The Modern Resume

Have you checked your resume lately?

2012-01-18T08:12:00.000-08:00

It's midway through January, and hopefully you are starting the year off on a good note.

A quick reminder that if you haven't touched your resume, or reviewed it in the last 90 days, do so today. Open it up, scan it, and see if there's something you can add or remove. Did you done some interesting work at the end of last year, something that might impress a future employer? Add it now.

If not, close it and move on with your day.

But set a reminder for 90 days from now to check it again.

Blackout

2012-01-18T08:07:00.001-08:00

It’s anti-SOPA/PIPA day, and a number of sites have shut down for the day. O’Reilly closed their page, and of course, Wikipedia shut down.

Google didn’t do the blackout I was hoping for, but they have hidden their logo:

I like the Wikipedia closure, which appeared seconds after hitting a page. It has a great effect on me.

I debated about shutting down this site, but for a Wordpress hosted site, I didn’t see an easy way to do it.

To be clear

I am not against copyright legislation, nor IP protections. We should ensure that content creators have some recourse and ability to control the way their content is used.

I think SOPA / PIPA are gross, overreaching ways of doing this that are designed to help a few large companies, and potentially hurt many small ones, and will have no impact on foreign sites. These laws simple cut the US off; they do not affect the operation of the foreign site.

We can come up with better ways to protect content, while also preserving fair use and personal liberties, and limiting copyright.

My personal stance is that the original 14 years + 14 year extension for copyright is plenty. If you cannot earn money in those 28 years, let someone else build on your work.

Setting a Networking Goal

2011-12-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

I believe in networking, and think it is worth some effort to network with other professionals in your area. It’s not a guaranteed way of improving your career, but I think over time you will end up becoming a better professional over time if you network with others.

In order to build and maintain a network, you have to put forth an effort regularly. My suggestion is that you set some networking goals for yourself that you can achieve, and that don’t create a large burden on the rest of your life.

I have one friend whose goal is to meet three new people at each event. He makes it a point to introduce himself to new people and find three people to have a five minute conversation with each time he attends an event.

It’s close to the end of the year, and you ought to be thinking about your goals for the new year. What do you want to accomplish, how do you want to grow? When you set some professional goals for 2012, think about including a networking goal or two. Build a short plan that you can review before your next user group meeting, happy hour, conference, whatever, and make it a point to strengthen a bond, or build a new one when you go.

Goals for 2012

2011-12-19T10:26:00.000-08:00

As we get close to the end of the year, what are your career goals for 2012? Hopefully you are setting some that will motivate you and help you grow your career in the new year.

If you had goals for 2011, you ought to start by reviewing those goals and noting your progress. Did you accomplish them all? If you did, then were they too easy, or did you make a strong effort to accomplish them.

If you didn’t accomplish them, why not? Were they too ambitious or too hard? Did you run out of time, change focus, or just get too busy? It’s entirely possible that any or all of those occurred, since they might not have been good goals for you.

In either case, re-assess what you want to accomplish for 2012. you can aim for more or less than in 2011. You can lay back in 2011 if you need the time off, or charge forward harder, but make a serious effort to re-examine your professional life and take charge of your career.

People Lie to You

2011-12-12T10:21:00.000-08:00

It’s true, people lie to you.

It’s hard to get an honest assessment out of the people closest to you. They often don’t want to say anything bad, or tell you that they view you poorly. Your family and close friend don’t provide the honest assessment you might need about your professional brand or work.

However people you don’t know very well will lie as well, and you can’t necessarily trust their opinions precisely because you don’t know them very well.

How can you get an honest assessment? You have to work at it. Ask someone you trust, but someone that is strong enough to disagree with you. Tell them you really need an honest opinion from them on something you’ve done, and that you expect there is room for improvement.

Hopefully you have a few of these friends or family that can help you improve the way you present yourself in a professional setting.

Branding Yourself - PASS Presentation

2011-12-09T13:49:00.001-08:00

I guess I did well, with 67 people in the talk and 39 feedback surveys. The average was between 4-5 for all categories, but some great comments for a few of the questions:

Did you learn what you expected to learn?

GREAT SESSION
PLUS SOME!
YES! NOT TOO MUCH NEW STUFF BUT I FEEL TEN TIMES MORE EMPOWERED TO GET MY OWN BLOG OFF THE GROUND. THANKS.

How would you rate the Speaker’s presentation skills? (1 - Very Poor, 2 - Poor, 3 - Average, 4 - Good, 5 - Excellent)

Steve is an excellent speaker. He repeats audience questions!
NOT BAD BUT NOT STANDING OUT IN ANY WAY EITHER.

What will you take away from this session?

Update my resume! Get blogging more.
A LOT
IT IS TIME TO VAN SP_UPDATERESUME
GREAT, GREAT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TIPS! ESPECIALLY LIKED THE PART ABOUT BLOGGING. WELL DONE!
IDEAS FOR FINDING EMPLOYEES AND OWN CAREER
THE IMPORTANCE OF MANAGING MY IMAGE
STEVE OPENED MY EYES TO THINGS I ALREADY KNEW BUT WASN'T REALLY AWARE OF.
LEARNED SOME GREAT TIPS FOR IMPROVING "BRAND" TO HELP IN KEEPING/FINDING JOBS
GLAD I CAME. VERY ENJOYABLE AND INFORMATIVE.
SUPERB PRESENTATION!
I GOT SOME GREAT TIPS TO IMPROVE MY ONLINE PRESENCE.
DESIRE TO PROMOTE ONLINE PRESENCE
I ALREADY STARTED TO UPDATE MY ONLINE PRESENCE AND I'LL BE UPDATING MY RESUME WHEN I GET HOME.
GREAT STUFF! MORE GOOD INFO THAN EXPECTED!

This is definitely one of my favorite talks. If you’d like to see it, let me know, or let the organizers know for your next event.

The Test

2011-12-05T10:18:00.001-08:00

When I was a young man, I was given some great advice. Before I post anything, send an email, write a letter, etc., stop and think about the content. If the content appeared on the front page of the Washington Post the next day, would I be OK with it.

That was the “Washington Post” test, but today it’s the “Kid Test”, or the “Mom Test”. I write a lot, but I think I ought to be able to look my kids, or my Mom, in the face and explain what I wrote.

Before you send an email, post a blog, or do anything that could be permanent on the Internet, stop for a minute and apply the test. Will you have a problem with what you wrote? If you have any doubt, don’t post it, and get a second opinion from a friend.

Tips for Networking at Events

2011-11-21T07:35:00.000-08:00

Geared for a conference, and made for the Business of Software 2011, this short video gives you some good ideas for networking.

Tips for networking from an 8 year old

Q: Everyone has already written about X, why should I?

2011-11-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

I think I get asked this question quite often from people that start blogging, and I’ve tried to cover it in the presentation.

The purpose of your blog, for most of you, is to showcase your skills. It builds your brand and shows that you understand whatever you do in your career.

In the SQL Server world, it doesn’t matter if Books Online, twelve people at Microsoft and 1,452 other people have written about backing up a transaction log, it’s important that you show that you have the skills to make a transaction log backup.

The same thing occurs, whether you’re a CEO, a developer, a plumber, or in any other field. It’s important that I know you have the skills I need.

As a sidebar, if I found a plumber, handyman, electrician, etc. that blogged about their projects and experiences, I’d be much, much more likely to hire them. Why? It’s due diligence for me. Hint to tradesman: Get your spouse or kids to blog about your job if you don’t want to. It will help.

Don’t overthink blog posts. Write about what you’ve learned, or done, or accomplished. No matter how trivial you think it is, it’s important that you showcase those skills.

Resume Advice from Lifehacker

2011-11-10T10:13:00.001-08:00

Not sure I agree with all of it, but there are a few interesting tips here at Lifehacker on making your resume more modern.

I do think typefaces and the display of your resume matter. Look at it from a distance to ensure it's not too crowded.

Where do I tweet? My personal account or a separate one?

2011-11-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

This is something I’ve been asked about blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. My advice is that you ought to keep a professional brand out there for yourself.

I have two accounts, one for me personally (@way0utwest) and then one for my site (@SQLServerCentrl). The company site definitely gets less time from me than my personal account. I rarely sign on to the company account away from my PC, so it’s hard to maintain.

I’m not sure I’d want a separate account for Twitter for me as a programmer, because it could be hard to maintain, and hard to manage. It would be easy to tweet something from the wrong account.

What I would do is keep my business social media separate from my personal media. Twitter is a blend for me, since I have mostly business friends on there. It evolved that way, and while I post some family/kid things, I do try to remember that the audience is technical people.

For Facebook, and my personal blog, I have set those to be family items. I might cross post to/from this site, but it’s about me, not my work. I have kicked off my Facebook friends that I don’t know personally well, so it’s now a personal site.

LinkedIn is completely business. I don’t connect with friends there, unless we have a business purpose.

Get Inspired - SQL Inspire 2011 New York

2011-11-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

Coming up next week is the SQL Inspire 2011 event in New York City. It’s an event with a number of SQL Server community speakers that are here to inspire you in your career, your life, and with SQL Server. The talks cover a variety of topics, and they look interesting. I am very excited to attend the event, and give my talk as well.

The event is from SQL People, the brainchild of Andy Leonard and Brian Moran, designed to build a stronger community by having us inspire each other. This event is based on the TED events, which are inspirational and informative talks that look to explore new ideas in a variety of topic areas. I have loved watching many of the talks, and while I’m not sure I’m up to the same level of presenting as many of these people, I’m going to try.

Please come if you are in New York on the 12th of November. It will be a lot of fun, and hopefully a very motivational event.

Document Your Day

2011-10-31T12:54:00.000-07:00

You should be documenting your day, your week, your month, on a regular basis. Take a few minutes when you accomplish something and make a blog entry. This is a great way for you to keep track of what you’ve accomplished during the year, and be ready to talk about it in an interview, or in a performance review.

You don’t have to publically blog this. You can use Word, emacs, Live Writer, text files, whatever works, but, keep track of it. Read through it when you need it and summarize your accomplishments for the quarter or year. This is also something you consult every quarter when you touch your resume.

And when you get ready for that review, read Kendra Little’s post on asking for a raise.

It’s Your Career

2011-10-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

It’s your career. It’s something you have to take ownership of and work on. I know that life is busy, and training budgets are tight. That’s one reason we started SQL Saturday; it’s a way to bring a training event and a conference experience to many people.

I posted this tweet almost a year ago, seeing Brent in a class somewhere, learning and taking notes during some session. It was in humor, but I’m a little serious here. We all have more to learn, and while you don’t need to cram it all in this year, you should be taking advantage of your user group, local events, conferences, classes, even reading something in a newsletter on a regular basis.

Many of us are out here to help. I’ve spoken at 12 events this year, 10 of them free, and will be at another free event this week (SQL in the City - LA). However, you’ve got to make the effort to improve yourself. I , and many others, will try to help you, teach you, but you’ve got to do some work yourself.

Pace yourself, learn at a reasonable rate given the other responsibilities in your life, but don’t ignore this aspect of your career.

PS - If you’re in the LA area, there’s still time to register for SQL in the City and get a free day of training. I’ll also be at DevConnections next week and SQLInspire the week after that.

cross posted at The Voice of the DBA blog.

Meet Someone New This Week

2011-10-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

Meet someone new in your career this week. Wherever you are, go make it a point to either meet a new person, or learn a new thing about someone that you work with, near, or is in the same field.

I'll be at the PASS Summit this week in Seattle, and one of the things that I make it a point to do when I try to meet new people there. It's easier for me since so many people want to meet me and will come up and say hi, but I do try to stop and say hi when I'm in an elevator or on one of the long escalators in the Washington State Convention Center. Or in line, or at lunch.

Just say "hi, I'm Steve" and ask when they do, or why there came to the event. Or at work, ask someone what they did this weekend, or what they'll do next weekend.

Build or maintain your network this week. It doesn't have to be a daily or weekly thing, but make it a point every month to touch part of your network or grow it.

The Long Road

2011-10-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

I gave a keynote talk recently called The Long Road, where I talked about the journey of your career and how you might not end up in the place you expect to be, but that's OK. Modify your career goals as you go.

Networking to Build Business Contacts

2011-10-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

The more I learn about building a better career, and the more I talk to people that get new jobs or have success in business, the more I believe that networking is one of the most important things you can do for your career. It just seems to work better, be more reliable, and more effective than any other career improvement strategy. Even blogging, which I think really helps, isn't as effective as having someone that's willing to recommend you.
I never really knew how to go about networking, but a few years ago I attended Don Gabor's seminar at the PASS Summit and it was well worth my money. I learned a lot and have practiced some of his techniques since then. I've even purchased a few of his books, which contain even more information on how to better network and work with others.
If you're attending the 2011 PASS Summit, you can see Don's Networking to Build Business Contacts seminar on Tuesday, Oct 11, from 3-5pm. It doesn't interfere with the other pre-cons, and if you're going to be in town, take this seminar. You will learn some practical tips and exercises you can use to build more contacts, grow your network, and hopefully use it to advance your career at some point. Even if you don't need a job, at some point you will and the time to build a network is before you need it. If you've already registered, call PASS to add this seminar to your registration, or do it on site.
Don has become a friend over the last few years, and was helpful in working on The Mentoring Experiment with me. I find him very insightful and experienced in the world of business and interpersonal interactions and a very interesting person. If you get the chance to sit and talk with Don, take it.

The PASS 2011 Summit

2011-09-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted awhile, with this being a busy conference time and I've been working on a few other presentations. I need to get back to posting here, and I have a few drafts in progress, just lacking some time.

I'll be delivering a version of this talk at the 2011 PASS Summit, titling it Branding Yourself for a Dream Job: The Modern Resume.

It's the same talk, or nearly the same, but a different title based on some feedback from various people that were turned off by the idea of "working on their resume."

We will see how it goes, but I would welcome feedback if you are attending the event.

Back Up Your Resume

2011-09-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

Don’t make a second copy, though it does make sense for you to keep a second copy of your resume on a separate system. Losing that data would not be good.

However for this post, what I really mean is that you need to be able to talk about the various things you’ve posted on your resume.

It’s all Fair Game

If you wrote that you consolidated server instances to save the company $100,000, you should expect to be asked any of these questions:

How did you know you saved $100k?
How many servers were consolidated?
What happened to the old hardware?
How did you decide which servers to consolidate?
Did performance suffer? How do you know?

Open ended questions, and not necessarily easy to answer on the spur of the moment if you don’t have stories prepped.

Anything you have on your resume is fair game, so take a few minutes before any interview to review your resume and be ready to talk about anything on it.

Build Detailed Stories

At each job, you should have something you are proud of and can tell a story about. These are the chances that you have to build a bond, show some depth to yourself, your career, and your skills.

Why you need to write

2011-09-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

I love writing. At least now I do. When I was in high school and college, I hated it. However over time I’ve learned to enjoy it, express myself, unload things, and teach people things.

I ran across this post recently from Jason Baptiste on Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write. It talks about the reasons that a person starting their own company might gain from sharing their thoughts and ideas with others, especially about their company.

But it works for employees too.

A lot of the same benefits will come to you as a worker if you write, especially if you consider yourself to be your own company. You are selling your skills as a service to an employer, and while you shouldn’t have the accounts receivables hassle, you should consider any job a temporary arrangement, an open-ended contract from which you might move on at any time and will move on at some point.

Writing builds skills, it teaches you things, and more importantly, it builds a brand that can help you get that next interview, or even job.

What’s a good sample resume?

2011-08-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

I typically don’t include samples in my presentation for one simple reason: I don’t want everyone to copy the sample and start using them.

My philosophy is that you ought to tell your story, make yourself stand out, which means that you should pick and choose from others, but do your own research.

Recently I saw the crew at Brent Ozar PLF post their own sample resumes. While I’m not sure you should copy their formats, I’ll say that Kendra Little’s resume stood out the most to me. It contains essentially a advertisement/cover letter as the first page for Kendra herself. It’s written in plain language with a question that a hiring manager might want to ask and then some details from her career. To me this stands out and it’s one that I bet would get a lot of calls on.

I didn’t love the others, but there are some things you can take from them, which might work for you.

In terms of other samples, ask your friends for theirs, especially the ones that have been successful. Look at what stands out, and ask them what questions they were asked about their resume.

Experience on my Resume

What would I write today, or what’s on my resume? I’ll include an item from one of my last few jobs with a few variations.

Operations DBA - JD Edwards - The JD Edwards SQL Server infrastructure consisted of hundreds of instances that were managed on a daily basis by myself and another DBA. I worked with and coached our team to implement standards across the servers to allow us to proactively monitor the systems. I introduced automated monitoring that went beyond the Patrol software we had purchased, and assisted us in troubleshooting issues. We automated much of our daily work to meet ISO 9001 standards, freeing our time to work with individual clients to help improve the performance of their systems.

It doesn’t say much in terms of details, but this gives an overview of my job, and seems impressive. However I can tailor this for specifics that might help for some jobs

Operations DBA - JD Edwards - to manage several hundred instances of SQL Server with two DBAs, I introduced a standardization and continuous improvement process. I developed scripting solutions to automate the monitoring and baselining of our servers that proactively allowed us to seek out clients and let them know of potential problems and solutions before tickets were raised. We regularly examined servers for consolidation potential to save on hardware refreshes and achieve more efficient use of hardware. We constantly received new instance requests, but less than 2/3 of those required new hardware thanks to these efforts.

Another version that emphasizes costs more and gives a number. I could talk to this in an interview in terms of the process and metrics for measuring the savings.

One more approach:

Server Consolidation - At JD Edwards, each new instance request was examined and the load compared with existing instances using our automated performance monitoring and baseline system. We were able to reduce new purchases of hardware by a third. We were also able to use this system to combine underutilized systems together and free up additional hardware for test and development systems. At Peoplesoft, I managed teams that migrated our large financial and ERP systems from Oracle to DB2, consolidating hardware in a virtualized system at the same time.

ISO 9001 /SOX Compliance - By building a set of processes for daily administration at JD Edwards, we complied with the requirements needed to maintain our ISO certification and meet SOX audits. To simplify this system and allow two people to manage several hundred instances, we developed automated daily reports that could be logged for documentation purposes, and also reduce the need to check each instance. Our reports included checks for backups, job completion, critical errors raised, and uptime to meet our requirements.

Here I’ve taken a different approach to showing my experience by looking at skills instead of jobs. If I were taking another job at a large company who would appreciate these skills, I might take this approach to catch their eye and just list each job at the bottom of my resume.

Tailor Your Resume

The key thing is to show the person that will spend 30 seconds on your resume that you have something to offer. In that sense, think about putting down the skills and experience that will meet their needs, and do it in a way that makes them think it’s worth spending 30 seconds looking at your resume.

Don't Wait to Start Blogging

2011-08-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

I'm borrowing the title from Brian Kelley, who wrote a post by the same name. The essence of his post is that you need to start blogging if you want to blog. If you want to make this part of your brand, or part of your career, you just need to start. Don't wait for the perfect ideas, or the perfect formatting or blog software, or anything else. As Nike says....

Just Do It.

I think that's the best advice, and you ought to start. As I wrote last week, you can get started quickly, in 5 minutes, and then go from there.

One last thing I'd say again is to get feedback on your writing early. Maybe privately, maybe by pointing some people at your entries, but get someone to help you learn to write better. Learn to convey your thoughts in a way that is clear to other people. It's not that hard, but there are lots of rookie mistakes that you make early on. Getting feedback will help you fix most of those small errors and allow you to write in a way that is clear to your readers over time.

The Five Minute Guide to Starting a Blog

2011-08-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

I was asked recently for some advice on starting a blog, so here’s a five minute guide:

Download Live Writer from Microsoft for authoring your posts.
Set a reminder in your calendar once a week to write for 30 minutes.
Get Evernote, a moleskin, or use Live Writer to make notes when you come upon a problem you have solved, or you’ve learned something new. This can be a link, a paragraph, or maybe a sentence. Get in the habit of making notes.
Save your posts as drafts. When you get ten complete posts, which means proofed and checked (preferably by a friend or spouse), note how long it took you to write ten posts.
Set up a blog at Wordpress, Blogger, or Typepad. Any of them will do.
Schedule your posts out at the pace it took to write them. If you wrote 10 in 10 weeks, schedule one a week. If you wrote 10 in 20 weeks. schedule one every other week.
Keep writing, and keep publishing.

That’s it, and it’s simple, but it won’t build a good blog. You have to do that work yourself, but pace yourself and build a blog that you can sustain.

Why Bother with the Effort?

2011-08-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

Is it worth your time to build a better brand, and allow yourself the chance for more opportunities in life? After all, that's what this brand building stuff is about. It's not here to ensure you make a million dollars or ensure you are famous. My goal with this blog and the presentation is to give you ideas and ways to make yourself stand out slightly from the rest of the people in your industry and help you to get the interview at the place you want to work. A better brand should give you more opportunities, hopefully in the areas in which you want to work.

I think it's definitely worth it, and this image says it all:

You want to have the best life for you, which is a very personal, yet elusive thing. A better brand in your industry will help you with this.

The important thing is to make sure that you don't spend too much time on career, branding, or work and make sure you enjoy life.

The Test

2011-06-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

When I was starting out in my career, I had a friend that was a bit of a mentor and helped me to make fewer mistakes in my career. He gave me this one piece of advice, and it has served me well over the years.

He told me that before I sent an email, or wrote a memo, or posted something publicly, I should give it the "Washington Post test". This was back in the days of newspapers in my native Virginia. The test was this: if what I had written appeared in the Washington Post the next day, would I have a problem with that?

Today I use a modified version of the test, where I think about what my Mom or my kids would think about what I posted, or wrote. or even said. It doesn't work quite as well for speaking, but it does work for writing. If there is something you blog, or post, or write, inside of work or outside of it, stop and review it. If you have any doubt that what you wrote might make a poor impression, then don't post it.

It's simple. If you have any doubts, don't to it.

Or get it reviewed. Have a friend, your wife, your boss, or someone else look over your work before you post it. Get their opinion and revise your work.

Show People What You’ve Done

2011-06-06T04:16:00.000-07:00

This is a good article worth reading: Why the New Guy Can’t Code. It’s a little heavy handed, but it makes sense and there’s one great quote: don’t interview anyone who hasn’t accomplished anything. Ever.

I think we are starting to see this, with all the research that hiring managers and HR people can do online about applicants. If you don’t have some body of work, some evidence that you have the skills needed for the job, why bother with the interview?

Blogging, building a project, having some volunteer projects or applications you’ve built on the side can bring some depth and color to your application, and it gives you the chance to let the interviewer know about your accomplishments when they are considering calling you.

It removes some level of doubt that you might not be a good fit, and it gives you the chance to make a positive first impression early. That’s half the battle of finding your dream job.

Better Writing from Hemingway

2011-05-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

These are five rules for writing from Ernest Hemingway, which I like and recommend for use in your communications. Definitely try to incorporate them into your writing, especially being short and positive.

Soft skills are important to MBAs

2011-05-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

Business schools are starting to understand that those soft skills are important to succeed in business. It’s a response to various companies interviewing and hiring based on strong soft skills, which seem to become more important all the time.

Work on your soft skills if you want to advance in management at all. It might be more important than an MBA.

Networking and Connections

2011-05-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

This quote says it all:

It’s from an article on the 9/11 memorial and how an algorithm was used to inscribe the names in particular places.

That could easily be applied to your career as well. The connections you have, with people that know you, respect you, like your work, like you, etc. are the most important things you have.

Your skills matter, but the skills help build those connections.

Learn to network.

Get Your Manager Involved

2011-05-06T08:51:00.001-07:00

I’ve always tried to make sure that I kept my manager informed of things I thought were important. However I hadn’t thought of getting them to attend local events with me.

This blog from Roy Ernest has an interesting idea, invite them to you user group. They’ll learn more about SQL Server, see your contributions, and maybe sponsor you to attend a conference.

A good idea, and worth trying if you have a manager that’s at all interested in the technology and you have some sessions that aren’t too complex.

Why Build a Brand?

2011-04-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

Why should you go to the trouble to start blogging, speaking, answering questions or anything else. What’s the point?

I’ve written a little before about this. When you build a brand, it helps you to stand out from others. You become more noticeable, and more likely to get the interview. You allow a potential employer to do some due diligence before they call you for an interview, which gives them more confidence you are the right person for the job.

And that if they call you, knowing your brand, the job is more likely what you want to do. Your brand lets people know what your skills are, what talents you have, and what you might want to do in life.

Working on your own brand also forces you to think about what you want from your career, or in your career, and it helps you to become better. Working on a better brand means getting better at your career in some way. Whether you blog, speak, or do anything else, you have to learn the topic well enough to teach it.

You are building an online brand with everything you do online, and many people in technology are regularly building that brand, so take advantage of it, put a little more effort in and get into the top ten percent of people in your field.

Remember that a brand can have a downside, so use your own version of “The Test” before doing anything online.

And don’t forget that just because you have a great job your branding doesn’t matter. It can still be useful, even if you don’t want a new job.

Leadership in the digital world

2011-04-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

Leadership can be a challenge, especially as we move to a more remote, digital world. However it can be done, and this video shows a touch of how someone is doing so in the Army, a place where leaders are very important.

It's humorous and worth watching, but near the end you get a good sense of the challenges involved in working with people across distances in a digital way.

Have Multiple Resumes

2011-04-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

I was asked a question recently about how to present yourself if you are changing careers. If you have been a technology worker for years and just got your MBA and are looking to move into management, how do you show this on your resume?
It’s easy: multiple resumes.
It’s the same advice I give if you are considering two different types of jobs in your search. I have used this successfully for years, and I the only downside is the time it takes to make a separate resume.
Each resume should be tailored towards a particular position, highlighting those skills that are applicable to that job. A few examples will help explain this.
Becoming a manager
Suppose that you have always worked in subordinate positions in companies and now want to try management. Hopefully you have had some taste of this, practicing in informal managerial roles or unofficial settings. Perhaps as some type of team lead.
When you examine your resume, the work you did to build some piece of software, or erect the frame of a house, or re-wire a circuit isn’t really important. In fact, it can be a detriment because there are many managers that transition into the role and cannot let their old work go. They try to do it all themselves and fail.
Instead, you ought to highlight those unofficial things you have done. Perhaps you helped coordinate work for other people and finish a project on time. Maybe you prepared the material to help your previous manager finish the budget. Your “manager” resume ought to highlight these accomplishments and show that you have some skills, even without much experience, in this position.
Changing Fields
Suppose you have been a software developer for years and now want to try being a database administrator. I was in this very position, and tackled this exact problem with a DBA resume that was different from my developer resume.
One of the things I had done was work on the upgrade of the servers and I listed that as something I had accomplished. I worked with another DBA on performance tuning, and I listed a few things I had done, noting that I had done them under the supervision of a senior DBA. It doesn’t make me look like the most qualified person, but it does show I have some knowledge, and I wasn’t bumbling or fumbling around on my own. I had a teacher.
I talked to those things in the interviews I got, and even mentioned them in a couple cover letters. I talked about my software development experience, as it related to the database, not as it solved the problem. My knowledge in solving problems was an aside, or afterthought, but the things I learned about databases while working with data in my application were what I highlighted.
Limit the Number
I know some people might have many resumes, even some specific ones for certain companies. I tried this at one point, but I am not sure it is worth the effort in maintaining them. At most, I might have three resumes right now: DBA, manager, and writer. In the past writer would have been developer or sysadmin, but I only put out resumes for jobs I want to do, and then only the top 2 or 3 positions I’d take.
Life is short. Enjoy it, including your work.

SQL Saturday #63 - The Modern Resume

2011-04-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

I gave this presentation last weekend in Dallas, and it was well received. A quiet crowd, but overall a good talk for me. I had to rush a touch with only an hour to go, and the last part I went through quickly.

I had a couple of interesting questions on resumes. One was how to highlight your skills when you are looking to change jobs. So if you are a programmer and want to be a manager, what do you do? After all, the resume you last used to get a programming job might not make you look like a great candidate as a manager. Multiple resumes can help you here, but don't go crazy. Stick with 2 or 3.

The other question came from a student, of which there were quite a few in the audience. How do you highlight skills without experience. It's hard, but you should have something that leads you to consider this field. Did you have coursework? projects? Interesting articles you've read that inspired you? Showcase what relevant experience you have, no matter how small it might seem, and try to show some passion, some excitement to get the job.

The next presentation for me will be at SQL Saturday #77 in Pensacola on June 4, where I'll have a couple other technical presentations to go with this one.

SQL Saturday #63 PPT

2011-04-03T08:41:00.001-07:00

The PowerPoint deck from my presentation is here if you want it

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Presentations/70959/

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Tips for Speaking

2011-03-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

I've read a few books on speaking, and looked to get feedback from people on what I can do better in my talks. I've learned things, and I think I've improved over time, but there are always ways to get better. I've considered Toastmasters, but time is precious for me right now and that's a night that I can't spare in the coming months. However I do want to get there at some point and have some practice talks.

Recently I saw a great post at The Goal Keeping DBA, from Brian Kelley called Tip on Speaking (and Writing) Well – The Key Idea. It's actually based on a Toastmasters article that Brian has distilled down. He has some great advice on speaking, or writing, and it's worth reading.

It's also similar to the advice I often give authors as an editor. Focus on something and do that well.

Getting Started with Online Networking - Go Slow

2011-03-21T09:31:00.001-07:00

An online social networking community is really like any community in the real world. It has it’s own rules, it’s own tempo, etiquette, and even a rhythm to how it works.

If you walk into a room of people you don’t know and start making comments, annoying people, handing your business card to everyone, or any other disruptive action, chances are you are going to turn most people off. It’s no different in the online world.

The first thing you ought to do is observe what happens in your network, or on the site you are using. Learn how other people react to each other, how they talk, and get a feel for what is appropriate and what is not.

Once you have observed a bit, start slow. Don’t post a dozen questions or thoughts. Post something and see if you get some interaction with people. Ask a question or comment on someone else’s post and slowly start to build a rapport with others.

Just like making a friend in the real world takes time, it takes time online as well. Don’t force it, and don’t rush in. Let the relationships evolve over time and you’ll have a strong network.

Building Your Network Online

2011-03-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

As part of a networking series, I wanted to give you some advice for how to add people to your network online.

Find Friends

I wrote a Getting Started Networking piece awhile back, and it was based on moving your offline network, the real world people you know, to the online medium. It’s a quick way to get started and find people you know.

Note: Don’t start pestering people with tons of requests for them to join your networking site. Start by searching for people you know and then getting connected, friending them, or whatever the term is on your site to link yourself with them.

Find Colleagues

It helps to align yourself, and build bonds with people in your field. Search out your particular career field or profession and find people that do similar jobs. Try to connect with them somehow. Either let them know you are interested in knowing more people in this field, or ask them a question. Develop and ice breaker with them by adding a comment or question that shows you are interested in what they do or know.

Another alternative is to start meeting people in other places. It could be online at some other site, like a forum or discussion board. It could be offline at some event, but participate in the medium, and once you start to know people, ask them if they have a LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. profile.

Join Groups

Many social networking sites have some concept of groups. Facebook has groups and pages you can “like”. LinkedIn has a variety of groups. Twitter has friends and even lists you can look over.

Find some of these that seem to be appropriate for your career and join them. Over time, as you participate in the discussions, you’ll build relationships, and add these people to your network online.

Use Business Cards

Don’t forget that the offline world is a great place to build connections. When you’re out, especially a professional events, and you meet someone, ask them for their online networking links. Ask if you can send them an invite to be part of their network. You won’t get a ton of these, but a network is something you build over time.

Make this Repeatable

The important thing is to regularly work on your network and expand it. When I was early in my career, this sounded like work, like something a salesman constantly does. They do, but you don’t have to attack it in the same manner.

At some point, networking should be easy. It’s a regular habit that you get into, spending a little time after an event, or periodically online, adding people to your network. Reaching out, and forging relationships.

It’s really no different than what we often tell our kids. Just say hi and make friends. That’s all networking really is.

Networking - Build Your Network

2011-03-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

A great post by a friend, Allen White, on how and why to build a personal network. Worth the read: Build Your Personal Network

Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta v3.0 Keynote

2011-03-08T06:38:00.000-08:00

I had the main room keynote at the recent Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta v3.0 in Denver. Jeff Certain & Ben Hoelting had the beginner track keynote, and I was sorry I missed that. I would have liked to see them talk.
However I had enough stress with my own keynote, especially with this being the first time my wife has seen me speak. Despite all my talks over the years, she’s never managed to get to one, usually because of some scheduling issue. My kids have all seen me, and even been on stage, but not her. So she came down, sat in the front row, and had me stressed.
I forgot to record it, which I regret, but here’s the text of the talk. I’ve included the slides in the places where I showed them on screen.

Welcome to the Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta v3.0. This is my third year attending and I am very happy to see this event doing well and even growing. This year there are some new technologies and tracks, like the beginner track where you can get a goo grounding in some technology that you may never have experienced, or don't get the chance ton use at work.
My name is Steve Jones and I started my career, like many of you, by working in a technical field, learning new types of software, and moving from company to company across about ten years. In that time I have watched technology grow and expand in my life, especially this "Internet thing".
One of the most amazing things is how the Internet has now grown from a useful tool in colleges to an essential part of our lives. When I was in college, the Internet was this private network between colleges and the government. We had limited email, only able to contact a few people I knew. There were discussions in newsgroups on Usenet, with only about 500 groups, and there was the barest beginning of the world wide web. I still remember the http protocol being introduced and using Lynx, a text browser, to navigate from page to page on the World Wide Web. I started communicating with 300 baud modems, and I used to watch characters paint across the screen on my computer, getting a page of data in a minute.
Today email is the primary way I contact millions of people and there are tens of thousands of newsgroups and probably just as many forums. One thing that really stands out for me in technology is how I've gone from phones with dials and cords

to this shiny new iPhone that I love, at least now that it's on the Verizon network.

Now my phone downloads a hundred times that much data almost anywhere in the country in a fraction of the time and I use my phone much more often for data transfer than I use it for voice.

As my career advanced I learned one very interesting thing. I could advance in my field, find better jobs, and grow my salary, just by working on my skills. This is probably true in many other fields, but it seems that the pace of change in technology and the constant influx of new products to work with means we can do this faster than in other fields. We truly have the ability to dramatically affect our careers for the better with a little effort on our part.
This is no different than the advancement that

doctors,

lawyers,

or any other professional can achieve by learning more about their craft and improving their skills. Unlike those other fields, I think we are a little closer to a meritocracy in technology. In those jobs your "connections" and network seem to matter a bit more than your skills. Those connections are still important in technology, but not nearly as much. If you demonstrate some skill and talent, it can make up for the lack of connections in many cases. At least up to a point.
Today I want to talk to you about your career, and professional development. Ely Lucas organized this event and when he asked me to do this keynote, he told me two things. One was that I needed to fill 60 minutes, and the other was that I should talk about professional development. Don't worry, I won't keep you here for 60 whole minutes. I'll leave you a few more minutes to go get a cup of coffee or find a restroom before the first session, but I do hope I leave you with some good reasons to continue to work on your own professional development after today. Or maybe even inspire you to motivate others back at your job to do the same.

During my career, I have learned that taking control of my career, and taking responsibility for my career, has allowed me to find better jobs, advance to more senior positions, and make more money at my jobs than I would ever have thought possible. It took me many years to realize that, but now it seems that each month more and more technical professionals are realizing that there is value in making professional development a regular habit. They are also asking for help in doing so. That's one of the reasons that so many of us are here today at the Tech Trifecta. We are here to work on our careers.

Four years ago, my business partner and I started a free event called SQL Saturday. Its a one day free training event format for SQL Server professionals and there have been over 60 events in the last four years, with more scheduled all across the country this year. As these events have matured, its been interesting to see that more and more of these events include some Professional Development talks, sometimes having 2 or 3 sessions during the day. I suspect before long we will even see a professional development track.

A few weeks ago, SQL Saturday #66 took place in Colorado Springs. One of the great things that Chris Shaw organized at that event were dedicated networking exercises. There was time scheduled in between the various technical sessions and it was used to help people meet and network with other data professionals in an organized fashion. Not only were they learning technical information that day, but they were also building their network and working on their soft skills. It was fun for everyone, and inspiring to me to see people not only taking a Saturday away from their families to learn something technical, but also willing to work on those other skills that could help them improve their career.
It's great that so many of you are doing the same thing here today, taking a Saturday out of your life to come down here and learn something. You could be skiing,

relaxing with your family,

working around the house,

or doing any number of other things

that would be a break from your job. But you're here, and you ought to be proud of the fact that you are here, making an effort to improve yourself.

Why spend time on professional development? After all you are already here today, on a Saturday, trying to learn something. That's great, but in a time when so many employers are not making any contribution to your career, I think you ought to be making a dedicated and organized plan for working on your career. I've got three reasons for you that I'm going to talk about and hopefully convince you that it's worth the effort. These reasons are employment, freedom, and purpose, and I'm going to talk about what I mean with each one of them.
Employment.
My son bought a science fiction book recently called The Unincorporated Man. It's a science fiction book about the future, and the story follows a cryogenically frozen billionaire who wakes up to find that the world has changed. He was frozen in a world like ours and awakens 300 years in the future to a world where everyone in the future is incorporated. At birth each person is incorporated, and just like in business today, the corporation of each person is divided up into shares. These "shares" are owned partially by you, partially by your parents, partially by the government and, here is the kicker, often by investors. You usually sell shares to pay for education or to borrow money, and then those investors that own your shares have a say in how you live. Your salary pays your dividends and your value is based on how the world perceives your performance. Those investors might force you to take jobs you don't like, limit your vacation, or something else in an effort to increase your value, and hence, their return. People end up spending much of their lives working to try and "buy back" enough of their shares to become free. Once you can own 51% of yourself, you are essentially free and in control of your own life. It's a great read, and a fascinating potential future. It's also a little scary.
When I talk about employment, I want you to think of your employment as you working for your own corporation. Unlike in the book, however, you own all your own shares. This means that you are the person that your corporation ultimately has to answer to. If that's the case, then do you, as a shareholder, think your corporation is being run the way you want it? Is it performing as well as it can? Is it making the decisions that will allow it to be more successful in the future?
Right now all of you should really be considering yourself as running your own corporation that employs you. In today's world, you really are working for yourself, and selling your services to your employer. Your skills are your products, and your salary is your revenue.
Some of you might get lucky enough to contract with one employer for your career, but the majority of us won't. The majority of us will end up working for a variety of companies during the course of our lives. Our "corporation" will subcontract to many other companies over its life.

We might be loyal to the company that is paying us, just as we might be loyal to Safeway or King Soopers for our groceries or to any other business for their products. As long as we feel we are getting a fair business transaction, we will be loyal. But when it is not a good deal for both sides, then we ought to be able to take our business elsewhere. If you have the same attitude with your job, then you can more objectively view the business deal with your employer, and look to take your business elsewhere when the value for your services isn't there.

And if we consider ourselves self employed, then shouldn't we be working to make sure that we make the "deals" that are best for our own corporation? Shouldn't we be trying to grow our corporation and increase the revenue we get for our products? Or make our products better? Shouldn't we be doing business with the companies that we want to do business with?

When you interview, you are making a pitch for the company to buy your services, and your skills. Just like a salesman visiting your company selling any other product. You ought to view it that way, and also take the attitude that you need to interview the company to be sure it's the place you want to work. Make sure it's the company that you want to do business with. You want your decision to take a job to be a win-win situation.
You might need a job, and need to take one quickly, but you should try not to put yourself in this position. When one side is desperate in a transaction, they get taken advantage of. that's how bad business deals get done between corporations, and it's also how people end up in crappy jobs.

If you spend time working on your career, improving your skills, and taking the responsibility to ensure that you are building a better product, and a better career, you will have more choices in where you work, and what you do. Hopefully you also minimize, or even eliminate, the time you spend without a job. And hopefully you have the chance to pick and choose the work that interests you most.

You will have more opportunities, and that's all we can really ask for in a free market. The opportunity for us to do business with who we want.
Finding better employment, by your definition of what that means, is the first reason you should spend time on professional development.

Freedom.

We live in a free country, with certain inalienable rights listed in our Declaration of Independence

and guaranteed by the US Constitution.

Free speech, freedom of religion and more. In a capitalist society, as we have in the US, we also have the freedom to choose to study what interests us, pick a trade, and then pursue it. We can also careers change at any time, or even move to live in another part of the world. We can choose to start our own business if we like, or even stop working if we can afford it. We have a lot of freedom with regards to how we choose to earn a living, and while there are some rules and regulations about how you go about practicing some crafts, those are mostly built around ensuring that someone cannot misrepresent themselves about their qualifications.

Medical doctors are licensed to that know they have had some amount of training in their specialty and passed some basic competency tests. No guarantees they will make you feel better, but at least you know they have some training.
As I mentioned earlier, technology is very close to a meritocracy. Your skills in many ways will define what work you get to do, what projects you are assigned, and who is willing to hire you. The better your skills, the better the job, the more complex the work, and the higher the pay. I know we always seem to find people that don't seem to be qualified working in technology, but that’s OK. To me that's an opportunity that person to learn and grow, or for someone that is more skilled to get that job.

Professional development time is mostly your own time. Your employer might fund some efforts that he or she finds valuable for your position. You might get SAN training, or a class on the next version of Exchange from your employer, and that's fine. However your PD time is your own, and you should spend it learning about one of two things.
Learn what will advance you in your career field, or
Learn about the field you would like to move into
You have the freedom to choose how you spend your Professional Development time, and the time you spend on Professional Development gives you the freedom to move further into your field, or move into a different field. The freedom you have in choosing how to spend your Professional Development time lets you follow your heart. You have the opportunity to learn about anything that interests you, inside of your field or outside of it. You have the freedom to look for work for another company.
The older I get, the more valuable freedom is to me. I realize that Life is short, and I don't want to spend my life working on a career, or in a job, that I don't enjoy.
Note: At this point, I deviated from the script. I told people that it’s rare that you get the chance to be on stage, giving a talk with loved ones in the audience and so I took a moment to recognize my wife in the audience and thank her for all the support that she’s given me in my career. She got a nice round of applause.

My wife works in the mobility/cellular phone industry right now, but she really wants to train horses for a living. In the short term, which might be the next few years, she's a little "stuck" in her current job. However we spend time and money every year improving her skills, and I support her in doing the "professional development" she needs to do in order to be a horse trainer some day. I know she'll get there at some point, and I am sure she'll be ready for her next career with all the work and training she is doing now.

Ten years ago, I started a publishing business. I was a database guy and technical writer, but I wanted to grow my career, get better jobs, raises, become better known in my field and earn some extra money. That grew into a full time job, and has allowed me the freedom to work from home, and set my own schedule. I ski over 20 days a year, often during the work week. I spend a lot of time with my kids, taking them to and picking them up from school. I had the freedom to direct my business as I saw fit, and also, more importantly, turn down deals that I didn't like.
I spent a lot of my PD time over the years at night, on weekends, like my wife does now, building skills for a side business. Along the way that work helped me get better jobs and eventually gave me more freedom in my life than I ever imagined.
You can earn your own freedom as well. Just make the effort.

Purpose

Purpose is an interesting notion. I read about this in the book Drive and at first didn't seem to think this had a place in business, or in managing's one career. After all, purpose typically seems to be reserved for those people serving a higher power,

or working at a non-profit organization or towards some "greater good" in the world.

This used to conjure up images of idealists to me, people working for Greenpeace

or the Sierra Club.

Not to denigrate those organizations, which the work they find to be important, but I used to think that purpose mattered to those people for whom the profit motive is not a big consideration.
People like monks copying books in ancient times,

the police or firemen working for low pay,

or even the people working at the local food bank for little or no salary.

These were the people that were working towards a purpose in life.
However now I'm not sure that's true. As I have thought about this more and more, I was convinced that most people need to feel that their work has some purpose in order for them to really enjoy the work.

Why do you look for a new job? Sometimes it's money, but studies have shown that when people look for a new job it's often because there is usually something missing in their current job. They don't like the people, or don't feel challenged. There is some root cause other than money that causes people to look for a change. However there's another cause that often comes up. People don't think that their work matters, or doesn't have a "purpose". They don't feel that their efforts are appreciated by some wider group of people. They feel their work is the digital equivalent of someone carrying a clipboard around all day without actually accomplishing anything.

There are definitely times I have felt that way, and wondered if I was just pushing bits around the wires without making any kind of difference at my company. I'm sure many of you feel that way as well, and to me, that's a sign that I am either not working on something that matters to me, and the company doesn't value my work. It doesn't really matter which one it is missing, because this is a sign to me that I need to think about making a change in my life.
I would argue it's the same for most of you. You need to feel useful with a purpose or you won't enjoy your job. Purpose can be as simple as ensuring your servers run with a high uptime, or you have built a useful process at work. It can be building software that millions of people use, or maybe just a web page you created for your Mom. Purpose is something you define in your career in the way that gives your work some meaning.
That purpose will also change over time as You will grow and change, even evolve as you grow up and go through your career. The things that are important at 16 will not be important to you are 22. And those things Will not be important at 28, 40, or 65.

At 16, where you need any job just to earn money for gas or to pay for dinner on a date, you take any job. You don't really consider this a career, but you never know what will happen.

At 22, after you've made some investment you starting a career, after college, a stint in the military, or just having worked for a few years, you want to get a job that earns more money, but also starts to develop a career.

At 28, you'll have some experience, maybe starting a family, and you might look at a different kind of job than you 22. Maybe you want more money, but maybe you also want better hours. Perhaps you have a child, or three, and your priorities change.

At 40, you might be reconsidering your choice of career.

A midlife crisis isn't always about your choice of spouse. There are many people that start to rethink the work they have chosen to do in their life. I'd like to think that no one is so invested or trapped by their career at 40 that they can't change, especially in technology. If you make an effort to work on the career you want, whether that's in your field or not, you can look to move into a new area. Hopefully at this age you have learned enough about yourself to make a better decision about what might provide you not only with a paycheck, but also a purpose that is important to you.

At 60, you might find purpose is becoming even more important as the knowledge of your mortality sinks in.

It might be the birth of grand kids that remind you that your own children are adults.

It might be the loss of friends, or even idols,

at an earlier than expected age. Purpose often becomes even more important as you get older, with less of a need for a high paycheck, a lot of life ahead, and less responsibilities to your immediate family. This is the time when many people find they have a desire to give back to their world,

their community, which has helped them get through life to this point.

At any age, at any time in your life when you find your priorities changing, you will often find that you are looking for something else in your life. It's a new chapter in your life when a new purpose becomes important to you. That doesn't have to be some higher purpose that serves mankind. It could be that higher purpose, but it could also be satisfaction from helping your company build better products and earning more revenue. It can be the effort you make to help someone else you work with, making their job better, easier, or more enjoyable. It could be the change that makes your life better for you. Whatever it is, having purpose makes your work more enjoyable, and often more meaningful and it's up to you to find what gives you that purpose.

The opportunities and chances for you to pursue your purpose are sometimes the result of luck, but often they are the result of hard work. That hard work is the professional development that you do inside, and outside, of the job that pays you.
Professional Development
There is no formula for professional development that I can give you to spell out exactly what steps to take, in what order, and how often. No book can give you a recipe, or a process, or a checklist that tells you how to grow your career. It's different for everyone and just like parenting, it's a skill you learn as you go along.

The advice I can give you to help you build your own plan is simple: do more of what works, and less of what doesn't.
Try to develop the skills in the areas that interest you, or will help you advance your career in some way. Pick the challenges that you find interesting, work on the problems that you think make a difference. Choose the things that have a positive impact on finding the job, gaining the freedom, or fulfilling the purpose that is important to you.
Make sure you tackle your professional development at a pace that suits your life at that time. That pace will change throughout your life, growing and shrinking as the other parts of your life become more or less important. Remember, we work to live, we don't live to work.
If you can do more Professional Development this year, do it. If you need to do less, then do less. If you want to stay in your field, learn how to get better at your craft. If you want to move to another field, spend time building your skills in that area. You get to set the schedule that works for you.
Make a plan and work on it, but don't be afraid to change that plan, and don't be afraid to question your decisions periodically. Don't change every week or month, but a few times a year question yourself. Enlist the advice and opinions of your trusted friends and family. Consider their opinions and then make, or modify, your plans.
Life is short, too short to do the things you don't enjoy. However life should also be long and enjoyable. You ought to be investing in yourself for the future, finding the time to build the career that allows you to enjoy your time on this planet.
Thank you for listening, and thanks for coming to the Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta, v3. Enjoy your day, and I hope you learn something to move you forward in your career.
Steve Jones

Why brand if you don't need a new job?

2011-02-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

The last time I presented The Modern Resume, I was a bit rushed, and I had the comment from someone afterwards that all the advice I had given could be used in a performance review. That's totally true, and I had a small bullet to that effect, but due to the time constraints, I didn't emphasize it.

If you can work for the same company for 20, 30, 40 years, good for you. Not everyone can, and perhaps not even the majority of people can. However even if you do, you will have reviews periodically where someone will look to rate your performance, perhaps help you decide where to grow your career within the company, and likely decide on how much of a raise you get.

Documenting the work you do, volunteering within the company, blogging about the things you've learned, noting your accomplishments that have benefited the company, will help you negotiate and debate the validity of a raise. It's always a debate, and the more evidence you can provide that justifies your increasing value, the more likely you can convince someone you deserve a raise. This applies as well to a promotion or a change of job, which may be something you want, even within the same company.

However as you blog, document, etc., you want to be sure that you are doing this in a way that shows your value to the company, or maybe the value you can bring by moving into a new position.

The Modern Resume Live in 2011

2011-02-01T11:50:00.000-08:00

I'll be presenting The Modern Resume in quite a few places this spring. Here are some events and dates if you are interested:

Feb 5 - Cleveland, OH - SQL Saturday #60
Feb 12 - Colorado Springs, CO - SQL Saturday #66
Mar 6 - Denver, CO - Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta v3.0
Mar 26 - Chicago, IL - SQL Saturday #67
Apr 2 - Dallas, TX - SQL Saturday #63

If you want to see it, let me know about your area. If you make any of these events, please come say hi.

Blogging–Peer Reviews

2011-01-24T10:13:00.000-08:00

One piece of advice that I often give people for their resumes is to have two other people review their work. One in their area of expertise, and one outside of it. The same thing should happen for your blog entries.

As you blog, even if you are doing it privately as a portfolio and not as a public expression of your knowledge, you ought to find two people that you trust and ask them to review some posts. Let them read your work and give you opinions about the way you write, the impression you make, etc. If you can find more than two people, send them different posts, and get feedback.

Writing is a skill and it takes practice, but to improve, it also takes feedback.

A blog is a great way to show off your knowledge, and a way to improve your communication skills, but only if you work on it and find a way to clearly express your thoughts. If you end up building a blog that it poorly written, hard to read, and does not convey your knowledge effectively, then it could do more harm than good.

Blogging–Tags and Categories

2011-01-17T09:29:00.000-08:00

Organizing your blog posts is important, and it makes it easier for someone to find out what you think about certain topics. I have not been extremely consistent in how I have done this in the past, but I am working to amend this.
Here is some advice that has helped me as I’ve learned a little about categories and tags.

What to Use

In general, I like to use categories for large sections of the site, almost like menus as they are in Wordpress. So if you have a blog, but also presentations, the categories allow you to separate those parts of the site.
I prefer tags since I think they are more flexible, and allow a better way of filtering your posts. If you have to pick one, go with tags, but keep in mind that your platform may not support these.

I would advise you to think about this a bit, as changing this over time can be painful, as I’ve learned.

Communicating Better

2011-01-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

I wrote an editorial that was published today on Building Better Communication Skills and it talks about the need to improve your communication skills. Specifically I talk about writing, since that is the type of communication that we seem to do the most often.

I recommend blogging as a way to improve your skills. To me, blogging is a no-brainer, and it's easy. It can take some time and effort, but you don't have to feel pressured to get it done at a particular time. I'd recommend that you do it at least every other week, but when you write inside that two weeks is up to you. You can do it late at night, you can do it on the weekends, at lunch, and even in a bunch of separate sessions. Unlike something like Toastmasters, you have more flexibility.

I have a whole set of posts on blogging, with different ideas and techniques. I would urge you to consider setting up a blog and working on improving your writing skills. You'll use them often in your career, and being able to clearly express your opinions, thoughts, and knowledge, is very important to growing your career.

Looking Forward to the New Year

2011-01-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

What do you want to do in 2011? Now is the time that you should be looking forward in the new year, and setting some goals for your career. Think about the types of things that you would like to accomplish in your career, and write them down.

As you think about your career, consider whether you will look for a new job or not, whether you want a promotion, or if you would like to move into a new career area. Then think about what steps you can take to move in those directions and set those as goals. Then set some metrics that you can use to measure if you are moving in the direction that you want.

Just be sure that you also set reminders to check on your resume or online profile and update it as your grow your career.

A Tale of Four Blogs

2010-12-27T10:47:00.000-08:00

How do you build content from ideas? Here’s a short look at what I’ve done.

I ran into this blog at 37 Signals. Read it and note the content, it’s short, basically a quote, so with that in mind…

I wrote a post on this blog called “What You Practice” in which I said that you can gain some self-awareness for your blog and career.

I wrote a personal post called “What You Practice” in which I noted that life is short, and working on what you write about is important.

In my business blog, “What You Practice” talks about the need to think about money, in keeping with the original idea of the 37 Signals post.

I actually even got another post for this blog on “Tag Clouds” from this idea. I had been meaning to write it, but this inspired me.

When you have an idea, think about it from different perspectives, and look at the ways that you can talk about what occurred to you. It doesn’t have to be something you read, but it could be something that you came up with yourself, but an idea ought to be able to spawn a few different posts.

What You Practice

2010-12-13T10:21:00.000-08:00

I saw a very interesting blog at 37 Signals on this quote
“The things you do more often are the things you’re going to get good at. …”
It’s by Jason Fried from an interview on the new workplace for the new normal.
One of the reasons that I highly recommend tag clouds for your blog, is that tag clouds let you see what you are really writing about. The stuff you write about often is likely the stuff that interests you. Whether that’s a part of your job or not, your passion will often shine through over time with a set of topics that you often write about.
What does that mean? It means that maybe you want to refocus your career, or training, in the areas that drive you. The largest items in your tag cloud.

2011 Presentations

2010-12-03T18:35:00.001-08:00

I’ve submitted the Modern Resume to a few places in 2011. If you’re interested in seeing it live, here are places it will likely be given.

SQL Saturday #45, Louisville, KY - Jan 22, 2011
SQL Saturday #60, Cleveland OH - Feb 5, 2011
SQL Saturday #66, Colorado Springs, CO, Feb 12, 2011
Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta, Denver, CO - Mar 5, 2011
SQL Saturday #67, Chicago, IL - March 26, 2011
SQL Saturday #63, Dallas, TX - Apr 2, 2011

The Modern Resume Presentation

2010-12-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

I’m always tweaking the presentation, adding new things, and after my last event in New York,

I decided to try and be more consistent with this, so I’m saving the current version of the abstract here so that I can easily find it, and get feedback on what people think of the description.

The Abstract

Learn practical ways in this session that you can use to build your career brand and stand out from the crowd. Steve Jones, editor of SQLServerCentral, shares some of the ways in which he has successfully grown his career over the years. Steve will present tips and tricks for using social networking sites, blogging, volunteering, leadership, and more to your advantage. He also has a few resume hints to help you find a great job that fits you.

My Bio

Steve Jones has been working with SQL Server since 1991 and been a DBA in a variety of large and small companies and industries. In 2001 Steve founded SQLServerCentral with two partners and has been publishing technical articles and facilitating discussions among SQL Server professionals ever since. He currently is the full time editor of SQLServerCentral, owned by Red Gate Software.

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/way0utwest

Presenting in 2011

2010-11-30T08:36:00.001-08:00

I’ve submitted a few sessions to events in 2011. I’d like to expand outside of the SQL world, but life gets in the way. I do have a life outside of this stuff, and I need to remember that.

So I’ve submitted to these places for The Modern Resume.

There are a few more I’m looking at as well:

Resume Templates

2010-11-29T12:28:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me recently if I had a resume template I would recommend. I didn’t and on one one hand I wish I had, but on the other hand you want to stand out, so why use what lots of others might use?
I think that there are a ton of templates out there for how to structure a resume, and any of them can work. I’ll add a few blog posts about my tips and hints, but the first thing I’d do is suggest that you pick a clean template that looks good. When someone gets your resume in the email, or in Word/HTML, you want it to look clean and not cluttered. If you find a template and it’s a pain to read, or look at when you’re 2 feet from the monitor, find another.
Don’t give someone a reason to send your resume to the recycle bin before they even read it.

Disclosing Salary

2010-11-22T12:15:00.000-08:00

Do you disclose your salary information? You might need to at some point, but when should you not talk about salary? I have a few thoughts here on the different times when you can disclose it.

Blog (public disclosure)

Should you disclose your salary before you even speak to a company? No. You have nothing to gain here and plenty to lose. Friends might get jealous, or laugh. Potential employers might think they can low-ball you, or not even bother to interview you because you make too much.

This also makes it harder to ask for a substantial raise in switching companies.

Recruiter

Personally I have found most recruiters to be salesman that are filling a position on their way to the next position. Even when I have run into very professional recruiters, they often come from another business, like technology, and they might go back into that business.

When a recruiter asks me, I usually give them a range where I’d like to be, but let them know I’m flexible. For example, I have in the past said that I would like to make about 85k a year, but that I might take a lower paying opportunity.

If pressed, I would politely decline. The next company is going to pay me to do a job, not try to match my previous company’s salary. If they think I can do the job, then they should pay in their range.

If a recruiter wants to know which positions they can submit me for, I’d say for them to let me know the salary range for each position when it comes up and I’ll decide. Stay firm here.

Phone Interview

If you get a phone interview, then you know your resume, or brand, was good enough to pique their interest. If you are asked about your current, or previous salary, I give the same answer I give the recruiter.

This is important for two reasons. One is that you want to match up with what the recruiter says. The other is that you don’t know what the company is looking to pay, and giving away your information first means that you might end up giving the impression that you are cheap (some managers have budgets) or out of their range.

My technique here is usually to counter with a question on their range for the position. At this point, I should then determine if I can work in the range. I had a position in the past where the range was low and I told them so. They manager liked me, and was impressed, so he said that he might be able to get another 5-10k. I agreed to go interview then.

Remember that companies are looking for good people, and if you are talented in your area, you have more power. If you need a job, any job, perhaps you should find something to make ends meet while you look for a career position. Ultimately you won’t be happy working for way below you think you are worth. Even in the short term (< 1 year).

If pressed, I tell the manager that usually I discuss salary if I get to the point that we are both interested in the position. If I have a range, I’ll decide if I want to continue.

If no one asks me, I always ask here for a salary range.

Live Interview

If you get a live interview, you’re on the short list. When I was starting my career, this short list could have easily been 15 people. However in the last decade, typically companies don’t have time to interview 15 people. Most don’t look at 10 if they find 3-4 good candidates. It’s a hassle, and a waste of time.

Again, I try not to discuss salary if we aren’t close to offering me a job. If they press, I might joke about being on the short list. That can help break the ice, and by this time you should have an idea of the salary range.

However at this point I will disclose my range if the company is trying to decide how much they need to offer. I will typically say that I was making in the “low 90s” at xx position and the “mid 80s” at yy position. Your exact salary isn’t critical, but really the company is trying to decide:

Can they afford you?
How cheaply can they afford you?
Will you be happy with their offer?
Will you disrupt employee morale if you are too high on their scale?

The Job Offer

If they offer you the job, then they ought to attach a salary to the offer. If they offer you a job and want to discuss salary, again, get their range first. They have no good reason not to provide you a range (it should be public knowledge for employees), and if they refuse, I’d move on. Likely money will be a fight, both with COLA raises and promotions.

They aren’t likely to verify your salary, so if you must start discussing this, I’d use ranges again, as I did in the Live Interview. Give them an idea.

Never Say Never

As the saying goes, never say never because there will be an exception. However in the US, I don’t think you ever need to disclose your exact salary. The HR/Accounting people and the IRS will know, but no one else needs to know.

Discussing money is hard, but you need to learn to discuss it in a roundabout way in order to further your career. Use ranges and generalities and you should be fine.

Two final things: one, be honest. I wouldn’t say I was making in the mid 80s if my salary was $77k. That’s not right, and if someone finds out, this is a lie. Second, taking a job because it has the most money in spite of other issues is a bad idea. I’ve never met anyone that thought this was the best decision for them in hindsight.

Life’s too short to take a crappy job.

Career Advice – Play Your Own Game

2010-11-15T08:29:00.001-08:00

I get asked this question fairly often. How do I find time to write so much, work on SQL Server, have a family, a ranch, etc. It seems that people often want to blog as much as me, or speak, or something else.

It’s natural, I often look at others and think, why can’t I do what he does, or think that I should do what someone does.

I don’t really want to be like someone, however. I don’t want to live another person’s life. I like my life. What I really would like to do is improve my life in some way.

It’s easy to get caught up in trying to emulate someone that’s successful, but that’s the wrong thing. Really you want to take a piece of what someone else does and incorporate it into your life. We all look at the world differently and what might seem to work for someone else, or make them successful isn’t what wil work for you.

Or work in your life.

I try to stress with the Modern Resume that you want to find what works in your life, what you can handle, and what won’t become another stressor. Learn to do what works for you, in your life, and incorporate that.

Don’t try to blog like me, or speak as often as I do, or write a book because someone you admire in this business has done it. Do it because it’s something that will work for you, and work at the appropriate time in your life.

Play your own game.

Do You Need a Mentor?

2010-11-08T03:45:00.000-08:00

When I was young, I never thought I did. I was sure that I knew what was best for my career and that I could figure things out by studying more, reading more, and learning more. Probably I had some trusts “issues” somewhere in my past, but I didn’t want to put my career in anyone else’s hands.

Over the years I’ve doled out advice to a number of people when they’ve asked, and they’ve come back to thank me. I even was in conversation with a few groups this year and two separate people (different people/places) spoke out in the group, crediting me as a mentor to them.

That surprised me, but it made me stop and think about what I’d asked them and how it had influenced them, based on what they told me. Apparently I had been a bit of a mentor. When someone recently asked me if I’d be a mentor to them, listening and offering advice, I agreed.

Mentoring

Those of us with kids try to mentor them. By definition, mentoring is a more senior person (in experience) providing advice or counsel to a more junior person. This has nothing to do with age, and a mentor in one area might be a mentoree in another.

Looking back I think my career would have been more successful if I had had someone to help guide me, bounce ideas off, and get advice about the directions to take. I’ve had a good career, but I felt like I’ve stumbled in many ways. Fortunately my wife has helped, and my business partner has taught my a lot in the last 6-8 years.

If you are looking to grow your career, I would look around and think about someone that you trust and have a good relationship with that is a more senior person. It could be your boss, a colleague, or even a neighbor. Ask them if they would help you, and see what they say.

It's about opportunity

2010-11-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

There are no guarantees.

There isn't anything that I can tell you, or anything that you can do that will guarantee you a better job, or even just a job. All of the advice on branding in various ways, networking, it's all about one thing: opportunities.

The better your brand, and the more visible you are, the more opportunities you will get. Whether someone finds you or a friend recommends you, these are just opportunities that you can try to take advantage of.

What you do from there is up to you.

World Wide Tech Day

2010-10-30T17:05:00.001-07:00

I just finished my presentation for World Wide Tech Day 2010. I did The Modern Resume, and I think it went well. My timing was OK, finishing right at the 0:55 mark. The presentation is really more of a 75 minute one, but I ran a little quick over Livemeeting, without many questions and without the visual feedback, it’s easy to go a bit quicker.

They had asked me to do this in August, and I agreed, saving this day, and here it was.

Now I need another beer to relax the throat.

Vote for me at the SQL Rally

2010-10-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

I submitted a pre-conference seminary proposal along with Chris Shaw to the SQL Rally event that is taking place in May of 2011. Our proposal is a half day pre-con, likely costing around $50-70, in which we'll talk about how you can find your dream job.

You can vote for me here: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22BD59JCQBT

The process is interesting in that a committee reviewed the proposals and then the ones approved were put out to the community for a vote. We don't get the results in real time, and I'm still semi-suspicious that PASS might not override the community vote, but I think this is a good chance for people to influence what they'll see.

The Professional Development sessions are located here, and there are some great ones. Kevin Kline and Joe Webb both are friends and both would present great sessions. You can't go wrong voting for any of the three. Whatever your feelings, please vote: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22BD59JCQBT

Our abstract:

The job market is becoming more and more competitive all the time as employees become more and more efficient at accomplishing more work and employers look to reduce their headcounts. This session will present the attendee with practical tips, tricks, and skills for enhancing their marketability. They will learn how to better use networking to their advantage, both online and offline, develop a technical blog, and build a better resume. Once someone has an interview, we provide them with techniques to prepare for the interview, and how to not only impress the potential employer, but also assess if this is the job they really desire.

Take Home Skills:

A technical blog not only shows your expertise but your dedication to your trade. Come out of this session learning what works well with a blog and how to leverage it in the job search.
Does anyone hire without researching a candidate online? Learn how to use the internet to your advantage.
Come away with a method you can use to see how well you and an opportunity match up.
Spend time learning the do's and don'ts of a resume. Bring your resume along with you for an opportunity to have it reviewed.
Interviews are the decision point in most employment decisions. Make sure you are not making one of the common mistakes that will eliminate you from the running.

Career Warfare - Book Review

2010-10-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

I picked up Career Warfare on the recommendation of a friend that had seen the Modern Resume presentation. I grabbed it as an e-book and have been reading it for the last few months, at a fairly slow pace (for me).

I often read a book in a week, but in the case of this one, I would read part of a chapter, and spend a day or so thinking about it. Digesting the information, and seeing how it might be applicable to my career, and my brand.

The author, David D’Alessandro rose to CEO of John Hancock Insurance, and you have to keep that in mind. The book is written as a tool for how you might advance your career in corporate America, and it includes lessons for upper management, many of which don’t apply to most of us. Items like dealing with the press aren’t something the average person needs to think about.

However there is some great advice in there about how you should grow your career, and the impact that you have on your career based on your actions.

I highly recommend it, and there are a couple of great pieces of advice in there. Most importantly, you are always building your brand. Slowly, surely, but every day you go to work, or interact with people professionally, you are building your brand. I like that he stresses honesty and integrity as well.

There are some things I don’t necessarily agree with, like not bringing your spouse to social events, or not drinking at all, but if you are attempting to rise to the C-level ranks, perhaps that’s good advice.

Who’s in your A Network

2010-10-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

I was talking networking with a friend recently and we were talking about how useful networking can be, how to maintain it, and how to use it to your advantage. All good topics, but topics for another day.

One of the topics that we mentioned was how you classify the people in your network. After some debate, we came up with the A, B, C classification for different groups. I’ll talk about the A Network in this post, and reserve the B and C groups for another post.

The A Network

The people that are closest to you, your “best friends”, the people that you can almost certainly count on for some professional help, these are the people in your “A” network.

Typically this is a small group that you start your networking with, likely informally. The people you work with, or used to work with, and would almost certainly do any of the following:

Answer a phone call from
Accept a meeting
Ask to help you find a job
Ask for a reference
Meet socially
Agree to work with again
Have regular contact with

It’s not definite that all of these are true, but they’re very likely. These are the closest, most trustworthy, most valued people you know in your career. It’s possible that you have a great mentor, or boss or subordinate that you don’t want to know socially or work with again, but they would have to be someone you know well and trust with your career.

How large can this group be? I would think that your A network is in the 2-15 person range. Maybe slightly larger, but typically you can’t maintain tight relationships or networking with people over time. I would guess for most people, the A network is less than 10 people.

My A network is really composed of probably 6 or 7 people. These are the people I ask for references, that I can count on helping me if I need help or advice, and that I trust. Not that I don’t trust people in my B network, but I’m just not as tight with them.

Who’s in your A network? It might be worth making a list here, and making sure you continue to nurture these relationships over time. And if they’re really in your A network, you won’t mind doing that.

Speaking Ideas - Plan to End

2010-10-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

Over the years I’ve seen probably hundreds of technical presentations. I’ve seen good ones, bad ones, on all sorts of topics, many of which I didn’t completely understand. However a good speaker still leads me down the path of allowing me to connect the dots, or enjoy the talk, even if I don’t know exactly what he or she is discussing.

One issue that I often encounter, however, is that speakers tend to run up until time is out and don’t leave time for questions, or not enough time. I’ll see the next speaker coming in and waiting, and unsure of how to interrupt. Speakers get rushed, and they try to slip a lot of content in the last 5-10 minutes.

A suggestion that I have is that as a speaker, plan for 45-50 minutes of content for an hour presentation. I think the worry for most speakers is that people are expecting an hour of content and so you have to deliver an hour.

That’s not necessarily true. I know some people might be disappointed in 30 minutes of material, but if you end at 45 minutes and allow 15 minutes for questions, they’ll be satisfied. They’ll learn something, they can ask questions, and if there are no questions, they can go have a few minutes to relax, check email, or network with others before the next session.

Plan to end early. If you have too much material, look to cut things out, or build a second, more advanced presentation that can follow on from this one.

People are talking about you

2010-09-27T03:26:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a friend give a presentation on getting a job recently. In the presentation, Chris Shaw, the speaker, mentioned my Modern Resume presentation, which was cool, but he also said something interesting in his talk.

He said that social networking is huge, and you can choose not to participate, but even if you don’t, people will talk about you.

I think that’s very true, and I caution people to be aware of what others might be saying about you. You never know when a coworker, a friend, or maybe a no-a-friend-at-all might post something about you. You never know when a particular person asks about you, your job habits, attitude, skills, or something else in their network.

People will talk about you, and not necessarily online. It might be offline, and the best way that you can help ensure that you are aware of what people say is to be involved in networks. It could be social networks, but maybe you just want to touch base with your own network, trying to keep in regular contact with 10-20 people that could let you know if they hear anything about you.

You won’t know everything that is said about you, but the more you participate in some type of networking, the more likely you are to hear what is being said publically.

The Modern Resume Presentation - Kansas City, MO

2010-09-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

I’ll be at SQL Saturday #53 in the Cerner Corporation Riverport Campus on Oct 2, 2010 giving the Modern Resume presentation. It’s free to attend (with an optional small charge for lunch.

Come see me if you are interested.

Branding Is a Double Edged Sword

2010-09-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

Anything in life that has a huge reward also has the potential to be a huge risk or liability as well. If you do something that could be perceived as a great achievement, keep in mind that if you don’t succeed, that could be viewed negatively.

Don’t let that completely deter you from trying to build your brand since a failure could also be presented as a learning experience. As I heard on Star Trek one time, “…it was a mistake, and there’s not anyone among us that’s not been young enough to make one.”

Sometimes there’s something you do that could be perceived as both at the same time, depending on the person’s point of view. That happened to me recently, and it was a good learning experience.

In my career I’ve been outspoken at times, espousing opinions and thoughts that can be controversial. That has worked well for me since many people have enjoyed my writing and it causes them to think, or even inspires them to do something. That’s the sharp side of the sword that is my virtual pen.

However expressing strong opinions also offends some people. It upsets them, and they can take it personally. That’s the other edge of my virtual pen, and it’s just as sharp.

I was attempting to obtain a new position awhile back and a number of people had to approve my application. They didn’t, expressing the idea that I might not work well with others since I am such a strong personality.

In this case my “brand” held me back, and it was a little painful. However it made me go back and re-examine who I am. I looked at how I present my opinions, what I’ve written, and how I deal with people. I came to the conclusion that I can be a bit overbearing at times, and maybe write with too much emotion, a little too “raw” at times with my thoughts.

However that’s who I am, and I am comfortable with that. People have come to trust me because I tend to call things as I see them. I don’t write for effect, I don’t put forth opinions to get a reaction, but I write what I really think and feel.

I can temper some of my language and the way I write, and I will look to be more careful, but ultimately I learned something about myself, and I learned that I have to live with the consequences of that.

Branding is still a good idea, in my opinion, since the benefits outweigh the negatives. You’ll never please everyone, and you should not get too upset if someone doesn’t like your brand. The idea is that you want more positive impressions from your brand than negative ones.

Sponsoring SQL Saturday #49 – Orlando

2010-09-14T12:05:00.001-07:00

I typically speak and support the SQL Saturday events and was interested to see my business partner, and organizer, Andy Warren, trying something new for SQL Saturday #49 – Orlando next month.

In a blog post, Andy offered blog sponsorships for $5 for the event. It was an attempt to give blog sponsorships to individuals as a way to support the event, fund a prize or two for a volunteer, and help people build their brands.

I’m not sorry that I’m not attending the event and able to actually talk about the Modern Resume, but I have a bunch of presentations and travel around this time and can’t fit in the trip. However I hope that this goes over well, and the blog sponsorships trigger some traffic to both my blog, and other blogs.

At $5, or even say $50 for sponsorship of 10 events, it could be a good way for someone that wants a more public brand to get some exposure.

First Step at a Logo

2010-09-14T11:33:00.001-07:00

I wanted to have something that represents this blog, and am looking for a designer that to build a logo, but here's a first cut.

Technical People Should Blog

2010-09-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

I ran across a great blog titled: Post 300 or why all developers should be blogging. The reasons given in the articles are great, and I think they apply to all technical people.

You will learn by blogging, and you will keep stuff in a place that you can go back and review it, in addition to giving you something to impress interviewers. There is one more big reason, however.

You need to communicate.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a position that didn’t require some type of communication skills. You might not need to get up in front of a group and express things (or you might), but almost everyone needs to document things or communicate through an electronic written medium. It could be email, IM, texting, some forum system, or anything else. However you need to communicate.

The more you build these skills, the better off you will be. There are definitely some very talented people that can get away with poor social skills and poor written skills, but that’s not most of us. Most of us need to communicate effectively.

To me, blogging is like typing. A developer that hunts and pecks with two fingers is not likely a good developer. And certainly they’re not an efficient developer.

The same thing comes from communicating. You need to practice it to get better at it. You don’t need to write as much as me, or write as long a posts as I do, but by writing regularly, you’ll learn to better express yourself.

Virtual Labs - A Great Resource for SQL Server

2010-09-06T07:28:00.000-07:00

I had someone send me a note recently asking some questions about how to get set up to work with SQL Server. This was a person that had used SQL Server in the past, but had become a manager and then lost their job. So they wanted to start working with SQL Server and get a new job, however they didn’t have a server or many resources.

My first recommendation is that you grab the SQL Server developer edition for US$50. You can get it from Microsoft, Amazon, or many other places, but this is essential. It gives you a good basic point from which to start and test features.

However if you don’t have a spare machine, or you don’t want to put SQL Server on what you have for some reason, you have another option.

TechNet Virtual Labs

There are a whole variety of labs available, including a series on SQL Server 2008 and other versions. These allow you to RDP to a virtual instance of SQL Server and actually practice working on things.

There are other labs for Windows, Exchange, etc. You can spend time working on these technologies, either guided or unguided, and get some hands on practice. You can’t necessarily save your work, but this is a great way for you to get started on some technology that you want to add to your skillset and resume.

The Downside of a Brand

2010-08-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

A brand goes both ways; it can help you, or it can hurt you. Sometimes it can be both, and it pays to understand what it’s doing for you. The brand, or the impressions you make, can determine where you go, or don’t go, so be aware of what impression you are making.

I have a personal story here, and I hope it makes some sense.

I have a fairly large brand for the average person. I’m not well known around the world like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, and I’m not even that well known in the technical world like a Joel Spolsky or a Tim O’Reilly, but in my own niche of technology, I have a fairly well known presence.

I think most people view me as a thinker, as a helper, as someone that can be outspoken and have strong opinions. I’m someone that speaks their mind, and has a fairly raw way of expressing myself. I do think about what I write and say, but I try to leave some emotion and passion in it.

Is that good or bad?

As with everything, or most things, it depends. In a recent case it held me back. I have been publically critical of some people, and I stand by what I wrote, but I believe it bit me in the proverbial behind. I was rejected from an opportunity, and it stung.

Is my brand bad? I don’t think so, despite what happened. I think that someone had power over me, and exercised it, using their opinion that I would be a bad fit in the opportunity. I can’t control that, and I live with it.

However if I were applying for something different, say a management job, a project lead, I think that my raw expression, my honesty, my ability to communicate, and the willingness to do so, would help me. Many people see those things as positive strengths.

If I were applying to be a member of a technical team, that might hurt me. Perhaps a manager would think that I might take over the team, or might not be able to work well with others.

You can’t control what others do, and no matter what you think, at some point you will need to give someone else control over your life. They’ll have the ability to exercise some power over which direction you move, or more likely, don’t move.

Knowing your brand, and understanding how it is perceived, will help you to determine which directions you should move in. And if you can emphasize parts of your brand, some of your skills and experiences differently, you can present the image you need for a particular opportunity.

Resume Hints - Keywords

2010-08-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

Recently I have a presentation at an event that had a few college students. Afterwards one of them came up to me to ask about their resume, and mentioned that they had been told to include the keywords at the top of their resume, and then list stuff below that. In the presentation I had talked about putting them at the end of your resume, and having a good opening instead that lists your accomplishments.

I was surprised to hear that this college career center had thought keywords made sense at the beginning of the resume, but perhaps they’re thinking about different keywords.

If you search for “resume keywords”, you get lots of lists and advice about using words like “accelerated” and “balanced” and other words that don’t often get used in normal conversation, but have a bit of power.

That’s fine, and feel free to use them, but that’s for prose, for writing about what you’ve accomplished. Those are words that punch up your writing. In technology, however, keywords are often skills you have. You wouldn’t want to do this:

Steve Jones

123 My St

Denver, CO 80111

Objective: xxxx

Skills:

C++
Java
.NET
SQL

…

As someone that’s received lots of resumes, this isn’t interesting to read. Typically if I need a C++ person, I used a search method to get to your resume. Now I want to know what you’ve done with C++.

Keywords are needed for those search programs, but those programs don’t care where the keywords are. Humans that will to scan your for 30 sec don’t need to see them. You want that 30 sec to count, so make sure that the first few things that a person reads stand out.

Your Career Is Up to You

2010-08-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

That’s a quote from an article by Buck Woody (blog | Twitter) on SQL Server Professional Development Plan, Part 1. It’s a great read, and worth the time to go through.

The one quote in there that stands out to me, is this one:

Your career is up to you.

I think Buck is right on that you are responsible for your career. I think you do need to take the view that you are always a consultant, even if you work at the same job for 45 years, you need to take control of your career and make sure it is moving forward.

Your boss might encourage you, your company might help you, but ultimately it is still your responsibility to ensure that their assistance is right for you.

And if there is no assistance, you need to provide it yourself.

A Resume Experiment

2010-08-09T03:02:00.000-07:00

I found this person's resume experiment to be very interesting. In looking for a data science internship, he created multiple versions of his resume and then tracked how they were downloaded or viewed.
The findings are interesting, though they are limited in scope. It appears that a shorter resume is more likely to be read, and also that links distract users.

I'd draw a few things from this, and it tends to match up with what I've seen as well.

1. Limit the length of your resume. I still think two pages work, but don't cram too much in there, go with less.
2. Limit links on the resume. I think a landing page on some site, or a blog, are better places for links to your various branding efforts.
3. Using social media helps. There were enough notes about people clicking through that I think this is a good way to move your resume around. Don't link from your resume, but link back to your resume from social media posts.

Speaking and Presenting Tips - Handouts

2010-08-02T05:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve given quite a few presentations, one keynote with another to come, and attended many more. I’ve read a few books on how to get better, and then in an Edward Tufte seminar recently, I got another one.
Dr. Tufte mentioned the idea of a supergraphic, an image with a ton of information in it. I think that some BI systems are starting to think of this as something to display to users. Dr. Tufte said that most screens, especially with projectors, can’t really put up the resolution, and I’d agree. Here’s an image I found online:

This is the idea. A ton of information on one piece of paper that you can give out to people. He said that as a presenter if you find one of these, you can likely “dine on it” for years. Here’s another example he showed from the course.

It’s actually about Napoleon's march into Russia in the early 1800s. There were other examples, but I didn’t see any online and didn’t want to play with a scanner.
The idea here is that you give people a bunch of information. Most of it might not matter to each person, but each person will look at something. They’ll also begin to process the data themselves, and let you highlight, talk about, or even encourage debate on the material.
I’m not sure how I’d do this in a tech presentation, but I definitely can see that if you are presenting a lot of information, especially some type of report to others, this would make sense. I’m going to keep this in mind for future presentations I do, and perhaps even build a Modern Resume supergraphic.

Do As I Say, Not as I Do

2010-07-26T06:58:00.000-07:00

Do I follow my own advice?

I’ve been asked that at a few of my Modern Resume presentations if I do all the things that I mention, and to what extent. My answer is that I do and I don’t. I’ve done them all at some point in my career, but I don’t necessarily do them all now.

For the most part I have my brand on my mind most of the time. I think about what I post, I consider the impact to my reputation, and try to self-moderate myself. I do, at times, also send things to others for comment before I post them.

I have tried to follow my own advice about promotion, but it’s hard. I struggle to write my own kudos, but I do try to post announcements when I am speaking, or doing something out of the ordinary. I also have such a presence with my daily editorial and podcast that I think sometimes that a regular note somewhere like Twitter might overwhelm my followers or overexpose me.

One area that someone asked me about was my resume. Do I touch mine every quarter like I ask other people to do?

No. I don’t, but I have a good reason.

I have an employment contract. So even if someone contacted me about a job that is almost as awesome as mine, I have to give months notice to leave. Months as in 3 or 4 (can’t remember), and while I could possibly get out of that, I wouldn’t. I signed a contract, I need to honor it.

So unlike when I worked in the corporate world, and have gotten calls that say “send your resume today” I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do that right now.

I do try to give good advice, and incorporate new things into the presentation and this blog as I learn them. I have a set of notes that I regularly keep working on as I get feedback and learn new things from others. If you find a problem with what I’ve written, let me know. Otherwise, start working on your brand.

Speaking and Presenting Tips - Bullets

2010-07-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

I’ve heard this before, it came up in the Tufte seminar I took, and it also was something that grated on my nerves at TechEd recently. I was in a presentation and saw a slide titled “Agenda” that had bullet points like this:

History of xxx
Problem of DIY
Reference examples
Basic structure
Enhancements
Security
Common Uses
Expansion to other systems
Summary

These weren’t the exact items, but it didn’t matter. This was a BI course on a Microsoft technology, but a Microsoft PM, and he read each of these, giving a sentence or two about what it meant.

HE READ EACH BULLET POINT.

Don’t do that. Studies show that people can read much, much faster than you can speak. By the time you’ve started to talk about this, most everyone in the room has read the entire slide.

The same goes for any other slide. People read it, heck, as the speaker I’ll glance back and usually read the entire thing in a couple seconds and then start talking.

Give people information that’s not on the slide. They’ll read what’s there, so go into depth on what you actually want to say. If everything is on the slide, why are you there? Just send them an article, or move them all to Starbuck and hold a “reading” of your material there, similar to what most libraries do for 4 year olds.

Give people information that’s not on the slide, and don’t read what is.

Damaging Your Brand

2010-07-12T08:11:00.001-07:00

The talk of the basketball world the last week has been LeBron James’ decision to go to Miami to play with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosch. Recently I was listening to ESPN Radio and Mike Greenberg mentioned that he thought LeBron hadn’t necessarily done his “brand” any damage.

Certainly LeBron James is more in demand, and has more power than most people in their jobs.. I might argue that someone like a Paul Randal in the SQL Server database world would be as in as much demand, and like LeBron, if he wanted a job with a particular company, he might take a pay cut.

Our brand is the impression people have of us. It’s the first impression, and maybe the only impression, that most people get of you. Relatively few people that have heard of you will meet you. Or hire you. A good brand is important to giving you a wide variety of opportunities. When your name comes up or your resume arrives in someone’s inbox, the brand that appears in someone’s mind first can determine if you even get a call for an interview.

A bad brand can hurt you, and you might never know about it. You’ll never hear about the jobs you didn’t get because of a poor brand.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t rebuild a brand, or that you can’t get by with a bad brand. Arguably there have been famous people, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, that have bad brands. Or bad to a large group of people, but they have still done well. Those are extreme, but I know there are people that have been fired from jobs for doing damage to the company and re-hired later in the industry by working to rebuild their brands.

Kobe Bryant arguable had destroyed his brand a few years ago with issues in CO. There are still people in CO that “boo” him when he comes, and still a few advertisers that don’t work with him. However he’s come back as a very popular player, he’s had success, and has new endorsements. He’s kept a lower profile in some ways and rebuilt his brand.

LeBron can do that as well. I’d argue the last two years, without winning, having less success, and not responding in clutch situations have damaged his brand. While he was popular and lots of teams coveted his services, I would argue that his “brand” was what most teams wanted, not his talent. He hasn’t proven he’s a champion, a go-to guy, and the success he’s brought the Cleveland Cavaliers has been mostly off the court, with more revenue for the owner, than pride for the fans.

Settling or Pushing On

2010-07-12T02:37:00.000-07:00

I read a blog recently that was titled: Time to Stop Settling. I think that the author (a friend) was intending to motivate you to move forward, and try to change things when you see a way to make them better instead of living with them.

I agree, but….

My caveat here is that you also need to find balance in your life. One of my favorite quotes is “God grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I think that quote is telling you to strive for balance, and realize that you cannot change everything, but you can change some things and you ought to think about those that you can.

We all have tough times in our lives, especially at work. Even though I have the best job in the world, I have bad days, I have things I don’t like, things that I can’t change. I strive to balance the stress and workload with the good things, and while I try to move forward, I move forward in different ways. Some periods might involve more time with my wife, some more vacation with family, some more speaking, some more writing, but they all are a part of life.

Don’t settle when you don’t need to, but don’t try to change everything. Pick your battles and look to make headway, make things better, not “fix” everything.

Making a Little Effort at Networking - Part 2

2010-07-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

I wrote recently about my efforts to network a bit more at events. Part 1 was to spend more time with people that engage me. This entry continues with the second thing I’ve done.

2. Look for Someone with a Connection

Since I speak, it’s easy to pick out people that have been in my sessions. I make it a point to look around the room as I speak and make eye contact with everyone, or at least look at everyone. Do that often enough across 60 or 90 minutes and quite a few people stick in your mind.

Then when I see people walking around later, I’ll say hi, and ask them if they enjoyed the session, did anything stand out, maybe ask about their job, etc. I look for a connection.

If you’re not a speaker, you can do the same thing. When you go to an event, look for people in the audience. You can pick the speaker, but it’s often easier to connect with audience members. Scan and pick out a few people. When you see them later, even immediately after, strike up a conversation. Ask them if they enjoyed it, ask them what they thought of some point, or if they understood something.

Try to engage for 3 or 4 minutes. You might never see them again, but you also might find a new friend that you keep in contact with.

A New Look

2010-06-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

Feel free to give me some feedback. I saw new templates on the Blogger site, so I decided to try out one and see. I think it's a slightly better, cleaner look, but I'm open to comments.

Making a Little Effort at Networking - Part 1

2010-06-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

I’m not a big networking person. I know that it’s good for my career, but I’ve been lucky enough to get myself fairly well known, my picture is on daily emails from SQLServerCentral, and so a lot of people know of me. As a result, I don’t have to do a lot of networking.

However I have started to make it a point to do some short sessions with people I don’t know at events. It’s easy to spend time with people I know, and that is valuable, but that doesn’t expand my network, or help me find people that I might want to know better.

So I’ve started to do two things that help here.

1. More than a Thank You

Quite a few people want to say hi to me, shake my hand, or even ask a quick question. So instead of saying “thank you” and moving on, I decided to try and do more. As people do engage me, I stop, take a few minutes, ask them a question or two, get to know something about them, and make sure that I don’t disengage for at least 2-3 minutes.

In doing that, I’ve found a couple things happen. The first is that I tend to remember the person more so that I recognize them again. It means that I have a little more of a connection, and it might lead to more interaction later on.

I can also potentially get some good ideas. I’ve heard a few cool things about SQL Server or careers from a few people that I’ve stopped to ask a question about. Someone told me a LinkedIn story that helped them get a job. Someone else told me how they use SQLServerCentral, and that’s valuable information for me. Another person gave me some insight into their job, which is for a media company and that was just a neat thing for me to hear.

For Part 2, tune into the next blog entry.

Selling

2010-06-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

I saw Paul Kenny at the first Business of Software conference, and then had dinner with him, chatting about sales. I actually had our company bring him in for some training and he was back last year again at the Business of Software. I’m not sure he’s coming again, but he’s a great speaker, and this video is worth watching:

Paul Kenny at the Business of Software

Most of us don’t want to sell, but we need to. Not often, especially for technical people, but there is one time when we need to:

When we are looking for a job.

You need to sell yourself. Think about how you sell your skills, your capabilities, and keep that in mind when you watch the video.

If you are in the software business, consider going to the Business of Software on Oct 4-6, 2010. It’s a great conference to learn about what others are doing.

Being Real

2010-06-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

I wrote last week about marketing yourself for a new job, or at your current employer for some reason. I got a note from someone that they didn’t feel comfortable putting on an act.
I agree with that. Putting on a front for a job isn’t a good idea, and it can end badly. Look at a few people that haven’t been honest on their resumes (George O’Leary)
The Modern Resume isn’t about putting up a front, or a fake persona that you try to back. It’s about showcasing your talents and focusing on certain areas of your career that you ensure employers take note of.
Not a writer? If you start to blog to get a job, or show what you’ve been doing, guess what? You’re a writer.
The same thing happens in other areas as well. You become that person. You gain those skills, and those skills become a part of your career.
The only way you would be disingenuous about would be if you presented things on your resume or with your documentation that aren’t true.
When you build your modern resume, you are highlighting the things you have done, and documenting them. Not putting on an act.

Tie It Back

2010-06-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

I gave the Modern Resume: Building Your Brand presentation last week at the SQL Saturday #22 - Pensacola event and had about 30-40 people come see it. I got some good responses, but there was one interesting thing that came up.

I have talked about how it helps to prove value to your manager when you attend training or a conference. You tie back something you learned/used to your job. You specifically show your boss where something matters.

I’d say that you ought to do the same thing for your brand. When you learn something at an event, from a book, from a blog, make a note of it. Give the person/event credit that helped you, and give your interpretation. Do that enough, and all of a sudden you look like a real go-getter that is worth hiring.

My Anonymity is Fading

2010-06-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve done a good amount to raise my profile over the years. Not with that intention, but as I’ve tried to be more active in the SQL community, writing more about SQL Server, my profile has raised.

Today I saw Dave Winer posting on Twitter about the Google home page change (there’s an image there) and then said that when he searched for “Dave” he was on the first page still.

So I tried it and typed “Steve Jones” into Google and hit enter. My first result page is long, longer than I remember and I had to scroll, but I actually had two results on page 1.

You can see the second one above, with another right above this for my SQLServerCentral blog.

That’s amazing to me. It’s kind of cool, but I think I’d prefer to be buried on page 10. Where do you show up?

Marketing yourself

2010-06-07T08:38:00.000-07:00

One of the things that needs to be a part of your modern resume, is a way that you market those things you do for your career. Whether it’s the book you’ve read on your specialization, a class you took, a blog you wrote, or a speech you gave, at some point you need to introduce some marketing to let others know what you’ve done.

I’m fairly humble, and uncomfortable with awards and recognition. I don’t like talking about what I do, or have done, most of the time if it’s self-promotion.

However the place where it is appropriate is where you can, and should, is when you are trying to get a new job, or impress your current employer. If you are a consultant or contractor, then this is almost constantly, but if you are an employee, you need to learn to do this when it matters.

That’s not every day or every week, but it does mean that you need to prepare every day or every week by documenting you efforts, blogging, volunteering, etc. and having that effort ready to show when you look for when you need it.

Plagiarism

2010-05-31T12:36:00.000-07:00

It seems to rear it’s ugly head more and more these days. Once again I found some content from my site republished on another site, without permission, and without a link.

I can’t speak for others, but if I knew you were plagiarizing content, I wouldn’t hire you. I believe in second chances, but if i were interviewing you, I’d question you on it, and I would definitely rate you lower than other candidates. I’d also realize that I need to interview you harder since I would suspect that any of your accomplishments in the past might not be your accomplishments.

And if I were pressed for time to hire, and couldn’t quiz you harder than the average candidate, I wouldn’t hire you.

It’s that simple, at least for me. If you’ve copied content, then my trust in your abilities has been lost, and I would need to rebuild that trust. Which means extra work on you part (and mine) and likely a lack of good assignments, important assignments or projects, more supervision, and lower bonuses.

Don’t copy content, and don’t plagiarize. It doesn’t do your brand any good.

Networking Online

2010-05-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

How do you network with people online in your career field? It’s surprisingly easy, and I’ll give you a few ideas that I use.
1. Comment on people’s blogs. You ought to read blogs, even if you don’t write, and when you see something interesting, comment. If you do so regularly, you’ll be building a contact.
* Note – Make your comment thoughtful. Don’t comment to comment.
2. If you have a group on Twitter or Facebook, where people post a status. Respond to something that you find interesting. Another type of comment that builds a bond.
3. Engage in a discussion or debate in a forum online. If someone posts a question, or you think there is more to add, something to correct, or you would like more information, respond. The back and forth that I’ve seen in many forums has built some fairly strong friendships. Even among people that have never met in person.
It’s not hard, and it doesn’t have to be a daily thing, but it ought to be a regular effort. Take some time every week, just a couple 15 minute sessions a week and flip through the places that attract you online and engage people.

Interviewed by Professional Development Virtual Chapter

2010-05-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

Kathi Kellenburger, fellow MVP and friend, pinged me recently for an interview for the Professional Development Virtual Chapter. This is one of the groups at PASS that tries to focus on a specific area, as opposed to move chapter based user groups that are location based.

She interviewed me through email and the interview is live, and you can check it out. It’s short, but I give out some of my thoughts on building your career and focusing on professional development.

Getting Started Networking

2010-05-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

I wrote recently that networking was a part of your Modern Resume, but what does that mean? How do get started?
Here’s a short list of things to do to get started.

Make a list of people that you have worked with and get along with.
If you don’t have contact information for these people, check and see if they are on Linked In, Facebook, Plaxo, or somewhere else.
If they are, connect with them.
If they aren’t move, make a mark and set them aside for now.
Contact one person that you knew well, and initiate a conversation. If you can have coffee, lunch, etc. with them try, but reach out, and try to stay connected.

Networking is about keeping a bond with people in your career. It can be a friendly bond. That’s it. Even if you’re not looking for a job, just make a small effort to keep in touch with people that you know.

A Personal Development Plan

2010-05-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

I’ve talked a lot about various ways in which you can build your personal brand and make a more impressive modern resume, but I haven’t necessarily given a great structure for how to do that.

I was sent this link on a personal development plan by a friend and I think it’s great. Putting things down on paper brings a little personal pressure to you and makes it more likely that you’ll follow through.

I’ll blog more on this topic later, but for now, check out the article. It has some good advice.

Networking

2010-04-26T15:34:00.000-07:00

One of the things I’ve been talking with a friend quite a bit about is networking. We are talking about different types of events that are coming up and how to incorporate some networking into the events and help people contact each other.

It reminds me that networking should be a good slice of your Modern Resume. It’s not just a question of references, but also contacts, referrals, and queries that your network can make on your behalf. The more others know about you, and the more comfortable they feel about your skills, the more likely they’ll help you in a job search.

I need to write more posts on this topic, but for now, make sure you have some sort of network out there in your field. LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc, make this easier, but it’s up to you to ensure that you cultivate a network of people that you know professionally.

Speaking at Pensacola SQL Saturday

2010-04-21T15:31:00.001-07:00

I saw that my session for the Modern Resume was accepted for the SQL Saturday #22 in Pensacola on June 5, 2010. If you’re in the area on that Saturday come on by.

Have a Plan

2010-04-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

A friend posted this link about having a Professional Development Plan, and how to build one. It's a general link, but it has some good advice. It isn't technical in nature, but rather it seeks to get you to think about what's important to you and then put those down into a plan.

Worth the read.

Express Yourself Clearly

2010-04-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

Recently my son had a short paper to write for school. He’s a sixth grader, and this year is a turning point for him where he’s expected to think a little more about his writing as well as tackle longer assignments. In this case it was a 2 page paper on Sophocles, and he was struggling one night with the paper due the next day.

Before you say that he should succeed or fail on his own, I agree with you. However as a parent, or manager/mentor/helper, you pick and choose those places where you provide assistance, and to what level. In this case he’s had a major change in his life with sixth grade and the beginning of Boy Scouts. While this doesn’t matter for college in terms of his grade, it is the place where he is gaining a base of learning, and I think it’s the time where I provide more assistance than I might otherwise provide.

Next year will be a different story. I’ll let him struggle, and potentially mis assignments if he doesn’t manage his workload. But I digress.

The issues that he had with producing a coherent paper that explains his thoughts while presenting information were similar issues that I see from many of my authors at work. The issues are also similar issues that I see in many blogs. While I’m not a top-notch writer, and I take liberties at times in blogs and editorials, I tend to see a few common mistakes in a lot of pieces that people write.

Don’t use pronouns

That was the main advice to my son as we worked through his paper. He, and many others, tend to use pronouns (“it”, “his” and “they” especially) to convey their thoughts. However they often have not tied the pronoun to a specific noun and the reference in ambiguous.

Most people learn this in grammar school, but they seem to forget it when there’s no grade attached to their work. As an example:

Sophocles was a great writer. He often worked with Aeschylus and his plays were similar.

What does “his” refer to? Is it Sophocles or Aeschylus? Either could be the reference and the reader has to take a guess. It’s possible that context before or after this sentence will help you to understand the reference, but it’s equally likely that you will mis-interpret what is intended.

This same type of ambiguous reference occurs in many technical articles, often when someone is trying to compare two items and show how they work in a similar manner. I correct this type of reference constantly, and often ask for clarification from authors.

So my advice is…..don’t use pronouns.

If you can avoid one, avoid it. Repeat the noun and make it clear. This does two things. One it helps the reader to better understand your meaning, but it also forces you to be more specific.

Why Not to Volunteer

2010-03-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

I wrote recently about volunteering and it being a real commitment, no less than the ones you make for compensation. I think it’s only fair you approach it that way, and if you can’t, then don’t do it.

But do it. Volunteer organizations need help.

I declined a volunteer invitation recently and someone ask why. I gave them my reasons, and they countered with “you can always find a reason not to volunteer.” That’s true, and I do encourage people to volunteer when I speak. However you can’t always volunteer, and I’ll give you a time and place where I think you might not want to volunteer.

You can always find time to do something that’s important to you. I met a guy years ago that was training for a triathlon and fairly competitive. Nowhere near professional levels, but a high level amateur. I mentioned that I had done a few, and would like to do more, but I didn’t have the time. He told me how he got up early and went to train before work, or went right after work and came home later, freeing up time. I could do those things, but as with anything else, there’s no free lunch.

If I make time in my day, usually what suffers is time with my family. That’s not always a bad thing, especially with volunteernig where my kids can see that I’m helping someone else, but they pay a price in less time with Dad. Or our time is moved around, or maybe I’m more stressed. Maybe not, but maybe.

I think charity, giving back, helping others outside your family or other responsibilities is a time and place thing. You should do it at some times, and where you can, but you have to pick those times. You should pick some time, but not every time.

I’ve balanced my efforts with Scouts over the years with my kids. Some years I do more than others, some I do nothing, sometimes I do either Boy or Girl Scouts and not both.

Volunteer when you can, note it as part of your brand, but if you don’t want to take the time this week/month/year, don’t.

Be Responsible in your blogging and posting

2010-03-22T13:14:00.000-07:00

I have been awarded the MVP award from Microsoft a few years in a row and it’s an honor, but it’s also a responsibility. One of the benefits from the award is that I get information about what is coming up in products, often under an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). That means that I can’t release this information publically, and every quarter it seems that one or more MVPs lose their award for disclosing information they shouldn’t.

The same thing ought to apply to the posts you make, blogs you write, etc., when it might apply to your company. I wrote an editorial at SQLServerCentral on this recently, and it is something that you ought to keep in mind for not only posts, but also discussions you have with friends.

Be responsible in your career, and don’t disclose information that you shouldn’t.

Your Brand is the first step

2010-03-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

As much as I try and preach to people that their brand and their modern resume is an important part of their career growth, it’s just the first step. A modern resume might help you get an interview, but that isn’t a job.

Once you get the interview, it’s important to present yourself in a professional manner that will add to your brand and help you get the job. The last thing you want is for someone to be incredibly impressed by your brand, and your resume, but then be disappointed when they interview you.

Here are a few links that contain tips for interviews that I think could help.

Ultimately you need to be yourself, and be honest. However, if you get nervous, and you don’t necessarily present a good image, here are a few things. If you’re not sure if you make a good impression, ask a friend.

Speak slowly – Most people start to ramble and talk quickly when they are nervous. And most people are nervous in an interview. Take a breath, and compose yourself for a second before answering.
Dress slightly up – I always ask what the dress code is when scheduling an interview. If they are business casual, I’d wear an Oxford and slacks (or the woman’s equivalent), perhaps a tie. If they wear ties, wear a suit.
Bring a copy of your resume on paper – You’d be surprised how often an interviewer doesn’t have one.
Turn off your cell phone – or leave it in the car. It’s really, really annoying to have one go off when I’m interviewing someone.
Talk through your answers - Even if you don’t know the answer, you can show them how you think. If in doubt, I’d also recommend that you explain where you’d go to look for help.

There are plenty more, and the best advice I can give you is to practice an interview with a friend, or a manager. Ask them to really quiz you on topics, ask you code questions and traditional interview questions.

Practice makes perfect, and it definitely helps you to perform better in an interview.

Don’t Be a Shock Jock

2010-03-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

One of the dangers of being an “Internet Journalist” or even just a blogger, is that you might compromise who you are to attract readers.

Or in the case of your “modern resume,” impress someone for a new job.

Here is case of someone losing control of their ethics, for the sake of ratings. This is more of a journalism story, and the only person that I think it really hurts is the writer, but maybe that’s not true. Maybe it didn’t even hurt him. He still has a job.

You, however, might not be so lucky.

There are companies that would let you go if they found out you misrepresented yourself in an interview, or with a resume.

Don’t write something for the sake of attracting or impressing readers. Write about what you know, and what you don’t. Admit your mistakes, and highlight your successes.

Your blog, your presentations, your articles, are all a part of your career, and you should treat them as though they are precious. You are the product in your career, you are what you can sell, and your brand is what you have to sell.

If people stop believing in that, you are in trouble.

Heading to Charlotte

2010-03-04T03:50:00.000-08:00

I think I’ll forever associate Charlotte, NC with my middle son. We were heading back to Denver from Virginia Beach a few years ago after a vacation. Our flight was scheduled to go through Charlotte before heading to Denver. My daughter and my middle son were sitting with me as the plane sped down the runway in Virginia Beach when about halfway down the pilot slammed on the brakes. If you’ve never experienced that, it’s very unnerving. My daughter gripped my arm as my son looked up and said

“Are we in Charlotte?”

Totally serious since he’d been engrossed in a book. My daughter, who looked like she might cry up to this point started laughing. She told him we hadn’t even taken off.

There was a problem with the plane, and we ended up spending another night with grandma, which pleased her and the kids. Everything was fine, but it is one of those events that sticks with you.

This morning I’m heading to Charlotte, no kids, to SQL Saturday #33, to speak and see some friends. I’ll be giving my Modern Resume presentation and also part of the keynote presentation. Andy Warren and I, along with PASS President Rushabh Mehta, will be up to talk a little about the history of SQL Saturday and it’s current transition to PASS.

It should be a great event, and the list of speakers is impressive. Kevin Kline and Joe Webb from TN, Denny Cherry from CA, Jessica Moss and Andy Leonard from VA, Aaron Bertrand from RI, Patrick LeBlanc from LA make this one of the more impressive events outside of the national conferences.