It took a recession, but resumes finally are receiving renewed scrutiny. The ability to embellish and obscure shrinks when one out of every six workers is under or unemployed. More than ever, recruiters want to see accomplishments, not responsibilities; numbers, not adverbs.
Certain professions have it easier than others. If you’re a lobbyist, you cite legislation passed or defeated. If you’re a fundraiser, you count dollars raised. If you’re a political operative, you record a win-loss record.
Alas, if you’re a social media consultant, you probably shun such metrics. Sure, you’ve helped clients tweet and blog, but who among us hasn’t? Sure, you have 10 years of experience, but what have you achieved?
For instance, does your resume refer to “viral videos”? Sounds impressive, right? Well, how many views have these sensations attracted? Have you supported a Web site redesign? How much did that bolster traffic, and how many unique monthly visitors did that result in?
Did you manage an e-mail list? How many people subscribed to it, and how many joined under your watch? Did you conduct blogger outreach? Name five bloggers you’ve successfully pitched.
Did you execute search engine optimization? By what percentages did that drive up organic traffic and referral traffic, and how many negative and positive stories did you navigate in and out of the top 10 search results?
To be sure, numbers don’t paint a perfect picture. They omit client satisfaction, can elevate quantity to the detriment of quality, and can be massaged.
Moreover, numbers are only a means to an end. So, you doubled the audience for your podcast? Nice! Now tell us how this affected the bottom line. Did it engender a 30% bump in donations? A 50% jump in e-commerce sales? A 100% spike in membership?
Taking these extra steps requires extra work. Yet those confident in their CVs should embrace this charge. After all, there’s nothing like cold hard data to reveal that the common claim, “increased significantly,” in fact was a trivial 8% uptick.
Indeed, like the SAT, numbers serve a crucial purpose: They constitute a uniform, relatively transparent credential. As such, they help to address perhaps the biggest complaint about social media: How to measure its return on investment.
If ever you’ve interviewed for a job you didn’t get, no doubt you’ve bumped into this unpleasant experience.
You interview, you send a follow-up letter—maybe even with some writing samples or references—and then you wait. A week or so goes by, and you check in, yet hear nothing. Another week passes, and your frustration mounts.
If you’re lucky, eventually you receive a form letter that the position has been filled.
Excuse me, but what the fuck?
If two parties take the time to schedule and meet for an interview—in addition to conducting any background research—doesn’t common courtesy demand acknowledging subsequent communications? Is it that burdensome to respond with boilerplate such as, “We’ll let you know if we decide to move forward”? Keeping people in limbo is just plain rude.
So what to do? A recruiter might advise you to keep your chin up and plug along. E-mails being ignored? Pick up the phone. Calls going to voice mail? Leave a message with an assistant.
Let me suggest an alternative. If a prospective employer refuses to give you the time of day, then check that company off your list.
Too often, we strain to craft the polite but pointed e-mail. “Just want to make sure you have everything you need?” “Was wondering if I should plan to uncork a champagne bottle this weekend?” “Thought I’d touch base…”
Instead, spurned job seekers would do better to take their talents elsewhere. Just because prospective employers tend to have the upper hand doesn’t mean they should abuse it. And just because prospective employees need jobs doesn’t mean they should let themselves be taken for granted.
Granted, many job seekers do not enjoy the luxury of being so choosy, especially when the unemployment rate stands at 9.8%. Yet this advice not only serves your self-respect; it’s also practical, grounded in the experience that if a company is interested in you, it will get back to you, usually promptly. When that doesn’t happen, rarely does following-up change minds. Move on.
In an article for Fortune recounting his time leading the auto task force, Steve Rattner drops this nugget about the (mis)management of General Motors:
At GM’s Renaissance Center headquarters, the top brass were sequestered on the uppermost floor, behind locked and guarded glass doors. Executives housed on that floor had elevator cards that allowed them to descend to their private garage without stopping at any of the intervening floors (no mixing with the drones).
The central fact about Bloomberg’s new headquarters in midtown Manhattan is that it is nonhierarchical, having no private offices; all employees, from the brass on down, sit in long rows of terminal-laden desks.
When … [Michael] Bloomberg took office back in 2002, he ripped out City Hall’s traditional “office” setup and went about constructing a “bullpen” with a series of office cubicles, where he set up shop square in the middle.
The boss … placed himself in the center cubicle right next to new hires and middle rung employees of the country’s biggest city?
You bet he did …
“Walls are barriers, and my job is to remove them,” the billionaire businessman told the New York Times at the time …
The cubicles idea, Bloomberg has said, is to create an atmosphere of openness with the boss out front without anything hidden.
“I’m CEO, bitch.” That is reportedly what Facebook CEO, Marck Zuckerberg, had printed on his initial business cards.
Immature? Certainly. Arrogant? Absolutely. Plausible? Given Zuckerberg’s penchant for wearing sandals to meetings, yes.
Yet the same charges apparently can be leveled at another tech founder, Larry Page of Google, whose fawningpress clips have been the opposite of Zuckerberg’s. As reported by Ken Auletta in last week’s New Yorker, Page not only flouted common courtesy in a meeting with media mogul Barry Diller; his co-founder, Sergey Brin, seems not to have minded a whiff. (In fact, in a 2003 meeting with Viacom COO, Mel Karmazin, Brin “arrived late and rollerbladed into the room, out of breath and wearing a T-shirt and gym shorts.”)
Here’s the Diller anecdote:
Barry Diller, the C.E.O. of I.A.C., a diverse collection of Internet sites, including Ask.com and Match.com, recalled visiting Page and Brin in the early days of Google. Diller was disconcerted that Page, even as they talked, stared fixedly at the screen of his P.D.A. “It’s one thing if you’re in a room with 20 people and someone is using his P.D.A.,” Diller recalled. “I said to Larry, ‘Is this boring?’ ”
“No. I’m interested. I always do this,” Page said.
“Well, you can’t do this,” Diller said. “Choose.”
“I’ll do this,” Page said matter-of-factly, not lifting his eyes from his handheld device.
“So I talked to Sergey,” Diller said. “I left thinking that more than most people they were wildly self-possessed.”
Indeed. Were I in Diller’s shoes, I think I would have pulled a Johnny Drama (see above video), said “I’ll do this,” and walked out the door. Rudeness is not Googley, I don’t care who you are.
What’s more, in Google’s early days, Page was nobody. For comparison, can you imagine the President of the United States, an avid BlackBerrier himself, thumbing away on his PDA during a meeting with another head of state?
It would never, and should never, happen. Rude is rude.
“Success is a lousy teacher,” Bill Gates once quipped. We learn so much more by studying our failures than we do by sipping champagne.
Sadly, this lesson seems to be lost on the organizers of Gov 2.0 conferences. As my colleague, Steve Radick, observes, we don’t need another event to learn about the virtues of transparency or crowdsourcing; we need an event to learn how to secure and expand buy-in for these things from the C suite. Specifically, Steve suggests, we need to:
1. Realize that not all is perfect in the land of Gov 2.0. While we’ve had a lot of success, let’s not sweep our weaknesses under the rug. Let’s identify what’s going wrong and talk about it. We have showcases to talk about all of the successes—why don’t we have an event to talk about the challenges we’re facing and how to overcome them?
2. Identify the skeptics and open up a dialogue with them. Let’s stop talking about how great we all are amongst ourselves. I want a conference where that CIO who continues to block access to social media talks about why he’s blocking it. I want to hear from that Admiral explaining why he’s banned his sailors from using social media. I want to go to an event where I can talk with the guy who decided to shut down the UGov e-mail system and learn more about the pressures he’s facing.
3. Hear the war stories of the people who have gone before us. Listen, I know that there have been people who have been fired, reprimanded, demoted, moved to another project, and just flat-out yelled at for some of their Gov 2.0 efforts. What happened and why? What are the battles that people are facing? What are the battles that have been won and lost? I know that I’ve dealt with people yelling at me, laughing at me, and/or dismissing me for my Gov 2.0 efforts over the last three years—I’m sure there are others out there who would be able to learn from these experiences, just as I have.
Happily, it appears that a remedial confab, The Shortfalls of Government 2.0, is in progress. Here’s hoping this shortfall will become our windfall.
Its home-grown products, such as Orkut, Knols, Lively, and Google Checkout (knockoffs of Facebook, Wikipedia, Second Life, and PayPal, respectively), have been failures. Google’s biggest successes have come from acquisitions. For instance, Google bought YouTube after its own attempt at video on the web, Google Video, crashed and burned. And did the same with Blogger after its blog platform, Pyra Labs, failed. Even the “successful” acquisitions Google has made—Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Docs, and Blogger were all purchases, too—have taken up resources without creating significant revenue.
Indeed, Google’s latest—the much-heralded Google Wave—has been a flop, and the market share of its much-publicized Chrome browser is a rounding error. Despite restless ambitions and an ever-growing footprint, the company remains stunningly, unhealthily dependent on a single revenue source: advertising.
“Yet even here,” Last continues, its results are mixed.
Those text ads are dynamite, but Google couldn’t master the banner ad business and eventually resorted to simply buying DoubleClick, the industry leader. Eager to extend their tentacles into other ad mediums, Google started selling print ads, TV ads, and radio ads. The print and audio divisions performed so badly that they’ve already been shut down. The TV division is still limping along lamely.
By contrast, Microsoft owes its success not only to Windows, but also to Office.
“And here’s another reality check,” adds Chris Thompson. “Plenty of tech firms are still head and shoulders above Google, at least in terms of revenue.” Apple’s at #71 on the Fortune 500, Intel’s at #61, and Dell is swaggering around at #33.
We may live in a Google world, but that world fades when we unplug from the Internet.
The other day, a friend who I haven’t talked to in a while asked if I am still active in politics. The answer—no—came easily, but the reason necessitated some introspection. Why, after spending four years in college and two years afterward immersed in the field—professionally and personally—have I soured on the subject?
Obviously, that I’ve changed professions accounts for a lot. Yet I think my disenchancement runs deeper. Here’s why.
Finally, on a prominent ListServ of conservative bloggers to which I belong, few seem to mind when the e-mailer calls a politician with whom he disagrees a “douchebag” or “scumbag.” Never mind that the issue is usually trivial, or that the pol is usually a Republican; the rancor toward one’s own party is palpable.
As one who prides himself on no straw men, I find such discourse repugnant.
2. Winning has become more important than doing what’s right. An excerpt from Taylor Branch’s new book, The Clinton Tapes, illustrates this point:
[President Clinton] treated posturing as a natural element. He remarked, for instance, that he had no idea what Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas thought about the merits of gays in the military. “He may genuinely be for it or against it,” said Clinton. “All our discussions have been about the politics.” He said Dole advised him quite candidly that he intended to keep the issue alive as long as he could to trap Clinton on weak ground, where he would “take a pretty good beating.” Similarly, the president said Dole consistently advised that budgets were the most partisan matters between Congress and the White House, and that Clinton could expect to get few if any Republican votes for his omnibus bill on taxes and spending. Clinton said Dole spoke of the opposition’s job not as making deals but rather making the president fail, so he could be replaced as quickly as possible.
Indeed, as a recent article in the New York Times suggests, the advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government, seems more interested in thwarting Obama than thwarting big government. The subtitle of the blog of the libertarian scholar, David Boaz, “Independent thinking in a red-blue town,” makes more sense to me every day I’m here.
In his book, Politics Lost, Joe Klein deplores “the insulting welter of sterilized speechifying, insipid photo ops, and idiotic advertising that passes for public discourse these days.” Wise words. What a shame they’re so true.
Addendum (10/6/2009): In a recent op-ed, Steven Hayward, of the American Enterprise Institute, elaborates on my point:
During the glory days of the conservative movement, from its ascent in the 1960s and ’70s to its success in Ronald Reagan’s era, there was a balance between the intellectuals, such as Buckley and Milton Friedman, and the activists, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich, the leader of the New Right. The conservative political movement, for all its infighting, has always drawn deeply from the conservative intellectual movement, and this mix of populism and elitism troubled neither side.
Today, however, the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas. The leading conservative figures of our time are now drawn from mass media, from talk radio and cable news. We’ve traded in Buckley for Beck, Kristol for Coulter, and conservatism has been reduced to sound bites.
A few months ago, I observed, “To watch me swim is to understand who I am.”
A high school valedictory I delivered provides the explanation, in words, of this declaration. Now, 10 years later, comes the videotape, filmed this past summer in Alexandria, Va:
Everyone these days wants a blog. Blogs are known to be the most frequently updated—and thus most visited—facet of Web sites, and often form the crux of an organization’s online impact. Few, however, realize just how time-consuming and difficult blogging is.
Indeed, running a blogging consists not only in penning posts, but also in corralling them from colleagues and possibly guest contributors, editing them, and promoting them—not to mention moderating and responding to comments. As such, when considering a group blog for your organization, the following questions may facilitate a decision.
1. How many people on your staff can write well? Poor prose is a big turnoff, and crafting snappy paragraphs is a lot harder than banging out 140 characters apiece on Twitter. Put another way, anyone can swing a baseball bat; very few can hit pitches.
2. Do these people know how to write for the Web? Richard Posner and Gary Becker are two highly esteemed and well-published professors at the University of Chicago. But their joint blog—bogged down with long paragraphs and utterly devoid of links, pictures and blockquotes—is a textbook example of why online writing demands more than copying and pasting its offline counterpart.
3. Will managers give these people sufficient time to blog? Securing buy-in at the leadership level is critical. Otherwise, blogging will be treated as a distraction from “real work.”
4. Can these people each commit to X posts per month? One of the biggest reasons for failure in the blogosphere is infrequent posting. To be sure, a solid weekly post can be just as good as daily content, but unless you’re Sergey Brin, you’ll never build an audience by blogging sporadically.
5. Is there a blogger (either on staff or whom you can hire) who can serve as the editor? Not only do editors edit—correcting grammar, adding hyperlinks and pictures where appropriate, suggesting broader themes—and solicit content, they’re also responsible for the blog’s direction, consistency, and visibility. A blog without an editor is like a ship without a captain.*
6. Will the blog’s editor have the connections and standing throughout the organization to request and obtain content? If your editor is off site or lacks the respect of her peers, her ability to do her job will be compromised.
7. Will every post require approval by the C suite? If an executive or lawyer must vet everything, then a blog is more trouble than it’s worth.
On the other hand, a second set of eyes on anything for publication always is healthy—but within reason. The Cato Institute, which each day assigns a different staffer to approve each post, has found a happy medium between paranoia and prescience.
8. What niche will the blog exploit? In other words, why will people want to read it? If the niche is already occupied, how will your blog be better?
For these reasons, many blogs are stillborn. As with any project, a blog needs a strategic plan and ample resources. If you start with these boxes checked, the resultscanwell repay the effort.
I work in the field of “strategic communications.” In my past job, I worked on “strategic partnerships,” among other things. Both terms are well-established, yet both are 50% meaningless.
The truth is, these are differences without a distinction. As anysemanticist will tell you, if you can remove the adjective without changing the meaning of the noun, chuck the adjective. It’s a buzzword, ”an important-sounding, usually technical word or phrase, often of little meaning, used chiefly to impress laymen.”
Think of this speciousness the next time you’re tempted to employ such jargon.
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