We’ve all read stories about employers looking for online behaviors of prospective employees before hiring them. Drunken pictures of yourself on MySpace don’t often impress. A recent MSNBC article pointed out that hiring managers are taking things a step further by contacting people with social media connections to interviewees and treating them as personal references.

Is this a good idea for either side?
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Technorati Tags: hiring, job, social media

BNET recently posted a video featuring skills coach Carmine Gallo that discussed some good tips commonly seen in Steve Jobs presentations.  Several of them echo thoughts I’ve written about in my series on PowerPoint Tactics, most notably getting to your point early, laying out the different steps your presentation will have, and reminding your audience frequently where you are within that outline of steps.  It’s a good 6 and a half minutes that anybody can get some goodness out of:

Technorati Tags: presentation techniques

Given the financial crisis in the US, things are bad fight now for a lot of people, which reminded me of a Bill Simmons quote where he described a point in his life prior to his blogger-before-we-called-them-that rise to sports writing stardom:

“You know things are bad when you’re setting your alarm clock for noon every day, only you still have to hit the snooze button a few times before rolling out of bed.”

—Bill Simmons, January 2008

Everybody has ups and downs and I’ve found that nothing resets my expectations or priorities in life quite like a down.  If you happen to be in one now, rest assured that it won’t last forever.  It worked out for the “setting your alarm clock for noon every day, only you still have to hit the snooze button a few times before rolling out of bed” guy it can work out for you too.

Technorati Tags: recovery, simmons

It’s like Inside the Actor’s Studio, except with techies.

That’s how I describe this podcast idea I’ve had for quite awhile but not the time to actually put it together.  If you don’t get the Bravo channel, you might not be familiar with James Lipton’s claim to fame but the reason I like that show is that it focuses on the craft of acting and how a particular person got there in their life’s journey.  The usual Hollywood interview show is all about who someone’s dating or what designer suit they are wearing and while there is a component of upcoming film promotion on Inside the Actor’s Studio, it’s mostly about the journey someone took to get them where they are.

Why should that be limited to actors and directors?  Thus, my podcast was born.  
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 Be Curious - Slawek Zachcial [16:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (133)

Technorati Tags: communication, curious, legos, music, perspective, Slawek

OK, I admit it, I dropped the ball on this one.  I posted this question back in July to LinkedIn Answers and didn’t get back to rate it until September.  I feel bad about it, but life sometimes intervenes.

As mentioned recently, my work group had an offsite recently and as part of that we christened a new mix of development teams.  The reorg was meant to align some assets using similar technology and with this new combination, we worked on coming up with a vision statement.  The final one is still under construction (which serves as a reminder to my boss, who is also a reader), but coming up with some inspiring statement that unifies the work a lot of people are doing together is a really difficult thing to do.  Hence, me asking the question.
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Technorati Tags: linkedin, vision

Note: This article originally ran on September 6 2007, is slightly edited for reprint in an effort to share previously published ideas with new readers.

I have been assimilated.

Lots and lots of people have recommended David Allen’s productivity bible,  to me over the years, but I kept thinking, “I’m already pretty productive, I don’t need that.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. Over the past several months, Allen’s techniques have made a noticeable impact on my day to day life that I didn’t think was possible. Instead of doing a traditional review of his material, I thought I’d walk through what I’ve done with it over the past few months that has changed the way I approach my job.
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This month’s Wired has a cover story featuring Shai Agassi and his new company Better Place.  As a general fan at observing the creativity in other industries, I was completely fascinated by the idea of applying the cel phone business model to the problem of electric cars.  At first, that makes no sense but if you think about it, it actually is a neat way to do it by inverting the solution to focus on the stations instead of the cars.
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Technorati Tags: better place, creativity, electric car, inverting solutions

I am at the tail end of work on the HP-EDS merger, which consisted mostly of being part of a team that decided how to consolidate IT assets that both companies had down into one in the combined company.  The deliverables for my part of it were a set of project estimates that are now in the process of being funded, which will then be staffed properly and executed over the next few financial quarters.  If you get the estimate wrong, the project doesn’t get the staffing it needs and either gets delivered late or with reduced scope.  No pressure though.
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Technorati Tags: estimation

Every year, my boss gets our geographically distributed team of 30+ full time staff together for a  multi-day get together. Among the things we do at these meetings, which was especially important this past year since a reorg brought us a new subset of people, is play some team building game. We shuffle the people in our three development teams so we get a chance to interact with people we normally wouldn’t, which gives us a chance to build a wider set of relationships.  This year’s game was particularly interesting as it presented a scenario that created a microcosm of the things that go on in real projects:

• Requirements were sometimes vague
• The group had to decide what to optimize
• Not everybody got their way and arguments insured
• Time was sometimes not used as wisely as it could have been
• The outcome was mostly correct, but not perfect

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Technorati Tags: ice breaker, survival skills, team building

“Dress for success” is among my least favorite phrases, so I took particular glee in the fun my friend Jason Alba had today with his article entitled “Dress for Failure“.  My favorite:

“4. Tie your tie so the front, fat part is HIGHER than the back, skinny part. I was taught your tie (the front part) should fall a few fingers below your belt.  Not higher than your belt, and not much lower.  Definitely NOT higher than your belly button.  Bonus, have the front fat part higher than the back skinny part. My seven year old son has to tuck the back part of his tie into his shirt, because the tie is to long for him… but the point is, the back part is supposed to be out-of-sight.”

I’ve worn a tie exactly twice in my HP career, but in the part time job I had in college as a DB administrator for Unisys, I had to wear one every day.  Being a tall guy,  the tie problem I run into is the opposite of this one in that with a standard length tie I run out of skinny part in order to have the front part be long enough.  Believe me, that’s just as bad.

Technorati Tags: clothing, jibberjobber