Monthly Archives: March 2005

Your own personal marketing campaign

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Seeing that I left off my last entry by noting that getting interviews is the other half of the battle, I figured I’d share how I’ve been doing that, too.

One of the really interesting things about the job search is how much it relates back to sales and marketing. I’ve been going through outplacement classes (“sessions” sounds too therapeutic) over the past few days at my previous employer. They’ve been excellent. A career manager from Lee Hecht Harrison has been on site to guide us through the transition process. The most effective thing she’s been able to impart, aside from her 40 years of human resources experience, has been a framework for undertaking a new job search. This, I think, is the scariest thing about losing your job: not knowing where to start. There are résumés to put together, contacts to call, people to meet, portfolios to build, emails to send, searches to run, clothes to buy, research to do…the list goes on. I already had been passively looking for a new position since November — thinking something was going to happen to my team sooner or later — but, quite frankly, I just don’t think I would have gone to all this trouble if the necessity hadn’t been foisted upon me.

LHH has done a world of good by putting the job search in the context of project management — a topic that a lot of us business and technology geeks can relate to. You set your goals, design a plan, build milestones, track your progress, execute well, and assess its completion. All straightforward stuff, and not a big deal to people who have been drilling this stuff for the last several years. We’be also been learning quite a bit about Sales & Marketing because so much of a job search is exactly that — marketing and selling your skills and experience to meet potential employers’ needs. This has been both eye-opening and familiar to me at the same time.

For of my professional life, I’ve been working in a sales context, and that has given me a lot of exposure to what it takes to be good at sales. My work with the customer relationship management (CRM) systems that the sales teams use to organize their day has taught me a lot about successful selling. In a few words: it’s all about follow-up. If marketing campaigns (like that credit card advertisement you threw away yesterday) are the first touch, good selling is following up that message with a phone call, visit, or email. CRM systems essentially boil that process down to a workflow and a repository. If a CRM system is working correctly, it’s helping you remember the name of that guy you exchanged business cards with at that tradeshow two months ago, who asked you to give him a call sometime. Siebel has created a vast enterprise building these systems.

The need for successful follow-up became apparently clear to me once I started getting face-time with hiring managers. Promises to forward résumés, make phone calls, and send emails got lost in a sea of buisiness cards and handwritten notes. I had toyed with the idea of building a tracking system for this actviity, but quickly realized that a.) it would drain a lot of time that I need to use more effectively and b.) this functionality already exists with CRM, and there are open-source systems out there to use. After a bit of searching on SourceForge, I rediscovered SugarCRM: a PHP and MySQL, open-source CRM platform. I set up a subdomain on Simplificate and installed the app — SugarCRM was literally up and running within an hour, and I was reaping the benefits inside of a day.

SugarCRM uses a very standard object model for tracking the selling process: companies are organized into Accounts, people are associated with Accounts and identified as Contacts, potential sales are organized and associated with Accounts and Contacts as Opportunities, and any of these objects can be associated with todo items called Activities. When you log into the system, you’re presented with a dashboard that consolidates this information into one centralized view. Open opportunities sorted by dollar value are listed, along with activity reminders (did you call John Doe?) and a calendar. Your opportunity pipeline is graphically shown using an interactive barchart using Flash that you can use to drill down to more information. Pretty slick for a free application. SugarCRM is not without its bugs: there’s the occasional sort-order problem, an irritating display problem that shows PM times as AM, and general usability could improve (tab order and readability on forms, for example). But it does the basics, and does them very well.

I noted that sales and job-hunting have a lot in common, but there’s one key difference to keep in mind when using a CRM application. The goal of sales is to sell as much product to as many qualified leads as possible. The goal of job hunting, however, is to sell one single product to that one, very special customer.

Nerve Touching

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Nerve Touching. John Gruber calms Mac-abandonment anxiety with his usual level-headed style. Favorite quote: If you take it personally that the Mac has perhaps slipped to Apple’s second-most-profitable division, you’re weird.

First rule of interviewing: don’t underdress

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So, as with any major life change, the layoff thing has illuminated a few needs that have long gone unattended. Most importantly: the need of a suit. Sarah and I were trying to figure out just how embarrassing it is that I’ve lived the entire 26 natural years of my life without having ever purchased this essential garment for modern living. I’ve barely managed to skate by formal events on clothing rentals, the hand-me-down jacket from a friend from high school (namely, ??Jon Hughes??) for senior photo day, and the sport jacket my mother-in-law purchased for Sarah’s and my honeymoon. But now, with the responsibility of wooing a prospective employer (or client) for the purpose of earning cold hard cash, my formalwear fate is sealed.

To give you a sense of just how clueless I am about anything dressier than khakis, I began my search in the worst of all possible places: J.C. Penney. After meandering through the store and frankly admitting to the salesperson that I had no idea what I was looking for, he brought me — as a stern parent leads a disruptive child — to the suits separates rack. If you’re unfamiliar, let me indulge: the separates idea in suit purchasing gives you, the suit buyer, the opportunity to afford the cheapest possible pants/jacket combination while _simultaneously_ giving you that freshly-punched-out-of-a-mold look. All this can be yours for just south of $200. Convinced that more exploration was in order, I left in search of information unencumbered by the hard sell.

Some well-known brand searching on the web brought to light some interesting observations as I bounced from site to site. In the early stages of searching for any information, you begin to get a sense for what you’re looking for and are rapidly able to discern dross from gold. To wit: someone _really_ needs to tell Penney’s that if they’re going to photograph men wearing their products, it might just be fitting for them to actually _tailor_ said item to the model first. After looking at this photo from Nordstrom’s, this model looks as though he’s wearing a garbage bag. Note the extra cloth around the midsection hanging off of him like a curtain — not exactly the most stunning first impression to make at an interview.

As with everything, Google bestowed cluefulness after some diligent searching, sifting, reassessment, and drill down. A “similar to” search on Nordstrom’s mercifully returned the Men’s Wearhouse. More Googling also turned up a four-article series on men’s fashion at The Morning News, of all places. And, the articles are actually really good, though written in TMN’s own, er, inimitable style. So much so, that I thought them each worthy of a link: Part 1, Suits; Part 2, Dress Shirts; Part 3, Pants; Part 4, Conclusion. Crassness aside, Part 1 was actually quite helpful for even simple things like: never, ever button the bottom button on a two- or three-button jacket. News to me.

An hour-and-a-half at Men’s Wearhouse with a very helpful salesperson, and Sarah and I settled on a sharp-looking three-button charcoal suit for a reasonable amount of money (which is, of course, a thinly-veiled euphamism for “let’s hope this new gig results in a substantial raise to pay for this”). They say feeling good and looking sharp is half the battle in interviewing — I suppose getting one is the other half — so I should be well on my way to that dream job any day now.