Who can I connect YOU to today?

April 22, 2009

First Bridge ATX Networking Event

Filed under: Events, General — Kim B @ 11:10 pm

I think we can call the first Bridge ATX Networking Event a success on all accounts – at least from the attendee’s perspective.  Smiles were plentiful and many new acquaintances were made.

The Little Challenges In Life

Of course, there are always little hitches behind the scenes that no one sees.

One of the major hitches was the fact that the event was advertised as having Bands performing.  Um.. There were no bands.  Although, I know a lot of musicians around town – most of them were unavailable. 

One of the musicians who was able to attend had to back out at the last minute due to technical difficulties.  She had told me that she needed an AMP/PA to be able to perform.  Union Park does not have one to provide. I had one secured via a friend. Then at almost the final hour we discovered it was unavailable. 

As for the other musician who was able to attend. Originally he was going to come with a group, but the group was in a state of flux.  So, to be kind to me – he was going to come with his Tenor Sax and perform solo for me (for 2 hours if I needed it). Unfortunately, he is not over 21 and they were not going to let him in – even with a legal guardian present.

So, no music.. Which turned out to be a good thing – because it was WAY TOO HOT to go and sit upstairs on the balcony where they would have performed.

The other technical difficulty was in the way that EventBrite indicates that tickets are no longer available for purchase online.  I had shut down the online ticket sales at 10 AM so that I would have enough time to print nametags and prepare for the event.    I had several frantic calls and emails from people who wanted to make sure they could get a ticket. People were able to purchase tickets at the door.  However, the EventBrite confusion caused many people to give up and not attend.  ON the brightside of this one,  people thought that the event was so great that it sold out – which means they will buy early for the next event. :)

Congratulations

Congratulations to Chris Rudd from ITT.  He was the winner of the door prize for the 2 Bellagio Gift Certificates!

Special Thanks

Special thanks to my friends who helped me work the door – Loren Guerra (Recruiting Bad Ass), Mike McGee, Chrissy Zupfer (Pure Romance), Beth Santasiero, Jessica Falscroft, John West and Wesley Faulkner.  There’s no way that I could have done this without you.

Special thanks to Liz Handlin for being the event sponsor.  If you are looking to have your resume professionally recreated contact her at www.UltimateResumes.com.

Special thanks to Cindy Feyereisen for providing some of the yummiest dips ever.  If you are looking for a caterer contact Cindy at www.prettydishes.com.

Special thanks to Steven Noreyko for coming and taking some amazing professional headshots.  Not everyone was able to participate due to the fact that they didn’t come prepared to be photo’d.  Watch for my new headshot to appear soon on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, etc. :)

Pictures

I did have a few very unprofessional pictures taken at the event.  Most of them came out very blurry. I’m not sure if I need a new camera or just need to adjust it to Auto Focus better. ;)   Or, maybe it was the person taking the pictures. :) Anyway, next time I’ll get someone much more professional to take the pictures.  I apologize for the blur.

 

My Thoughts

I would love to gather everyone’s thoughts and comments in this blog regarding the event.  I think it was a huge success for everyone.  I was surprised by how many people were waiting at the door to come in at 5PM.  I was also surprised to see how many people were still hanging out and having a good time when I left at 9 PM. Both, very good signs.  In fact, I saw many a Facebook comment this morning about festivities lasting late into the night.

Several times I looked around the room and saw people smiling and deep in conversation.  I knew I had achieved my dreams for the event when I saw this.

I had someone come up to me who couldn’t quite remember how he had heard about the event.  Even though he was a master networker in town – he didn’t know anyone at this event.  A brand new untapped resource for making new friends and business partners.

I had one friend who doesn’t frequent a lot of networking events.  He was in awe at the end of the night. He was going home with 15 cards in his pocket all for people he was going to be able to do business with.

Now, the only question is when should I do this again?  Is May too soon?  What fun!

Stay tuned…….

April 11, 2009

Resume Writing – My Perspective

Filed under: Job Seekers — Kim B @ 12:37 pm

First, let me say that I am NOT a professional resume writing service. There are lots of really good ones out there who can add far more valuable insight than I can.  If you really want to make your resume sing then you should look into one of them.  Check out my Candidate Resource Page – www.bridgeatx.com/cand_resources.html and you’ll get some great names there.

That being said – I have lots of years under my belt reviewing resumes.  As a technical recruiter I’ve gone through far more resumes then I can even begin to remember.  I’ve seen the good, the bad and the REALLY UGLY.

Resumes are the tools that you use to open up a conversation and get you an interview.  They should have just enough information that it tells someone why you are perfect for a job. However, they should not tell your whole career story.  Tempt them to what to hear more.

Here are my tips and tricks:

What do you want to do?

The first advice that I give people is to make sure that your resume outlines what you want to do. If you don’t enjoy programming in COBOL, don’t have it on your resume - even if you know how to do it.  :)

Frequently I tell people to put their resume aside and start writing down all the things that you love to do.  Then write down all the skills that make you really good at that.  That’s what you want to start with your resume.  If your resume says “I’m really good at these things I love” then people will hire you to do the things that you are really great at in a job that you love.  Your resume should clearly indicate the things that are important to you. 

Do you love to get into the middle of chaos and sort things out?  Do you love to be given a project and completely immerse yourself in it and only come up to eat and sleep? Do you love to meet people and network?  Do you love to give back to the community? Do you love to find ways for companies to save hundreds/thousands/millions of dollars?

Frequently people go online and they find a sample resume.. Then they try to squeeze in the pieces that they fit in.  Your resume then just looks like everyone else’s resume and doesn’t have a clear indication of who you are and how you are different.

Need Help with Ideas

At this point you may already be on your way to crafting a beautiful resume.  However, if you are like most people you’re probably at a loss for words. You may not be able to say what it was that you enjoyed doing. 

This is the time where you go out and seek help.  Go out to Indeed.com, Salary.com or any other resource where jobs are listed by job titles.  Type in the job titles that accurately describe what you have done in the past or what you might like to do in the future.  Look through the results and pick the bullet points from the position description that you think apply to you.  Store those away in a word document or notepad and start accumulating statements that indicate what you have done.  Don’t try to fit them in any place yet, just add them to your list of things you like to do.

Use Good Descriptive Words

Nothing makes me cringe more than when you scan through a resume and every bullet point starts with the word “Managed”.  Different words conjur different meanings in my mind. The English language has such a vast amount of words that mean “almost” the same thing.  If you pick the right ones it can really get a conversation going.

I think – did this person really mean to say “Managed”?  Could they have meant “Led”, “Orchestrated”, “Developed”, “Organized”, “Produced”, “Established”, “Delivered” or “Created”?  Do you see how each of those words conjurs a different image in your head? Read them again if you need to.  They are all very similar to managed but really don’t mean the same things at all.  Choosing the right words to use in your resume can paint very different pictures.

In order to find these words you can always pull out your Thesaurus (or use the one that comes with WORD).  However, there are also websites out there that can help guide you in your decisions of which Action Verbs to use. I like this one – http://www.quintcareers.com/action_verbs.html - but you can just as easily do a search on your own to find the words as well.

Putting it together

So, now you have a list of things that you have loved doing in the past.  You have a list of things that someone who holds your position (past or future) needs to be able to do.  You have a list of powerful action verbs that help you get to the meat of exactly how you want to say things.

Now you can start putting your resume together.  There are various different formats that people suggest for your resume.  Some people like the format where you list each position that you have held in the past and then outline what you did in that position.  Some people like the format where you list all the things you can do and then afterwards you say where you’ve worked.  To me, it doesn’t really matter as long as I can do a quick scan of a resume and decide if that piece of paper makes me want a further conversation. This is the point where most people go into a great debate on resumes. I’m not really here to make that argument one way or another.

Here are things that I’d like to see on a resume:

  • Keywords must pop out at me when I do a quick scan of a resume
  • Technology experience must be easy to find (that’s because I do technical staffing)
  • Information must be easy to gather quickly – I don’t have time to read full paragraphs
  • Do you have recent experience doing what the role needs?
  • Do you have any large gaps in employment that are not explained?
  • Education means little to me with an experienced hire – drop it to the bottom – I’m looking for hands on experience
  • Does it look professional? – typos and gramatical errors are an immediate turn off

Basically I’m saying that you can decide your own layout for your resume as long as I can get to the information that I want quickly.  

Regarding experience, I like to tell people that any experience older than 10 years is no longer relevant.  You’d better have a really good explanation for me as to why it is still on your resume. If you have 15 years experience doing something – put it in a summary sentence at the top of the resume.   We are all proud of our accomplishments but I don’t want to look through a resume and find something that someone was doing in 1989. 

Customize Your Resume for Each Position

For most people, writing resumes is a real pain in the butt. You don’t like to brag on yourself.  You don’t remember what you did in the past without sitting and thinking about it for a while…  I get it… 

However, when that little piece of paper is helping to make a decision on whether or not you’re going to get your dream job - You’d better treat it with all the love and respect that it deserves.

Every single time you submit to a job your resume should be different. You should look at the job description and see the things that the job is requiring.  Then your resume needs to state why you uniquely fit all of the pieces of that job description.

For example – Let’s say that one job that you are interested in is for a game development position.  When I look at your resume, I’d better see all over it that you LOVE to play games.   You may also be interested in a position at a social interactive media company.  In that case you’d better have all over your resume how you’re involved in Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, etc.  In both cases you may be applying for a C++ developer position.  However, the things that make you a unique match to those positions (and these companies) differ in each case.  So, there will be a certain amount of similarity in each resume but each resume will be different.

The most successful candidates out there are the ones who custom craft each resume for each position.  Some people will completely rewrite their resume from scratch each time.  Others will have a standard resume with basic information in it and they embellish it with the details needed for each position.  Others will have a large master resume with every possible potential bullet point they can dream up and they pull out all the pieces that don’t apply for each position. 

In Summary

Hopefully this starts to get your brain thinking about how you can craft a truly remarkable resume.  If you still have problems with it, hire a professional to help you.

In most cases, your resume is the first thing that a potential employer is going to know about you.  Make sure that your resume leaves a great first impression and leaves them wanting more. Your resume will make you or break you.  Treat it with the respect it deserves.

April 1, 2009

Crisis Identity in Organizations

Filed under: Events, General, Starting a New Business — Kim B @ 4:49 pm

I am involved in a lot of different organizations in Austin. 

One of the common issues that I see come up is trying to define exactly what the organization is and what the organization does for its members.  An equally trying challenge is defining what the organization is not.   Sometimes organizations have defined charters – but over time as officers and interested parties change the organizations change away from their charter.  Or, the charter is reinterpreted.

I was just talking to a friend of mine.  She was considering rejoining an organization for a very large amount of money. She was weighing out the pro’s of being a member versus just being a non-member and paying that price to attend the events.  What she didn’t know was a recent discussion that I had had with the leader of that organization.

Recently, I was contacted by the organization in question because there was a sponsor for one of their events that was a competitor of mine.  The sponsor had requested that no competitors attend this event. This organization had never made such a request of me (or anyone else that I know of). I have been to countless other events within this organization that were sponsored by competitors (there’s lots of recruiters out there).

This request upset me because the organization (which I also paid a hefty amount to become a member) had a tradition of holding networking events every month.  However, due to a leadership change, there had been no networking events for several months.  The only one so far this year (which was to be held late in April) was the event that I was asked not to attend.  So, basically I had paid a bunch of money to not get to go to the only events that I wanted to attend.

I told the leader of this organization that he/she was sitting on a critical pivot point for their organization.  This was supposed to be an organization that served its members. Now, all of a sudden in a blink of an eye the organization was now serving it’s event sponsors instead of its members.  Sponsors were now being given the right to tell the organization which members could attend and which could not attend.  

The excuse that was given to me was that the sponsor had paid a lot of money to sponsor the event.  The sponsor has paid this money each year for the past 3 years. So, since this sponsor had been such a valuable sponsor they were going to meet the sponsor’s demands.   How about the large sums of money that were being paid by its members?

I asked the leader of this organization whether the organization was there to help it’s members or whether it was there to provide a pool of people whom sponsors could pick from. I was given no clear answer other than the sponsor had full authority to do it for this event and the leader would go back to the board to find out what the policy should be going forward.  I have not heard any response on this policy.

The other thing that is truly upsetting is that non of the membership of this organization know that a decision has been made in favor of a sponsor over an individual member. Slowly but surely this organization is changing out from under its members.

Yes, this organization does have other events.  However, for a lot of other reasons the other events either don’t interst me – or  I’m not allowed to attend because they are for a specific sub group of the membership to which I do not apply.

This particular organization had involved me in a discussion in December about how to increase membership. Lots of smaller businesses showed up to participate in the discussion. Our main complaint was that small businesses needed to have some way to be able to participate without having to shell out all the money that large businesses could easily afford.  At that point I asked whether the organization was truly there to help small business members. 

This organization is in crisis.  In reality, this organization has been in crisis for some time.

I write this blog not to cause any ill will towards this organization. I have been very careful to leave out any details that could help you determine which organization it is.

Instead, I’m writing this to warn organizations how terribly important it is to define the mission for your organization and stick with that mission.  If you stand by your mission, then people really can’t argue with you about what your organization is trying to do.  You take it or leave it but you understand. 

When you start to make decisions that are not in line with your mission,  it causes bad blood and causes many people to become very upset.  We all know how I feel about burning bridges. :)

It will be interesting to watch what happens with the organization in question over time.

Copyright 2009 www.bridgeatx.com | Initial Web Design by Internet Splash


RSS Feed Subscribe to the RSS Feed