a corporation is to hold the status quo, especially in difficult times, when zero revenue growth means superlative performance. The CFO can always invent some growth, if needed. When corporations say they can "think outside the box," it is a euphemism for "total disaster." They can think outside the box, but they never will.
• Why? Bad things happen, when ordinary people in corporations think outside the box. That's how we got into the whole Sub-Prime mess.
• Do not wonder why you never get a response from anyone regarding your job application. This is perfectly understandable behavior. A hiring exec has time to see 5-6 "final candidates." HR is scared of that exec, so they need to get into an "elimination mode" quickly in order to reduce 200 applicants by 98%. This leaves no time for niceties. They are the hiring exec to you and you are no threat to them.
• The best way to get through the process is to look very much like you would fit into the organization, but have slightly more energy, enthusiasm and a "can-do" attitude than the other candidates. HR will discard all of the "interesting" people and approaches first, then the over-achievers. The HR screener knows that the job description reads like the fine print in a drug ad, so they look to you to define the real job. They are looking for you to make them look good. You are the Energizer Bunny, who has done her homework, but ordinary enough not to make the hiring exec uncomfortable.
• That last point cannot be made strongly enough: nobody hires a great potential replacement. This is why we scratch our heads over Vice-Presidential candidate choices. People hire you to make them look even more appealing. Duh.
• The mindset you need to have, if you make it through to a meeting (the Search Establishment never calls this an interview), is that you are one of them, you belong. No matter that you have been locked out for 6 mos. or 2 years. You must act like you belong. The mere hint that you accept your "outside-ness" will eliminate you. Act as though you work down the hall in an identical office to the one in which you are meeting. Dress like the hiring exec, speak like her/him, make them feel comfortable and certain that you will help them keep their jobs, so they will never, ever get to be like you, the outsider.
• Start with the shoes, when dressing for the meeting. Really good, comfortable shoes. Imagine someone wearing them and trying to sell you something you do not want, but you buy it anyway. Dress up around the shoes. The shoes will not get you the job, they will give you confidence, energy, balance. Those things will get you the job. Maybe.

More soon. Meanwhile, you must listen to the Sonny Clark Trio's Rudy Van Gelder Edition from 2001. Just don't tell the hiring exec you listened to this, otherwise you won't get the job. It's way, way to cool. Jazz scares them.

Expansion At Last!

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, AKA Princeton Prof and Times' columnist, has declared on the Daily Show that "....the American Dream is dead" for most Americans.

And so, we can say, with utmost certainty, that we are on the brink of perhaps the greatest economic expansion in history.

Apparently, people like Dr. Krugman, who is wealthy by any definition, and an intellectual by intellectual establishment definition, does not know any average Americans. He particularly does not know any average New Yorkers. It will come as a shock to him at some point in the relatively near future, if he pays attention, that recent immigrants to New York City will not be buying any tickets home based on his declaration.

I recommend that Dr. Krugman and his fellow Daily Show guest, the noted seer of American culture, Eliot Spitzer, take a ride on the Number 7 train beyond their moated Manhattan castle. On the trip, if they get off and on in a number of Queens' neighborhoods, they will see a microcosm of the world. If they ride all the way to Main St. Flushing (neither, I'll bet, has been anywhere in Queens except the US Open, in a limo, for the Finals), they will have outdone Columbus and gotten all the way to Asia.

Funny thing, but people from Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico, China, Korea, Malaysia, Afghanistan, etc. do not know that the American Dream has died. Funny thing too, that many of these families work hard so that their children can go to Princeton and hear Dr. Krugman explain how they have wasted their time doing so from his pulpit. Mr. Spitzer, who matriculated at Princeton, pronounced on the same show that "median income has been flat for forty years," was born with a silver spoon in his mouth in addition to the foot. He probably makes the median income in one week at his dad's real estate firm. The former Governor lived the American Nightmare: he had it all and threw it away. Does he assume that since he undervalued the Dream, that others must do the same? A steamroller knows more about the average American.

We have said this hundreds of times in various fun ways, but this time let's be blunt. You cannot get reliable, valuable information in the Media any longer. The Media is made up of wealthy, over-educated people who hang with each other, marry each other, become wealthy and wind up working for huge corporations and elite institutions (News Corp., Time Warner, Disney, GE, Princeton). All the while they pretend that they are looking out for "the little guy."

The only reliable thing we get from them is that we know that the opposite of what they proclaim is the truth.

Start your engines.

Exclusive! The Twitter Interview

Twitter was valued at $1Billion last week after investors placed a $100Million bet on the service that provides subscribers with 140 characters so that they can say out loud what they are doing. We sat down this week with Twitter itself to discuss its phenomenal success and get some under 140 character responses:

3G: Congratulations on becoming a Billionaire.

Twit: We should all know by now not to believe anything banks tell us.

3G: Who are your heroes?

Twit: The Pet Rock. Brilliant. Soap On A Rope. A number of New York's governors.

3G: We get The Pet Rock thing, because it also did not actually do anything, but didn't people actually use that Soap in the shower?

Twit: Some did, it's true, but, mostly the thing just lay unopened in its box. Pure inspiration.

3G: How did you know there was real value in nearly nothing? I mean most people saying what they are doing in 140 or less aren't doing anything remotely interesting.

Twit: We looked at the media companies. They invest billions to say nothing of real interest. We are maintaining a managed cost basis and do not pay for content.

3G: Could you be more specific?

Twit: We knew that "content" had little economic value. Traditional media value their content, but that's pride and myopia. Media commoditized content.

3G: Isn't journalistic content an ethical and moral issue?

Twit: Yes, but the audience doesn't place any economic value on those ethics, hence Sunday am Blah-blah and a dreary 24 month presidential campaign.

3G: And entertainment passing for "news," as with Glenn Beck or Olbermann?

Twit: Exactly. People no longer know what's fact, opinion or entertainment. They place equal value on their own thoughts, opinions, actions.

3G: Even if they are not having interesting thoughts or doing something interesting?

Twit: The thought is interesting, because they have it. A man named McLuhan got this right: the medium is the message. Tweet = cool.

3G: Are you saying that it's the USE of Twitter that counts, not what is communicated?

Twit: Yes. Twitter extends the self. Users typically convey messages of little value to a reader.

3G: The value for the sender and receiver is in the sending and receiving itself?

Twit: And in the machine/network used. Exactly. One is brilliant just for sending and the other is hip just for receiving. Both optimize you as a person.

3G: To extend your thought, if it's the sending and receiving or the trading of information that really counts, is that one possible explanation of the subprime mess? The overall quality of the mortgage-related trades and insurance did not matter?

Twit: It is possible that the traders valued the trade or messages more than the actual aggregate content quality.

3G: They didn't do the long term math, because trades were all about them? You mean, it was more about extending their egos through a medium of trading?

Twit: We hadn't thought about that, but it sounds right. It was about the medium of trading, not the sum quality of their messages or content.

3G: And the sum totals of their trading messages were billions and billions of losses. They couldn't believe it, because it all felt so good, so right. They were twittering away wealth without knowing they were Twittering!

Twit: That's why we are Billionaires today. Twitter feels right. We don't need to do much or have any revenue yet. We are there for Tweet.

3G: That and you pay nothing for content, only infrastructure costs.

Twit: Content's free and all tweets have equal value. Commoditization. Users value the experience; they value belonging.

3G: We value belonging more than correct/factual information. Thanks for nothing! What are you doing now?

Twit: Finishing.

Waiting For The Sand-Blasting Man

Most of my neighbors are quiet ones. We have the occasional early bird gardening crews, blasting their machines at 7:30am, instead of the more polite eight. But, recently, my neighbor, the Metro-Norths, have been causing some alarm and sleeplessness.

I awoke one night about three weeks ago to the sound of what I thought was someone power-washing my fence. Since my fence is, in most places, old and fragile, this concerned me. A power-wash of more than a squirt, would surely demolish the fence. As it turned out, there was nobody doing any power-washing. But, what was that loud sound?

Could it be sand-blasting, power-washing's thirsty cousin? Once, a long time ago, I had briefly worked on a sand-blasting crew; one never forgets the sound. I tried, like a good neighbor, to ignore it and go back to sleep. Didn't happen. So, I did what any decent victim of possible sand-blasting at 3 am would do, I called the cops. The duty cop was well prepared and told me that the Metro-Norths were doing some re-modeling of their estate across the way from our house. Since that property wasn't, technically and legally, inside city limits, we can't do a thing the cop said. Eventually, the sound faded, but each night for weeks we could hear the Metro-North's crews working further down the line.

Last night they were back working directly across the street and woke us up. Before going downstairs to watch early morning TV, I thought of New Neighbor Coleman. I realized that New Neighbor Coleman had been away during the first bout of blasting, and that I had neglected to mention it to him as a new night time feature. Even though I knew that we were both now awake, I didn't think it was proper to call him. Besides, NNC is a lawyer and I knew that he had already called the cops. I also knew that NNC was not going to go easily into that noisy night, precisely because he was NNC The Lawyer. He was going to get to the bottom of how the Metro-North's boundary lines become part of a separate city. If they lived in their own city, then they probably didn't pay city taxes, and, if they didn't pay city taxes, then NNCTL was going to harass them. I became fairly certain of this.

One benefit of having the Metro-North's do their blasting work at 3am is that I discovered a whole new world on TV at that hour. Apparently, people who do not see enough commercials for Viagra or Cialis during civilized viewing hours, can see a lot more of them, including products you've never heard of at 3am. I wondered if NNCTL was also watching, but I didn't see any lights on next door.

My favorite infomercial was for something or someone called Comanche. A man in what looks like an Indian Chief's headdress was saying some very exciting things, while holding a writhing snake over a small cauldron with some leaves peaking out of it. There was a statue of the Blessed Virgin on a shelf over his left shoulder. He was exhorting listeners to call the number on the screen. I knew that, even though I didn't precisely understand his Spanish, because he spoke over some fake ringing sounds. The whole production probably cost about fifty-cents to make, and the poor BV looked totally embarrassed by the whole thing. Whatever it was that Comanche was curing related to Amor, the only word I recognized, and we pretty much know what that means. Remember Crazy Eddie? Comanche makes him look like Walter Cronkite.

Sitting there in my kitchen, watching and listening to Comanche, wondering about NNCTL, I began to wonder if this Comanche guy had gotten his start by having some idiotic neighbor, like the Metro-Norths, wake him up one night.

Then, I realized that the sand-blasting had stopped and I went back up to bed, but not exactly to sleep thinking, gotta call New Neighbor Coleman The Tired Lawyer tomorrow.

Little Black Dress

Before making light,

God cut

a piece

out of the charcoal night,

held it

in one hand,

and waited.

When light came,

God shook

the dark piece

and beheld:

the little

black dress.

Then, God

looked about

for tan shoulders

on which to

perfectly drape it.

(the rest

is herstory).

- For Ingrid Michaelson/copyright 2009/twmcdermott

I highly recommend Ingrid's new album, Everybody. If you do not have it, get it. Now. You will not be sorry.

See You In September?

Those of us in transition look forward to Labor Day's passing, because we believe that everyone we'd like to contact about finding work will be back at their desks, counters or shop floors. But, that doesn't happen. People with jobs, even in the recession, stay on vacation into the second full week of September. And beyond.

Vacation, we think. If only. I've spoken in the past about the only desire stronger in the transitioner than finding real work being the one about never taking a vacation again, when we do find real work.

Real work means that you earn at least half of what you used to earn, regain a sense of confidence and dignity, and feel respected among family and friends. Just don't hold your breath in early September.

There's a certain guy at an international bank, for example, who seems to have a lot of vacation time. He is a friend of my close friend and a business colleague of my close business colleague. He is the hiring executive for a position that perfectly fits my experience and list of accomplishments. Both my friend and colleague encouraged me to write directly to the man, using their names. So, a few weeks ago, I wrote to him.

You know what happens next, of course. Nothing. No acknowledgement of the email (I re-checked the address several times and received no non-delivery message). No phone call or invitation to call him. He has not used one of the dozen ways to brush me off despite my connections to people he knows. Meanwhile, the job may very well been filled already; interviews may already be set for late September. This has become acceptable behavior in the job market. Nothing. Silence. Void.

And yet, we do not pick up the phone to call him and bug him. What we would gain by taking the Energizer Bunny approach, universally recommended by the job search consultants, we would lose if he told us that the spot is filled, or that they have too many great candidates, or that it doesn't seem a fit.

Or, that he figured out that you're his age and he is about to retire. That one never goes away.

But, we must not be denied. Most importantly, we must not deny ourselves. We must have back-up plans to back-up plans. So, I am going to focus more on seeing if my consulting client, who disappeared towards the end of our project's first phase, will once more engage with me.

His suppliers are contacting me, his internal colleagues are contacting me, but he has not been talking.

His email message says that he is still on vacation.

If only.

Children Address The President and Country

Tomorrow night school children around the country will address the President, Congress and their parents. Parents will need permission from their children in order to listen to the address. We have been able to obtain a preview of the address' main points, which we share below:

1) Please stop lying to us. We say this respectfully, because we know that many of you think you're being honest with us, but we need to get your attention. What do we mean? Healthcare, for example, though important, is not on our list of top ten critical to-do's. We are more focused on the two wars currently being fought by our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should be talking about these first, everyday, whether or not we think they are a good idea or not. How will we continue to manage these two fronts and how will we pay for it? How will we defend Afghanistan's recent election and condemn Iran's? Do we want to continue borrowing from the Chinese to pay for it all, while they get Iraqi oil rights? ETC.

2) OMG. We don't have time to listen to those chattering cable-heads on the left and right or the network ones in the middle; we have homework and lots of texting to do. We don't have to be "socialists" to know that large corporations are not always honest and that their top people skim millions in so many ways we can't even count. But, we also don't have to be raving "capitalists" to know that Washington D.C. and state capitols are corrupt almost beyond our imaginations. Stop whining. Stop pointing fingers and name-calling. There is too much work to do.

3) Now that we have your attention, we propose that you start this way: we want an apology to us and our parents from the banks and others who caused the phony "recession." We studied recessions in class and none of them are like this one. This one is not part of a natural economic cycle, it was hoisted upon us by a few thousand reckless people, aided by the government. Some of our parents are over 50, and we want big banks and other corporations to start giving them some jobs. Our educations will be pointless, if we have to spend our futures taking care of jobless, moneyless, hopeless parents. Millions of them. Start hiring. Now.

4) Our education is also pointless unless you stop this deficit/borrowing roller-coaster. Also, get the tax code right. Now. Stop all the bickering about how to suck the rich dry (we call this Rangling, after the Congressman who doesn't like to pay taxes). You want us to study so we can be relatively rich, so why do you want to portray the rich as being evil. Only rich bankers are evil, others are perfectly okay. Make everyone pay some taxes, even us, even if it's a dollar. Paying taxes is part of our responsibility and paying no tax has become an entitlement for too many people. Collect universally and spend more wisely!

5) We read history, even though you don't. Every President since our grandparents were in K has wanted to be the Education President. All have failed. Face up to this. We kids watch what you do, not what you say. You say study, study, study, but you do not study yourselves. You seldom read books. You put dumb people in charge of important institutions. You are captivated by TV, which is just another vending machine. You talk incessantly about sports and watch sports all the time. When we're not too good at sports, you get disappointed, as if it was your life and not ours. You encourage the "best" colleges to emphasize sports over every other area of learning. We never see a town announcing something like, "Centerville. Home Of the State Champion Math Team." Do what you say!

6) You have been stealing from Social Security for decades and now you have to stop. Quit lying to our parents that WE can afford to take care of them. You already used their contributions for a million other dumb things, and we can't assume that burden. You sound like you are preparing to spend trillions more on new things. Are you telling us to study harder just so we can take care of you all for our entire lives? Fix Social Security before you do Healthcare. Or, dump it. But, stop stealing!

7) Mr. President, many of us would have voted for you, not just because Sarah was more than a little scary. Also, we are pleased to have an African-American President. But, we respectfully must say: Start Over! your only real opposition is on radio and cable TV. Their audiences did not study very hard in school. They have weird ideas about science, eat really unhealthy food, don't exercise and wear funny clothes. Don't be so worried by these people. Also, don't be mesmerized by your fawning cable admirers; they're dangerous too. Get your priorities straight. We would have voted for you because of who you are not what you promised to do. It's about Trust and Honesty. Focus on making the country honest again; that will be a huge accomplishment. We've been lying to each other for so long, we believe our own hype. We need to get to a place where we can have an honest national conversation. So, shoving Healthcare through will only make matters worse in the long run, because our national moral infrastructure is rotted. And, did we happen to mention that we're totally broke?

8) Consider allowing us to vote and pay taxes. We're being really serious. We look at state legislatures, Congress, corporations, universities. Honestly, we think that we could do as well if not better. How could we screw up Albany? How could our votes mess up AIG, Citi, or Fannie (love that name)? Less than half the eligible adults bother to vote (more talk and not doing), except in Illinois, where twice the number of eligible voters vote, like in Afghanistan. We'd rather share our allowances than take more from China, which does not even like us one little bit. Be bold. Do it. Lower the voting age to 10!

9) Please say hi to the Secretary of State, wherever she might be. She's a Whirlwind, kind of like one of those satellites that used to circle the earth over and over again. Do her trips cost a lot? How many pantsuits does she own?

10) We know that you want us to study hard so that we will have great futures as individuals and together. You want us to have prosperous, healthy lives. Want to know our biggest fear? Our biggest fear is that we will become you, that we will live in a dream world in which we can say one thing and do another. CEO's say they value stockholders first, while many hold them in contempt. Congress says it wants to take care of us, but they want to take care of themselves and their lobbyist friends first. Presidents want what's best for the country, but they overvalue what their own legacies will be. Corporations love capitalism until it hurts them, then they want socialist investment. Parents stop learning as soon as they can and pretend that they know everything anyway. Get real. Or get lost.

Subversives Among Us!

There are subversives working in the government of my city, the smallest city in New York State.

Four trucks and seven males in hard hats appeared in front of my house yesterday and began drilling a hole in a very busy Boston Post Road. Nevermind that we do not need this road to get mail to and from Boston any longer; it's still a main local artery.

After a couple of hours of digging, looking into the hole together, then more hammering and more looking into an increasingly muddy hole, a funny thing happened. Brownish water began to spurt from the shower nozzles and faucets in our home, whether or not they were active. Shortly after that, there was no water at all. I questioned the head hard hat about this and was told that water would be off for several hours.

Now here comes the subversive part. I immediately informed my city DPW of this serious matter. I mentioned that these hole-hammering men had not given citizens any notice about a shut-off. I said that they probably just thought I was another rich, spoiled banker worried about his swimming pool, instead of an apparently unemployable, forcibly-retired grumbler like millions of others in the country. What if people in the neighborhood are ill, I said, will they have to suddenly get to the store somehow to buy drinking water?

A woman named Eleanor Militana wrote back to me almost immediately. She agreed with me that citizens had been wronged. She agreed that someone was at fault, and that the water company, working on contract, certainly could have had the decency and courtesy to inform citizens. She said that she would look into it in such a convincing manner that I believed her.

Fellow Citizens of the City and the Republic, we have a bigger problem than we thought. There really are subversives working in government, who, if we let them, will undermine our anger and frustration. If we allow people like Eleanor to thrive in government, there is no telling what kind of mayhem and disruption might occur! We must organize faster, otherwise government might actually do things like create a simple one page explanation of the secret Healthcare Plans. Can you imagine an SEC that actually catches the Bernies of the world, even if it is on the fifth try? We might even have Presidents and SecTreases who can get bankers to apologize for their corrupt and reckless behavior.

All over the country people are working themselves and being worked into a frenzy, mostly over the Healthcare Thing, but that's just an excuse. People are really ticked at government at all levels. People in Texas are scared to death of allowing their President to address their children in schools, because of his "socialist" message. New Yorkers wonder if having a State Emperor like the one in New York City would work better that having totally corrupt and/or incapable set of legislators and governors in Albany. Some wonder why we bother to even have something called Albany. Or Springfield, Ill. Or Sacramento. Etc.

On top of all that, we now have to worry about Eleanor Militana and others like her. If we are not careful, city and town governments might watch budgets more carefully and speak to citizens respectfully on a regular basis. This could spread rapidly, leading to high unemployment in the ranks of radio/TV chattering classes. Congress might begin to buy its own lunch! Presidents could think twice about spending trillions so others around the world could learn from our democracy how to get the Chinese to loan them trillions to spread their own ways. And so on.

There are subversives at work in government and they are reasonable, accountable, courteous. This is dangerous.