Reinke Faces Life

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Tomorrow morning marks the seventh day since, through a combination of your kind efforts, I was able to put my candidate information in front of XXXX for the YYYY position at ZZZZ.  Thus far I have received no responses from either XXXX or YYYY HR to my emails, and so I plan to contact XXXX tomorrow via phone.  I will call him at around 7 AM Eastern time (4 AM my time) and my approach will be "just wanted to make sure you had received my information and to answer any questions you might have."  I don't want to appear over-eager, but at the same time I think I have waited too long in the past for responses from potential employers, and want to avoid that mistake here.  If you have any comments, I would be very interested to hear them.  Once again, your assistance is deeply appreciated.  

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My suggestion, while it may be too late, is three fold.

(1) Prepare by writing your message. Script it out. Prepare for voice mail. If you get voice mail, then you won’t sound like your disorganized, drunk (why else would you be up at 4am to call him – he knows where you live), or whining. When you deliver your message, don’t read it. It’ll sound read. AND, deliver it standing up, smiling, but not yelling. Quiet enthusiasm.

(2) Offer to help in any way that you can. Try to have something to offer. Commiserate with administrative systems that make it hard to get things done since he directed you to the internal HR site. Tell a tiny story.

(3) Leave your cell phone number at the front of the message. Clearly. And slowly. Tell him that you want the job and it’s NOT necessary for him to call you back. (He may have nothing to offer. I know at Comcast all contact MUST be done by HR. And, he may have to waste time calling you when he could be advancing the ball.)

My thoughts FWIW,
John

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Actually, your email arrived just as I was leaving him a voicemail. I hit Cancel and got out of there. :) I will make a script later this morning (I'm going back to sleep) and contact him from work (via my cell phone, walking outside – that'll force me to stand up, although I may get some looks walking around with a big smile.) Can I clarify your "story" point on suggestion two? I take your meaning as "I understand you may be waiting for HR to process the paperwork of your applicants – my present company's the same way" or similar.

Thanks again for the suggestions – the better my message to him, the more likely I'll get an affirmative response.

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Exactly. You want to try to establish rapport. A common foe is always useful. The vagaries of corporate HR, the Post Office, ISPs in general, or even the green meanies. You need a common foe to bind him to you. "Heck, he's a great guy, understands that everyone has problems, and I can work with him." That's the key hump. Make him like you. You know a Sally Field moment. "You like me. You really like me." Now I'm a generally disagreeable sort so I have to work extra hard at that. And being an injineer by trade, I try to create a "make me likeable" process. Tell a clean joke that a third grader would "laff" at. Establish a common enemy. Help by giving him some topical current information like the PDF I've attached. Change yourself from a resume to a person. May not get you the job, but if it's a close call, who would you pick? The faceless resume or the person. IMHO YMMV, john

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QUESTION> Graduation year for university on resume.  Yes or no?

Put it on. Your age is no real secret. Sell thru the objection.

See Dave’s blog this week about age discrimination, http://execunet.blogspot.com/2006/04/selling-experience_24.html and my comment.

Then, “pull up your Big Girl undies” and compete. No sense making an issue out of it; make a value out of it. “I’m not old; I’m experienced; You can benefit ‘cause I’m house broken and I made all my mistakes when some one else was paying for them!”.

RETORT: Need the job!

Well, I’ll quibble. SunTse always advises things like “When weak, appear strong. When strong, appear weak.” You may need the bucks. But you never need THAT job. I would suggest that there are certain moral, ethical, and personal boundaries that you should NEVER cross. The casting couch is a great example of a line that should never be crossed. I also firmly believe that the appropriate deity (i.e., Jesus; the Intelligent Designer; the Universe; the Flying Spaghetti Monster) will always provide what we need. The famous Wayne Dyer admonition applies: “you'll believe it when you see it OR you’ll see it when you believe it”. His formulation is that you visualize what you want and the Universal Soul will supply it. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Now, I don’t believe that one should sit on one’s butt and wait for the Publisher’s Clearing House Lottery van to arrive. But there is anecdotal evidence in my own life that this has some truth to the idea that “lucky breaks” occur. Funny how the harder I work at something, the more breaks go my way. So, let’s agree that you don’t need THAT particular job.

ALSO, I’d admonish you never even to think of the HR people as morons. It may be flip, but I have seen people sink their own ship with a loose lip. While there are a few “bad” people, (in my personal trek, I have met FOUR out of a grazillion.) by an large, people, while they may be: dumb as a stump, overworked, underpaid, overwhelmed by volume, completely inept, or just plain disagreeable, they are the Intelligent Designer’s creation and as such worthy of our respect. When I get totally in a knot, I ask myself things like: would you do that job, what problems can I help that person overcome, or what lesson is the Universe trying to teach me here. I get a lot of lessons in humility and patience. I need them because I’m not very humble or patient. Lessons are repeated until the student learns.

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http://execunet.blogspot.com/2006/04/selling-experience_24.html

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Sad to say, age discrimination is alive and well 

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Ahh Dave, a topic near and dear, but as a big turkey, I think one has to "get over it". I've shared the story in which the HR head of a Financial Institution, who I knew well, had the clarity to tell me that I was "too old" for them. :-) I am happy to report that they are no longer in business. Getting tagged with a felony is not good for business. Unfortunately it was NOT for age discrimination! So, when I hear a fellow turkey complain about "age discrimination", I ask them if they gripe about the Law of Gravity, the Third Law of Entropy, and the Law of Supply and Demand. When they look at me as if I have three heads, I continue to point out the innumerable constraints of life. If pushed, I probably can sign a few versus of the song from "The Facts Of Life". (Frau Reinke liked that show.) Bottom line: Grow up, shut up, pull up your big boy pants, and go compete. Demonstrate that old doesn't mean senile. That grey hair is NOT synonymous with old ideas. And that having experience means you don't have to make every single mistake that everyone else has made in doing something. I try to stress that us old folks tend to work smarter rather than harder because we made those mistakes on someone else's payroll. Needless to say, I'm employed and plan to stay that way until old and senile. Not needing their job is one of the best ways I know to ensure that you have a job. That convinces them that you actually know more than they do. Zero debt, secure retirement when you choose, and a few bucks in the bank can impress any recruiter. It levels the playing field. Especially when you can say, I think I can help you if you let me. And if you don't, no big deal. Like the Sally Rand fan dance, you have keep them guessing. And when they can't have you, then they want you. ;-)

Where did I find?

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” (also heard it as “arrive”)

“Lessons are repeated until the student learns.”

“chop wood, carry water, seek enlightenment, chop wood, carry water”

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/401069p-339405c.html

A good idea to know what can be found and associated to you.

I had to recover from a platform failure. McAfree got stuck on a registry entry. I could not uninstall the privacy service, couldn’t reinstall the privacy service, and couldn’t get anything to work. So I had to reinstall wxppro. Luckily I didn’t have to reformat.

In bringing everything back up to snuff, I had problems with IIS and Perspective. I just kept looking and trying stuff. Finally, I got the idea of permissions. I brought up the IIS directory and right clicked it. Then, I took the “web sharing” and added the iis directory to the “share the folder” option.

Magically everything began to work.

http://ripples.typepad.com/ripples/2006/03/if_you_are_empl.html

While very depresssing, sort of like “in the end, we’re all dead”, this blog entry highlights the changing metaphor in employment. Originally, at least from my pov, there was the “gold watch” era of my Mom. Then, there was the era of “pretending”, (you pretend to work and we’ll pretent to pay you). Then there was the entreprenurial era (“You Inc.”, intraprenurship, coopetition). Now I think we are in the era of “bleakmanship” (i.e., there is no salvation, no silver bullet, no hope, work for who will pay you, build your own skill, diversify, build networks of people who can help you). I do think, and I advise youngsters, that the model for their sucess is: get a cost-effective education for a white collar job, build a blue collar skill other than flipping burgers, develop side businesses like ebay, and be a ruthless manager of money. If I could come up with a sexy label it would be the “insecurity” era.

I have manged to “brick” my lovable luggable laptop. It’s limping along no thanks to a corrupted McAfee execuatble “protecting” me from the inet. Arggghhh! But, with every “challenge”, there come opportunity. In my anal dedication to backups, (having paid tuituion at that particular school TWICE in my long long career), I am pleased to find that everything is preserved. Not as elegently as I would like, but I do “have” everything. My prolific “kid on the soceer field” whirling dervish do it all outpouring has been staunched by the lack of my favoirte tool performing as it should. But, I am still bloging, working, paying bills, nagging, and browsing pretty much as usual. Recovery is awaiting Senor Dell sending me the recovery disks that they no longer ship with each product because as their tech says “no one ever needs them any more”. Wrong, “No one” is me, now! So as soon as the pony express delivers them, I’ll do resusitation on this big heavy pig and be back in business. The luggable being down has given me a platform to play with the latest release of UBUNTO, which I call I BUNT TWO, which is sweet. Right out of the sleeve their live cd brings up a workign platform. Sweet. The last version had trouble with a hardwire connect to the work lan requiring configuration, and wireless for home never worked. This version BOTH situatuins work on boot up. Sweet. No touch useablility.

Why do you care?

If you’re employed and your workstation fails, what personally will you lose in both personal content (very bad) and business content (worse). In one of my tuition experience, I “lost” 6 months of intellectual productivity. I was depending upon my employer’s recovery scheme as I was told to do. Bad idea. The guy who was responsible said “oops” and kept on chugging. I was left scrambling and took a hit in my bonus for certain things that I knew I had done but couldn’t demonstrate and / or recreate. The second lesson, different employer, same scenario, I lost a week’s work. At that time, I backed up every Friday before I left for the week end. No I backup at the end of every day!

If you are unemployed and your workstation fails, what will you lose? Besides the ability to do work, what data will you lose? What is your plan for doing email or cover letters or a targeted resume, when your computer is doing its best imiatation of a brick?

Remember “lessons are repeated until the student learns”!

It’s interesting that when the modern large enterprise reorgs progress grind to a halt. It’s not that problems go away. It appears that focus is lost while the deck chairs are rearranged. Hmmm.

http://labs.google.com/

http://next.yahoo.com/

http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/

There’s just a wealth of “stuff” to try. Free, but beta.