Great new iPhone App.. Cultureous- Washington DC

One of my former employees from Discovery reached out the other day, letting me know that he is no longer at Discovery, he and his family have moved to Paris, France. His wife is part of their Foreign Ministry, and her new posting was back in the City of Lights. That's a loss for Discovery in my opinion, he was working on some interesting projects, and he is a very talented programmer with other skills such as project management.

In the email, he also introduced me to a program he wrote for the iPhone called Cultureous: Washington DC. This great application is for anyone who is traveling to DC, or who is living there and just wants to know more about the city. It is not just a list of interesting things to see in DC, of which there are many, but goes way deeper and gives you insights and multimedia content that really expand your knowledge of the particular monument, museum, attraction, etc. The application has a clean and easy to navigate interface, and uses geolocation to point out locations that are close to you that you may want to visit. Well worth the $2.99 asking price.

Great job Peter, can't wait to see what you turn out next!

Here is the link to the application in iTunes Cultureous - Washington DC

BTW due to Apple's ridiculous application approval process, they gave Cultureous a "Mature" rating, since it references links from Wikipedia and such, where you MIGHT come across adult themed material. This is absolutely one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. If that were true, the Safari web browser on the iPhone should be labeled NC-17...

read more “Great new iPhone App.. Cultureous- Washington DC”

Resume review - business vs technology

I spent quality time reviewing the first draft of my resume re-write today. It is a very good first stab, a definite upgrade from my old resume. The issue is, it portrays a technology person, not a business person who is a technologist.

Yes I am a technologist, yes I know a lot about technology. That background has certainly helped me get to where I am today. But what separates my skill and experience from many other pure technologists is how I apply that technology to solve business problems. I see technology as a set of tools in my tool-bag, there to be used once I have understood what the business issue is, just like business analysis and finance skills are tools.

I tried to express this in all the examples I gave to the resume writer. They are projects that had a significant impact on the business, either lowering costs, increasing efficiencies, or support for new product development. Yes I have done a lot else to guide technology in these jobs, including evaluations, RFPs, architecture etc. I think that is a given for someone with my background. I need to differentiate myself with what I have done to help the business I was supporting with their issues, using technology.

That is what a successful CIO/CTO needs to be these days. He needs to have a seat around the "business table", participating in the discussion and getting to understand the business issues. Then he can craft solutions with his set of tools, in this case technology, to help solve those opportunities and challenges. Same as someone in marketing, sales, or finance, just with a different set of tools.

I don't see this as a "should be" but as a "must have" for CIOs, and their businesses, to be successful.

read more “Resume review - business vs technology”

Resume re-write

As you may be aware from previous posts, I received an offer from TheLadders.com for a free resume re-write. One of their PR folks had seen my post on their critique service, and asked if I would like a no strings attached free resume and cover letter re-write. Of course I jumped at it..

On June 1st, I was contacted by Andrew from TheLadders.com, who introduced himself and the service, and provided a worksheet for me to fill out. The purpose of the worksheet was not to reiterate what was on my resume, but to add to it. It asked for career objectives, core competencies, and for each job in the last 10 years or so, more detail on the company, the job itself, and significant accomplishments. It also asked for any job posts that would be reflective of the position that I would be looking for.

I started to fill it out, and in the meantime asked Andrew a couple of questions about the service and how we would be proceeding.. Here is what I asked and how it was answered:

1. You obviously have my current resume, do you also have a copy of the critique that was done by Tyler? Will you be using that as part of re-drafting my resume? Are there other things you see that Tyler may not have? I have your resume and Tyler's critique. It's something I will review, but since I'll have your resume and your worksheet, I'll be able to develop a more comprehensive strategic game plans, because I'll have more building blocks to work with.

2. What are some of the most important things you think I need to highlight or re-do that my resume might be lacking or need further clarification? The most important thing you can provide is the results of your actions. I don't think resumes necessarily come down to metrics. I do believe that every action has a result and that results are the most tangible and employer-focused demonstration of your qualifications you can provide

3. If I also wanted to use this resume to target government jobs, at the SES level, would I need to do anything differently or answer different or other questions? Government resumes are different than traditional business resumes. We will need to define the target for the resume we are creating (I asked this question, because I had seen a couple of SES positions, and all signs pointed to a need for a specific resume format to submit to the openings. Just wanted to see if Andrew agreed)

4. How long from when I send you back the worksheet can I expect the first draft? I will have the initial draft back to you within one week of receiving and reviewing your materials.

5. Whats the process on edits after the first draft, are there a limit on how many times we can discuss and tweak the resume? Technically, you have 30 days of writing services. Not that it takes 30 days, but, I want you to know that quality supersedes a time table. We're going to create something that fits you and I'm not going to be counting 29 days or 30 days. The policy is there because sometimes people come back 6 months or a year later looking for a free update. So, again, getting a top-performing resume supersedes a schedule

6. Are you part of TheLadders.com staff, or are you an outside consultant/resume writer? I am a subcontractor with the ladders. I own my own business (URL omitted). Though I'm not on staff, I hope it's not boastful to say that my team and I are considered one of the Ladders premier "closers". I've been asked to write documents for the friends and family of several of The Ladders co-founders and I'm often the one they call for VIP clients or clients with particularly challenging or unique careers

As you can see, Andrew is not on staff, has his own business, and subcontracts to TheLadders.com. It is interesting to note a comment on my June 1st blog post ResumeKing commented that I had "disparaged" home resume businesses. I don't believe that is true, what I said was that a home based resume business is not necessarily a negative. The concern is determining if the person you are dealing with is really good at writing resumes, or just really good at marketing and sales. Going with a larger company I think alleviates some of this, as they screen the people they hire or subcontract with, and I would expect that they get rid of the folks that are not up to par. I am positive there are some great resume writers out there who work from home and own their own businesses..

I filled out the worksheet, and submitted it back to Andrew on June 9th, and received back the first draft last night, 6 days after I submitted the worksheet, well within the week he quoted me. I am reviewing it today, and I will post tonight or tomorrow on my first thoughts on the resume.

So far all communication has been via email, but Andrew offered several ways to review the draft, including a phone call, email, or exchanging word documents with tracking. Once I review, I will see what makes the most sense.

Couple of questions for someone from TheLadders.com on the service.. if they read this and can send back answers to me via email, I would appreciate it..

1. What is your policy on hiring subcontractors? What is your screening process and criteria?

2. How do you determine whether a subcontractor or a staff writer gets the resume?

3. What is the percentage of resumes written by internal staff vs subcontractors? What about the critiques, similar percentage?

read more “Resume re-write”

TheLadders.com Resume service

Received an interesting email from the folks at TheLadders.com about one of my blog posts. One of their PR people doing searches looking for comments on their critique service came across this entry. Someone thought the blog was pretty good (flattery will get you everywhere) and in the email asked if they could use an excerpt of the blog, as well as add the blog URL for reference. I was happy to say yes, and as my cousin said this weekend jokingly, I am taking the blogosphere by storm! LOL

One of the incentives they threw out was was to offer a complimentary professional rewrite of my resume! "No strings attached" of course, but they know full well that it is a topic that no blogger could resist. So I gratefully accepted their offer, and was contacted today by one of their professional resume writers to get the process started.

If you have been reading the blog faithfully, and I know you all have ;-), you know that I have not made a great deal of progress on the re-write. While the critique was great, and pointed out some glaring issues on my resume, it has been hard to sit down and draft the resume based on what the critique said. Not that it wasn't clear what was wrong, it just is that every time I re-wrote something, somehow it always ended up sounding extremely similar! I guess your writing style is your writing style, and unless you write for a living, it is hard to not hear your "inner voice".

I have been doing research on other resume writing services, but had not decided on whether or not to persue TheLadders.com, or some other service. Some of the others were definitely less expensive then TheLadders.com, but they also didn't have the same "big company" feel. Most seemed like home businesses, that had other resume writers working for them on a freelance basis. Not that is necessarily a negative, but I felt like it would be more random to get a really good re-write of my resume, then what I felt like I could get using TheLadders.com, or other, larger resume writing services. But of course, the bigger they are, almost invariably the more expensive they were.

Also since my resume will be targeted at C-Level jobs (CIO, CTO, SVP type), I definitely needed to be sure that I was getting a professional who really could make my resume stand out. And while all of the websites of these services said they dealt with resumes at that level, you obviously never know.

I did try to talk to some folks in the recruiting world, people who own their own recruiting firms, or folks with some of the majors that I have dealt with in the past. None really had any good recommendations for me, and as a matter of fact one major firm suggested that anything smacking of "boilerplate" would be a definite negative!

So this offer from TheLadders.com for a complimentary re-write is the best of both worlds! I get to see how a large, more corporate service handles my resume, and see if the money I would have had to shell out would have been worth it.

Please stay tuned to the blog as the re-write progresses!

read more “TheLadders.com Resume service”

Faith in people.. and in your work..

My wife was having a conversation with her sister last night that I overhead from my office. Her sister has been having a run of bad luck in her life, and is also job hunting at the same time. When I say a run of bad luck, I mean it. Her car caught on fire a couple of weeks ago.. really.. that bad..there are pictures and everything..

In the course of the conversation, you could hear my wife continuing to give her encouragement about looking for work, and kept telling her that she can do almost anything she puts her mind to, which is absolutely true, her sister is one smart person. But as I was listening, it occurred to me that my wife just generally has faith in people. Not only that she sees the good in people, but that she truly conveys her faith that you can do whatever they put your mind to. She has constantly said that to me, and has put her faith in me many times, but I am her husband. This is her general attitude, and she really is genuine in her feelings. One of the many reasons why I love her, and one of the reasons she is a spectacular doctor.

That got me thinking about faith in your work, and how having faith in what you are doing can allow you to overcome many obstacles, and put aside things that might be bothering you. When you feel like you are contributing, moving an organization forward, and helping the business meet their goals and objectives, that leads to faith in the organization and the work you are doing. Other issues can then be handled, becuase they are merely small obstacles to overcome for the greater good.

I don't want this to sound like a sermon, what I mean is that faith in your work and what you are doing is a significant contributing factor to how satisfied you are with you job, and allows you to set the small annoyances or issues aside, and keep pushing forward. I know it is a large motivation factor for me.

read more “Faith in people.. and in your work..”

Hershey Park

Completely off topic...

My wife and I took our 15 year old, 3 of her friends, our 10 year old daughter and a friend of hers to Hershey Park this weekend. And while it could easily have been a disaster, everything worked out great and the girls had an awesome time.

We left at 6:30 on Saturday to get an early start. Picked up all the girls, who were on time and eager to get going. I drove the first half into Pennsylvania, and Donna drove the second half. We arrived around 11am, which was amazingly short drive time, checked in at the Hershey Lodge, and were at the park by 11:30, not bad at all.

It is a lot bigger then I expected! The park has 11 roller coasters according to my oldest, and she and her friends wanted to make sure to hit them all. A couple were out of commission for maintenance, but they managed to get on every one that was working, at least once, and a couple 3 or 4 times! One of the coasters, called Fahrenheit, has a 90 degree vertical ascent (yes, straight up on your back) up 121 feet, a 97 degree NEGATIVE drop, and a top speed of 58mph! I was nervous just looking at the thing! See here for information on the coaster. Here is a picture..

Of course it poured rain while we were there. The girls actually went on a ride in the rain and got soaked as Donna and I hid under a Dippin' Dots umbrella LOL. We spent a total of over 8 hours at the park on Saturday, and finally went back to the Lodge after the world's slowest bus driver took us back (anyone need to get off at Cocoa RRrrrrrrr?). Girls tried to go swimming in the pool, but they closed it due to the thunder and lightning.. lol closed an INDOOR pool! Too funny.

Breakfast the next morning, early but not too early, 4 more hours in the park, a tour through Chocolate World, bought a ton of candy we didn't need, and finally on the road again at a little after 4pm. Took us a bit longer to get home, some traffic in jersey and Staten Island, but surprisingly the Belt parkway was clear. Everyone home by 9:30, and exhausted.

I would definitely recommend a trip there, everything went well, plenty of activities for everyone, kids, young adults, adults, and wide variety of food, even a kosher and a vegetarian restaurant! Hershey Lodge was very nice, comfortable and clean rooms, not very spacious, but how long are you really going to spend in the room anyway? Very convenient bus service from the lodge directly to the park, so no parking hassles. It was crowded Saturday, but Sunday was a breeze, with lines no more then 5-10 minutes at most, even for the popular rides.

Great weekend, girls had fun, which is what the trip was all about. Everyone is wearing their matching t-shirts to school today!

read more “Hershey Park”

Lunch with former colleagues

I had lunch yesterday with some of the old gang from a past job. It is always fun to get together with these folks, we have all gotten along well over the years, and have amazingly kept in touch over the past 10+ years since last we all worked together. It hasn't been regular, or as often as anyone would like, but still, it is always a good time when we do.

It is amazing to see how their families have changed (a daughter married, a son playing college football, etc), and talking through the changes in your own family. It is great to get reflected back to you how much your own kids and family have grown and changed.

We had 3 no-shows (you know who you are!), which is par for the course, and as I was driving there, I kept thinking of people we should have invited along.

Driving home from lunch, I thought about the company and situation where we worked together. Man did we complain about things, and think we had a messy situation back then. Thinking back on it though, it was probably the most enjoyable job I have ever had. And it wasn't the work, although we had some very interesting projects and worked with some pretty cutting edge technology. (See this link as an example.) It was the people that made the experience enjoyable and memorable. Whether it was my peers, subordinates, or others in the organization, we worked hard, got the job done, and had fun doing it. The best thing about almost the entire IT organization at the time was the amount of teamwork displayed, but without all the melodrama and rah-rah that seems to accompany "team-building" these days. It was just a good group of people that got along, had fun, and helped each other along the way.

Soon after, we were acquired, new management came in with new directions and new attitudes, and slowly almost all of us ended up leaving in one way or another. Some of us ended up at other jobs at other companies, some still work at the old company.

But 10+ years later we still get together and hang out periodically.. that was, and still is, a great group of people..

read more “Lunch with former colleagues”

Importance of networking

I have been reading and surfing a lot lately, as you can imagine, and one of the common themes is the importance of networking. This has nothing to do with Ethernet or Cisco you IT geeks out there, but concerns maintaing relationships throughout your professional and personal life. It is something I realize I don't do exceptionally well, and will definitely be improving on, not only during this job search, but as I move forward in my career.

It is hard to try and maintain contact with people you meet as you cruise through life and work, and we are all very busy. That is an easy excuse to use when we don't network effectively, even when we know we should. Think about it, how many high school or college friends or acquaintances do you keep in touch with? What about people from you very first job? I know there are not very many in my case. Actually since I have joined Facebook, it is amazing the people that find you on there.

But all of these people, no matter when or how you met them, can be connections to your next career. That sounds mercenary, and it is one of the reasons that networking is difficult for me personally. I hate just calling people out of the blue only when I "need their help". And that is exactly the reason why networking is so important! You have to constantly maintain these contacts so they are mutually beneficial, to you and the rest of your network. Think of it as your personal web, all those people you know, well of course they know people, who know people, etc etc etc. Like that shampoo commercial from the 70's I think it was.. they tell two friends, and so on and so on...

A great example of someone who does it well just contacted me yesterday. He has reached out to me almost constantly since he left our last job together, with little emails and updates, asking how things are going. When he heard I left my former company, he reached out, discussed updates of where he was and gave me some pointers on how he had been conducting his job search. When he emailed me yesterday, he requested an introduction with someone in my network, at a company where he is interested in a position. He found the connection on LinkedIn, the Facebook for business contacts. And of course I am going to give him an introduction. Not only is he a great guy, and did well when he worked for me, but has stayed in contact and worked his network.

For all of you in my network, I apologize if I contact you out of the blue, but I promise to do better in the future :-)

By the way, you can find me here on Facebook and here on LinkedIn. feel feel to reach out and add me on either site!

read more “Importance of networking”

Increase in Risk Adverse Cultures in IT

I was reading an interesting article on InformationWeek.com, and it spurred some thoughts on risk adverse cultures in IT organizations. You can find the original article here.

I don't think it is just CIOs that are becoming more risk adverse, but IT departments in general. Even when CIOs encourage their reports to take risks, and even when they have the right attitude when people take risks and they don't work out, it still seems that senior folks below the level of CIO are not taking risks. Why is this?

I can think of a couple of reasons:

1. They have gotten burned or have seen others burned in past lives taking risks. This is where the CIO may encourage risks, but then takes punitive measures when the risks don't pan out.

2. They don't believe the CIO when he says that calculated risk taking is acceptable. They have to have confidence that when the CIO says it is acceptable, he means it.

3. They don't know how to measure risk, so the thinking becomes every risk is too big, or just big enough to get them in trouble. This is a lot more common then I believe people understand. I have watched many projects where there isn't even a pause to consider if there ARE risks, never mind to measure them. And even when risks are put down on paper, there is no contingency planning.

4. They truly just don't know how to take a calculated risk, it just isn't in their psyche. These are the people who have to have everything planned and exactly right before they will move on to the next step. There is a corollary to this, called "analysis paralysis", that I will hold for another blog post :-)

Of course, taking a lot of risk is just as bad, if not worse, to taking no risk at all. Those people that just throw caution to the wind and jump right in are just the "b" side of a bad record.

So how can a CIO encourage calculated risk taking? I think there are several ways:

- Lead by example - this is the best and most obvious answer. He needs to also take risks, with his organization, with his strategy, and with his interactions with other parts of the business. And he needs to make sure his directs see these risks, and understand how he came to the conclusion that this was a calculated risk worth taking.

- Add it to the goals and objectives of his department and his direct reports. Yes this can be subjective (did you take the right number of risks and were they well calculated) but it will certainly encourage people to think about risks at the very least.

- Celebrate risk successes and discuss risk failures openly. Both need to done to show that you can succeed when you take risks, and that risks sometimes do fail and here are examples of how they do.

- Be supportive, not vindictive, when well calculated risks do fail. There is a reason it is called a risk. No matter how well you think you have covered all the contingencies, sometimes it just doesn't work out. This is when the CIO has to show his backbone, correct the mistake, and perhaps even take the fall for the risk taker.

Taking calculated risks, in technology, in projects, and on people, are what in my opinion seperate out good IT organizations from great IT organizations. And by stretching what we can do, and how we use technology, we help the business move forward faster. Which after all is what a great IT organization can bring to the table...

read more “Increase in Risk Adverse Cultures in IT”

Motivation and Leadership

Finally cleaning up from the mess of the move, my office is pretty well straightened out, and somewhat organized. (Rest of the house.. not so much LOL) Yesterday was my birthday (thanks for all the Facebook happy birthday messages everyone!), and I had a good day cleaning up the office, and having dinner with the family. This is the first time in a long while that I was actually home for my birthday, and that was a nice bonus. Donna and kids as always were very generous and right on target with my gifts, getting me a gift certificate for golf lessons for my time off from work, as well as a new laptop to replace the one I had to give back when I left Discovery. (you don't realize how attached you are to that laptop until you are continually looking around for it!)

I was sitting in my office this morning, after having a good day yesterday, and I found it very hard to get myself motivated to do much. I don't know how much the weather is contributing to it (raining fairly hard right now, been almost constant for 2 days), but it was hard to get going today.

Which got me thinking about motivation in general, and specifically what motivates me. I spent some time (since I wasn't motivated) thinking about this, and I came up with a couple of characteristics of a perfect job:

- Opportunity to contribute to a goal or objective (sounds obvious, but not all jobs contribute to a goal, they are just "work")
- Leading others to a goal or objective
- Developing a good team, as well as good individuals, and seeing them get ahead.
- Opportunity to learn and stretch myself, past what I have done before, looking for challenges and completing them.

And the last but not least, if I accomplish all of those above: get rewarded by advancing my career or completing one of my personal goals.

I will readily admit, I enjoy being a leader, as I think you can tell by what motivates me. Not necessarily a manager, but a leader. I know that some folks can't, don't or won't separate the two, but they are different. I don't have to be 'in charge of people", although that is a bonus. But I do like to have influence, authority, and accountability. It is hard to be a leader when one or more of these is missing from a position, especially if you are NOT the manager or head of the department. Sometimes these need to be earned, sometimes they are delegated to you, but without all three, you cannot lead effectively in my opinion.

See this link for a great explaination of the difference between leadership and management.

Now I need to go out and find that job that will motivate me and let me lead!!

read more “Motivation and Leadership”

Resume Critique

So I signed up for TheLadders.com, "The Most $100k+ Jobs". Figured it couldn't hurt to see whats posted, not that I really expect my dream job to show up on a web site, but you never know. One of the "freebies" they give is a critique of your resume. Free is something that every unemployed person can use, so I submitted my resume..

Now I say freebies in quotes because there is almost always a catch. In this case, the goal is to hook you with the free critique, and then reel you in to their professional resume writing service. Now I haven't really used my resume to get a job for over 9 years (joined Cablevision in 2000, didn't really need a resume to join Discovery), so I know the resume was rusty.

Put all this together and I was imagining that I would get some negatives from the resume critique, but I thought it wouldn't be all that bad. After all, I have senior level, significant experience at top notch companies, so how bad can what I put down on paper really be?

Here are some quotes from the person who did the critique:

"Before I begin the critique, I would like to warn you about my style because my comments can seem frank. But the reality is that the job market is very competitive now, so I find it beneficial to help you develop your resume by being direct."

Ok, anyone familiar with my style knows I am direct, and like folks who deal in a similar fashion, so give it to me straight. Sounds good.

"First things first, lose the objective heading! This comes across as too low level! This is a bad marketing tactic plus an OLD resume technique that is not used today. Objectives aren't used anymore because they don't speak to the needs of the employer but rather to your needs. It’s a weak marketing message."

That's fine, this resume was made up 10+ years ago, probably just using a dated technique.

"Your job descriptions are much too BLAND and unexciting as an executive-level candidate."

"Another problem with this resume is its’ structure. Employers are looking for a specific format when they pick up a resume, and this one does not follow suit. Unfortunately, you have EVERYTHING bulleted - resulting in NOTHING standing out to the eye of the reader. Nothing CAN stand out in your resume because everything is formatted the same. Too many bullets and you lose the IMPACT that bullets were meant to achieve."

"While on the topic, some of your bullet points are simply too long to be effective."

"Way too long, and this isn’t even the worst one!"

"I would strongly recommend a more attractive or reader-friendly design to the document to provide a better first impression and better readability."

"Considering your career experience and target jobs, your resume is definitely not marketing you at ALL. It does not convince the reader of your qualifications, instead merely having faith the reader will make assumptions about your performance and read between the lines – definitely NOT what you want."

WOW.. and there are about 3 pages in total, just tearing my resume into shreds..

And you know what.. they are absolutely correct. I went back and critically looked at the resume, after doing some research on the web and reading a book or two, and they are spot on. My resume doesn't position me for where I want to be, and with things as difficult and tight as they are in the job market, I can't afford not to have a professional spend time with me and make this document more reflective of where I am. And more importantly, relate how I can be a unique and significant resource to a prospective employer.

For anyone looking for some help, I can honestly say that TheLadders.com did a fine job of taking a look at my resume, understanding where I want to position myself, and giving me free advice on how to better market myself. And they certainly weren't afraid of telling me all the gory details either.

Now I just need to go heal my bruised ego and get some help re-writing this!

read more “Resume Critique”

First Post!

Well by now I think most anyone reading or remotely interested in this blog is aware, my last day at Discovery Communications was Wednesday. The parting was mutual and amicable, and I think was handled well by both sides. Donna, my wife, suggested it might be a good idea to start a blog about the job search, I think to give me something to do :-). So I will post here all the trials and tribulations of my adjustment to moving back home full time, starting the job search, re-connecting with past colleagues and friends, networking with past co-workers and vendors/consultants/partners/just about anyone.

So if you have a job lead, want to network or reconnect, or just generally want to comment, feel free to respond to any of the postings, or contact me direct at dprill1@gmail.com

read more “First Post!”