IT jobs and out of state recruiters

It would be completely legitimate to mistake my adventures in IT job hunting for little more than thinly veiled hit pieces.  In a way they are but only to illustrate the antics of the bad players. 

Reality check!  You really need to take off the rose colored glasses and stop taking job-seeking advice from 1963.

Make no mistake, the people you're interviewing with are not your, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen.." or anyone else with your best interests at heart.  

They're in it for them so you'd better know what's in it for you because giving your 2 weeks notice 3 weeks into the job is too late to do your due diligence.

It's not like I'm actually endeavoring to end up on American HR's Least Wanted...

I've just been (un)fortunate enough to collect the evidence from the worst offenders.  I'm not saying that everyone you'll ever interview with is out to screw you but everyone has an agenda and whether or not you want to satisfy it is a personal choice.  It's only fair that you have all the information before you sign on the dotted line.

Thing is, you rarely get the dossier before you get to the conference room so try to pick up your hints from clues in the job posting.  An overly aggressive tone is obvious with words like "Professionals Only" or "Must have" before every sentence.  What may not be are terms like "24/7 environment"  That's not boasting about their uptime, they're expecting anyone they hire to submit to that availability.  At least you know up front but better run organizations don't require indentured servitude. 

Only James Bond is on call 24/7 and I can guarantee you're not going to have near as much fun as he does...

It gets trickier if it's a blind phone screen.  You have to listen for the clues.  Are they reading questions out of a book? Is there more than one person on the call?  Is the demeanor friendly or have you felt more warmth from your last visit to the DMV.  Is every question answered with a question or a string of rehearsed responses.  What if you go off their script?  Do they seem annoyed, combative or deflect the query?  In that kind of scenario I wouldn't ask about covered parking.

Of course defenders of the HR and recruiting professions will tell you every story has 2 sides but when it comes to job interviews it's not about them it's about you.  The key attribute any hiring manager wants to see is submission.  They're the boss and it's their game but it seems more often than not they're not playing fair.

All the HR pundits will give you sage advice about being the most attractive candidate but in the end it may as well be admonitions from your mother....

"Sit up straight!, mind your manners! Eat your vegetables.."  Great advice....if you came to adulthood after being raised by wolves but useless otherwise.

Thus we come to my latest, "Hit Piece"

First some background.

I received a phone call from an out of state recruiter for a local position that was to last for 7 weeks.  I usually don't give much weight to out of state recruiters mostly because they rarely have a good relationship with the potential employer.  That's why I don't usually bother with them.  Their relationship with hiring managers is critical to your success.  If they don't have one,you may as well be applying to a plain old Want Ad and throwing your unemployment checks in the trash.

Out of state recruiters are little use to you in prepping for the interview because all they know is what's printed in the job order.  It literally turns into seeing which crap sticks to the wall by sending a parade of hopefuls into the interview process.  It's a roll of the dice based on a punch list of skills and questionable reasoning.

On the other side of the equation (aka: the hiring manager,) it doesn't say much for the company's selection process if they can't be bothered to be a more active participant.  The selection of an agency that has no local presence was likely based on 2 glaring factors that never work in your favor. 

First,  they're probably cheap, as out of state firms can underbid local firms due to low overhead.  All they need is an Internet connection and a phone to do their job.   

Hey! Cheap is great for stuff you buy by the pound but unless you wanted to be treated like a bag of walnuts, it's not going to go well for you.    

Second, it shows the employer has little interest in you as the candidate or any candidate for that matter.  They're just  looking for a warm body that won't make too much trouble (In this case "Trouble" is defined as having a soul).  If that's you, well, you probably stopped reading at the second paragraph and are busily sanitizing your web cache before anyone finds out you came here.  :-)

Against my better judgment, I went ahead with the phone interview.  Fortunately, it gave me a splendid example of how broken the process is.

It began with this email... (names changed)

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Hi (candidate),

Thank you for submitting over your resume for the Windows Administrator position in Phoenix, AZ.  I would like to discuss the opportunity with further please call me when you have time to chat.

Thanks,

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I called, went through initial screening and received this...

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Hi (Candidate),

Thanks for your time today and for your interest in the 7 week contract position with (company).  I am having our Technical Engineer Tom (techguy) give you a call today at 10:00am PST (11:00am MT) to discuss the technical components of the position. 

Please confirm that you have received this email and are set to speak with Tom.  After your conversation with Tom we will get you submitted over for the position and hopefully have next steps very quickly.

Thanks,

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Which got me to the tech screener after sending the confirmation.  Apparently I passed muster with "Tom."

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Hi (Candidate,)

Could you do a phone interview tomorrow between 1 and 3?

Thanks

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Which of course I made sure I was available for.  I was sent an email with a phone number and conference ID.  The hiring manager couldn't be bothered to call me, instead I had to play with the voicemail system just to talk to him.  Not a good sign, I felt like I was on a treadmill...

Voicemail jail aside, I thought the call went well and lasted about 30 minutes.  He threw a surprise question about working weekends (the first I heard of it and another sign the recruiter had never spoken to him)  but other than that there was nothing out of the ordinary.  What was strange was no technical questions for a very technical job.  It was as though we were just going through the motions.  I tried to keep it light and friendly and the manager seemed to respond well but he wasn't exactly a "touchy-feely" kind of guy.  Oh, and his name was "Hans" and he spoke with a bit of an accent. Achtung baby!

Still, I could have been wrong so I let the recruiter know I thought the interview went well and waited to hear back.  I had no contact information for "Hans" so the whole "thank you" note was impossible.  Although I guess I could have shown some initiative and hacked their phone system to find him...Nah, Sorry HR gurus, I guess I failed you...

So imagine my surprise (not really) when I got this back the following Monday.

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They have decided to pass, here was the specifics feedback from our client.  Hope this helps with future interviews!

“Spoke to "applicant" and was not too impressed. He was 5 minutes late to the meeting, no apologies and overall a fairly familiar approach to the conversation. Little too much for an interview, don’t think it will be a good fit to what we need.”

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Ok, first off, I wasn't late by the clocks I was looking at and apparently this guy takes being friendly and responsive as "familiar."  

Geez, sorry Kommandant!

It could be a cultural conflict or this guy's just a jerk.  I can tell you that out of hundreds of interviews I've had in my career I can count on one hand the number of people that have responded this way.  In most cases I've found people like this usually end up in a padded room at some point in their lives.

This also shows how detrimental it can be when a recruiter doesn't know their client.  Remember I talked to 2 screeners before getting to the final screening with the client.  There were no issues and I didn't act any differently with "Hans.". 

Here's my email response...

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Really?  Didn’t get that read from him during the conversation.

Also didn’t realize that being personable was a character flaw. 

I wasn’t any different with him than I was with you or your tech screener. 

This was supposed to be short term anyway so he shouldn’t be looking for somebody he has to babysit.

Ah well, this is why I generally don’t like large IT organizations. 

Too many insecure managers caught up in their own inflated egos.  

Thanks anyway.

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Here's the final proof of why you should never deal with recruiters that don't know their clients.  The email I got back after I sent the above...

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Hi (candidate)

Sounds like he is pretty formal guy if that was the situation.  I do not know him personally sorry this one did not work out!

Thanks

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I'd like to say I was sorry too but I can't.  I'm not looking to marry the guy just work for him for 2 months.  Not only did he lie but he let his ego get in front of his judgment. 

In the end it was the perfect confluence of bad recruiting and bad manager.  Learn from it!

You need to stop beating yourself up over things that you have no control over.   IT is rife with screwed up people and lots of them end up in management. 

You can't fix stupid so don't try and just move on to someone who can hold up their end of a conversation. 

Come to think of it, that's good dating advice too!

Microsoft's pot calls out Google's kettle

Article first published as Microsoft's Pot Calls Out Google's Kettle on Technorati.

A friend of mine sent me a few links to a Microsoft blog where the company's legal department apparently has issues with the recent FTC ruling on Google's alleged anti-competitive practices. I could write paragraphs of babble but I think a direct quote sums up Microsoft's position best.

"Unfortunately, this agreement appears to be less demanding than the pledge the U.S. Department of Justice received from Apple and Microsoft nearly a year ago."

Microsoft's ruffled feathers come from Google's apparent blocking of the Microsoft YouTube app from Windows phones going back as far as 2010.  A service available to Apple and Android users by the way.  Again we'll let a direct quote tell the story...

"Google often says that the antitrust offenses with which it has been charged cause no harm to consumers. Google is wrong about that. In this instance, for example, Google’s refusal deprives consumers who use competing platforms of a comparable experience in accessing content that is generally available on the Web"

A more classic case of a jealous pot bashing the upstart kettle there has never been.  Replace "Google" with "Microsoft" in the preceding quote and it's 1996 all over again.  And there's the rub.  Microsoft doesn't think Google is getting punished enough and has somehow equated an inferior YouTube experience on Windows phones with Google's apparent monopoly on Internet search.

" We are concerned that the FTC may not have obtained adequate relief even on the few subjects that Google has agreed to address."

Microsoft appears to want to link two largely unrelated topics in their complaint which in spite of their claims to the contrary equate to little more than sour grapes. Microsoft's assertions bank on the short memory of the Internet and consumers in general.  Ironically a Google search can correct that.

Remember that the FTC went after Microsoft not because they had the leading operating system but because they abused their market position with it.  The tight integration of Internet Explorer with Windows operating systems starting with Windows 95 made competing browsers inferior on the platform.  It also allowed Microsoft to claim that the Browser and the Operating System were too closely interrelated to expose the details to competing browsers.  To do so would allegedly expose their trade secrets.  The FTC didn't buy it.

As for search, if Microsoft Bing is damaged by Google's dominant position in search and Google's related products it has less to do with anti-competitive business practices than it does with poor execution.   Let's be honest, nobody goes around saying, "I'll Bing that." Google's about search and has managed to leverage that simple fact in all of its products.  Bing isn't a poor search engine because of Google, It's just a poor search engine.

Consumer preference can be influenced but not controlled.  That's why Bing has been and always will be an also ran search engine just like Yahoo and the bygones like altavista or askjeeves.  Windows Phone still holds less than 5% of the worldwide Smartphone market and will likely continue to do so until it offers the features that can lure consumers away from Apple or Android.

Neither Google nor Apple have any obligation to help them improve that number.  A fact driven home by Google's impending removal of support for syncing Microsoft Exchange accounts (via Exchange Activesync) to its Gmail service as of January 30th.  Luckily Microsoft has it's hotmail service to fall back on.  Yes, that's a joke.

The bottom line is that right now Google's services are the consumer's choice for web applications.  Apple learned that the hard way with the Apple Maps fiasco but to their credit at least they tried.  Instead of complaining about being excluded from Google's services Microsoft should be trying to create a better competing service.  After all, software and servers are their thing, right?

Then again what else would you expect from a Microsoft legal blog?

Sinofsky May be Out But Don't Expect the Same of Windows 8

If you're one of those folks that cheered the departure of Steven Sinofsky last week from Microsoft you may be anxiously awaiting the return of the good old days.  Surely the Start button will make a return and all this business about tablets and touch screens will go the way of Vista.

Don't count on it...

Sinofsky may have ruled the Windows division of Microsoft with an iron fist but he didn't operate in a vacuum even if other Microsoft divisions thought so.  Change was going to happen even if it was going to be painful and potentially risky to Microsoft's relationship with its customers.

That the basic Windows interface had remained unchanged over the last two decades wasn't lost on Steve Ballmer and other Microsoft Executives.  The popularity of touch devices from competitors like Apple and Android showed the direction of the market.  The design of Windows 8 was the response. 

Sinofsky's laser focus on Windows after his installment as division president in 2009 and success with the Windows 7 launch gave him the credentials to move Windows forward.  To many, his removal so soon after the launch of Windows 8 suggests that Windows 8 is a failed product destined to go the way of Microsoft Bob.  Steven Sinofsky was not Gabe Newell, however.

Job performance has never been a problem for Sinofsky but jealous protection of his division was.  Windows has always been the most visible Microsoft product with Office running a close second.  Not coincidentally, both products Sinofsky and his team had intimate involvement with.  Sinofsky was known to exercise complete control over his products to the exclusion of all else.  Much to the dismay of other product teams within Microsoft that were used to a culture of collaboration, Sinofsky's actions proved to be divisive.  A rift that's expressed itself with similar looking but largely incompatible products under the Windows 8 banner.

His departure isn't a reflection of the success of Windows 8, rather it is a symptom of Microsoft's new product strategy.  Touch interfaces have proven themselves as more than a fad with the popularity of tablet devices and smartphones.  Even Apple's desktop staple, Mac OSX, has taken up second position to IOS devices like the IPad and Iphone.  Before Windows 8, Microsoft's only entry into this market was the lackluster Windows Phone and tablet editions.  Neither of which were high water marks for Microsoft's "Windows Everywhere" mantra championed by Steve Ballmer.

Windows may still be the centerpiece of the new strategy even going so far to add  Windows"panes" to the Microsoft logo but Windows development could no longer be done in isolation.  The vision for Microsoft was to have a unified experience across all devices from PC's to toasters.  Sinofsky's culture of separation ran counter to it.  Cloud services and hosted applications can help smooth over the rough spots but ultimately come up short of truly having Windows Everywhere.

There's no denying that touch interfaces are the future of computing.  Just as we wouldn't think of using a typewriter to compose our documents it won't be long till a swipe and tap are more commonplace than a mouse click.  Windows 8 tries to meet that future demand before consumers know they have it.  The fact that the vision borrows a page from Steve Jobs is no accident.  But where Jobs enforced a unity of vision throughout Apple, Sinofsky's focus was not so global when it came to Windows' place in Microsoft. 

Over the next year expect Microsoft to work hard to correct that error.

The new revenue stream

Originally published on Technorati as "The New Revenue Stream."

Remember way back before the Iphone or the I anything for that matter?  Those were the days when we went out and bought a piece of technology and whatever else we needed for it and Boom! we were pretty much done.  When we wore it out we went and bought a new one.

Getting a cell phone was a pretty simple proposition.  You picked the device and how many minutes you thought you'd need and paid your bill every month.  Now you'd be hard pressed to find a phone without features you'll never use but are charged for anyway.  Not to mention overage charges for data or unlimited plans that really aren't unlimited either cutting you off or degrading your service over a preset limit.

Everything's a subscription now.  Seems like you never stop paying.  Services like Netflix started it.  Used to be you'd pay a small subscription fee and get your choice of DVD's every month.  What made them successful was the elimination of late fees and the highway robbery of the chain video rental stores.  Now it's streaming movies at 8 bucks a month to any device that can use the service.  Even if you don't use it.

Yes, it's wonderful that you can go to Itunes and just buy the song you like for 99 cents and leave the rest of the selections on the curb .  Of course you've bought a lesser quality version of the song for roughly the same price as the same song on CD but hey, it's in your Itunes now, so long as you don't lose your password...

You can even subscribe to Microsoft Office 365 to essentially "rent" the use of office applications.  Too bad if you miss that monthly payment and want to open your Word document.

I can go to carbonite.com and back up my computer to the cloud automatically, for a fee of course.  That fee goes up if I have more than one computer and/or external device to back up by the way.

Gee, used to be I got a backup program with my operating system or I could get a better one and that was it.  I didn't have to subscribe to anything.

Buy an IPAD or an Iphone and you're not likely to have much fun with it unless you visit the app store which generally involves a purchase or subscription depending on what you choose from it.  Oh, and don't forget that 2 year contract and/or ridiculous initial cost of the device.

Let's not forget that our workplaces will have limits on our bandwidth and most ISP's impose bandwidth limits on how much data you can use per month.

Too bad if you were backing up you Terabyte Hard drive to Carbonite...

The point is that more and more products seem to be introduced whose very design is to work with this subscription model.  Product features tend to be stripped down for the sake of it.  Even the latest version of Windows dumped their email client in favor of the useless free Windows Live suite or online applications such as Hotmail or Gmail.

 I wonder when they'll dump notepad...

Yes it's true that application suites were prohibitively expensive but if you didn't need to be on the cutting edge you could always find a deal on the previous version.  You didn't have to keep paying for it either.   It seems we've been led to believe that the a la' carte model lowers the barriers of entry to productivity and recreational apps but the truth is that we're just spreading out our buying patterns. 

With every app you buy you end up on another mailing list.  There's also this false ubiquity that anything in the cloud is secure and accessible.  Yes, it may be so long as you pay the subscription.  Let's also hope they don't go out of business taking your data with them.  Read the Terms of Service,  if they're gone, so's your data...

There's nothing wrong with making applications more accessible but to rely on the subscription model and the cloud exclusively  is dangerous.  I'd hate, for example, to lose the ability to update my resume if I had to cancel my office 365 subscription after losing my job. 

I sometimes chafe when I hear some pundit advocating how the cloud should be our primary data repository.  Really?  You have that much faith in a web page with an e-commerce portal to secure your data? 

I can't accept that a commercial entity has my best interests at heart thus I have no faith in the assumption that they do.  Yet when I look around I see a consumer mindset that accepts the premise as reasonable. 

Whatever happened to Caveat Emptor?  I guess they don't teach that in schools anymore...