Finding time to interview
When looking for a job while working, one of the biggest challenges job seekers face is finding the time to schedule an interview during the work day. The plain truth is that most of the time employers are going to conduct interviews during the work day, when everyone on the “team” is around. If you are the type of person that prides themselves on never being late or leaving early, this can be a big problem, as your co-workers will notice that you are not there.
The truth is that everyone misses a day of work now and then, you can take a day off, and your boss doesn’t have to think that you are going to go on an interview every time you miss a few hours. Be smart about how you are going to do things. First, do some leg work and try to arrange several interviews in one day. Try to schedule them so that they are all on a Monday or Friday, because this is the most common time for people to take a personal day. For follow up interviews, see if you can make them as late in the afternoon or as early as possible, it is a lot easier to work a half day and leave then try to come back with an excuse. Last, be smart and don’t try to lie your way into a hole. Any boss is going to understand if you simply ask for a few personal hours rather than have three sick Grandmothers in a row. Better than making up a story that your boss could potentially follow up on, try being vague rather than dishonest, let them draw their own conclusions.
from Morgan Miller - COO at XL Projects Inc.
“Hire When It Hurts”: A training metaphor?
My interest was recently piqued by a phrase I came across in “Rework” by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.
To understand more precisely what the ‘hire when it hurts’ principle means to your business, think of a training metaphor. It is important to first distinguish ‘discomfort’ from hurt. Most who have trained for an endurance event or pushed themselves in the gym will instinctively understand this distinction. You never progress by alleviating the pressure right when it starts to become uncomfortable. When training for strength or endurance events, you push yourself often far past the point of comfort in order to produce an adaptation in your body. The body instinctively makes physiological changes in response to a stimulus that make it easier to perform the task the next time. Ultimately you reach a point where quality starts to diminish as you approach the line between hurt and mere discomfort. Just as tolerating a certain amount of discomfort leads to adaptation, hurt leads to injury. Extending this metaphor to your business, when your quality starts to suffer, then you think about hiring.
In training, we often explore the limits of our physiological systems. Do the same you’re your workforce. Resist the impulse to hire when work starts to escalate. Think of more efficient ways to do a task, create software, outsource, be creative, ask ‘why are we doing this particular task at all, is it necessary?’ Do anything you can before adding a large fixed cost to your balance sheet. Pushing past the point of hurt can lead to innovation and more efficient methods of operation. Following the “hire when it hurts” principle can keep a business from increasing its number one cost too quickly, overhead.
It is a natural reaction for workers in bigger more established companies to have a hire reaction whenever the workload starts to increase. In a company of less than ten people with limited resources, it is easy to see how hiring too quickly can have negative consequences. This real value of the “hire when it hurts” lesson comes later once a business is starting to experience significant growth and has the funding to hire. Just because you can hire someone, doesn’t mean you should. Making the wrong decisions about hiring in the middle stages of a startup company can mean the difference in a profitable, lean business and one that becomes addicted to people and takes years to achieve profitability despite delivering a compelling product and having millions in funding. These companies tend to resemble bureaucratic government agencies, existing for the sole purpose of providing jobs. Don’t become addicted to people, they are an expensive habit.
from Gray Skinner - General Counsel for XL Projects
WTF is with WPF: How to get a cool job at a Hedge Fund?
A question that I get a lot from creative minded developers, is “How do I get a job at one of those Hedge Funds, that pay those BIG bonuses?” Sadly for a long time the answer was either go back to school for four years and study finance or learn to get excited by endless hours of SQL, VBA and Excel…..No thanks.
Recently however a lot of hedge funds have been hiring creative minded, C# .NET WPF and Silverlight developers. Why is you ask, simple, even the stuffy world of finance is taking a cue from the rest of the world and building systems that everyone can use with simple, easy to use, neat looking interfaces.
Now I know what you are thinking, easy, I will get a book on WPF and I am good to go. Well its going to take more than that, hedge funders may be as exciting as a white tee shirt, but they still a very smart people that like to surround themselves with very smart people. Chances are you won’t be able to “learn on the go” or “take a month to ramp up.” To go work at a place that basically makes money out of nothing, you need to master your craft, work on some large scale projects and come in day one a C# Ninja.
So next time your friend goes onto Monster and ask you “Dude, WTF is WPF and how do I get a job at a Hedge Fund?” you can answer, “if you have to ask, you will never know”… Unless you follow this awesome blog.
from Morgan Miller - COO at XL Projects Inc.
