iPad Job Search Tips | Take You With You (Part 3)

I love to tell the (all true) story of being introduced to a room full of conservative peers for the first time.  Of course, I was there taking notes on my iPad (v1) – since I am all about employing emerging solutions. 

When my name was called and I stood up – I fat fingered my Home Button and My Music came on at full VOLUME with Lady Ga-Ga getting busy with Judas.   The 17 seconds (that seemed like 17 minutes) it took me to unlock the iPad with my code was a great way to kick off the meeting. I made an impression for sure.  I’m just glad it wasn’t Darling Nikki.

I retell that fable since it is a reminder as the final Chapter of “iPad Job Search Tips | Take You with You” is here (where we’ve been talking about bringing you – and your body of work on your iPad - into an interview).  However, taking your iPad into “the room” is not like curling up under a blanket at Starbucks.  A measure of prudence and planning (and common sense) is needed before strapping on you iPad for your next interview.

And the ring at the end of my nose makes me look rather pretty

Some quick review items (I hope that you already know): 

• Clean your Home  Review your Home Screen(s) for apps that might not be a good companion on your interview.  If your apps consist of only Angry Bird type games and iNap at Work- and nothing that indicates you might read a book from time to time – here’s your sign.  You Apps are definitely a reflection of you – but remember we want just the part of you companies are willing to hire for pay.
• And the ring at the end of my nose makes me look rather pretty  Check your photo library.  Pictures (or worse videos) of you on the couch in a wife beater or your wife in a bikini at a Holiday Inn swimming pool is also something to remove from your iPad.  I know you put your work examples in one Album and Spring Break 2009 photos in another – but (as the Duke once said) I wouldn’t want to live on the difference of you fat fingering Photos (and showing “all of you”).  
• Wallpaper (See guidelines above)
• You and yours  Ethics.  Remember – take your iPad to an interview, not your company issued one.  There’s a wrong vibe in doing (like putting your work email on your resume).  Also make sure there is no client or company confidential information on there as well.
• I didn’t know someone could go to McDonald’s that many times in a day  Personal confidential items (consumer apps with “save password”) are other things to review.  You don’t need someone surfing your US Bank account.
• Turn your passcode off  You don’t want you to you resume to close on someone – or not be able to quickly dispatch with something like the aforementioned Ga-Ga incident.
• Cloudless  Have an offline plan.  Some interview locales may be impervious to even LTE.  Don’t assume you can show them things online.  And before you fire up Safari - remember to close the tabs in your browser.  You may not want the last 4 websites you visited to come up.
• Fight the (lack of) Power! Make sure your iPad (and all the accessories you bring with you) are all powered up.

In other words (that was 637 words to say),  “plan and ahead and be smart”.  Don’t bring anything into the room that could submarine your changes.

Related and not so related links:
Judas (Lady Ga-Ga)
iPad Job Search Tips
Venus & Mars/Rock Show (Wings)
My Rifle, My Pony and Me (Rio Bravo)
Fight The Power (Public Enemy)

iPad Job Search Tips | Take You With You (Part 2)

In Part 1 of Take You With You, I opined about ditching the paper resume and bringing it with you inside of your iPad.  It is an engaging way to change the interview from the back and forth volley of a Q&A to a more tactile and interactive conversation.

But let’s not limit it to the resume – why not take all of you (at least the professional you) into the room.

The following program is brought to in living color

Portfolios, sample work product and other “leave-behinds” have been strewn across the desks of interviewers infinitas infinitio.  However, digital and “moving pictures” were not so easy to display (unless you had your own 3DBB). Stopping an interview in its tracks by setting up a projector (and littering the room with the vibe of a stale drive-in movie hot dog) was not a good idea. 

But in the tablet era – you are able to bring those nice bright colors of your life to life without jarring the interview off the rails.

Phrasing in tribute of Dick Clark’s recent passing, let me describe to you the things you would find on my iPad during an interview:

• A picture (shown to the left) of a project network diagramming session
• A series of pictures from a field study I conducted with a client for a Service Cloud implementation for their field service techs
• A diagram about governance and Salesforce.com (to illustrate the importance of the product manager mindset that you need to adopt with your social enterprise tools).
• The books I am reading (great conversation starter)
• A Home screen bookmark to this blog as well as other Apps that are a fit for that interview (e.g. The Chatter app or CloudOn).
• Pictures of the Big Boot (yes – I have worked it into an interview answer)

Of course – if you have access to “the interwebs” – you can show even more of your work.   Heck -  I can even show you my personal Facebook site (without giving you my password).

Never do I want to hear another word…show me

Whatever it is that makes you a most valuable candidate to a potential employer – show them.  Online, offline or how you drive results to the bottom line – bring all of that with you to the interview to help “digitally enhance” the picture of you that create in the interview.

Up next, in the final chapter of the “Take You With You” trilogy, I mention some “safety tips” when bringing your iPad to an interview (i.e. pants on, ethics and Lady Ga-Ga).

 

Related and not so related links:
iPad Job Search Tips
All of Me (Billie Holiday)
NBC Network ID (1968)
Tennessee Tuxedo - The Bridge Builders
It’s Time for a tasty and refreshing snack (Drive in Move Intermission film)
Kodachrome (Paul Simon)
Salesforce.com explains the Social Enterprise (Forbes)
Best Winner’s Circle Ever (25,000 Pyramid Billy Crystal)
Show Me (Audrey Hepburn)

iPad Job Search Tips | Take You With You (Part 1)

As you’ll hear here – and on the likes of 60 Minutes - the hardcopy resume is swimming towards the top of the dead pool.  It is on the same trajectory as the Blackberry: stolid corporations still love it - but consumers and progressive companies loathe it. 

But until the world catches up  – you still need to have a resume along with all your social media derivations (at least a Linked In Profile for  professionals – other sites depending on your industry and job). 

But now is the time for you to show the world – and your perspective employer – that you’re ahead of the curve.  You need to show them you’re not doing your homework on the back of a shovel with Honest Abe and that you are relevant in the digital and social age.

It’s a thousand pages give or take a few

Earlier this year, on my trek along the job search process, I decided to go paperless and also green.  For certain interviews, I printed zero copies of my resume and simply loaded a PDF of it onto my iPad. 

As often happens, a number of interviewers would come to the meeting empty handed and ask, “do you have a copy of your resume”?

With one tap of the Home button, I closed whatever app I was using to take notes, opened my Kindle for iPad (with my resume already loaded), and flipped the iPad around and handed it to them and said, “here you go”.  

Better still – you can click to your Linked In profile and show them a recommendation that underlines a point you had just been making in the interview.   At that point – like the iPad itself, the interview becomes interactive and tactile.  You can show them you are relevant online by showing them you online.

 

Epilogue: Let’s make this clear about these posts on the iPad and job searching:  You do not need an iPad to get a job.  If there is any reason that cash is king for you and your family, then be smart.  But if it makes sense for you – and is a differentiator in your industry - it’s another tool in the bag.  In other words, have style. There are always other ways to demonstrate your prowess during an interview.

Further – we all know results vary.  Make sure you know the person on the other end of the table will appreciate this tactic (“you never open your mouth until you know what the shot is”). 

 

Related and not so related links:
iPad Job Search Tips | Every Move a Picture (3Minus3)
3Minus3 Facebook site
”The resume will become an obsolete tool” (Trapped in Unemployment-60 Minutes)
”Style ain't the jeep U bought when U know your broke ass got bills” (Prince)
Paperback Writer (The Beatles)

Random | And the beat goes on

The news of the last 24 hours was one of those Al Stewart moments that collapses the bookends of (nearly) a decade into a single moment.  I (like many folks) was immediately transported back to that Tuesday morning in September 2001.  The sights, sounds, smells and the feelings of that day that also lives in infamy flooded me. 

As is common in these human milestone markers (the birth of a child, your 40th birthday, MJ dying), we can often take stock and ponder the delta of all the things in our lives that have changed over that period.

I heard the news back then, oh boy

In 2001, I was in my recently purchased first home and my just as recently acquired unemployment status.  Just 3 days past my 3 days of severance, I sat in my spacious home office that Tuesday morning massively searching online for a job and scheduling networking meetings.  I was listening to KSTP-AM (talk radio - the social/edgy/viral/ media of that day) when (the late) Mark O’Connell announced “a private plane” had struck the Trade Center in New York.

Still in my work outfit of that day (running shorts and a wife beater), I headed into the living room and turned on the TV and flopped onto the couch.  Moments later,  I witnessed a second plane hit the other tower.  For the next 3 days, Max (my cat) and I remained similarly splayed on that couch watching all the gory details unfold on broadcast/cable news (primarily through the eyes the late Peter Jennings and the now retired Tom Brokow).  There was little else to do - my anemic job search ground to halt as quickly as civilian air traffic that day.

Who told you this guy was in here?

Fast forward to last night.

I am in the same room as 2001 – but now it is my master bedroom.  Max the cat is still there – but also my wife (who I did not know in 2001).  She was watching The Housewives of “Whatever” (since I was not paying attention).  

I had my headphones plugged into my iPad and had resumed streaming “The Sting” via Netflix (as I often use movies as sleep inducing white noise):

Billie: Who told you this guy was in here?
Lieutenant William Snyder: Nobody. I just know what kind of woman he likes. Going to check all the joy houses till I find him

The movie had just rolled by the above scene (with Charles Durning and Eileen Brennan) when a muted beep from a KSTP-TV “push notification” informed me that President Obama was about to speak.  Soon thereafter, we all knew why he was to speak.  It would be over an hour before he came to the podium – by which time both my wife and I had fallen asleep.

The next day, reports chronicled (that like so many recent events around the globe) that Twitter was the source of the first credible reports. 

History has turned a page, ah-huh

As I am wont to do – linking and transitions filled my mind and my morning commute (although dressed in a real suit as I headed to a client site today). 

Of course, in 2001 I did not have a blog (let alone this one).  In 2021, I doubt I will.  What will be the social media killer app of that day? 

October 23, 2001 – one month after 9/11, the first iPod was introduced to the market (white only).  Many colors and variations of iPods, iPhones, iTouches and two iPads would follow. In 2020 – what will be the mass communication media platform of that day…the holodeck?.  If so – I hope I have the life size (virtual) Paul Newman and Robert Redford acting in my living room

There are countless other examples that remind us that drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain….

All I know is we don’t really know what is to come in technology and media that far in advance (although we get closer to the Jetsons and jetpacks every day).   All I know is that I look forward to the journey to come. 

Oh – and don’t worry.  My wife swears that Max will beat the odds and still be with us in 2021 (at a  spry 25 years old).