Thought Picnic: Caught at the end of a CV review

Stacking the shelves again

Putting yourself back on the market for a job after a break can be a daunting experience. Having accounted for your absence you are left with how to make recruiters interested in your skills, all acquired over time and packaged as experience.

Sometimes, what your CV was so good at doing at a certain time of your career may today be doing a less effective job and this requires that you have other people critique and review your CV – an experience that could be quite bruising but helpfully frank too.

Malleable CVs

The mistake many of us make is to turn our CVs into tablets of the law delivered from the mount when they should be as flexible and directional as a wind vane, catching the blast of the air and showing where it is going.

One truth I realised so recently was that your CV is not a one-size-fits-all for the jobs on the market, each time you have to skew your experience to match the opportunity which will allow the recruiter to immediately see if your skills match an opportunity on their cards.

For so long my CV was more suited to my professional network, it worked in the hands of people who already knew me, my work ethic, my abilities and potential. As one expert in the field put it, I had a social CV – that was a tough indictment.

Engage with the familiar

He went on to say my CV was telling stories that very few will have the time to read if I was not already known or somewhat recommended. With the competition on the job market and the attention spans that last less than the times to skim of the top page of the CV, one had to radically change the complete package to elicit better responses – my CV had to begin to target people who will only notice me from familiar things they see on my CV.

For that to happen, I needed things I have for long considered anathema in a CV but for the recruiter and manager are crucial – keywords, buzzwords, jargon, spiel and clichés.

The conservative mind in me with the well documented use of prose and language was now being asked to pedestrianize my CV for the lowest common denominator to order to have the eyes, then the ears and hopefully the role at the end of it.

Motivate interest with motivation

Another aspect I cannot say I am good at but I find is literally mandatory for when applying for a job in the Netherlands is the motivation letter or what the English will call a cover letter.

My friend offered these basic tips, if you know about the company; flatter them, then be excited about the role, tell them why you are well suited for the role using words or paraphrases from the job description and do not forget to include other virtues you might have boasting of your abilities and talents.

Use the active voice and ask them to call you providing your number within the letter, but even before the letter might have been read, call them too and ask questions that will compel answering services to pass you to the principals.

These are extraversion attributes I will have to cultivate, difficult as they might seem at first, it is war out there and you just have to be more than prepared to take the market on and work the system.

And much else

Along with this, position yourself for opportunities, show flexibility and broaden your view by including yourself in what you have the aptitude to attain rather than limiting yourself because you have not mastered a skill.

Much as you might want to tell a lot about yourself in your CV, leave space for the imagination and the desire for the recruiter to want to learn more about you by meeting you.

Between writing and speaking

One particularly fundamental lesson I took away from the review of my CV was to write about all my strengths but only talk about my weaknesses or vulnerabilities if the issue comes up.

HR departments on sighting a chink in your armour will most likely give you a wide berth than find ways to accommodate you.

As my preconceived thoughts about CVs got jettisoned and consigned to the scrapheap of the ineffectual, I can only hope that my new marketing literature, having excised the superfluity of the inconsequential will present interest, engagement, acceptance, consideration and contract.

Thought Picnic: Regaining the verve

Regaining the verve

It has recently become apparent that the wealth of professional experience and the almost enviable record of impact and radical change that has somewhat been the hallmark of my career over 23 years was no more turning heads as much.

Times when one would turn down opportunities because the people had put you through an interrogation of waterboarding and asphyxiation whilst waiting for a better opportunity that always eventually came have somehow passed.

My first job

My very first job was in a brewery just after secondary school, by arrangement of my father who was the Chief Accountant, I went for interview where the test of my knowledge of chemistry and physics for a laboratory assistant’s job put my pride at stake and obviously the reputation of my father where if I performed badly, it would reflect badly on both of us and possibly any other recommendations for employment my father makes.

They were impressed and on the way back from the interview, I had by reason of the moving vehicle fallen asleep as I was wont to leaving the driver to a reckless manoeuvre that had a laden truck ram into us from behind and still had us at fault with no eye witnesses.

I did start work on the following Monday but there was no time to reflect on how well I did, but by the time I left, I observed that the end of the line in the loading bay had some cartons of beer poorly packed, with broken bottles and in one instance there was a cockroach in a ready-to-go delivery.

Shaking it up

I suggested to my manager a quality checking procedure that meant randomly selecting 12 cartons at different times of the day to check for the quality of the contents, checking off a worksheet which fed back into the system to improve quality through all parts of the beer-to-bottle-to-carton process.

Each subsequent job where I have been allowed the latitude, I have been a change and improvement agent, just because it happens and just because it benefits the organisation and it was just a matter of course which when looked back on is radical in its effect and wonderful to behold.

Somehow, I have never been there long enough to reap rewards before another scheme called on my skills to do something simple and realise something complete, the knowledge passed on to the extent that one becomes too expensive to keep on – in any case, at that time, my work is usually done and pastures anew await.

Putting letters to the skill

Today, my marketing literature reads well but does not pass the muster because there are no letters validating basic knowledge even though the words speak of extensive experience from three countries supporting global enterprises in complex environments.

So, something needs to be done to get my stuff beyond those filters that prevent that first call, the contact, that chat, that interview and that job.

The joy of study for an examination was rekindled and I dusted some books, refreshed my knowledge on some obscure features and watched simulations of some activities and I prepped my system for some practice.

Having fun

I chuckled and laughed in the library as I watched the expression of the thinking that went into some processes, the apparently complex stuff being made simple and easy to grasp and understand.

I was having amazing fun preparing for an examination that I plan to take very soon and pass well, I would immediately update my curriculum vitae and send it out to those who matter with the hope that it would begin to percolate to the top.

Twice before, I scheduled three tests for the same day and did brilliant clearing the full certification in weeks, couple that with experience and a return to helping others in forums I have long been passive on and well, the makings of a bigger profile loom.

I am enjoying this and well, I am not throwing in the towel for what at certain times had me in the top 10% of experts in my field. I am even thinking of going back to university but there are pressing needs that need to be in order to chart that course confidently.

The fundamental lesson really is one has to change to remain relevant or the threat of irrelevance when not heeded to with radical change will leave you out.

Thought Picnic: I am available, let's talk

What I have to give

Each time I have the opportunity to return to the market at the end of a project I wonder about what it is I can give to those that could use my skills.

My skills acquired over 22 or so years of working in IT, maybe skills of a lifetime too because a good deal of how I project myself comes from everything that makes the person that I am.

Behind the façade of assuredness about ones abilities lays a niggling concern about relevance, you read the job offers and measure yourself against the requirement wondering if you do match them or you are extending yourself beyond your capabilities.

I am able

Now, I believe I have always risen to the challenges in terms of projects or problems put my way for solutions or innovative ideas.

The whole workshop of my expertise is brought to bear in crafting the concept, the process, the workflow, the solution and the implementation giving due consideration to maintaining operational effectiveness whilst improving the environment.

However, I have somehow been unable to put that level of passion into my marketing literature, my curriculum vitae shows so much but probably does not reveal enough about my usefulness.

Looking further afield

In some cases, I tap my resource of professional contacts built over the years who have been my source of jobs in the last 15 years, but in tougher times, the net has to widen to include new contacts and people who hardly know what I can do and probably may never appreciate that who they are getting is a lot more than what they are seeing.

Sometimes I feel I am a man of many abilities without a coherent channel of expression, it becomes a bother gnawing at my confidence and contributing to my sense of uncertainty.

Yet, I believe, things would turn out right, I just have to keep letting people know I can bring something valuable to the table and it would be of use, worthwhile and of good quality helping their organisation be better at what they do.

Maybe it is also time to begin something anew, my ideas of what makes for the conversion of crazy ideas into viable solutions – that is a process towards avoiding irrelevance.

In any case, I am ready for a new job, can we talk?

Reference

LinkedIn Profile

Beware of deceptive LinkedIn recommendations

Professional social networking

LinkedIn* is more or less the professional networking site that allows for people to keep tabs with people one has somewhat interacted with in professional life.

For a person who has been self-employed most of my working life and has worked in many organisations, LinkedIn offers a forum to keep tabs with people I have worked with and also allows one to keep abreast of the careers of those same people.

Most recently, I tapped this professional network for job opportunities after having been out of work for almost a year and that mostly due to serious illness. I was glad to find that many of my ex-colleagues responded with sympathy and help which eventually lead to a job.

Self-referencing resource

I have also found that the LinkedIn profile can serve as an adjunct to a curriculum vitae (CV) because it can contain information that would not necessarily appear on a CV for instance, it can be a self-referencing portal if an employer reviews the profile finds people you have worked with and probably knows those people or organisations and make qualified assumptions or deductions of the prospect.

A slightly more subjective but useful function in LinkedIn is the recommendation feature, it can be interesting and indicative of the views ex-colleagues have of a person, hence, it is important that the writer and recipient pay particular attention to the construction, content, context, intent and import of the recommendation.

The recipient is given the opportunity to edit and recommend to the writer changes that would reflect better in order not to have the opinions misconstrued by other readers.

Understand before acceptance

Where English is used but not the mother-tongue, it is even more pertinent that the matter be reviewed by an English speaker before publication. I have at least in a number of cases had to decline recommendations that were subject to unfavourable interpretation even though the intentions were noble and generous – such however should not be enough to allow a recommendation or it would be the equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot.

I was completely mortified when I read a recommendation posted on a LinkedIn profile, I was half persuaded to highlight that the intention and the meaning were at complete variance. However, on reflection, the writer might well have meant what he wrote and the recipient none the wiser about the nuances and pitfalls of the gentle English putdown has proudly published this damning assessment of abilities sandwiched in passable praise.

The short recommendation

“Person is a great consultant with a lot of knowledge from everything. Doesn't bother helping you with all sort of things. Really a great team worker and a nice colleague.”

Three short sentences that speak volumes that are either lost in translation from a Dutch context or are a good excuse to use language as a deficiency to castigate in the most unfair light.

Person is a great consultant with a lot of knowledge from of everything. Either way, the knowledge from or more correctly, the knowledge of everything could easily read as a Jack of all trades and a master of none. The more charitable turn of phrase would probably have been a very broad knowledge of technical concepts – giving it a more specific frame of context. Whilst Dutch allows for verbosity and generalisations that could be easily contextualised, English is not that forgiving.

Does he bother or does he mind?

Doesn't bother helping you with all sort of things. This is the damning part because it reads like he doesn’t mind helping you in every way but it says he is the most unhelpful person you can find regardless of the situation presented to him.

It might be that the writer thought bother was synonymous with mind; in some contexts ‘Are you bothered?’ or ‘Do you mind?’ could be interchangeable but definitely not here. With Google Translate to Dutch the meaning did not carry as well until I modified the sentence to read as “He doesn't bother helping you with all sort of things.”

Dutch requires that the object and subject are very explicit in a sentence, it is not that good with implicit references and so this passed the censorship of the recipient when it should not have gone any further.

Can he really be?

Really a great team worker and a nice colleague. This would leave one almost wondering what the writer was trying to say after the first two sentences and it might well allow one to consider the possibility of a Freudian slip. Malevolently, this was the sweetener to the bait, obfuscating the intentions in the second sentence.

You might call it pedantic but recommendations are read with a greater attention to the detail rather than the general idea of what the writer is trying to convey – this recommendation has in my opinion torn the professional reputation of an otherwise knowledgeable and great consultant who is a nice colleague to shreds.

To think this recommendation has been published for over 2 years might well mean the damage is already done.

As for my opinions of the recipient, I could not possibly comment any further. The advice is, never accept wholesale a recommendation you do not fully understand and comprehend regardless of the good intentions of the benevolent writer.

* LinkedIn - Wikipedia

Tapping my network for work

Tapping my network

Over 20 years of work experience, I have done many things and worked with people. Today, I decided to tap on the network of people I have met in my working life and ask for their assistance in finding a job.

Some of them I have not spoken to in a very long time, but somehow, I felt seeing my message might remind them of their experiences of my expertise, work ethic and abilities and hopefully, they might just rekindle that with offering me a job or recommending me to other recruiters in their network.

The text of the letter follows and I just thought, if I could not use my professional contacts, my blog, my social networks and any other connections to find work too, what are those networks for if they are not also part of life itself?

The letter

I have overcome adversity and now I seek opportunity, opportunities I hope and believe you all as ex-colleagues at work or at school, who I have worked for, worked with or helped at work can offer – I address you all.

I do have an extensive curriculum vitae but that only contains some basic truths of my work experience and maybe what I have achieved before, I definitely cannot put in another section talking about how I fought cancer or how you liked or hated working with me, those are life experiences of a different significance.

However, having come out of that situation, I need to get back to work and want to get back to work – I am speculating and hoping that with the recall of experiences you have had working with me you can help me with assignments or know people who have assignments that you believe I can tackle with the ability, expertise and professionalism you remember me for.

I know this is an unusual message to send to you all but if I cannot tap on the wonderful experiences and network I have had in the last 20 years in this critical but necessary time, then I might have failed to have any impact in all the workplaces where I have been given the opportunity to work, serve and maybe change for the better, all with your help.

I have attached my resume [My LinkedIn Profile here] for your perusal and hope that very soon occasion will warrant being at your service again, I can also be contacted on number provided.

Thank you and the very kindest of regards,

Yours faithfully,

Akin Akintayo

So, all I have to do now is wait and I will keep you posted as to how it all turned out.

Do you have a job for me?

A call I received - Introduction

Yesterday morning, I got a call from a very enthusiastic recruitment consultant who found my CV on a jobs board and thought my experience and skills-set would be useful and suitable to his client.

This consultant had placed 37 out of a 100 technical staff with his client, so he probably had a good idea of who and what his client needs.

An hour later, he called me deflated stating some technical person had seen my CV and somewhat “trivialised” the context of it.

However, this consultant was not about to give up on my prospect, he asked me to write an email to him explaining how and why my wealth of experience should not fall into the pigeon-hole I had been placed in.

I have reformatted that email into my blog format and here it is.

What I am about

Below, you will find my cause and purpose, my views and drive, what makes my work-life exciting and in the end, it is a simple expression to any organisation to give me a job that can change your organisation for the better.

There are things in here, specific to my CV that I have left in place, parts of it might be a bit technical, but the thrust of it is that I try to put a fully human dimension on the use of information technology for the benefit of that organisation.

If you do have an interest as regards my being employed by your organisation, please leave a comment or send an email to forakin at gmail dot com.

Meeting that challenge

Dear Recruiter,

Thank you for our conversation yesterday and the enthusiasm you showed in my skills which unfortunately were not appreciated by the people who reviewed them. I have decided to take up the challenge of explaining why it is myopic to consider my activities in "Desktop Deployment" trivial and why it should be seen as beyond just the desktop or just deployment.

It is a bit of a long email, but it is difficult to put this kind of thinking in a CV or relate this easily without the convenience of an interview, I hope you will have the patience to read it through and let me know your views either by reply or a phone call. Thank you very much for your time and the challenge.

My experience

Now, it is quite easy with simplification to look at a person's career in terms of the tools the person uses to perform a job, but anyone can use tools, but it is a talented artisan that can produce objects of amazing value, worthy of commendation and admiration.

Indeed, for more than 13 years, I have used Microsoft SMS 1.2/2.0/2003 and now Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager 2007 to manage environments, the smallest being BT/Infonet with just about 1,500 users and the largest being over 40,000 users in ING Bank.

Seeing things from different ends

Whilst the Mission Critical vision appears to view things from the backend to the user and mission critical pertains to what keeps a business running from day-to-day, I have extended the vision of how I use my tools to understand how 1 user or 40,000 users can connect seamlessly to their organisation and access the mission critical applications they need to perform their duties to make the organisation competitive, profitable and leader in whatever field they are in.

Critical to this observation is that SMS (I will use this broadly to encompass all tools to do with software control & deployment) is used to deploy software, applications, utilities, tweaks, patches & updates to user's systems which might be online, offline, in-house or some remote place.

For this software to deploy consistently to achieve close to 100% success rates, you need uniformly configured systems, this boils down to understanding the range of hardware (desktops, laptops & devices) in your organisation, deploying a basic common framework of the operating system, handling the common and different software requirements of the user, streamlining your application pool and being able to manage that from the centre whilst touching each and every system in that organisation.

The power of position and responsibility

Just as downtime in the mission critical application systems can shutdown a business, I appreciate even more that as an SMS administrator; I can shutdown the business if a poorly packaged application is deployed to user systems which can be up to 40,000 users.

Hence, suddenly, my responsibility is not just being a plain postmaster of deploying applications, I need to know what those applications contain, who is repackaging those applications, what operating systems we have out there and if they are manageable - if not, find a consistent approach to the management of these systems.

Influencing the chance for good change

I cannot allow changes to take place in the back-end systems in the weekend that might affect the way users access those back-end systems on a Monday morning because the back-office people thought their change was minor, but we have a major situation because it is easy for the back-end engineer to think locally to their big-expensive systems (mainframes, enterprise databases), when I have to think globally about the effect on 40,000 employees who need critical access to these back-end systems.

You begin to realise the kind of planning that needs to go into serious enterprise desktop deployment or rather, management, if it is work consistently and produce results that do really reduce the cost of ownership at the desktop and reduce the overall cost of IT from service calls and management costs and so on.

What I am about - again

That is the value of my 22 years in IT and my 13 years in enterprise desktop deployment, I am not just a technician, I am a facilitator, a collaborator, an enabler and an unquantifiable benefit to any organisation that entrusts that kind of job to me.

I was employed to do a quick and dirty job of desktop deployment in Canon in August 2006, I left after 2 years having changed that organisation in ways that no one realised till I pointed it out; in the process a whole new department was created to handle the issue of the "user experience" of connecting to the organisation with minimal issues.

The structures I put in place allowed for one of those weekend backend changes halting the business to be redeemed with SMS because we could deploy consistently, verifiably and successfully an essential patch that got everyone reconnected before noon on Monday.

Engaging all communities

In that two years, everyone began to realise any change was global; it affects something, if not everyone; communication is essential because people need to know how changes might affect them; technicians have to be customer friendly because the user satisfaction helps company productivity; architects need to liaise with administrators but user feedback is the best knowledge resource to determine if your solutions are really working; if not, seek advice and change the situation to a working situation.

In short, to be blind-sided by the simple concept of desktop or deployment is to miss the whole point that users are key to keeping an organisation running and whilst the mission critical team is critical, without users being able to connect to the mission critical systems [through their globally deployed but individually configured desktops, laptops, devices with the adequately distributed software] you have no mission critical solution.

Seeing things from different ends - again

I look up the organisation from the eyes and hands of the user, 40,000 of them in some cases to affect and effect change because I touch each and every system with my tools, others look at their servers and if they are up, they think everything is OK - welcome to a new perspective of what the desktop really should mean - managing the user experience with whatever tools, skills and abilities you might have.

If you have read this far, thank you for hearing me out, I do however wonder if this makes me suitable for your organisation, I'll say any organisation that wants the mission critical environment to be consistently accessible to the user environment should consider having me on board.

Thank you.

Connect to my LinkedIn Summary (PDF)

Are you selling or shelved?

Recently, I was touted as someone who knows a bit about making CVs do what they are supposed to do. Create interest and get an interview.

So, in the end, I did receive a number of CVs and ended up writing this commentary which I believe would help towards ensuring that you are represented to the standard you do want to be recognised when your material lands on a recruiter’s desk.

Some of the commentary is directed and personalised, but no less relevant to any CV you read or write.

Introduction

I read your CVs with interest and decided it might be better to share a few thoughts about what I believe makes CVs do the talking before they really, really want to meet the persona behind the data.

I have a number of analogies which I think would help reframe a lot of the detail of what in your CVs to bring out the qualities that really sell.

At first, I view a CV as marketing literature, it is your brochure that says, when I sent you my resume, I saw myself as the best person you could recruit for that role. How do you get your CV to do that.

First Analogy:

This is quite morbid but contains some interesting facts of life. When I visit a cemetery, I first look round the first few tombstones to give me an idea of the time frame in which people were buried in this cemetery after which I go looking for the mausoleums or grand edifices that tell you about the persons, persons and families buried therein.

Then I hear a famous person is also buried there and go looking for their headstone usually expecting to see something grand. If the stone is grand, fine, however, if it is ordinary, I am a bit underwhelmed.

What is the point here? Many CVs are tombstones, ordinary, plain and simple, nothing of note apart from gleaning an idea of what is about. The CVs that stand out have professional formatting, straight to the point and clearly engage the interest of the reader - these are the mausoleums.

Always give your CV a different look.

Second Analogy:

Culled, edited, personalised and updated from an article about the Perfect CV.

This chap comes round and says, "I've got a gun", in some cases he would instil fear, if well known, he is probably trying to show off and his friends say "so what?" Any one can get a gun.

That is the Feature - many CVs are full of features and lists. The reader has to figure out how each feature might apply to his recruitment situation or rather discard the CV and pick another up.

Maybe, the chap was caught mid-sentence and he says, "I've got a gun and I shot someone". That is an Achievement, of sorts, but it could also be murder and everyone is appalled and horrified, he is about to be shopped to the police.

And so, many CVs are full of achievements, but who are the achievements for and why?

Then he really gets to complete his sentence, "I've got a gun and I shot someone with it and because I did that, we won the war". Everyone exclaims, "You won the war?" He is feted, honoured, respected and the feature or achievement pale in significance because he used those two to gain a Benefit.

Anyone who reads that benefit through from the feature has his imagination excited about who this person is and that is what your CV should do.

Anything you have done that cannot be quantified as a benefit to the firm you work in is of no great significance.

There is not though that the order you bring into the chaos of change management saves money, time, resources and increases productivity and so on.

People who can clearly illustrate that they have brought benefits to any environment in which they have worked are seen as people who have something to bring to the party even if they are initially not considered qualified for the job.

Work to be done!

Your profiles should be a brief about you which should cover 3 essential things - who you are, what you bring and your pledge to fit in. Eliminate jargon and profession letters from that profile.

Each aspect of your work experience should concentrate on how your contribution helped and benefited, then you can list or analyse how you used the tools to get there.

Use statistical stuff like you halved waiting times, increased success results by a percentage, got people involved in some scheme.

One of my jobs was tough to explain and this is how I put it down "Three teams were combined into one; my role was to make them work as one." - Then I talked about how we got about it.

How do you get promoted at interview? Your CV raised expectations, your presence exceeded expectations.

Only put in the jargon where it helps shed more light on what you have done.

The area where you did temping jobs, you were useful to whoever employed you and achieved and benefited those organisations, spruce that up.

If you travelled, give a general idea of what you did - white-water rafting, crocodile baiting or lion-riding.

Recruiters like unusual, weird, crazy but collected people; they have a great outlook on life. - Statement from Tom Peters the uber-guru.

Close your CV with an idea of where you think you are going career wise and what general skills you have that do not fit in the body of the CV per se.

Do not waste space on old jobs except if they do contribute positively to the whole picture.

Have fun!