Near the end. (Layoff) Part II

Recently, I interviewed for the permanent position that I have been working at for the last 9 months in a temporary capacity. Thought this would be a good time to do an overview of the journey that I have been through to this time.  This was written before I found out that I was selected for the position.  This is part 2 of a three part post. 

Write your resume for three audiences. First audience is the computer. Match the words in the Job requisition to the words in your resume. The more matches the higher your score only the top ones make it past the computer screening. Second audience is an HR person. Generally, this person is not qualified to judge the technical merits of your submission, but understands the business, has a pretty good bullshit monitor for people trying to game the system, (like putting the entire job requisition in invisible type to get by the computer screen). The HR representative does not read your whole resume. They read less than 7 seconds. A good test…

Padding the resume

Working at Boeing, I didn’t consider how something would look on my resume, or how an experience  would help me in the longer run.  Instead, I gravitated to projects that I enjoyed doing; this hasn’t a bad way to approach it—I was always doing what I loved.   But now, needing to be prepared to enter the job market at any time, the effects on my resume is a concern especially in the project startup phase when the scope is still up for consideration and modifications.  I think about how each project would look on my resume, or examine the skills involved in delivering this project.  While this seems somewhat self serving, I think  it actually makes me better at my job due to the increased focus in my value areas.  In addition to being on projects that I have passion around, the projects also need to have components that are highly marketable.  This combination keeps me focused on my skill and market niche.

 

More Learning

When in the OSR Masters program, I learned about Punctuated Equilibrium points.  These are points or milestones in a system where change becomes chaotic and it is no longer possible to predict what will emerge from a system.  At these points, small inputs can have enormous effects in the final outcomes. 

As a system passes through a punctuated equilibrium point,  the foundation of the system—the parts of the system that keep it stable and unchanging—are loosened.  In human systems, I believe this means that changes can be introduced that would normal seem impossible, but which can seemingly be accomplished with relative ease.

Think of people that have gone through near death experiences, some make whole scale changes in their lifestyles and never look back.  After having a Heart attack many people stop smoking after years and years of feeble attempts.  Other people don’t change at all.  They somehow have a belief that the way it was is the only way it can be and this belief informs their choices going forward.  Many people knowing that smoking will kill them, smoke through heart attacks and lung cancer up until the bitter end or until the explosive oxygen they are using to breath precludes them from smoking—else they blow themselves up.

It is almost like the normal laws of cause and effect don’t apply as we go through these punctuated points. 

Extension

After  being lulled by the security  of 20+ years at Boeing it is amazing how  much my expectations and fear levels have changed or maybe it just a change in my time horizons.  Today, I was informed that my 6 month position at UW has been extended to 10 months.

To me this is great news from a couple of perspectives.  The first is that I don’t have to focus on getting a new job until after the summer is over.  So I can continue to focus on the getting ready for the STP and I can get back to focusing on completing our remodel.  Over the last few months my increased focus on work and biking has translated into not making much progress on the remodel.

The second area for which this represents good news, is that they are recognizing my value for helping with what they are trying to accomplish.  I am enjoying what I am doing, and feel truly valued for what I am able to accomplish. 

I’m not sure that this will turn into a permanent position, but I think that the possibility is a step closer.    This is where I’m feeling my perspective is changing.  Getting a permanent position would be icing on the cake, but it isn’t as so all fired important as it was before.   Getting through the fall is enough for now.  Not having to look for a job is a great benefit.  Being able to do something that I’m enjoying and feel valued for is a great benefit.

I’m feeling better able to handle whatever happens.  I may need to go back on unemployment, be without work for a while, or go for work with a whole new company;  but I can handle it and it won’t be the end of the world.  In fact, I can thrive through this situation and come out better in end.  At Boeing, I fooled myself into thinking that I was in a secure situation when I wasn’t.  Being a little more secure would be nice, but  isn’t as important as I thought it was.

Sharing what I’ve learned

Two teachers have informed me that their contracts will not be picked up for next year, basically getting their warn notices.  For one, I put what I learned into a letter.    As state governments deal with their short falls I fear there will be many more layoffs.  And then if the federal cuts  come quickly another wave of layoffs will follow.

I thought I would share this here and it might give some ideas on helping others.

So sorry and so excited to hear your news. Our times of growth happen in interesting times, in times when the rug is pulled out from under us. Times when each step you take, unsure of the footing, you have to gingerly test to see if it will hold.

Life goes on–2 months and counting

Well it has been two months of the six at UW-IT.  The job is going great, though the time is speeding by.    My job is divided  into two parts.  The first part has to do with Bench marking and metrics.  In this, I am gathering the inputs to complete two surveys which will enable UW-IT to evaluate itself against many different university IT departments.  This will be used to determine strategy and for determining where to focus improvement activity.  Also here, I have been looking into developing metrics, actually a dashboard type concept for IT.  So far this is in the research stage, with benchmarking being the current focus.

The second part of the assignment is in helping with the implementation of ITIL.  ITIL is a set of international best practice processes for IT.  I worked for many years at Boeing in the implementation of process management and ITIL.  This has several facets and has been very interesting.  I designed and held a world café conversation involving 45 fresh ITIL foundation certified individuals.  This was designed to promote a community of change agents and to discuss the strategy of ITIL implementation going forward and was a great success.  I have been asked to design another conversation as the next two certifications classes complete.  For this first conversation I invited 60 people, so getting 45 to attend is a fabulous turnout.   For the next one I will be invited over 100 individuals.

Networking VII -Gone but not forgotten.

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It has been great.  I haven’t even thought about searching for a job.  I haven’t touched my resume.  The break has been good.

The state of Washington was a bit late getting into this recession and is late coming out of it as well.  The state budgets are constrained beyond belief and the cuts they are looking at are truly draconian.   With this backdrop, I’m thinking that the possibility of having my current 6 month UW position morph into a full time permanent position is pretty slim.  I’m not burning any bridges though, the work is there, and my skill set is very helpful for where they are as an organization.  A permanent position is like a carrot dangling just out of reach.   I will be working hard to get to the carrot and at the same time I will need to be looking for work.

Time passes by so quickly, I have already been in the position for 5 weeks.  I want to go at least another 3 weeks before I get serious about job hunting again.  This will begin with adding information about my current position to my resume and getting that all ready to go.

Finding the Time

Well it has just about been a month at the new job.  It is going great.   The campus doesn’t look like this yet, but it won’t be long before it does.

It has been very nice to get a reprieve from job hunting.  I don’t remember the last time I used Simply Hired and it has been weeks since I rewrote my resume in order to send it out.  The news on the job market seems to be getting better.  I hope that when this 6 month position is done, I will be entering a hot job market.

I have been approaching this job in two ways.  The first way is as a 6 month interview—a way to fully bring what I can do to the job.  And then with that understanding, they can make an informed decision about whether I would be good fit for the organization.  I have been cramming to learn all I can as fast as I can to make a good impression.  Since I have been riding the bus to and from, I have been using this time for studying.  It’s been nice being able to devote this extra time.

Excellent Questions

Today I receive the following comment on the last post:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Getting ready for the first day at school":

How has your first week gone? Has it been easy to slip back into the routine, is it exciting to be there? How does it feel to work again instead of working at home to find a position? How is the adjustment of shared chores at home instead of you doing all the cooking and cleaning? Have friends been supportive?

Posted by Anonymous to Other Dribblings at February 18, 2011 7:46 AM

These are great and I thought I would answer them here.

How has your first week gone?

D290 - Simply Hired—Useful again

Image via CrunchBase

On Feb 1st,  Simply Hired attempted to stream line it’s user interface and increase the prominence of sponsored jobs in search returns.  The result was the loss of the ability to sort job requisitions by date, which for myself and for many other job seekers made the site completely useless.

Many users pushed backed and many threatened to leave, (I’m sure many did leave).   Blog traffic here has increased since writing the entry title Simply Hired has become Simply Useless.  Much of the traffic was from Simply Hired employees. 

Well the listened.  After a couple days they announced that they would be making the change to reinstate date sorting.  And a couple days ago they made it happen.

So Simply Hired is back to being my number one job search engine.

And I would even say that it has improved a little.  There is better marking of search terms in the text of the returned requisitions.

Some people have complained about the sponsored requisitions that are returned.  These are job requisitions that have paid to have their jobs shown first.  When I was seeing these, they weren’t really useful, but I can understand them putting them first and getting advertising money from them.

I don’t see them because I an add-on called  AD Blocker Plus on my Firefox browser which cuts out advertisements, so this section isn’t shown.  I highly recommend this program.

Thanks to Simply Hired for listening to their users.

Related articles

• D283 - Simply Hire becomes Simply Useless (other-dribblings.blogspot.com)
• SimplyHired.com Gives JSYK Readers Top Job-Finding Tips (jsyk.com)
• Top 9 Job Sites to Bookmark for Your Career Search (mashable.com)

Day 285- Transition–Not Over but on Pause

The last few weeks have been flurry of activity in the job search.  I have mentioned before that it seemed like the job market changed dramatically awhile back.  It seems there has been more jobs advertised, leading to more applications , leading to more phone and personal interviews.  At the same time I have been increasing the amount of networking that I have been doing which also has caused an increase in activity.

Others have commented that they have experienced this same shift in their search, so it isn’t just constrained to this region or only to the types of jobs I’m looking for. There is no way of telling if this is just a blimp of employers trying to jump into activity at the beginning of the year and will die down here shortly. Or if this is a fundamental change in the job market, indicating that this long recession is finally starting to recover in ways that real people can feel.  

This activity has also led to a job for me.  Not the permanent position that I have been looking for, but there is some slight possibility that I will be able to turn this into a longer term position.  The job is temporary assignment for 6 months at UW, and then depending on how I perform and how the UW budget comes out for next year come out, which right now is not looking particularly rosy will combine to determine if more work will be involved.

D283 - Simply Hire becomes Simply Useless

Image via CrunchBase

My favorite job search engine has been Simply Hired for quite a while.  I have especially like the interface with LinkedIn and Facebook. 

I have 21 searches that I perform everyday.  I have these set up so in one click 1/2 of these searches are executed and come up in their own tab.  After I have gone through these and closed all the tabs, I execute and analyze the second half of the search results.

The searches are all set up to run the last seven days and sort in Date order so that the newest are at the beginning.  The one that are new that I have not seen are usually marked so I don’t have to go through all seven days worth.

Normally this would bring up about 500 jobs to look at, which I can quickly reduce down to between 10 to 30 jobs to read through and see if I want to apply.

Simply Hired changed their program on February first, and now there is no way to sort the output in date order.  This makes the results useless.  These 21 searches took between 15 and 30 minutes to go through each day.  Now instead of plowing through 500 possible jobs, I have to plow through all seven days, because they are in no particular order.   The first half took about 50 minutes to get through.

Unless this is changed, I will be changing to use Indeed, and can no longer recommend Simply Hired to be used for job searches. 

I’ve contacted the help forum on Simply Hired, but they claim this is a result of them improving their user interface , I’m afraid they are so removed from their users that this will take forever to resolve.  Unfortunately, I can’t wait for them, so I’m in the process of converting my searches to Indeed and hope to up and running in the next day or so.

Related articles

• Top 9 Job Sites to Bookmark for Your Career Search (mashable.com)

D282-Transition-Remaining Active in My Network

In an earlier post I started covering how I remain active in my network, and this second post will conclude this topic.  

My favorite networking tool in LinkedIn has to do with groups and adding to the dialogs taking place.  Best to listen to the conversation for a while and learn what is going on.  After feeling comfortable, bringing resources to the group, or adding to a discussion that is going on is a great way to network.  Over time you build up a relationship with the other members.  I find that I’m currently a member of too many groups, and it has spread me out a little more than I like.

It is hard to find a group that both relates both professionally and has a good dialog taking place in the group.  Some groups are all recruiters, some have no discussions, and some have discussions are of a tenor that I would rather not be involved in, but it is possible to find groups having a good dialog involving a good sized group of people.  Networking in this way if fun and there are some great people to learn from—some of the discussion are quite good.

I try to check in to LinkedIn several times per week.  And try to quickly scan the  the LinkedIn Status emails when they arrive.  I try to participate a couple time a week in groups and read the emails of discussions that I’m following or started.  I also pay attention to all comments on anything that I post, in order to learn from and better understand what people feel has value.

Day 276–Transition—Uptick

Maybe it is just wishful thinking, but it seems that starting last Thursday there was a noticeable uptick in job activity in the areas  I search.  The number of job requisitions I go through each day has increased and the number of jobs that see that turn out to be of interest for applying has seemed to go up.

At the same time, my personal job hunting activity has gone up.  This week I have four interviews and I have 4 possibilities for positions in the works.  Three are shorter term contracts that could lead to longer term employment and one is a full time position.  This is the most activity that I have seen since I was laid off.

Each of these four has come about in a different way.  One was from an interview from December.  I wasn’t chosen, but my resume was passed on to someone else.  One came from a recruiter seeing my LinkedIn profile and then contacting me directly.  One is from some personal networking I had done with friend.  And the last is from a  job requisition that I put in near the end of the year.

The timing for hiring at Boeing usually comes after budgets are finalized and released.  This seems to happen towards the mid or end of February.  The Pace of Boeing jobs has remain constant since moving lower for the holidays around the end of November.  I’m wondering if other big companies have this same sort of beginning of the year delays.  If they do, then the next few weeks could see even more improvement in the jobs market.

This has combined to improve my outlook on the situation.  It was hard for me to remain upbeat at the end of 2010.  But the sun is out today, and the outlook seems bright.  Bright, not just for finding a job, but for finding a a position where I can bring all of my talents to bear in helping organizations, teams, and individuals become more productive and to expand their boundaries or concepts of themselves.  This is what I love to do and I do this as a organizational change management consultant and by helping in with continuous process improvement.   With this uptick, I’m seeing more of these positions, and with that an uptick in my personal emotional situation is taking place.

I hope the sun keeps shining!

Day 268-Networking VI Remaining Active in my Network

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The human brain is a good analogy of  the relationship you have with your network.  We now know that at any part of your life you can form new brain synapses—new connections between information and emotions.  Somewhat like a muscle, if you do not use your brain, the unused synapses with wither and die—a pruning to reduce useless complexity.  If you abuse your body, or fail to keep it in shape it will have negative consequences on your brain.
You can at anytime, grow your network and add to it.  No surprise here.   We have always had networks of relationships in our lives.  And we have always had  tools to help us manage these relationships—tools like calendars, day timers, and the infamous little black address—tools that help us to remember things like the addresses, the names and ages of kids, and the anniversary of Jim down in accounting.  Studies should that those with a more active social network are happier and healthier.
I remember the expanding power when I could add all the birthdays I wanted into my Outlook calendar and I didn’t to fuss with them at the beginning of the year by transferring them to a new calendar.  This allowed me to track many more birthdays than I ever had before. Those times when I could say, “don’t you have a birthday coming up?” or “didn’t your son just turn 9?” made the little bit of effort to record dates well worth it.

Day 262 - Transition - Taking Stock

It is the beginning of the year.  For many years I have spent January reflecting on what has happened in the last year and what, if anything needs to change in my goals and behaviors going forward.  It is a time of taking stock and deciding what to focus on in the coming year.

I can’t believe this transition phase in my career has lasted as long as it has.  I was easily prepared to last 6 months, figuring that I would be able to find something in that time.  Even as I was planning this, I was hearing that the average time to find a job was taking 8 months.  Now I’m moving past this mark and not feeling good about it.

In order to last 6 months or more I decided to set my priorities as the following:

Day 254–Transition -Keeping my Network Informed

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This is the fifth part on the series on Networking.  In this post, I will share how I attempt to keep my network informed as to what is happening with me and where I need to the help of my network.

I have taken the track that I need to continually be adding value for my network and then every once in a while focus on my situation.  There is a balancing act associated with this; otherwise, my network will stop paying attention.  It is hard to judge the affect my communications are having, though I do have a few concrete areas to watch.  Blogging has associated metrics on how many people visit the blog and how many pages a person looks at. I can’t identify individual users by who they are, but I can see where they come from, how many pages our read, and some other information from which I can put together a bit of a profile of blog usefulness.   Blog comments also provide a window into what readers  are thinking, though I wished this was a more active form of feedback.   On Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Email, I can see the responses I get and use this as a gauge to the attention of my network, though this is a very incomplete metric.  I also receive quite a bit of direct feedback from people that I see them in person concerning things that I have posted.

Day 228–Transition–Breaking the Code?

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It has been busy last few weeks.  I have wanted to continue on with my networking series of posts, but have not had the time to get back to it.  There are several reasons for this.  It is the beginning of the Holiday season so going through Thanksgiving took some time away from my normal activities.  I also pushed to get the remodel to the point that the sheet rocker can come in.  All the cabling and electrical work in the walls is complete.

But the larger reason is two fold.  The first is that I think companies are more interested in hiring people, maybe it is a end of the year push or a beginning of the year push, but it has seemed to change in the last couple of months.  Companies who are hunkering down to weather bad times, tend not to hire people like me that help with improving their efficiency and productivity.  They need people that can keep the factory up and running and not much else.  Now people are looking at capturing efficiencies so that they don’t overhire people and so that they can work on the backlog of improvements and changes that have piled up over the last couple years.

The second area that I think has changed is the way that I am applying for jobs.  I think I may have finally cracked the code on getting my resume to be seen by people.

Day 212–Transition–Networking Part III

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It’s a conspiracy of sorts.  I started the idea for this series of post on Networking; got into the middle of it and then got lost.   I had a plan, but I’ve been hesitating on moving forward.  Mainly, my plan bored me, so I’ve been waiting for something better to come along.
Sometimes networking sounds like a conspiracy of sorts.  Sometimes it seems so contrived and dishonest.   We all have seen those people that are overly self promoting; people the come on so strong you want to run and hide from them.   Now looking for work it seems that everyone is saying that I need to become this person.  That I need to be putting myself out there.  I think I have been guilty of this at certain times in my life, times that I look back on as a lesson in how not to be.
I’m a bit strange in that I like to  be in front of groups; I like facilitating groups.   This is more strange because I a somewhat introverted person.   Introversion doesn’t mean that I don’t like to be with people.  A great definition given to me a few years looks as introversion/extroversion from the perspective of energy:  an extrovert is a person that gains energy by being with more people and feels depleted when isolated and an introvert is a person who gains energy with fewer people around and expends energy when with larger groups.  Introversion and extroversion are the two ends of a continuum;  each of is unique in where we fall on the scale.  This changes depending on particular situations and can also go through major shifts through out your life.
As an example of particular situations making a difference, I become much more introverted in situations in which I’m unfamiliar.  Attending an Networking Event , at a place I have never been, filled with people that I don’t know is a recipe for me becoming a uncomfortable wall flower.   While if I was attending a family or a work pot luck you would find me in the thick of the party  talking to many people and catching up on the latest in their world and updating them on mine.  Both of these are examples of networking.  We all do networking, and I think for the most part many of have an edge where the networking becomes uncomfortable or unnatural for us.
Part of my hesitation in moving forward with this series was in being able to understand and articulate this discomfort. 
Another part that has been holding me up is in having a concept of the whole.  As a systems thinker,  I need to see the whole before I can understand the parts.  This is synthesis, it is the reverse of analysis.  In analysis you take something apart and examine each pieces in order to gain understanding.  In order to understand the whole I need some sort of definition which defines the scope of what networking is.  I ‘m sure it includes the new tools like LinkedIn and Facebook but these aren’t all of it. It must include these things called business mixers that have become popular of late.   What else should be included?
A friend sent me a note this week and it crystallized a few of the ideas that I was struggling with:

you've blogged a couple times about "networking". that word and that concept just bugs me. strikes me wrong.

Day 200–Transition–The Saga Continues

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I can’t believe that this is day 200.  This journey continues with little or no end in site.  Today I learned that 13,000 people will lose extended unemployment benefits in just King County later this month.  That is a lot of people being affected and that is just one county in the state (though  most populous).

Over the last week and a half I got my hopes way up high and had them crashed to the ground.  A job I interviewed for, seemed like they were going to extend an offer, but in the end they did not.  I really thought this was going to be the one.  I was a fool. 

Today I had the privilege to  a keynote presenter at a local community college staff workshop.  It was nice to do some work in my field, something I that I really enjoy doing, as opposed to searching and filling out job requisitions.  I did an 1 1/2 hour session called Leading from the inside out.  This was a series of exercises designed to help people find the passions that they can use to drive their personal leadership.