Jobyssey

Jobyssey’s redesigned site is now live!  Based on comments and feedback we’ve gotten on the site, we decided to go with a bolder, crisper look for the site, which allowed us to clean up the layout some and and get rid of some unnecessary fieldsets.  We’re pretty excited about the new look, and we hope you like it too.

Writing a great job description for your CV or Resume
Everyone dreads revising their CV.  Obviously, you know what you do for work, but as you sit there staring at the empty Word document, you suddenly can’t remember.  Or at any rate, you can’t explain it.  Here’s what you should not do: don’t write up a list of your responsibilities.  Unless your current job is radically mis-named, anyone reading your CV already generally knows what you do, and if you squint hard enough at your CV, you can already imagine the reader’s eyes glazing over.

To have a great CV, you need to use the same techniques great writers do.  Have a protagonist (you!) that’s compelling, facing a series of challenges he/she overcomes through cleverness and derring-do.  It needs motivation and a sense of mission, great action, and a happy ending.  Tell a believable story that casts each job as a different chapter in your life, and ends with you ready to move on to your next great adventure (at the recipients company, of course).
The Beginning:
For each job, write a sentence or two explaining the point or primary mission of the job.  What was your quest?  Aside from your obvious day-to-day responsibilities, what larger issue were you there to fix, what problem did they need you to solve, how did your role or department need to change to keep up with the times?  Here’s a few examples:

“When I joined Dublin Software following their acquisition of Limerick Technical Solutions, the IT division was fragmented and disorganized.  I was brought on board to restructure the department and craft new policies and practices to support the new, larger company.”
“Prior to my hiring, Irish Content Management had outsourced all design work, which was expensive and inefficient.  I was tasked with providing all necessary design services for our clients as well as developing a working in-house approach to integrating design and UI into the planning process.”
“Your Friendly Local Web Company hired me to handle an increased demand for 24/7 support services from our hosting customers.  It was my job to develop a working on call system to ensure good service without burning out the server team”.

The Middle:
Use 6-8 bullet points to explain the things you did to solve the problem or meet the need.  Its better to give specific accomplishments than tasks, becuase they convey a sense of purpose.  “Installed and maintained rack of servers running Apache” is bland and pointless- who knows why you did it or what happened as a result?  “Eliminated managed hosting costs, improved uptime and page load speeds by moving to our own rack of Apache servers”  makes you a clever, reasoning person doing useful things.
When is it OK to have less than 6 points?  Only for very short jobs (less than 6-9 months), or very old jobs (more than 3-4 jobs or 10-15 years ago).
When is it OK to have more than 8 points?  For jobs you’ve been at longer than 3 years, or very senior jobs with a lot of responsibilities.  If so, subdivide your duties into multiple bulleted lists with clear headings.

The End:
You don’t have to explicitly state why you’re leaving a job (actually, it’s often better to leave this off), but you do need to be ready to explain it.  You should be able to make it clear how you accomplished your mission, and how a desire for new challenges is leading you to search for a different role.  Challenges like the duties of the job you happen to be applying for…

Feeling like you have more to say?
Framing your career as a story makes it easier for hiring managers to understand and to remember you, but you don’t have to include every detail on the CV.  Remember- its just the trailer, and you want them to see the movie (aka interview you).

I try to mainly blog about practical, hands-on stuff, mainly for people looking for software jobs, but I sat in on a discussion tonight that illuminated (for me) the lack of understanding many developers have of how job-hunting and hiring works (particularly in the Dublin area) and why the widely-loathed technical recruiter continues to exist.

I think most developers see recruiters as dim-witted, bottom-feeding, manipulative and mercenary (and there’s plenty of truth to this) and as a distasteful obstacle to getting work.  They’re mooching off the development community, and making ridiculous sums of money for doing pretty much nothing.  It’s just a question of good companies getting the word out to developers in places they naturally go, right?  Why not start a job board a la Joel Splosky?From the programmer’s side of things, this seems like a perfectly reasonable solution, since if you work with computers you’re used to readily finding stuff via the Internet.  You don’t mind trolling through a bunch of job ads every few years, and don’t really care if you hear about every job under the sun- you only need one, right?

But recruiters don’t exist to fill a need for jobseekers.  Think about it: who is willing to pay for the recruiters services?  If you’re an employee in the IT industry, not you.  Recruiters fill a missing need for employers.

Lots of employers write crummy job ads.  Way too short or long, confusing, missing key information.  Posted in out of the way places only a handful of people see.  Lots of job ads don’t get any applications whatsoever, or at least none from anyone qualified.  Why not?  Because you’re busy, and you probably only spend your time poring over job ads when you’re really desperate to get into a new job, or if you’re really involved in the user community.   But, the number of super involved people is a tiny fraction of the total developer community, and there aren’t enough qualified but super-desperate people at any given time to make this work.
Even if the passive advertising route draws in some CV’s, sorting out who is worth interviewing is tough.  The manager looking to fill the role is busy managing or developing, so it ends up falling to the HR person to try to figure out what’s going on.  It’s their job to figure out if the Symfony person might be worth calling for a Cake project, or whether the Java guy that doesn’t have NetBeans on his CV will do.  Unfortunately, they probably don’t know much about any of this unless their company has a whole lot of software jobs, and someone has taken the time to help them really understand all this stuff.  More likely, though, they’ll look through their meager pile of applicants, and possibly hand the least-wrong ones off to the hiring manager, who will techily explain that no, the Javascript guy won’t cut it for the lead Java developer position.  Back to square one.
The recruiters exist because they plug all the information gaps in this system.  They post ads in lots of big, well read places, and they revise the ads so that they’re clear and appealing.  They call people.  They filter out really awful CV’s, and the call the people with decent ones to find out if they really want the job, really have experience with x, y and z, and really seem suitable to company ABC.  Instead of having no CV’s at all or a few wildly unsuitable ones, recruiters send back a couple that mostly suit the job in question, and they’ve already made sure that the people involved aren’t total lunatics (most of the time).
Now, having said that, recruiters are only a tiny bit better than no recruiters.  They’re often ill informed about the sector they recruit for, and they have a financial incentive to push people toward jobs they don’t want.  We think there are much better ways to go about addressing these information holes- that’s why we’ve developed the matching algorithm Jobyssey uses, and why we ask users to tell us so much about themselves.  It’s not a simple problem- if it were, someone would have already built a job board for that.

Want Santa to bring you a new job for Christmas?
Unfortunately, the man in the big red suit may not be able to do this for you.  But if you can do these 12 things for yourself, you’ll go into the new year ready to start actively looking and find the job you’re ready to have.

1 Great CV- Get your CV up to date, and if there are problems with it (you’ve always worried it was too short, or you have a hard time explaining what you do), get some help with it- check out our other articles on CV’s, or get help from a friend in the industry who hires people.
2 Interview Outfits- Now, here is something you can ask Sant a for!  Keep in mind that, particularly in Ireland, you may still need a suit for the interview, even if the office is more casual.  Also, you’ll probably be going back at least twice, and while it’s find to wear the same suit (provided you’re not going to be wearing a suit to work every day) you need different shirts/ties/
3 Perfect References- Figure out ahead of time who you’d like to use as a reference.  The ideal is 3 people who’ve supervised your work within the software or IT industry, but sometimes a co-worker is OK too.  When you talk to them, be explicit- “Would you feel comfortable giving me a good reference?”  It’s also courteous to give them a heads-up any time you think a particular employer may be contacting them.
4 Work Samples- The proof is in the pudding, right?  Build up a portfolio of things youve worked on in the past to share with new employers.  This is easier and more critical for designers and consultants, but it’s important for everyone. If you spend your time writing code, that’s what should go in your work sample collection.  Package it nicely (say, laid out in acPDF or on a webpage) and send it out along with your CV, and doors may open up more easily.
5 expert advisors-  You can’t go it alone, and it’s good to have a variety of people to turn to for advice as you go along.  Some specific advisors you’ll want to have in mind:  a Job Hunt Guru (someone that does a lot of hiring or has just gone through the process themselves), a Profession Expert (that person that goes to every conference and knows someone at every company), a Hiring Decisionmaker (someone that can help you prepare for an interview because they’re used to being on the other side of the desk), a Best Friend (someone to turn to for a reality check when the going gets tough), and your spouse (the other person who will be most affected by your choice, and whose opinion you’d probably better consult!)
6 Free vacation days- It’s the beginning of a new year, so you’ve probably got some leave built up, but keep in mind you’ll probably be applying for more than one job, and have to interview 2-3 times for each.  It adds up.  Few companies in the Dublin area regularly accomodate requests for interviews after work, but try to go first thing in the morning or at the end of the day to soften the blow.
7 Days (a week) of searching- Set aside a time every day to look over new jobs, and get creative- your local users group, for example, may post jobs occasionally.  Be wary of jobs that don’tclearly state the name of the company- these recruitment company ads can be misleading, and you may waste a lot of time on duplicate jobs.
8 things to look for- Have a clear idea in your mind of what will and will not suit before you start looking through jobs.  Know what you need in terms of: location (this won’t be new information to anyone in Dublin, but think about how you’ll get there too), salary, benefits (is health insurance a must for you?  Tuition reimbursement?), job title (don’t get too rigid about this one though- a grand title at a start-up may have the same responsibilities as a more junior role at a multinational), company (right size for you?  Right culture?  Business in good shape overall?), skills fit, room to grow (look for somewhere that you’ll get exposed to new skills you’d like to develop), anddealkillers (is there anything you absolutely don’t want to do anymore?)
9 good examples- An interview technique gaining popularity in technical circles is Behavioural Interviewing.  Based on the idea that past behaviour is the best indicator of future performance, the interviewer will ask questions like, “Tell me about a time you disagreed with your boss and how you handled it?”.  9 things you should have anecdotes in mind about: disagreements at work, stressful situations/time constraints, unhappy clients or bosses, past failures or mistakes, analysis/solving a problem, having to persuade someone, descisionmaking/prioritizing, leadership, and innovation/initiative.
10 Calls a day- Give yourself time to apply for 5 jobs a day, and follow up on 5 previous applications.  The number may be a bit higher at first, and may drop over time as you’ve seen a lot of what’s out there, but be sure you’ve set aside time to act when you do find the right roles.
11 people to help you network- It’s just as important to find out about job interviews that are as yet “under the radar”.  Make a list of people to contact- former colleagues that have moved on, people in the same industry as you that are friends-of-friends, someone heavily involved in the local user community, etc. The more the better.  If your current employer doesn’t know you’re looking, be sure to share that with them and ask for their discretion.
12 Different questions- to ask at your job interview.  Keep in mind you’ll be speaking to different people, so you’ll need questions suited to their areas, and you should have at least 4 in mind, since some may get covered earlier in the interview, and not asking any questions can look like a lack of interest or motivation.  Come up with some for HR (about the hiring process, benefits at the company, etc), your prospective manager (direction of the department, upcoming projects, his needs and requirements for the role) and for a prospective co-worker (company culture, past projects, their thoughts on different aspects of the company).
Happy Holidays and Happy Job Hunting!

So, as mentioned in a previous post, Jobyssey is now developed in Ruby using the Rails framework, which has made us all very happy.  Unlike Jobyssey 1.0, which used PHP and a framework called Seagull no one has ever heard of (or, TBF, no one that writes decent tutorials or useful API’s or books has ever heard of), Rails has a great community, tutorials, books, blogs, and so on.  Even better, though, it’s a simple, beautiful language with a powerful, consise framework, so we don’t even need all that stuff as much as we once did.  Stuff just…works.  It was delightfully shocking. 

So, as part of our newfound delight and enthusiasm, and, yes, pride (Ok, ok!  So I’m a dork) over the way things were going,  I was all primed to append a Rails logo to the bottom on the site.  Because in our Born Again Software fervor, I wanted to let everyone know how much easier this had made our lives and business, and that they should try it themselves.  Really.  Go download it now from http://www.rubyonrails.org/.  Or give it a try online, without any downloading.  Or, if you have some time and a large stash of Sour Skittles and Mountain Dew, read this.  

 But it seems that using the Rails logo without permission is a no-no, although I’m not 100% sure.  It seems reasonable that you could use it in a “Using the Rails Framework” context if you in fact were, but “it seemed reasonable at the time” isn’t really the entirety of trademark law, so I’m leaving it alone.  It was suggested I could email DHH and ask for permission to use it, and I’m sure he’s a prefectly nice and reasonable guy, but my fear of rejection forbids it (Hey, this software is our baby!  And if someone didn’t like it…I just don’t know how I’d handle that *sniff*). 

So, we may just go for the Ruby logo, which has a Creative Commons license.  Although I do worry that when resized to fit in the footer, it will just look like a small red blob.  

I continue to be surprised an annoyed by how many of our problems come solely from trying to make something work or show up properly in IE.  Invariable, things that work the way you intended in Firefox and look mostly OK in Safari too go completely pear-shaped in IE.  In fact, after this latest issue, I am giving serious thought to appending a warning to the main page advising anyone visiting with IE6 or 7 to return when they have a more standards-compliant browser *sigh*.

Anyway, we were using jRails to supply autocomplete functionality in a few places, but found in IE it throws an error that keeps the rest of the Javascript on the page from working properly.  I tried the first couple things that Google suggested, but after that didn’t work I’ve just removed it for the time being (given that we were under the gun to get a new release out with some other key festures by tomorrow, I decided we could like with a few hideous pull down menus on the admin side for the moment).

If you’re passing through and have any experience with this (or have an alternate autocomplete solution for Rails that is simple to implement that you’d suggest), I would love to hear about it.

So, first off, sheepish apologies for the insanely long delay in posting any new content.  Truth is, we decided the core software for Jobyssey needed to be pretty much pitched and started over to get the level of quality we were looking for, and through a rather unfortunate series of events I ended up doing a good chunk of the redevelopment myself.  If you know me you’ll know how unfortunate this was.  I can spot talent and I can talk the talk, but walking the walk was more like watching some pitifully injured bird hop in circles.  But, that’s mostly behind us for the moment.  Jobyssey is now proudly running in Ruby on Rails, and much better for it.

There’s lots more to say about that, but for the moment, I just wanted to get in here, clean out the insanely spam-clogged comment queue, and generally get back on the horse.

Please pop over to Jobyssey.com and check out our new site.  It’s pretty freaking cool, if I do say so myself.

So, now that Jobyssey is up and running, its a question of getting the word out to the right people for us. We hate to do the same boring mindless stuff everyone’s seen a million times- who really needs another ballpoint pen? We’ve got a couple of fun ideas in mind, and the first one we’re planning on doing is customized fortune cookies. Fun, right? And tastier than most pens.

Looking for ideas for the messages, though, we came across a few sites that were too funny to go unblogged about:

• Bizarre Fortune Cookies
  
• Unsettling Fortune Cookies
• Fortune Cookies You Don’t Want To Get

The Catch-22 of trying to get your first job in a particular field is that everyone wants experience. It’s easy enough to understand why potential bosses would prefer someone with a background in the field, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Whether you’re looking for your first “real” job or making a career change mid stream, try the following to get some experience under your belt: Read the entire post…