Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Learning to listen

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, interviewing, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing on July 13, 2007| Leave a Comment »

At school and university, I always dove headfirst into class discussions, excited by ideas and eager to express my own. I was probably a selfish beast, not overly interested in other’s people’s contributions unless they sparked new ideas in me. Although I eventually learned to be less egocentric and more restrained, I’m sure I carried the same tendency into adulthood.

That’s why, when I was interviewed last week about OpenOffice.org’s Calc spreadsheet by CFO Magazine, I was surprised when I had to struggle to give ideas and to say something interesting. The 8AM call had something to do with it, but only a little. Abruptly, I realized that being a journalist and interviewing people myself had actually taught me to listen.

For nearly three years, I’ve done anywhere from three to fifteen interviews per month — mostly on the phone, but occasionally face-to-face as well. By definition, an interview is not about the interviewer — it’s about the person being interviewed. And if I don’t draw the person out, then I am in the annoying position of having to craft an article with too little information. So, I suppose I’m been highly motivated to learn.

It helps, too, that I realized early on not to come into an interview with my own agenda. In one of the first interviews I conducted, I planned to debunk the common opinion about the subject and asked several questions while playing devil’s advocate. The approach made the subject so suspicious of my motivations that he tried to insist on having control over what I wrote — a demand that made the interview unpublishable, since it would have compromised my independence.

From that, I learned that it’s better to ask open-ended questions rather than ones slanted too strongly in one direction. Instead of getting too specific, I let the discussion wend its own way, asking more specific questions mostly for clarification, and changing topic only to assure that all the points I wanted to raise get covered.

The advantage of this tactic is not only that I have to prepare less for most interviews, but that I also consistently get information and slants that I would have missed if I had tried to control the interview more closely, because my subjects are more forthcoming. Even the very reticent, I’ve found, become more forthcoming when allowed to dominate the discussion.

This approach leaves me in the position of a tugboat to an incoming ship, guiding the discussion, but mostly leaving each subject to continue under their own power. About from a few navigational nudges, most of what I have to do is to utter the occasional comment to show that I’m paying attention or, if talking in person, to make sure that I lean forward facing the interview and focusing my eyes on them and keep my eyes on the interviewee to reassure them that I’m listening.

At times, too, I summarize or rephrase what I think the person has said, asking, “Could I say … ” or “Would it be fair to say that …” This tactic has the dual advantage of checking that I have understood and reassuring the interview that I’ve grasped the point.

Of course, often I do have to mention perspectives that the interviewee doesn’t share, so that I can get their reactions. But, instead of treating the interview as a discussion, the way I might have done a few years before, I raise the perspective as a hypothetical one, or observe that “some people say.”

I don’t have to mention the fact that I would be among those who would say what I’m about to mention. As enjoyable as a debate might be, an interview isn’t about me.

I round off these tactics by concluding by asking whether there is anything I’ve left out or that the subject would like to emphasize. Some interviews use these questions as a launching pad for pontifications, but, just as often, I get another two or three nuggets of fact that were previously half-concealed. Often, I get pithy quotes that I can use to attract reader’s interest in the introduction, or that can round-off my article’s conclusion.

When I come to transcribe an interview, another advantage of focusing on listening emerges. Having followed what the subject has said, I know how to punctuate what someone says in order to echo the way that they sound. In this way, the quotes in my articles give readers some sense of what the subject sounds like, although no doubt the experience is overlaid with a heavy veneer of my intonations.

The result of this approach is that, while I’ve often had errors of fact in the finished article pointed out by an interview subject, and people haven’t always approved of the opinions in an article in which they are quoted, I almost never have anyone complain that I misrepresented them. I work hard at being more than a conduit for other people’s ideas but I figure that, if I get what’s said wrong, then the conclusions I draw will be wrong as well.

In fact, now that I think, I realize that I could never do my job — or, at least, not do it as well — if I hadn’t learned a thing or two about listening. If I sometimes miss dominating the discussion, I figure that I was overdue for growing up anyway.

Besides, there are other times that I can be a more active participant. And, when I am, my enjoyment is greater because I’ve learned to pay closer attention to what other people are saying.

Read Full Post »

Winning friends and influencing people aren’t everything

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, careers, corporatelife, dalecarnegie, employers, leadership, officework, Personal, Uncategorized on June 26, 2007| 3 Comments »

Martin Michlmayr, the former Debian project leader and recent Cambridge graduate, wrote to say that my dismissal of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People as “simplistic hypocrisy” in a recent blog entry was an interesting contrast to the “glowing review” he had read on another site.

I answered privately, but Carnegie’s book has been viewed uncritically for so long — almost seven decades — that I think a public debunking is in order. So let me say here and now that Carnegie’s book presents a limited view of complex problems, and trying to follow his advice usually leads to psychologically dangerous behavior — two points that are often lost in his readers’ relief at being given concrete solutions to problems that concern almost everyone at one time or another. His advice is especially unsound in the IT department, whose members mostly interact in situations for which Carnegie’s advice is simply not designed.

You should never forget that Carnegie is a salesman first and last. And, like many people, he sees all situations in terms of the one that’s most familiar and important to him: being face to face with a potential customer, trying to close the deal. However, if you think for even a moment, there are many situations where this view is both inappropriate and misleading. Should you really see closing a deal as having anything to do with working on a group project? To the relationship between teacher and student? To a marriage? While you may find aspects of sales in some of these relationships, none of these examples are defined nor dominated by closing a deal — or, if they are, they are profoundly toxic.

The same is true of people. In the true capitalist tradition, Carnegie assumes that you can appeal to people’s competitive spirit in your effort to persuade. Yet, when you stop to think, even those who are competitive in certain situations hardly want to be so all the time. Often, other values like truth or reciprocity have a higher priority, even in the business world. Encourage computer programmers to compete, and they’re likely to roll their eyes. Ditto for graphic artists or researchers.

And just ask yourself who you’d rather work with on a project: someone who wasn’t outgoing but came up with original insights, or someone whose first priority was to be liked? Yet Carnegie urges that, in your efforts to be liked, you should hide your own passions in favor of echoing other peoples’, thereby cutting off the exchange of ideas that often leads to the greatest creativity.

The truth is that many situations require some give and take, even some temporary disagreement. But a person trying to follow Carnegie’s advice will shy away from conflict, even if it is ultimately useful. In many situations, trying to live by Carnegie’s stripped down sense of the world means that you won’t be able to function effectively. Outside the world of sales, being liked just isn’t the most important concern. Much of the time, assuming that it is becomes a dangerous and unproductive simplification.

Consider, too, the effect that following Carnegie’s advice can have. In his book, Carnegie stresses the importance of having a genuine interest in people, and genuinely listening to people. And, granted, diplomacy is a social grace. Yet if you have a shred of honesty,you have to admit that you will not have a genuine interest in some people. At times, you won’t even have a genuine interest in listening to the most important people in your life, because you are tired or distracted.

In such situations, what are Carnegie’s followers to do? Unless they abandon their credo, they can only lie, both to themselves or to those around them in everything they say and do, pretending an interest when they have none. In other words, they can only transform themselves into hypocrites. They are not just being polite; when you are polite you may not tell a boor that you want run screaming from him, but at least you know that’s what you would like to do. But when you are being a hypocrite, you add a level of manipulation to a relationship that is not only avoidable, but destructive to both you and the relationship.

Carnegie’s advice contains a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, you are supposed to genuinely like people and encourage them to warm to you people, but, on the other hand, you do so only in order to manipulate them. Making a point of remembering their name, leading people along with a chain of questions that leads them to buying, letting people blow off steam so that they are calmer when you start addressing their complaints, offering upbeat praise, introducing them with a compliment that they will feel they have to live up to — all these are ultimately ways to control people, according to Carnegie, not things to do to develop a relationship for its own sake. So, once again, hypocrisy taints the relationship if you follow Carnegie’s advice.

Not that all relationships are between equals, or should be. But when you are constantly concerned with manipulating the other party, how can respect or any other mutual feeling enter the relationship? You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t despise a person you can always manipulate. You may even come to despise yourself for being the manipulator.

For these reasons, dealing with one of Carnegie’s followers can be a deeply frustrating experience. When you want a new perspective, often they won’t give one. If you want honesty or team work, you’ll be lucky to get it. If you’re used to not hearing a compliment unless it’s sincere, a Carnegie follower can momentarily lead you to think that you’re been extraordinarily successful — at least, until you realize that he or she says much the same of everyone, and the compliment is empty. In fact, once you become aware of Carnegie’s relatively limited bag of tricks, they become so obvious that you quickly stop trusting the person who uses them and start wondering what their hidden agenda might be. In the end, conversation, let alone working together, can become almost impossible.

Carnegie’s advice is not always so unhealthy. Some of what he says, such as trying to imagine yourself in the other person’s position, or allowing them to save face when you admonish them are solid people skills. Other pieces of advice, such as readily admitting you are wrong are also good advice — good enough to have come down over the millennia from Aristotle. But the trouble is, these nuggets are embedded in such an unstable strata of simplistic and hypocritical advice that they are hardly worth the effort of separating them out.

Unfortunately for Carnegie, all relationships are not a sales deal — and trying to pretend that they are is not only risky, but mentally unhealthy as well.

Read Full Post »

Business experts and the cult of leadership

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, careers, corporatelife, employers, leadership, officework, Personal on June 22, 2007| 6 Comments »

Business experts always have an air of fantasy about them. Many give watered-down accounts of outdated psychology like the Meyers-Brigg personality test. Almost all give the impression that the writer’s experience of the modern office is either scant or years in the past. I mean, what other field would still consider a piece of simplistic hypocrisy like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People a significant work for seventy years? But while their sense of dislocation fascinates me, business experts can be dangerous and offensive — and never more so than when they are promoting the modern cult of the leader.

According to this cult, proving yourself a leader is the way to advance your career. If you are not a natural leader — whatever that means — then you should try to become one by imitating various role models. Some experts go so far to suggest that you should copy the fashion sense and behavior of those higher in the corporate hierarchy. The goal is to become someone that others look up to and admire so that they follow you willingly (that is, are willing to sacrifice their personal time for your business goals). Should you not appreciate this goal, the subtext always seems to be, something is deeply wrong with you (presumably, that you’re a natural follower instead).

Where do I start explaining what is not only misguided but also deeply insulting about this sales pitch? Perhaps the point to make first is that this advice is based no more solidly on research than creationism, cryptozoology, or any other junk science. Are some people natural leaders? Or is that just code for being aggressive and extroverted? Can you really become one by imitation? Or does such imitation simply flatter your models and identify you forever as a follower? What percentage of people who use these techniques succeed, and what percentage fail? The failure rate must be extremely high, since by definition there are far fewer leadership positions than candidates for them. And how does the undisguised opportunism advocated fit with the more laidback, flatter corporate structures of today?

For that matter, who says that people are just looking for a leader to follow? Many jobs in modern business, up to (and maybe especially) most management, executive, and officer positions, can be done adequately by the average eighth grader. Beyond the inevitable division of labor and the coordination that it requires, very few people require a leader — and those that do aren’t people you want to hire anyway, because they are probably untrustworthy.

Similarly, while it’s true that people are often looking for a higher cause to give meaning to their lives, most of them don’t expect to find it at work. They put in hours of over-time because doing so seems a job requirement and they’re afraid of being fired if they object. Just because they put the best face on such demands, that doesn’t mean they enjoy them. Most people know when they’re being exploited, and having a leader won’t inspire most of them to do anything except hide their resentment better. Generally, it’s only very young workers or those very high up in the power structure who have a mental stake in a business. For the rest, it’s a income, a means to an end.

Nor does the average person’s relative indifference to advancing their career indicate inferiority in intelligence and talent compared to those who are dedicated careerists. Some people prefer to stay in a position where they are competent or fulfilled rather than advance. Many prefer to carve out their own small empire at right angles to the main power structure, like the quartermaster or surgeon on a 19th Century sailing ship. Others see those in the main power structure as enemies, and more or less actively oppose them — unionists, for example. An even greater number seek meaning from something other than work.

But the worst thing about those indoctrinated into the cult of leadership is that their beliefs encourage an arrogant oversimplification. Ambition, to cult members, is the only legitimate aspiration. From that position, it is a short step to justifying everything you do and viewing others as stupider and less talented than you are, and yourself as a superior being (or, at least, a demi-god in training).

Such a world view may be comforting to you when you have doubts at night, but, during the day, it’s also likely to make you a damned unpleasant person to be around. I wonder, too, how many cultists have defeated their own ambitions because they made their goals a little too obvious and displayed their contempt for others just a little too openly?

Perhaps the rest of us should thank the business experts for making it easier to detect their cult members. However, I think this service is vastly outweighed by the disservice the experts do by encouraging the cultists in their worst behavior by flattering them with comparisons to samurai warriors and heroic Antarctic explorers, and by pretending their naked ambition is anything except the rather paltry egotism that it so often is.

And should you be someone attracted to the cult of leadership, take a moment to consider how many assumptions that are either unexamined or at best proved by anecdotal evidence are contained in the key message of the cult of leadership. Personally, before I guided my future by such experts’ advice, I would like more proof that it was well-thought out and based on solid evidence. Otherwise, I may be making plans on a very shaky foundation — foundations that could very easily crumble beneath me and leave me unhappy and, because of my arrogance, very much alone.

Of course, the experts would have an explanation ready for such failure. Probably, they’d say I didn’t try hard enough, or didn’t apply their ideas correctly. That’s the beautiful thing about closed systems of belief — for the faithful, they defy debunking.

All I know is that I wouldn’t do a relatively unimportant thing like buy a washing machine from a clerk who sounded like the so-called business experts. So why would I buy a philosophy of life from them?

Read Full Post »

Training a bad boss

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, careers, employers, Personal, technical writing, technology, Uncategorized on June 17, 2007| 2 Comments »

Articles about dealing with a bad boss always seem to center on enduring the situation. They tell you to avoid being judgmental, to understand a boss’ situation, to find ways to relieve your stress – and to leave quitting or complaining as last resorts. The assumptions are always that you are powerless, and that you are the one who has to change. However, a few years ago, I discovered that another alternative exists. Instead of finding ways to cope, you can sometimes train a bad boss into better behavior, even if “better” only means leaving you alone.

The setting was a small high-tech company where I was working as a technical and marketing writer, attached – who knows why – to the testing department. The new manager was a small, fussy man, with a great drive to conform to corporate culture to further his ambition. On being hired, he went out to purchase dozens of books on testing and management to decorate his office, all cataloged with stickers according to his own system, and none of which I ever saw him read. His office was soon decorated with motivational posters, corporate toys, and the most elaborately color-coded spreadsheet printouts ever. The result was so stereotypically perfect that, when a film maker wanted the perfect corporate setting, she chose his office.

As I might have predicted from his mannerisms and office, this new manager loved being in control. He was always insisting on progress reports (which he had the right to expect), and trying to change priorities developed in cooperation with other departments (which he had no business doing). Despite the fact that I had defined my position, he started trying to micro-manage me along with the testers. He also showed an alarming tendency to hold meetings, one on one or as a department several times a day, frequently at ten minutes before quitting time.

The company officers were either clueless or frequently absent, so complaining to them was out of the question. Nor did the manager himself have enough self-reflection that he would have welcomed advice or criticism. At the same time, department morale was plummeting, and the manager was seriously getting in the way of meeting deadlines, so something had to be done.

No one else would do more than make jokes at the manager’s expense, and several seemed worried about losing their jobs. As a consultant, I had seen jobs come and go, so I was less worried and had less to lose.

If the department as a whole wouldn’t act, I decided, it was time for me to show some initiative and lead a revolution of one. But it would be a polite revolution, with never a raised voice – just a calm and firm insistence.

Instead of waiting for the manager to assign priorities, I began telling him what the priorities would be, citing interactions with programming leads and other managers. Since he didn’t know my job, or where it fit into the company’s release schedule, he was more than glad to let me take over. For my part, I had been largely setting my own priorities since I started at the company, so I wasn’t taking on any extra work. Once I established quickly that I knew what I was doing, and would meet my self-imposed schedule, he was more than happy to spend his time producing elaborate color coded spreadsheets of my schedule for his own satisfaction while I returned to being productive.

Avoiding his meetings was a little harder. Fortunately, my work frequently involved making appointments with other members of the company, so I got into the habit of scheduling these appointments around the same time as his meetings, giving me an indisputable excuse to leave. The only meeting that I didn’t try to evade was the weekly departmental planning meeting, which I judged legitimate and occasionally useful for my work.

The meetings just before quitting time were hardest to get around. But, in the end, I hit upon a compromise of attending them until ten minutes after the end of my work day. Then I would plead an excuse, such as a need to meet my wife or to go grocery shopping, and exit. If necessary, I was prepared to point out that, as a consultant, I got an hourly rate, so he should seriously consider if he was making good use of company funds to have me bill an extra hour for a meeting that could just as easily be held during normal business hours, but that fallback position was unnecessary. After three or four weeks, he was soon conditioned to scheduling any meetings with me at other times.

Throughout all these guerrilla tactics, I was careful never to have a direct confrontation with him. I stayed polite, and even joked with him, a tactic that furthered the larger campaign by encouraging him to think of me as an equal rather than a subordinate.

Outwardly, I was a model employee, showing commendable initiative. It was only inwardly that I was undermining his authority.

I do admit that I wished I could tell someone what I was doing. I became fond of whistling “The Black Freighter” from the Threepenny Opera, but, fortunately, no one else in the department was a Bertolt Brecht fan.

In the end, I gained what I had wanted all along: The ability to work unmolested by meaningless interruptions. And when the manager was fired after a few months for incompetence, I felt my subversiveness fully vindicated.

Some people are horrified when I tell this story. In effect, they say that I stepped over the line and didn’t show myself a loyal employee. But, to say the least, I would beg to differ.

No employee is being paid to obey orders. They’re paid for results, and this manager was seriously interfering with those results. While I admit that a large part of my motivation was my own peace of mind, what I did allowed me to better accomplish what I was paid to do. Besides, no job is worth unnecessary stress. For these reasons, I would have no hesitation in doing the same again.

Of course, being a consultant rather than a regular employee, I had the advantage of being more independent than a full-time employee. Also, I knew my job far better than the new manager. But my experience convinces me that most so-called job experts are leaving out some important advice for dealing with problem bosses.

Sometimes, you don’t have to cope. Sometimes, so long as you stay polite and show some initiative, you can survive bad bosses by training them out of their bad behavior.

Read Full Post »

Using an objective in your resume

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, editing, grammar, Personal, resumes, Uncategorized, writing on June 16, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Of all the possible contents of a resume, the objective statement is by far the most controversial. Many consider it a waste of time, a piece of puffery that is as empty as a mission statement. Personally, I am in favor of using one, but only if it is written and regarded in the right way.

The major objection to using an objective is that it is too vague to carry much meaning. If you are referring to the sort of objective that most people write, I would have to agree. A single phrase like “a programming position” is wasted space on your resume, especially since you can put the same information in a title after your name.

Nor are hirers going to be impressed by “to be CEO,” a statement that I’ve seen at least a dozen times. This is the kind of objective that is passed around the office for its unintentional humor. It’s especially ineffective at a small company or startup where the person reading your resume is the CEO. Just what everyone wants to see — someone with ambitions to replace them.

The trouble with the kind of objective statements that you usually see are that they say nothing meaningful. However, if you view an objective statement as a kind of teaser, an executive summary that encourages those reading your resume to read more, then you can start to write a more effective objective.

And how do you encourage readers to continue looking at your resume, instead of scanning it and then tossing it among the discards? Simple: use the objective to summarize what you can do for the company. With any luck, the hirer will then read the rest of your resume more carefully.

Let’s take an example from one of my resumes. It has three parts: A statement of the general category of position for which I am looking for work, a description of the three main traits that I have to offer, and, finally, a description of how I can use those traits to the benefit of the company to which I’m applying.

The first part is simple: “A marketing and communication position.” I make it the first five or six words, so that readers know immediately what work I’m applying for.

The second part involves more thought. Before writing it, I made a list of two dozen job skills I could offer in marketing and communications, describing them in a phrase and polishing the phrases until they were as concise and precise as possible. Then, I chose the ones that I wanted to emphasize for this particular position: “defining and developing corporate strategy; building communication links; and marketing products.” These are general traits — if I had more specific information about the position, then I would try to use more specific ones.

The third part is crafted in much the same way as the second. I built a list of different ways that I could help a company, then chose the most appropriate ones based on what I knew about the company. Again, I didn’t know very much, so I kept the list general: “to enable a company to define and realize its objectives and production schedules and to create relations with business partners.”

The final version reads: “A marketing and communications position that involves defining and developing corporate strategy; building communication links; and marketing products to enable a company to define and realize its objectives and production schedules and to create relations with business partners.”

This objective isn’t perfect. It’s more general than I would prefer, but you don’t always have the information to do better. However, it does tell hirers what I am looking for. In a few lines, I’ve made clear that I am not looking for an entry level position, but a reasonably senior position (since I talk about shaping corporate strategy first and also mention defining objectives). It also suggests that I might be interested in product management, and that I have experience working with other companies. If I’ve done my research properly in looking for places to apply, with any luck I will have attracted a readers’ interest and he or she will be looking at my resume a little more carefully than the rest in the pile.

Also, since I use semi-colons correctly, I am signalling that I have a high degree of literacy. The implication, if anyone notices, is that I can be counted on to represent the company in a polished and professional manner.

Boiling down your career goals to a few lines isn’t easy. Realistically, you can expect to spend at least several hours coming up with an exact summary of your skills — and don’t be surprised if you spend even longer. But considering that the point is to interest readers enough to notice the details of your skills, then you’ll find that time well spent.

Read Full Post »

9 common misunderstandings about resumes

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, resumes, Uncategorized on June 13, 2007| 2 Comments »

For years, resumes were my life. As a marketing consultant, I not only submitted hundreds of resumes to clients but also maintained a stable of different resumes for all occasions. As a manager, I’ve waded through hundreds of the things. As a mentor, I’ve helped people write their resumes, and as a freelancer, I’ve written resumes for pay. From these experiences, I’ve learned that the average person’s ideas about resumes can be as strange and misguided as celebrity gossip.

The trouble is, unless you understand the conventions of resume writings, you are unlikely to write an effective one. Here are the most common misunderstandings I’ve run across — misunderstandings that, far from landing a job, may ensure that you aren’t even considered:

A resume will get you a job

Occasionally, people are hired on the strength of their resumes. However, more often, they are interviewed because of their resumes. A resume is really the second filter for applicants (the first is the cover letter).

Instead of thinking of a resume as an end in itself, think of it as the equivalent of a marketing ad. aimed at those with the power to hire. And, as with any ad, a resume should be tailored to its audience. That’s why taking the time to write and proofread a resume and format it in a professional manner is so important. A professional-looking resume suggests that the person it concerns is competent and business-like, the qualities that any hirer wants to see.

Your resume will be carefully read

Have you any idea of how many resumes may arrive for a single position, especially if it’s advertised in major newspapers or on the job-boards? Many companies can’t possibly afford to have anyone read every single resume. Just to survive, they have to develop techniques to weed out as many as 90% of all the resumes they receive.

If your cover letter is poorly written or suggests a lack of experience, at the most your resume will be scanned. It might not even be read at all. If your resume is poorly organized or relevant information is hard to find, only part of it will be read.

Think of the hirer as someone who is over-worked and has a low boredom threshold. This image is not very fair, but it should help you focus on the main goal of getting the hirer to read your resume all the way through. The easier your resume makes it for hirers to find the information they want, the greater the chances that they will read all the way through – and, as a result, invite you for an interview.

A resume is an objective job history

A complete and utter job history may be possible – and relevant – when you are just out of high school. However, people switch jobs so often today that, before you have been working for five years, becomes impractical.

Even more importantly, hirers are only interested in the parts of your resume that help them make a decision about you. Put in too many details, and they may miss the relevant ones.
A resume should be truthful and not exaggerate your experience. But nobody expects you to give all your history. Today, when nobody has a job for life, that’s just not practical.

It’s not a matter of honesty so much as the need to be selective. Think of the need to be selective as a chance to prove your organizational and communication skills.

A resume is a static document

Rather than writing a single resume and using it for every job application, you will probably land more interviews if you take the time to customize your resume for each job. Depending on the job, you may want to mention different skill sets, or even to describe the same job differently. For instance, if you were Manager of Sales and Marketing at a company, you might have one job description that emphasized your sales duties and and another for your marketing responsibilities.

Some job hunters maintain several different resumes, each with a its own emphasis. Another way to streamline customization is to use either the macro or autotext features of a word processor to store a variety of customizations in the same document. In this way, you can conveniently store variable content and quickly produce a custom resume. However, be sure to proofread each custom resume before printing it, just in case you’ve duplicated content.

A resume has an ideal number of pages

Ask each hirer how long your resume will be, and you’re bound to get different answers. Some will tell you a single page, citing Donald Trump as an example. Others will say two, or that it doesn’t matter.

The point is, no one agrees on the ideal length for a resume. The most agreement you’ll get is that if your resume is longer than four pages, you may want to take a long look at its content and layout. Yet, even then, some hirers might make an exception for exceptionally absorbing material.

Before you start fiddling with fonts and margins in order to squeeze your resume into an arbitrary length, ask the hirer what their preferences are. Alternatively, consider adding an executive summary, a single page description of your qualifications.

Whatever you do, think twice about removing content. Otherwise, you might wind up with a resume that is so general that you look unqualified for anything.

A resume is more effective if it includes keywords

Some larger companies scan resumes, then use software to look for keywords that cover some of the skills that the position required. This practice has led some job hunters to include a keywords section in their resume, sometimes in white letters so that they are invisible to humans.

Unfortunately, this practice is so easily abused that a prejudice against it has set in among many hirers. Many may actually resent keywords as an attempt to game the system.

To avoid this reaction, study job descriptions and try to fit the keywords naturally into your resume, so you don’t cause any resentment.

Education should come first in the resume

Since you want to gain the attention of hirers, the most relevant information should come first in your resume. If you are just out of school, that information may be your education. However, the older you are, the more likely that your education will be less important than your job experience. For this reason, experienced job applicants usually list education near the end of the resume. Some very experienced applicants even leave it off altogether.

A resume should include reasons for leaving a position

Forty years ago, some resume templates included this information. It was a different era, when many people wanted the same job for life, and switching jobs seemed unusual enough to require an explanation.

Today, however, people hold many jobs in their lifetimes, and the reasons for leaving a particular one are less important. Anyway, many hirers are more interested in what you can bring to the job than in such details.

Still, you should have explanations ready, just in case a hirer asks. But, whatever you do, don’t imitate one man I knew, who mentioned that he had left two positions after taking his employer to the labor relations board – then wondered why he never got an interview,

A resume should never include hobbies or interests

Hirers seem divided on whether they want such personal information on a resume. However, so long as it only takes up a few lines, such a heading can’t do much harm.

Moreover, in some cases, it can do you good, so long as you are selective about what you include. For instance, if you are a graphic artist, the fact that you design fonts shows another side to your skills that your work experience might not show. Also, some hirers like to see volunteer work listed, in the belief that such a background shows a team player with solid values.

Listing your interests also gives interviewers some talking points, a way to make both of you feel comfortable. For example, on my own resume, I list my interests as “Running; parrots; punk folk music; history, science fiction, and 19th century novels; Linux.” Almost every interviewer has asked me what I mean by “punk folk,” which gives us something to talk about.

Occasionally, too, you’ll find some common ground with the interviewer. I once got a job after a forty minute conversation about parrots that the interviewer and I had known. We didn’t spend five minutes talking about the job, but, by then it didn’t matter.

Understanding how resumes are used and written doesn’t guarantee that you will write a good one. You could note everything I say here, and still write an ineffective resume. However, at least you will avoid some of the more common errors – and that’s a start. The rest is up to your planning and ingenuity.

Read Full Post »

Leading with my chin

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, web2.0 on May 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »

SourceForge, the company for which I do most of my writing, was one of the pioneers of community-building on the web. Slashdot, one of its main sites, is notorious for both the size of its audience and its — well, frankness, I suppose. Linux.com, the site which publishes my work most often, is more subdued, but feuds still break out from time to time — and sometimes article links are posted on Slashdot, exposing me to even more fire. So, over the last few years, I’ve learned to live with the fact that my work will be discussed publicly and with no holds barred.

On the whole, I’ve been handled more generously than many of my colleagues. Nobody has ever threatened me, questioned my sexual orientation, or called me a communist (I probably would have insisted that I was an anarcho-syndicalist, and invoked the peasant commune in Monty Python and the Holy Grail if they had).

However, I have been called a “moron” and “ignorant” and been told that I wasn’t a real journalist. Memorably, too, reporting on an issue that involved three parties got me accused of being a paid hack for all three (I only wish I were, I might have said; I’d probably be much better paid).

And I’ve lost track of the times that people have missed my incorrigible if sometimes dry sense of humor, taken something I said out of context, or seen bias because I ventured to criticize a project or cause that was dear to them or seen proof of an opinion that was the dead opposite of the one I was expressing. I don’t very much mind being publicly berated — it goes with the job — but if I’m going to be verbally abused, I would prefer it was for something I actually said. Sometimes, I wonder if people have read my article at all.

At times, these misunderstandings seemed willful, as if those who made them were picking a fight out of frustration with something else in their lives, or were just waiting for an article vaguely related to a subject that they wanted to rant about. But eventually, I learned to take them in stride, and they cured me, too, of taking an undue pride in the compliments that I receive. After all, if the hostile comments were so far off-base, how could I suppose the friendly ones were any more accurate?

Some online journalists never read comments on their articles. However, even after I became disillusioned with them, I still continued to scan them at least. Between the extremes, there are also people with insights that hadn’t occurred to me, or with an expert knowledge or sharp eyes who point out genuine mistakes. I know I’m not infallible. I figure that I might as well take advantage of the comments to to rewrite an unclear sentence or two when necessary or correct a genuine factual error. After all, the ability to receive input and correct mistakes are two of the benefits of online journalism.

Still, I take a perverse pride in both the attacks and praises. If nothing else, they prove that my articles are at least being noticed. About six months ago, I posted a kudos and an abuse page on my website, and occasionally I read both of them together or add a comment to one of them. I find that they help to keep me from taking myself seriously when I should be taking the work seriously instead.

Read Full Post »

The business card thing

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized on May 26, 2007| Leave a Comment »

VA Software and the Open Source Technology Group, for whom I do most of my writing, are changing their name to SourceForge after their most successful web page. As part of the change, we’re getting new business cards – even the long-term contractors like me. The news has got me thinking about the whole idea of business cards, and my experience with them.

I suppose that business cards evolved out of the calling cards used in polite society in the nineteenth century. But where calling cards have fallen out of use, business cards continue to thrive, even in these days of the Internet. Attempts to replace them with mini-CDs for people with portfolios have never really caught on, although in some geek circles, such as the Debian Project, people sign each others’ public encryption keys instead of exchanging cards.

In Japan, I hear secondhand, there is an elaborate etiquette to giving and receiving cards, and even in North America, the exchange is ritualistic. I call it the business equivalent of two dogs sniffing each other’s butts – an analogy that, all humor aside, is not too far off, since both are greeting rituals. The cultures and customs are different, that’s all (It’s just as well that they are: wool and linen, the usual stuff of suits, preserve body odors even from a couple of meters away. You don’t really want to get that close to a lot of people).

Moreover, just as meeting dogs are evaluating each other’s status, a business card tells what level of access to a company you represent. People want to know if you have the power to make a deal, influence hiring decisions, or whatever else they might want from you. That’s why, at the startups I’ve been at, business cards suddenly start appearing as the company creeps out of stealth mode and starts interacting with other companies.

Of course, the appearance of business cards can also herald a rush for the status of grandiose titles in a company. Just getting a card is a sign of belonging, but, often, the ambitious want more.

I admit that I had some ego gratification when, after six months at a company, I suddenly found that I was director of marketing and communication, but, often, these titles mean remarkably little. In practice, I rather admire those who undermine the tradition, like the webmaster who liked to use Zope and had “Zopista” on his card, or the owner of a small company who listed himself as “CEO and Janitor.” I suppose that people who find these deviations annoying have a point, since not playing the game can obscure your level of clout, which is what people really want to know. However, at the same time, creative titles can be a talking point to strike up a conversation at a networking event, so they are more than just whimsy.

Business cards also create a first impression, which makes the frequent poorly designed ones out there all the more puzzling. The lowest levels of mediocrity are those printed from a template in a word processor on to a label sheet. Often, you can still see the perforations, and the designs are always uninspiring. But plenty of large companies issue cards that are almost as unimaginative. Perhaps that’s a subtle form of boasting, suggesting that a company doesn’t need a memorable card because it’s memorable in itself, like the mediocre advertising from megacorporations like McDonalds and Microsoft.

I’ve always preferred cards that have a dash to them, on the grounds that, if they are memorable, I’m more likely to be. I’ve designed a number of them, both for me and other people, and they always represent an interesting challenge in design, since they require standard information in a limited space that leaves little room for originality. My approach has always been to minimalize the information, and to add a checklist on the back, so that people can remember why they took a card and if they’re promised any followup action.

Since I started working chiefly as a journalist a couple of years ago, I haven’t bothered with a card. Most of the time, I’m contacting people via email or telephone rather than in person, and, if they want to know me, at any given time, they can find somewhere between fifty and one hundred thousand entries for me in a search engine. I had thought, though,of doing up a card to look like a bar code as a comment on the whole idea of business cards and their all-too common blandness. Now, it looks like I won’t have to bother.

The only thing that worries me is that, in the past, I’ve always moved on within a year after I received cards. Not that I am superstitious (he says, rapping his computer desk), but I hope that doesn’t happen with SourceForge.

Read Full Post »

Working hypothesis

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, journalism, Personal, technical writing, Uncategorized, writing on May 23, 2007| Leave a Comment »

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about the closure of Progeny, a company for which I used to work. Usually, I lack the patience for nostalgia by temperment. Besides, experiences such as my high school reunion last fall have convinced me that such efforts are largely pointless. However, writing the article required contacting old acquaintances, and I became introspective, writing a reminiscence on my Linux Journal blog about working for Progeny and a sequel about Stormix Technologies, the company I worked at before Progeny.

Both, I realized, were part of the path to my current work as a journalist. After writing those articles, it strikes me more strongly than ever that my work history amounts to a circling around my core skills until I actually had the courage to use them.

In school and university, I never worried much about what I would do with my education. I have always been a firm believer in the value of learning for its own sake, and I was too interested in my classes to think much about where I was going. I always had vague plans about being a writer, but I can’t say that I took many concrete steps towards that goal – certainly not any consistent ones, anyway. As a result, I have a work history that might politely be described as chequered. Less polite observers would call it a thing of rags and patches that they wouldn’t even wear to wash the car on Sundays.

After I finished my bachelor’s degree, I literally had no idea what I wanted to do. I had taken a double major, straight out of high school with no more than a semester’s break, and I was mentallly exhausted. I took a minimum wage job in a bookstore to pay my share of the expenses, but it was a nightmare – not just because I endured a Christmas in which every second album played in the mall was the Smurf’s, but because I had never been previously exposed to the idea of books as commodities. Nor was I cut out for dealing with customers arriving one minute after closing or saying things like, “I can’t remember the title or the author, and I can’t explain what the book is about, but it’s got a green cover.”

Seeking escape, I entered graduate school. After all, what else does someone with an English degree do except teach? Besides, it was another few years in which I could put off the decision, and, meanwhile, I was at least talking about books as books.

I had given poetry readings and lectures at my old high school, thanks to the courtesy of Allan Chalmers, my Creative Writing Teacher. However, it wasn’t until I started working as a teaching assistant during my degree that I realized that I had a talent as a teacher. I enjoyed sharing my enthusiasms, and genuinely felt that I was helping students, if only by teaching them enough about writing to survive the rest of the university years.

That belief was enough to propel me through my years as a grad student and for another seven as a sessional instructor. I might not have been doing much writing myself, but at least I was talking about books.

But university English departments aren’t about enjoying literature. They’re about dissecting it, and, as I settled into semi-regular work, I realized that my distaste for straightjacketing literature into the latest trendy theory was counting against me in my struggle for full-time employment. My thesis supervisor and I described ourselves as the department’s “token humanists.” And I started thinking a lot about Robert Graves’ story of his oral defence, in which one professor said that he seemed like a well-read young man, but that he had a serious problem: He like some works better than others.

After seven years, I had squeezed the last hopes out of academia like an old lemon. I attended a presentation about technical writing, and jumped careers. It wasn’t the sort of writing that I wanted to do, but getting paid for writing sounded fine to me. No one cared, either, if I was a post-modernist or post-colonialist. The only priorities were accuracy and meeting deadlines, and since I’ve always been a first rate researcher and well organized, neither was a serious problem. Within six months, I had so much work that I was hiring sub-contractors, and was organizing major projects for international companies.

Unfortunately, I was also mind-thumpingly bored. In desperation, I learned typography so that my working life would have an element of creativity. I branched out into marketing and PR. I became ferociously devoted to learning the technologies I was documenting – not just enough to get by, the way that other writers did, but becoming an expert in them. Boredom receded, but it was still lapping at the outer edges of my mind.

That changed when I worked at Stormix and Progeny and discovered the joys of both free and open source software (FOSS) and of management responsibility. FOSS triggered my latent idealism, as well as my growing impatience with the average executive I met. When those jobs ended and I returned to being a technical writing consultant, boredom came flooding back. Only now, it was combined with a impatience at the mediocrity of those giving me orders.

With growing desperation, I realized that I didn’t care if the projects I was working on finished on time. Nor did anyone, else, really. Without a prospect in sight, I quit my last consulting job and started doing FOSS journalism. And, to my surprise, it seemed to be what I had wanted to do all along. It’s already lasted three years – about two years longer than any full-time employment I’d had since I went back to grad school – and I don’t think I’ll be tiring of it in a hurry.

That revelation may have seemed like a blinding flash of the obvious. However, I don’t think I could have done it sooner. I didn’t have the experience to know what I wanted or could do. I needed the experience of teaching to understand that I needed meaning in my work, and the experience of technical writing to believe that I could make a sustained effort in my writing. And, when I discovered FOSS, I also found a cause that I wanted to write about.

Looking back, I wish that I could have hurried the experience. However, I doubt that I could. Clarity and experience take time, and, if I got to where I want to be late, at least I got there. How many people can say that?

Read Full Post »

The interviewer between the mirrors and trial reporting

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, Free Software, freesoftware, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing on May 3, 2007| Leave a Comment »

I had a call earlier this week from ABC News. With the trial of Hans Reiser for the alleged murder of his wife scheduled to start next week, the reporter wanted background on the free software community and how Reiser is regarded. Since I wrote an article last summer about Reiser’s struggle to get his work accepted into the Linux kernel, and another one shortly after his arrest about how his company was going to carry on without him, I’m the person from whom the mainstream media is looking for answers. In the past six months, I’ve been interviewed by The Oakland Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and People on the same subject. And, each time, it leaves me with a deep sense of ambiguity.

For one thing, I’ve never actually met Reiser. I only exchanged a few emails while doing my earlier story, and fielded some complaints from him about what I said. For the second story, I also corresponded with his father. But these contacts were brief, and hardly make me an expert. I suspect I’m being called for background mainly because these articles pop up in a Web search, but I hardly feel qualified to give the comments for which I’m asked.

For another, so far as I’m concerned, these stories were only minor parts of my working life. I had some small pride in the first story for its thoroughness and attempts at balance, but neither the Linux kernel nor Reiser’s work on his filesystem are beats that I cover regularly. The second story is especially minor, an update that helped me fill my monthly quota of articles. When I consider the comprehensive articles I’ve done that have been largely ignored, I’m irked that the second one should be the part of my output to receive so much attention.

Most importantly, I have no wish to join the chorus of speculations about the case. In the second article, I made a conscious choice to focus on the technical issues because I thought that to do otherwise would be in poor taste. I don’t even care for mysteries unless they are a facade for a historical novel, so covering or discussing a real life murder is profoundly distasteful to me.

Nor, for the record, do I have any predictions about the outcome. From what I’ve seen and heard about Reiser, I would be no more surprised to hear him declared innocent than to hear him found guilty. I simply don’t know enough about him to form a meaningful opinion. Either way, the case seems like a tragedy for everyone involved – and that’s as far as I care to go.

All the same, I found myself replying to each request for comments in some detail, and I’m still not altogether sure why.

Part of the reason, I suppose, is the implied compliment. Online journalists may have more readers than colleagues in the mainstream media, but we’re not nearly as well-regarded. So, to an extent, I feel that the requests lend legitimacy to my daily work.

Even more importantly, I feel that, if I don’t give a reply, my mainstream colleagues will simply move on to someone with less knowledge of the free and open source software community and less of a sense of responsibility. Since I have a detailed perspective of the community, I honestly feel that I can express the range of reactions better than most people. Hans Reiser is a person whose work is both admired and pilloried, and whose personality often interfers with sober judgment of his accomplishments, and I can point out this range of opinions because, unlike many people, both my job and my temperment keeps me interested yet distanced from the various issues.

But, mainly, I’m simply too damned polite to refuse despite my own ambiguity. So, I talk, but, not so deep down, I keep feeling that being party to the coverage of the case at all is enormously gauche. In fact, there are times I wish I’d never written about Reiser at all. Had I known the consequences, probably I wouldn’t have.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »