What A Manager Wants to Hire

Get ready for another rant!

When you apply for a job in the professional world, what are some things you might write on the resume you send, or say to the hiring manager if you get the chance?

I am passionate about (insert industry skill)

I work well in teams and independently (or something along those lines)

I understand and have experience in the entire project’s life cycle

Sound familiar? That’s because I’m sure you’ve said or written at least one of these before. Are these inherently bad things to say? Absolutely not.

Q: Which one of these statements could easily be said/written by a random person who might be faking it?

A: All of them!

What I’m strongly hypothesizing is that your application isn’t popping off the page. It’s not standing out to the hiring manager in the least.

Try your hardest to put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes: What do they want to hear about YOU?

Chances are, if the recruiter is online looking through resumes instead of hiring their co-workers cousin, they’ve read at least a hundred resumes from people who ‘are passionate about (insert industry skill)’

Q: Who do you think you’re competing against for the job?

A: Lot’s of passionate, hard working, team players etc. etc. etc.

I recently came across some knowledge from a Bloc mentor Mark Carpenter in a group session he was teaching about job searching. Paraphrasing one of the points he made was that employer’s look for more than the obvious minimum qualifications (like a degree or particular industry skill):

1. Proof of passion – Notice I didn’t say passion. Who’s a manager going to hire, a passionate individual, or a passionate individual with projects done on their own time/dollar to prove it?
2. Attitude and Personality – Who is this person really? Are they curious to learn more? Do they love what they do or do they just want a paycheck? Can they take criticism and turn it into improvement regardless of who it’s from? Will they be pleasant to work with? Answering  these are absolutely critical to success in any professional environment.
3. Above all else: YOUR EMPLOYER CAN NOT AND WILL NOT WANT TO CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE.

Let me say it again in case you missed it:

Your employer can not and will not want to change your attitude.

• This means having a positive, charming, professional, pleasant demeanor even in the face of disaster.
• This means helping the inexperienced (or plain lazy) folks when they need it, without complaining or shifting the responsibility to someone else. Ideally without your manager making you.
• This means getting more work done than needed (because you can).
• This means staying late to ensure a project is finished on time.

Beyond this list is a company’s mission and goals, and I highly recommend you research them in advance. Aligning with these can be the difference between top candidates.

That being said, you should still try to meet basic job requirements, especially if your blindly applying online. Don’t throw them to the wind.

More important side notes:

• I did not talk about it because it should be obvious: it’s not about you, it’s about the company. Think about what you can do for the company.
• Recruiters are people too! They don’t want to disappoint their manager/supervisor by referring a person that doesn’t look like a good fit.
• Make your resume short and sweet. If an employer wants to read more, they can contact you, and they will. One page is a great limit in my opinion. Not going into resume structure, but you can google this pretty easily.
• Talk about and provide proof to your passions/hobbies, not just your work experience. This goes along with what I said earlier.

 

 

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I will be posting again soon about my experiences with the React.js library, so stay tuned!

What will the future look like?

My ‘Red Pill’ 

I recently had a conversation with my father about what I believe the world will look like when I die. Sounds morbid, but I am quite fascinated with the rate humans are discovering new technology and implementing it. Most of our conversation revolved around the crazy idea that my generation (1990s) will be the last to remember life before the internet took over. Here’s a brief compilation of my thoughts in no particular order:

1.) Currency will no longer be traditional printed paper and coins, but rather mostly, if not entirely, crypto-currency.

• What kind you ask? Not sure on that, I think the idea needs to evolve and spread. There will be a roster of them, but likely one or two with the most value, though all will have value.
• Governments will either regulate or convert to them entirely, banks likely as well.

2.) Google will ultimately be able to predict people’s buying decisions and the eventually control the entire market. This may not become public knowledge. This may take a while…

• Why? Machine/deep learning and AI are already proven to make decisions and subsequently predictions faster and with more accuracy and precision than humans. See this video about AI and DOTA for example. 
• Everyone is now connected. See this Forbes article on the internet of things.

“. . . The first artificial intelligence will be a supercomputer based on the neuron activities of the hive mind of humanity with billions of people wired into the internet exchange, and so all of our thoughts go into it, and we’re actually building a computer that has real neurons in real time that’s also psychically connected to us, that are organic creatures so that they will have current prediction powers, future prediction powers, a true crystal ball. But the big secret is, once you have a crystal ball and know the future, you can add stimuli beforehand and make decisions that can control the future.” – Alex Jones

3.) Traditional Colleges and universities will be largely online, and likely much cheaper. The younger generation was pushed into college by their parents, with little ROI due to the industry capitalizing on this and driving costs to the moon. Online academies are popping up everywhere offering training and job-ready skills for a fraction the cost of university, especially in tech. A huge win for education in my books.

4.) Cable television will not exist. None of the younger folks that I know pay for it, and that’s not likely to change. The media we consume will be entirely on the internet.

5.) Traditional sports will gradually be replaced by E-Sports but not entirely.

• Lots of people enjoy physical sports, so they will never disappear, but e-sports will become much more popular and I suspect share the market at least 50/50.
• Video games are not just popular, they generate a lot of revenue.

5.) Along those same lines, ISPs will find a way to corner consumers and control prices. If everything is on the internet, someone’s going to find a way to control the pipeline. For better or worse. This is starting to unfold in the recent push in the US against net neutrality. Sooner or later this heavenly bubble of free information will bust.

6.) Real estate will become drastically more valuable. 

• With people living well into their 80s on average, the human race is expanding at an unprecedented rate.
• Real estate in developed countries will be a hot commodity
• Farmland and farmers will become a major market again, likely to convert to laboratory produce as real estate costs soar.

7.) The job market will be reduced to strictly to the jobs we see now as highly technical. 

• Low-level labor will make sense on a charity basis, with the exception of agriculture, and even that may evolve.
• STEM and medical careers will be the entire economy.
• As mentioned previously, AI and robotics will take care of everything simpler.

8.) Mars will begin planetary engineering by various space agencies. People want to go to mars, but more importantly people want it to be like earth.

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That’s all for now, I may add more. If you have questions or comments feel free to add to this discussion.