The Great San Francisco Job Hunt

Come Together for Laid Off Lemonade and Emerge Blue (Stick with Me on This One)

2009-03-25T14:49:00.000-07:00

My mom has never been a big utterer of aphorisms, but when I was little there was one that she'd whip out all the time: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

It always came following the greatest injustice, the biggest indignity, or some other time karma stood on its head. It offered no solace because you can't make lemonade out of lemons alone. Lemonade requires sugar, damn it, and ice and a pitcher. There's no way to make lemonade when life has only given you a bushel of the sour stuff.

Since we're living in lemon city these days, I've got to say that I'm more and more impressed by folks who are turning setbacks into an opportunity to blaze their own path. I'm going to leave poor Jamie Varon alone in this post, but she's a poster child for pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Chris Hutchens and his Laid Off Camp are another great example. The thing that's especially cool to me is that both Chris and Jamie are trying to engage others to help everyone get out of their funk.

The recession is providing opportunities for new ventures. It's acting like a forest fire that clears the underbrush, permitting new businesses to sprout.

In the time of social networking, it totally makes sense that endeavors that go beyond simply selling something are some of the heartiest new growth. We're all trying feverishly to link to each other online. The next big thing has been Friendster, then MySpace, then Facebook, then Twitter. Our favorite web browser is the one that's built by a community. In fact, Mozilla's sincere goal is to create community and provide universal access to the online world. Firefox is just one of the ways they're trying to make their goal come to life.

The laid off are building apps to share, starting networking circles, and doing up each other's websites. It looks to me like an old-fashioned barn raising where everyone from the community helps out (with the knowledge that everyone will ultimately get a barn of their own). This sense of entrepreneurship combined social utility and generosity is even slipping into more traditional business models.

The other day, I had the opportunity to attend a Career Mojo event with a new creative staffing firm called Emerging Blue. Founded by HR and recruiting vets, Emerging Blue presented a series of seminars on job hunting, encouraged participants to network, and offered moral support before eventually mentioning a few of their openings at the end of the day. Their event could have been an awful, desperate job fair, but they placed an emphasis on creating relationships and helping people move forward.

At the end of the day, Emerging Blue is developing a great roster of talent and making a name for itself by putting the best interests of its contractors first. Being attuned to the needs of their talent pool may also be opening a market for paid career guidance. They're not about filling vacancies, shuffling (human) resources, getting commissions, and making money. They're not making it about themselves. They're making it about service and community--knowing the money will flow when the community is strong.

So if you want sugar for that lemonade, it's looking more and more like the key is finding some raw cane inside yourself, tracking down someone to help you refine it, then enjoying it together. From the most popular web browser to San Francisco's newest staffing agency, putting you before me is leading to a lot of sweet results.

What Will You Do for the Right Job? Follow Up

2009-03-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

Before moving on, I wanted to add a little more color to my last entry. First of all, I uncovered the name of the Google employee who found his way to great success by wearing a placard and handing out resumes around downtown San Francisco.

His name is Steven Schimmel, and you can read his full story here.. He displayed a ton of initiative and it paid off. His activities since his initiative paid off? I present them with a raised eyebrow but no comment.

Meanwhile, Jamie Varon's flitter with Twitter has reached what appears to be a happy end. She didn't get the job, but the outward manifestation of her passion for it has started to open a lot of doors.

Bottom line: working hard to explore things that fascinate you and get yourself out there will set you on the right path. Where you go from there is up to you.

What Will You Do for the Right Job?

2009-03-17T10:58:00.001-07:00

When I troll the job boards, I often feel like Goldilocks in a house with a million bowls of porridge. So many listings are too hot, too cold, too boring, or too something that coming across the one that's just right is a cause for celebration. The big question is: how far should you go when you find your dream job?

You know the drill: First, you do your research and apply for the job via the suggested method. Then, you track down linkedin (or other) contacts who can help you network your way through back door. In my experience, part two can turn out a bunch of different ways. From resume-forwarding to informational interviews to awkward 45 second phone conversations, you never know what the old social network is going to turn up.

But once you've made a solid effort at squeezing through both the front and back doors, what's next? How often and how many followup emails should you send? And how many people within the company should you try to track down? What if you showed up to drop off your resume in person? Or serenaded employees on their way into work one morning?

If you go to an extreme, you could be showing your dream employer your initiative, ingenuity, and resolve, but you could also wind up creating the appearance of desperation and instability. I ran into this problem years ago when I found an opening working for my favorite author. The ad was anonymous but, dork that I am, I knew so much about the author that the few biological details in the ad gave away his identity. I kept my cool, played it straight, but never heard back from him.

I hoped I would rise to the top on the merits. Given all the competition, my strong but meek resume may not have been noticed.

On the appropriately assertive side of things, we have a great contemporary example in the form of Jamie Varon's Twitter Should Hire Me page. It's a sincere statement of intent that's brought some attention to its author. There's nothing psycho about it and, as someone who (reallyreallyreally) covets the same job, I wish I'd come up with her approach. It sounds like she's even getting interviewed by the media now...

Watch her saga unwind here.

Jamie Varon wouldn't have bothered creating the site unless she was passionate about the job. And, in addition to getting her foot in the door, her site gives readers an opportunity to go beyond her resume to understand she's a passionate, creative woman. Within a day or two of the site going up, Twitter's recruiter tweeted: "@jamievaron cool site twittershouldhireme.com which @krissy surfaced to me. How about coming up to our offices to meet us?"

Nice work!

On the flip side, I recall the story of a guy who moved to the Bay Area in the late 90s, put on his best suit, and stood around Market Street with a "Will Work for Food" placard on while he handed out resumes. His name is escaping me, but someone took an interest in him and he wound up becoming an early employee with Paypal, Google, or eBay.

To me that seems like an unfocused and overextended approach, but you can't argue with the results.

So how far is too far?

Going back to Goldilocks, she found the best porridge by digging into as many as she could. When the bears came home, the mark she'd left was undeniable. For the time being, it looks like Jamie Varon's approach is just right.

P.S. But it's still cool if you want to hire me, Twitter.

The Rise of Coworking

2009-03-06T10:46:00.001-08:00

About ten years ago, I was looking for a little space to start up my own business. I found a number of groups that shared office space, copiers, secretaries, and costs, but it all seemed kind of sterile and miserable -- like a bunch of misfits had been forced to band together to create the appearance of legitimacy by using air conditioners, cherry furniture, and florescent glare.

About the same time, underground artistic and renegade dotcom types were colonizing old warehouses, creating places like The Werepad (RIP) where likeminded souls came together to make the next big, wierd, loud, or obscure thing.

Freelancing and job hunting from home has had me pining for a productive place to go, and I'm delighted to discover (via Chris Hitchins' swell Laid Off Camp) the existence of cool coworking spaces that unite the utility of shared office space with the laissez-faire attitude of warehouse dwellers and the forced vernacular of dotcommers.

Drop in and use wifi for free; rent a conference room for a meeting; have your own private office in a funky sea of bean bag chairs -- it can all be yours for zero to $500 each month, depending on whether you need things like 24 hour access or a door that shuts. I'm not ready to take the plunge just yet, but it's good to know that paces like Citizen Space and The Sandbox Suites are more or less in my back yard.

Here's a good way to find your local coworking spot.

A word of warning, though.

Ahoy!

2009-03-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

When I was creating this blog, the captcha was "stuin." It was perfectly fitting, actually, because I've been stewing for about six months now. Along the way, I've learned a lot about how to job search. I've received every piece of job searching advice known to mankind. In fact, casual conversations have come to remind me of one of the more famous scenes from The Graduate:

This morning, the New York Times told me to write a blog. Blogging is the future, young man, so here I am. My goal is to share some of the (possibly dubious) wisdom and resources I've amassed, and to let other forlorn job hunters know they're not alone.