Job Search Tips for Introverts

Heather Mundell posted a terrific article on careerhubblog.com: Job Search Tips for Introverts. Many introverts don’t even bother with networking because it’s so difficult for them. And even extraverts can become introverts when faced with a roomful of people they don’t, but should, know.

When I read this post, I thought Heather must have been watching me at SVASE meetings. I mean, most of what she says is exactly what I do. At first I felt guilty about my networking, but I’ve given myself permission to go to these events and not meet everyone in the room. I’ve always been good at mingling till I found somebody interesting, and then spending some time in deeper discussion with that person. Lo and behold, that’s one of her techniques.

Another thing I’ve found essential is research. I was running a small company until about a year ago. Like many small business managers, I didn’t have much time to look around at what was going on in the tech world. I was mainly interested in how we were going to make the next payroll.

When I started networking, I found that I didn’t understand much of what I was hearing deep in the heart of Silly Valley. So I started my immersion therapy. Incessant reading, trying dozens of new sites and software systems. Thinking, integrating my thoughts. Reading more blogs.

In my workshops, I make sure that everyone is set up on Google Reader with at least one RSS feed before they leave. For most this will be a job search category on Craig’s List. But I also try to get people set up on Techcrunch or Techmeme (or if they’re not technical, I might suggest the New York Times). I subscribe to 56 feeds, and I get hundreds of articles a day, most of which I ignore after seeing the title.

Deep immersion in all these articles got me up to speed fast. After about 2 months, I found that I could go to networking meetings and understand almost everything. By the 3rd month, I could participate in conversations, and frequently contribute something.

That was my ticket to networking. I put in my homework, got some training from Dan Rink on the techniques of networking, and I jumped right in.

Do I feel comfortable? Not really. Am I functional in this setting? I think so. I’ve made some good connections, I’ve gotten enough knowledge to follow and contribute. And in turn, I teach other people how to do this, which is ultimately rewarding to me as a citizen of the high-tech community.

Posted in Personal branding.

Tagged with careers, Job seekers, networking.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 4, 2009

A new approach to hiring responsible CEOs

All the economic gurus who were running our banking system based their assumptions on rational market behavior. Unfortunately, Greenspan’s vision of rational behavior and Madoff’s are pretty far apart.

This got me to thinking about irrational salaries in general (except mine, of course). Way back when NYU’s top basketball player Mal Graham was first round draft choice for the then undefeatable Celtics, his salary was under $40k. Perhaps that was too low, but it made more sense than the obscene salaries sports and entertainment people get today. Those were rational market behaviors.

So these bankers watch the big sports and entertainment earners and say, why not me? And the game now becomes how many gazillions am I making instead of how profitable my firm is. The old-fashioned idea that CEOs and top managers competed for the glory of success (corporate, that is) is gone. And this has bred an entirely new type of entrepreneur who will happily screw not only the general public, but their own company at the same time. All to make a few more millions.

To be sure, greed isn’t new, but if you think of the robber barons, they were looking to build a legacy as well as a fortune. Today’s Rockefellers and Carnegies only care about how much they can secret off to the Grand Caymens before the house of cards collapses. In Madoff’s case, he probably thought he’d be dead before everything collapsed – and that might have happened if Good Ol’ George hadn’t been elected.

So here’s my idea: let’s auction off public company CEO positions. Lowest bid wins – or maybe we can even find some people willing to pay for these jobs. While this may sound ridiculous, imagine how much better a Board of Directors could be at selecting their new CEO from a group of candidates who are qualified and want to put the company’s welfare before their own.

I’d do it, and I know many others who would as well. Give me a chance to run GM, and I’ll work without salary just for the glory of having turned around one of the world’s largest messes. Just think how many Harry Trumans are sitting out there unemployed and unrecognized today. (If anybody is listening, I don’t need any $1,200 waste baskets. Ikea is OK for me).

Oh yeah, if I’m not earning very much money, guess what I’m going to do with the salaries of my managers? To paraphrase Everett Dirksen, “a million here, a million there… pretty soon it adds up to real money.” This will immediately get rid of tons of Dilbert-managers, who can be replaced by people who want their jobs because they want the companies to succeed.

Join with me America! Let’s start a Bernie Madoff Pro-Massacre movement (apologies to Arlo Guthrie).

Just walk right into your local mega-corporation and say “Greedy bastards, we can get everything this country needs by replacing you with conscientious, socially responsible managers.”

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t listen. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both flag-waving liberal socialists and they won’t listen to either of them. And if three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of the “Madoff Pro-Massacre Anthem” and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of the “Madoff Pro-Massacre Anthem” and walking out? Friends, they may think it’s a movement.

Posted in Management thoughts.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 3, 2009

Personal branding? Or baloney?

I talk a lot about personal branding, and I teach it. In fact, I even bought the brandingme.com domain (which points to my old website until I can think of something clever to put there). And I use my picture frequently not because I think I’m good looking, but because I want people to associate my mug with what I say and write. That’s my personal brand.

But I have to confess that every time I hear the term, I get a little nauseous. That’s pretty much the same reaction I had earlier in my career when recent college grads started talking ad nauseum about branding this and branding that. It’s probably genetic; I also get prissy when somebody talks about prioritizing things. Or maybe I’m just old-fashioned.

These concepts aren’t new, although the names have changed to enrich the marketeers. They’ve been around since humans started socializing. Probably animals too, but I don’t want to get between the Darwinistas and the Creationists.

It’s natural for a prospective partner to want to know something about their new partner, whether the other person is your boss, a job candidate, or a consultant – it doesn’t really matter. That’s why people look you up on Google before offering you a job or trying to sell you something.

We once referred to this as your reputation. Now it’s called your personal brand.

Web 2.0 has brought back the notion of community for many of us. At one time, everyone in a community knew everyone else. Where I grew up, I knew everyone that lived on my street, and I’d been in almost every house. Today, that’s uncommon.

Five years ago, when you applied for a job, it was hard for a hiring manager or an HR person to learn much about you. Resumes were relatively more important then, because they were the only screening mechanism companies had – except for networking, which has always been important.

Today, for most of us – at least in technology-rich areas like the San Francisco Bay Area – that’s no longer true. If you have the right keywords on your resume, you may make the first (usually) electronic cut. But before you get called for an interview, somebody is going to look you up on Google, or perhaps go even deeper.

That’s why managing your reputation is important, and that’s why somebody had to rename it personal branding, so we could get your attention.

Whatever you call it, this is real, and it affects you. You can be a victim, or you can thrive – the choice is yours.

Posted in Personal branding.

Tagged with Personal branding.

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By Walter Feigenson – February 1, 2009

Free resources for job seekers (well, ok – you working people can use them too)

Recently I did a presentation on personal branding and small company branding for the Contra Costa County Library. This was part of a series of sessions on practical business training.

Valerie Zito, the wonderful inspiration for this series, told us about some reference sources available to anybody with a library card. It turns out there are many great resources available online from our library – and I’d bet if you’re not a CCC resident, many of these are available through your own library system.

ReferenceUSA, which is produced by infoUSA, is a huge database of people and businesses in the US. If you have a navigation system in your car, there’s a pretty good chance the points of interest came from these guys. And it’s pretty expensive. I know this because I negotiated a deal with them in 2000 for the location-based services company I worked for.

What a great resource this can be for you! They have many databases, although not all are available to library users. Here’s the selection you can get through CCC Library:

You can look up specific companies you’re targeting. Here are the results for Financial Visions, the company I used to run:

Click the image to enlarge

Pretty cool stuff, albeit not all accurate. But then none of these databases are ever accurate. This may not provide everything you need to know about your target companies, but it will sure give you a good starting point.

You can also search the database using various selection criteria. The number of resulting matches you can display is limited (they do want to sell their services, after all). To minimize your frustration with their primitive interface (hope they’re not listening, or maybe I hope they are…), remember these databases weren’t really designed for casual users.

You may want to use their quirky query builder, especially if you’re just starting out. Here are the results of a search for executive recruiters in Walnut Creek, CA with 1-9 employees:

Click image to enlarge

When you click on the company name, you’ll get a screen like the Financial Visions results I showed above. Here, we find that Nancy Nolan is the President of Nolan Group, and you’ll see the sales she reported (probably to Dunn & Bradstreet). If you scroll down a bit, you’ll get a “Competitor’s Report” which may be very useful for you as well.

It’s easy to see how this could be useful for job seekers. But it’s also a great tool if you have your own business or even if you’re working for somebody else. It’s a great way for sales people to research prospects. Or use it to assess compeitition when you’re writing a business plan. Or maybe just use it to find out that your competitor’s marketing claims were written by a disciple of Timothy Leary.

Posted in Personal branding.

Tagged with free reference resources, Job seekers.

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By Walter Feigenson – January 31, 2009

Think you’re popular, huh?

If you’re looking for an objective measure of how well your personal branding efforts are doing, you can use the technique I describe in this post.

If you’re aware of personal branding, I’m sure you Google yourself regularly. It’s really rewarding when the results are good – “damn, I’m doing a great job…” For me, these results are really biased, because I’m the only Walter Feigenson in the country. But I had a clue that everything wasn’t as good as I thought when I Googled Feigenson – then my results were just OK. Turns out there are some Feigensons who are more famous than I am, although none of us gets much traffic. Drat.

Here’s how to get even more info: use the Google keyword tool to check out how often your name is searched. You’ll have to have a Google account to use this tool.

Here are the results for “Feigenson” and “Walter Feigenson.” (You should uncheck the “use synonyms” option.) Click on the images to see larger versions.

Keyword: full name

Keword: last name

For my full name, things look ok – except for the low volume of people looking for me (sigh). When I search for Feigenson, though, note that I’m only #4 in the list. In case you’re wondering, Joel Feigenson is my brother, and I assure you he’s not a personal branding expert. Ben and Perry Feigenson were the founders of Faygo, a soft drink company in Chicago.

You should try this on your own name. You might want to share some of the results via comments on this post. In a future post, I’m going to tell you about how you can actually use AdWords to help people find you. It’s not free, but it doesn’t cost much. If you want a hint, Google my name and look at the paid listings (those are the listings on the right side of the Google results). You’ll see a paid listing for my name from Ziggs. I pay $4.95/month for that listing. I only do it so I can show other people how this can help you if you have a common name.

You probably already know about that problem: look at the keyword search tool results for “John Jones.” I’m only showing a small part of it, but you’ll see that John Jones was searched about 165,000 times in December. It’s pretty hard to stand out if that’s your name, but you can do it with AdWords.

Keywords: John Jones

Posted in Personal branding.

Tagged with AdWords, Google Keyword Search Tool, Personal branding.

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By Walter Feigenson – January 28, 2009

Microsoft comes up for a breath of air (theirs and mine)

I guess I’m going to have to stop waiting for Microsoft to go down the path trodden by so many (VisiCalc, WordStar, dBASE, to name a few). Vista was sooooo bad, and Office 2007 was sooooo foolish, that I thought the end was immanent.

I’ve been using Windows 7 since the big beta release – not consistently, but increasingly more often (my machine is set up to boot from either of my hard drives; one has XP and the other Windows 7). I have to give MS credit, they really got their act together on this one. Not only did it install without a hitch (and the install is so much more elegant than XP), but it runs without a hitch. More important to me: for the first time since Windows 95, the changes all seem to make sense. Gone are the “changes for change sake.” For once, even though things have moved, I can find them. And it’s clear that this is a significantly more elegant Windows than XP. Reminds me of the upgrade from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.

The big question always is this: what’s in it for me? With Vista, the answer was that you paid more (money and psychically), and got less than XP. With Windows 7, you actually get more. I know the compelling reason to change will be different for most people, but for me, it’s actually pretty simple: I can see the fonts on my 24 inch monitor. I’ve adjusted them in XP so I can usually read them, but other things (especially some web pages) get really messed up with the increased font size. Not Windows 7.

Here’s something trivial, but to me, it’s a major indication that actual users (even if they’re within MS) had something to say about this version – it’s what I like to call a rounded edge. If you’re using a dual monitor system and you’re looking at something full screen on the second monitor, you can just drag it to the primary monitor without resizing it (i.e. putting it into a window). This is the kind of refinement that I rarely see in products. (Anybody remember the first release of Paradox? It was full of these rounded edges.)

So, I see hopeful signs. MS isn’t changing things because their usability labs of new users can find things easier, they’re paying attention (finally!) to the installed base who already know how to do things, but who want them done better.

To me, ignoring your installed base is stupid, callous, and – well, I’ll stop there. When I helped design the interface for SuperCalc3 in 1983, I was like a proud father, because even though we introduced a totally new menu substructure, our heavy users never even realized we’d done that. Things just felt “natural” to them. And that’s the way it should be for a product with a big installed base. I want MS to think about me, not about the 14 people who haven’t used Windows before.

This also means that somebody with product-love was running things, rather than a Dilbert-trained manager, which was the distinct feeling I got from recent product releases.

Good work Microsoft!

By the way, if you look closely at the image (click on it to enlarge it), you’ll see that I still can’t get rid of DOS. I’ve got a shortcut in my taskbar for those (frequent) times when I just gotta type.

Posted in Personal branding.

Tagged with microsoft, Windows.

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By Walter Feigenson – January 26, 2009

My Socialbrowse links

Posted in Personal branding.

Tagged with Personal branding, SocialBrowse.

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By Walter Feigenson – January 7, 2009

Personal branding seminar for people and small businesses at the Contra Costa Library

SBDC - Contra Costa County Library Classes On January 6, 2009, at the Ygnacio Valley branch of the Contra Costa Library, I’m going to be giving a workshop on personal branding for individuals and small businesses. Most of the techniques are the same, but there are some imporant additions for businesses. For example, if you’re a local merchant, you want to list your business in local directories.

Registration is free, here…

You can download the schedule for other sessions here…

My workshop will be the first in a series the library does with the California SBDC (Small Business Development Centers). The title of the series is “Start, Grow, Succeed!”

Posted in Personal branding.

Tagged with Personal branding.

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By Walter Feigenson – December 15, 2008

Helping job seekers get found

Over the past two weeks, I’ve given two workshops at the EDD (Employment Development Department) offices in Concord, CA. Glen Zamanian helped organize these sessions with the nice people at EDD and East Bay Works. Thanks to Barbara Vineyard and Claire Marchiano for your encouragement and thanks to EBW for allowing us to use your computer labs!

Barbara Vineyard, Glen Zamanian, Walter Feigenson

We were over-subscribed for both workshops! All together, 40 people attended these hands-on sessions. We are trying to put together at least one more session for the people who couldn’t get into the first two.

This workshop is hands-on – by the end of the session, everyone had learned how to set up LinkedIn properly, join appropriate groups, do advanced searches and much more. Everyone also set up GMail, and Google Reader with an RSS feed from Craig’s List and Indeed. Some people also added TechCrunch. Finally, we took pictures of everyone, put them on a Flickr site for download, with instructions for how to pop the pictures into everyone’s LinkedIn profile.

The purpose of this workshop is to show people how they can improve their Personal SEO activities, so they can push the results they want people to see in Google searches (push down things they don’t want seen by pushing new things up past them). Ultimately, this improves the job seeker’s chance of being found by a prospective employer and getting pre-vetted by a hiring manager.

Job Search Tips for Introverts

A new approach to hiring responsible CEOs

Personal branding? Or baloney?

Free resources for job seekers (well, ok – you working people can use them too)

Think you’re popular, huh?

Microsoft comes up for a breath of air (theirs and mine)

My Socialbrowse links

Personal branding seminar for people and small businesses at the Contra Costa Library

Helping job seekers get found

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