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Why you need a GMail account for your job search

gmail-logoIn my personal branding workshops, the first requirement is a GMail account. I sometimes meet heavy resistance, but I can convince most people I’m right. Here’s why:

Deliverability. Every email provider has problems with receiving and sending mail. Mostly this is because of spam and how filters work. Some providers, like Comcast, block emails that come from a particular server. Note that I didn’t say domain, which would be bad comcast-logoenough. This is much worse! I had an email account from a computer shop I worked in – there were only a handful of accounts on this domain, and email volume was very low (outbound, we got plenty of spam inbound). I can’t send email from that account to anybody at Comcast – the email is just rejected. The ISP that we used at the shop has a machine that serves hundreds, or perhaps thousands of customers.

The first time this happened, I called the provider and asked for help, and since he wasn’t a very good provider, he told me to fix it myself. It seems that he bought the IP address for his server from somebody who was a spammer. No spam from that machine recently, but the IP address was still on black lists. I contacted a couple of the list owners and convinced them to remove the IP address, but at some point, it fell back on the black lists.

If you don’t know about email black lists, you might want to look at spamhaus.org. This is the best known anti-spam service, and here’s what they say about their business:

spamhaus-logoWORKING TO PROTECT INTERNET NETWORKS WORLDWIDE
Spamhaus tracks the Internet’s Spammers, Spam Gangs and Spam Services, provides dependable realtime anti-spam protection for Internet networks, and works with Law Enforcement to identify and pursue spammers worldwide.

Most people think spam is detected from content, and indeed with software like Outlook, that’s true. But the email has to get to you before your software can determine if it’s legitimate content.

GMail is considered a trusted source by most email services, and there’s even been speculation that GMail gets preference with some sites like Yahoo. That means your email is more likely to get to your recipient if you use GMail.

Service levels. This is hardly statistically valid information, but from my own observations Yahoo email tends to move in and out very slowly. Like sometimes a day or two later. I’ve watched this on my own account many times – send myself an email (like an article I’m reading), and watch it get to GMail instantly and Yahoo the next day. Likewise, outbound email is often delayed. Hey, this is better than it used to be when PacBell, SBC, and then ATT (wish they’d decide on their name already) ran the email servers. I first noticed this about 10 years ago when I found that some of my emails weren’t going out at all. A little research on the Internet showed that the PacBell email servers were frequently overloaded to the point of simply losing email. I’ve never seen or heard about this happening at GMail.

Your brand. You can believe this or not, but I’ve heard two recruiters say that candidates using GMail accounts were generally better than candidates using other email services. I can tell you that as a hiring manager, if I got an application sent from AOL, I wouldn’t even read it. I’m in high tech, and if you use AOL, you simply don’t get it.

Other Google services. If you’ve been to one of my workshops or seen one of my presentations, you know how important I think Google Reader is. You will need a Google account to use it or any other service at Google. I have a website parked there – my first try – http://wfeigenson.googlepages.com. I also use Google Analytics (tracks web traffic) and recently I created a Google AdWords campaign.

The Evil Empire? I have to bring this up… Google has frequently been draconian in their service terms, and they clearly have more information about everyone than almost anybody wants them to have. But believe me, dear reader, they are not interested in you or me. There are too many people in the world for Google to target people who aren’t famous, and they don’t even target those people. Your anonymity lies in sheer numbers.

Email from your domain or GMail? Many people say true professionals should use their own domain for email (e.g. john@johnjones.com). While I agree with this in principal, I don’t suggest it – for the very reasons I mentioned above. You cannot be sure that your domain is hosted on a server that’s “clean.”

Keep your old email account! But don’t use it for your job search – just use it for your personal correspondence. If you’re like me, you’ll probably drop the old account after a while.

Final point: being an old fart, I hate GMail’s interface, so I use it in Outlook. It’s really very simple to set up, and the Outlook interface is much better for me – and I use an indexing outlook-logoprogram (Copernic), which indexes all my files and email. Then I have a fighting chance to track what I promised you two weeks ago. You can also use the Google servers with other email programs: Outlook Express, Thunderbird, probably many others. If you want to do this, remember Google is your best friend (I should trademark that, but I’m sure Google would object). Look up “set up GMail for Outlook” or equivalent. There are some really good instructions available on the Net.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 26, 2009

Free service – convert PDF to Word

How many times have you wanted to convert a PDF file to something you could edit? Sure, you can buy Adobe’s full Acrobat product, but it’s expensive, and Adobe has a very colonial attitude about your computer (if they land on your computer, they plant their flag and declare your computer part of Adobe’s empire).

PDFtoWordThe people who make PDFHammer, a free tool you can use to edit your LinkedIn profile (see earlier post), are beta testing a new service called PDF to Word. It’s still in beta, but you can use the code “nitro” and a valid email address to get access.

I did a cursory test yesterday, and I was absolutely amazed at the results. One document was a large table, which came over with all formatting, logos, headers and footers – perfectly. The other document was a PDF of the PowerPoint presentation I give. The conversion wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty darn close – certainly close enough to use with minor edits.

The amazing thing is that this conversion brings headers, footers, illustrations – everything. How they make Word perform these amazing tricks is beyond me. I’m a pretty heavy duty Word user, and I don’t think I could have created these documents. PDFtoWord can also create RTF documents, which can be read by most applications, including WordPerfect.

nitropdf-logoYou may want to check out some of the other software Nitro offers. I’ve been using PrimoPDF for a while to create PDF files, and it’s great.

By the way, this story provides an interesting example on my usual theme of personal branding. Here’s how this came about:

  • I got an idea – how about removing the resume portion of your LinkedIn profile, leaving just the recommendations?
  • Where can I find free software that will let me remove pages from a PDF?
  • Google is your best friend.
  • Figured it out, and posted my article (linked above).
  • Shameless self promotion – wrote to Jason Alba and asked if this wouldn’t be a good subject for the JibberJobber or I’m On Linked in sites.
  • Jason wrote a blog entry that pointed to my article.
  • Readership skyrocketed, and I thought I should write to the NitroPDF people because they might think the post was interesting. Oh yeah, I’m into this Web 2.0 stuff, so I did this using an InMail on LinkedIn.
  • Sam Chandler from Nitro, wrote back thanking me and he offered me a full copy of Nitro (wow, another great, great product), and asked me to try PDFtoWord.
  • My readership continues to grow because of Jason’s link.
  • Connections beget other connections, etc. etc.

They say that Web 2.0, whatever that is, is based on two-way communication. This was a wonderful experience for me. It’s pretty unlikely that this article would ever have gotten noticed if it weren’t for the connection I made with Jason. That connection was based on studying and becoming a subject matter expert on personal branding. It’s also unlikely that I could ever have found or talked to Sam before tools like LinkedIn came about. Web 2.0 was clearly an enabler in this instance.

And so, again I say: you too can become a subject matter expert on something. It takes a lot of work and time, but it’s an attainable goal.

Posted in Personal branding.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 24, 2009

A cool personal branding site for college students

Check it out – it’s called Brand-Yourself.com, and it’s run by some smart young people who are building a company to help college kids establish themselves in the online world.

brand-yourself-logo

Most college kids today are already deeply into the Internet, but few have thought about how to use the Internet to help build a career. That’s what brand-yourself.com is all about. As students get closer to that dreaded day when they have to find a job, they’re going to find that MySpace profiles and silly stuff on Facebook just ain’t going to work.

I’d like to say that I found them, but truth be told, they found me. One day I had a nice comment waiting for approval on my blog – it was from Trace Cohen, one of the company’s founders. He wanted to talk to me about personal branding, since that’s what his site is all about.

Trace CohenIt’s really amazing – Trace is a junior at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management. When I was a junior in college, all I could think about was – well you can guess (some of those thoughts are still illegal). For somebody his age to be involved with a project like this is pretty incredible, but the stuff he and his partners is doing is really good.

After a couple of emails, Trace invited me to be a guest blogger on their site http://blog.brand-yourself.com. Of course, I was flattered, since this meant that somebody else considered me a subject matter expert in personal branding. And this demonstrates that if you work at it hard enough, you too can become a subject matter expert at something.

So check out their website. It’s really too bad it’s just for college students. Or maybe it isn’t. Being an old fart, I’ve been reticent about signing up for their program and creating the only brand-yourself.com senior citizen website.

Oh yeah, Trace and I had a short discussion about my most recent post (not yet published as of 2/23). My topic was about how young people have to reinvent – rebrand – themselves as they approach graduation and the job market. He was a little skeptical, but he agreed after he read my post. And shortly after that I got a notification on LinkedIn that he had changed his “What are you working on” status to “Trace Cohen helps students create a personal brand and online presence.” Pretty simple, direct, and easy to understand. Passes the six-second test (you’ve got six seconds to tell me what you do or I’m out of here).

Posted in Personal branding.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 23, 2009

How not to capture names for your mailing list

I came across a website today called namesdatabase.com. Thought I’d look at it – I look at new sites and try new software virtually every day. It’s part of keeping current. And listing yourself on people search sites is an important part of personal branding.

Names Database LogoThe site requests your name and email. That’s fair, since it purports to be something like ZoomInfo. Aah, too impulsive. I should have done some research first. Here’s a snippit from their Wikipedia entry:

The Names Database is a social network, owned and operated by United Online, the parent company of Classmates.com, with headquarters in Orem, Utah. Unlike most social networks, it requires that new registrations include five email addresses of friends or acquaintances. The site immediately checks the validity of the addresses, disallowing fraudulent information.

So what’s wrong? First, classmates.com is an overly aggressive and sometimes misleading site. There have been a lot of consumer complaints about their marketing techniques. That would have made me think twice, and at least research them before signing up.

But what’s worse is that you have to give them other email addresses even before you can find out what they’re offering. And you can’t put your own address in each time, because they really do check. And although I may have done something wrong in registering, I didn’t get to read the Terms and Conditions before I gave them a throwaway address (something I often do if I’m not sure about a site).

Of course, at this point, I just closed the browser window and wrote them off. But a little while later, I got an email to my throwaway email service saying that I could join anyway, even if I wouldn’t submit friends’ email addresses (and I want to add “to their spam machine” but i don’t know if that’s true).

Fortunately, they provided an unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email, which I used. Whether or not it will be honored is another matter entirely. Even the wording in their confirmation email was defensive:

Please also note that this message is a transactional relationship email that was explicitly requested by wfeigenson@***.com from The Names Database at NamesDatabase.com using a computer with the IP address of 0.0.0.0 on 2009-02-20 22:24:13.735743-07 while signing up for a Basic Membership.

All in all, I feel like I was slimed. It’s probably why – even though they claim over 33 million users – I’ve never heard of them.

As my grandfather used to say: “feh.” (Please don’t ask me for a translation, use your imagination.)

Please read the Wikipedia entry and research this site if you’re thinking of signing up, also please read my two comments.

Posted in Marketing, Personal branding.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 20, 2009

Do all high tech CEOs have attention deficit disorder?

[This is a repost of an article I did before I started my blog.] My last boss

Ever wonder why your CEO is so unfocused? Mercurial? Unaware of how their actions will affect other people? Ever wonder why they even wanted to be a CEO?

I’ve spent my career in startups and early-stage companies – software, publishing, Internet, Location Based Services. Once I had a full head of hair, but it’s thin on top now from years of scratching my head wondering how my CEO I could possibly have decided to do what he’s doing (I’ve never worked for a female CEO, but I hope they are better).

You can see another side of this question in another article I wrote.

Well, my friends, if it looks bad and smells bad, it probably tastes bad. It’s probably your CEO who’s nuts, not you.

I think getting to the top ranks of companies is a Darwinian process. Most people don’t even want to be the CEO. Too many headaches, too much responsibility. And some people may even feel that they don’t want to tell others what to do. This is what we sometimes call normal.

Now people with ADD tend to have certain characteristics that make them sublimely eligible for leadership positions:

  1. They can’t see the risk in what they’re doing. A normal person, when asked to start up a risky enterprise, might say: “Oh no, there’s way too much risk involved. I’d rather do something else.” Somebody with ADD would be more likely to say: “That sounds exciting, I’m sure I can do it. When do we start?”
  2. They don’t see how their actions affect other people. Ever wonder how a person could be so dumb that they can’t see that a small action could provoke a huge reaction? Just look at some of our politicians, and you’ll see this behavior in spades: President Clinton’s sexual adventures. Elliot Spitzer’s sexual adventures. Let’s stop the list there before we all get depressed…  The common thread here is that a normal person wouldn’t transgress in these ways because they would predict trouble. But I bet you’ve seen your own CEO fall into this trap many times.
  3. ADD personalities tend to be creative (in my opinion). Creative people tend to be leaders. A creative person can see an opportunity where a non-creative person could only see problems. Of course, the flip side of this is that the opportunities may be similar what you’d expect from drug-induced euphoria.
  4. Lacking empathy, this personality type can easily take draconian measures in a company – doing things that would make most people cringe. You’ve seen this: firing somebody just before Christmas, or when they’re just short of their pension. Good for the business? Maybe. Bad for the soul, though. And therefore, also bad for the business. Remember what I said: if it looks bad and smells bad, it probably tastes bad.

So don’t be too hard on your CEO. Your CEO is missing some important neural wiring. That’s probably why he or she got to be your CEO.

Most of these people are undiagnosed. Most are not especially introspective (it’s part of being impulsive, which is a signal part of ADD). Most have absolutely no idea that they are objects of ridicule by others – and if they do, they will almost never know the true reasons. Most don’t want to improve.

But people can learn to live and be even more productive, even if they have ADD. Try sensitizing your CEO without being threatening. If they look like they could catch on, keep training them. If not, then be prepared for a bumpy ride.

PS: A friend and associate read this article and said it sounded hostile. I didn’t mean it that way – but I can see that point of view. Here’s another view of this subject, one that I also believe in. Its essential point is that ADD breeds creativity. Society and business would be very dull without it’s ADD visionaries.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 20, 2009

One of my biggest marketing successes was a failure

ComdexComdex in two weeks? No booth or displays? Oy vey.

I started work at Frecom Communications just before we went to Comdex, which was then the largest trade show for the microcomputer industry. Frecom made some of the first low-cost fax/modems, which people used to communicate with bulletin boards and AOL before the Internet showed up.

Comdex was a big show – it drew over 100,000 people in those days. It was a real zoo, spread over several convention centers. Sheer numbers made everything difficult, but also posed a real opportunity – if you were ready.

Of course, we weren’t. But we had a great image on on product box – company President Paul Masters, one of those bow-tie-types, lying on red velvet holding the product. Tag line was something like “this is as cheap as it gets.”

That was a great and memorable image, but the branding was all wrong. People don’t want cheap, they want good (and by the way, better make it cheap). So we changed the tag to “This is as good as fax/modems get.”

Frecom Fax Modems

Next thing: what do we have to offer at the show? Nothing. OK, I get it. No new products, no marketing collateral, gotta make something up really fast.

Well, we did have something. That product image with Paul was something everyone loved. And I had an idea for getting people into our booth.

First task: make a giant blowup of the product packaging. Mount it on foam. Cut out Paul’s head. Get a Polaroid (this was before digital cameras, folks). Take pictures of our product box with the attendee sticking his/her head through the hole.

You may think this was hokey, but we always had lines of people waiting to get their pictures taken.

Next: popcorn. Everyone loves popcorn at trade shows – well, everyone except the people working in surrounding booths. It makes a mess. The smell permeates everything. But we gave away a LOT of popcorn. $5,000 of popcorn, to be exact. I never even considered that it would cost more than a couple hundred dollars. What a surprise.

So here’s the good news. We were mobbed throughout the show.

And here’s the bad news. We had nothing to sell except our old product. We missed an incredible chance to get a new, improved message out. But we did start rebranding the product as a quality product, rather than as a cheap product. (In fact, using some clever pricing techniques, we were perceived in the big-box stores as the lowest-cost fax modem, event though our chief competitor sold for less!)

It’s not like we didn’t get any benefit. People got to see the new tag line, which had traction. People who didn’t know about our existing product line got a chance to learn about us. But as I recall, we didn’t get any orders.

Having said that, over the next three months, we quadrupled sales! Well, that good news came with bad news as well. In case you didn’t know it (I sure didn’t), in a manufacturing company, the more you sell the more funding you need. You see, you have to pay for parts and manufacturing in cash (if your credit isn’t good), and you sell to big box stores on 30 day terms (which means you get paid in 90 days). Our sales success put us out of business.

In retrospect, I might have done things a little differently…

Posted in Back in the day, Marketing.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 16, 2009

Television news coverage

Wednesday night (2/11), KTVU interviewed some people at the workshop I did for Experience Unlimited – in the EastBay Works facilities in Concord, CA. The gist of the story was that despite state budgetary problems, some people at the Unemployment Center are working overtime to help jobless people. One of the ways they’re helping is by putting on workshops like the one I did.

If you’d like to see it, click on the logo below. (I’m not sure how long KTVU will keep the video on their site.)

KTVU news story

ebworks2

Thanks to Barbara Vineyard (left) for helping to make these workshops possible at EastBay Works. Thanks to Glen Zamanian (center) for setting this up! And thanks to reporter Jana Katsuyama for doing the story.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 12, 2009

Upcoming presentations

calendar

I no longer do presentations. Here are some that I did a few years ago:

October 17 – Keynote speaker at Job Connections in Danville

October 7 – Guest speaker for the Latino Business Student Association at San Jose State University. Great bunch of college students who understand they have to work on their personal brand before they enter the job market.

September 22 – Experience Unlimited in Walnut Creek. Filling in for my old friend Dean Tracy.

September 26 – Personal Branding workshop at Job Connections, after the main meeting.

Septemer 11 – I was flattered to be the keynote speaker and panel member at the CHispPA quarterly meeting. “CHispPA is an all-inclusive non-profit, no-dues organization whose mission is to spark & empower advancement of its members and the Hispanic community.” Great group! And a wonderful panel, consisting of Randy Block, Hilda Ramirez, Nancy Lin, and David Lemos – also CHispPA representatives Juliessa Perez, Alex Ontiveros , and our great moderator Eduardo Salaz.

February 11 – this is my third workshop for Experience Unlimited. EastBayWorks has been kind enough to allow us to use their computer lab in the EDD offices in Concord. We are limited to 16 attendees, and this session is fully subscribed. There will be more, although none are scheduled yet.

February 14 – at Job Connections (Danville Presbyterian Church in Danville). Can’t remember how many of these I’ve done, but they keep insisting that I come back and do them until I get it right. Lots of room – the Job Connections meeting starts at 9 am, and I go on around 10:30.

February 17 – I’m doing one of the meetings for Dan Rink and Chani Pangali’s group. This session is private.

February 18 – Private session at St. Isadore Church for a group set up by Steve Goveia and Greg Vervais.

February 19 – Torchiana, Mastrov & Sapiro in San Francisco. I did a presentation in their San Leandro office a couple of months ago. Torchiana is an outplacement firm.

February 28 – Back at Job Connections to do a post-meeting workshop (the workshop starts after the big meeting ends – should be about 11:45 am). Please contact me if you want to attend. I may have to limit attendance.

March 17 – Experience Unlimited in Lafayette. They’re going to keep me coming back till I do it right…

March 26 – Valley Community Christian Church in Pleasanton. My first time here.

April 6 – Calvary Temple Church in Concord. First time for this group.

April 22 – ExecutiveWorld – Michael Parsells’ group. I’m really looking forward to meeting Michael after all these years. We’ve spoken by phone many times.

April 23 – Experience Unlimited in Oakland. First time with this group. I lived in Oakland for 20 years, so it’ll be like coming home.

May 1 – Pleasant Hill Chamber of Commerce at JFK University at noon.

May 6 – (date changed) CSIX Connect presentation in Sunnyvale. There are a lot of people out of work in Silly Valley, and this is the first time I’m presenting there. I’m not sure what the rules are for attending these sessions – if you’re interested, leave a comment and I’ll find out.

May 14 – CSIX in Saratoga. Asked back to speak to another part of this group. Last session had 100 people and lots of questions.

July 7 – Experience Unlimited Contra Costa Chapter in Lafayette at Temple Isiah. I think they’re going to keep me coming back till I do it right…

July 16 – Lafayette Chamber of Commerce Entrepreneur’s Group. Check out their fantastic email blast promo (click on the image). LafayetteC0C

July 18 – Job Connections in Danville at the Community Presbyterian Church.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 9, 2009

A questionable telemarketing scheme that works

Did you ever wonder why you get so many hang ups on your phone? Bet you didn’t know that there’s a service – and probably many – that can be set to hang up if somebody answers or leave a message if they don’t.

The motivation is simple, the telemarketer gets to leave you a recorded message. They don’t have to staff phone banks, and the whole process is totally automated – and incredibly inexpensive.

To me, it’s a judgment call whether or not you consider this technique ethical. Hangups are clearly annoying and disruptive. Sometimes people would call the originating number back to try to connect with the person who dropped the call (these people got essentially the same message we would have left on their voice mail). If they weren’t at their phone, there was no interruption. But I often thought that if people knew we were hanging up on purpose, they would be pretty upset with us.

Against my better judgment, I was coerced by my employer to use it. To my surprise, it really worked, and the reason also sheds some light on why good marketing works and lousy marketing annoys. In our case, we left messages for financial insurance agents and financial planners. Our selling proposition was simple: we’re giving a webinar today, and we’d like you to attend. The webinar will teach you how to use the Internet to market your services, and it’s free.

That’s not a bad pitch, because we were offering something of value for 30 minutes of your time. And it got through the clutter; I don’t think there’s any industry where workers are so bombarded with sales pitches as these people were. I got probably 100 promotional emails every day, and like financial professionals I largely ignored them.

Bottom line: we got an 8% response rate on the voice mail messages – these were people who called us or went to our website to sign up for the webinar. Email blasts, which we did as well, generally had about .1% response rate. And the other thing these voice mail/registrations did was ensure that we had screened candidates. Every step you make a prospect go through filters out more people who aren’t interested and leaves a more qualified candidate.

CallFire.com

If you’re thinking of doing this, the service is called CallFire.com. But get some legal advice before you start – I’m not at all sure that we weren’t breaking laws in some states.

CallFire is really a very interesting site, because you can also set up a virtual call center quite easily. This allows you to have telemarketers (or it could be technical support or sales) in any location; people can work from home or remote offices anywhere in the country. The system dials out and connects to a prospect and then connects a live person to your telemarketer. The sales person doesn’t have to call out – there’s only one call, and it’s placed from CallFire to your telemarketer.

This service is pretty economical, and it’s easy enough for almost anybody to set up. All you have to do is find some telemarkers, which I did by advertising on Craig’s List in various locations. No need to move things to the Philippines or invest in roomfulls of people. It’s potentially a great resource for a small company working on a limited budget.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 8, 2009

Old-fashioned personal brands

I love mystery novels, and I’m just finishing up a series written by Rhys Bowen that’s set in Northern Wales. These cozy mysteries feature not only a main character, Evan Evans, but a town and citizens with real character.

Evan Evans MysteriesI don’t know if this is a widespread practice in Wales, but in the town of Llanfair, people are known by their first name and their profession. So there’s Evans-the-Meat (butcher), Evans-the-Law (the constable), Evans-the-Post (letter carrier), and more. This town has lots of Evans living there.

This is really cute, and I’ve enjoyed meeting these characters. But it occurred to me tonight that these are actually brands! Think of it, active branding in communities that don’t even have the Internet (is that possible??).

Maybe we should start branding people this way in the US. Oh, I could think of a few great ones for politicians. And for some of the high-tech founders I’ve worked with. Too bad so many of them would end with “the fool.” And of course, most of the Wall Street types would end with “the crook.”

On second thought, I don’t think we could get away with this. It probably doesn’t scale.

Posted in Management thoughts, Personal branding.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 4, 2009