Complained to a Fellow

On January 25 I wrote that I left the house by 830 and caught a Mission street bus and headed south to have coffee with an acquaintance a café. I told her about her supervising board representative’s email and how she had rejected my discussion.

We discussed our her live’s.  She told me about her connections to a planning agency and a tech outreach organization and mentioned a good person to talk to. SHe told me about her previous jobs and I mentioned a mutual friend. She told me that she considered herself to be a program manager but like me wanted to stop using fossil fuel - her reason for her most recent position. She had gone on bike tours had had an injury and only recently had fixed her bike to get back onto the riding.

I got some more coffee and we discussed the email I had sent to the board person. My acquaintance said that they had planks. One of them was an audit - her associate was administering to that. They gave people sheets and then they go out on rides and fill out the sheets.

I told her about my ideas. I told her that you can use data to identify different groups of people. Then you can go and find individuals who might want to help the group. An example was that one might have a corridor where people live. Census data or commerce date describes who lives there and it is possible to find one representative opinion leader and would represent those people.

We talked about 24th street and also her wonky board members. She said that her perspective as a small business person was that things like the central subway we're only going to make things worse for business people. At her old job she had utility trucks going through and cement cutter is in the way. Eventually she said that she went and offered them menus.

I assessed that we agreed the MTA had a tin ear. She noted that if Twitter can take payroll taxes off of their bill then why can't other small businesses? Here she told me that her husband sometimes has a hard time finding parking in the mission and it's possibly because the MTA didn't take the time to show him.

We discussed useful information for grant writing. She told me that her board was learning how to write. She told me that the transit center was also kind of new. I listed off the top two granting organizations. She told me one foundation was actually the focus of a current grant writing push .

She told me that every grant that you write needs to have some sort of equity and or environmental element to it. A vision her board member had written provided both an environmental and an equity element. She wasn’t certain that equity was the best term. I told her about my experience with an equity person in DC that I had known.

This is where we started to wind things down. I told her about the a survey group. I described my Career. She mentioned the utilities commissions.  I told her I needed a project management job.  After this I told her that the next thing that needed to happen was some sort of connection between the context on the ground in the state of research. I told her that a bibliography would be the best way to go. I said that an academic research would probably do best to have some sort of community relationship.

We had talked for about an hour at that point. I had kept notes throughout. While getting coffee I had complained to a fellow customer about the parking lots in the area. My acquaintance and I caught the bus to 16th and I said bye to her.

This series of experiences are conversations that I have had with knowledgeable people about my career or job interests. This Interview Series is meant to describe the basic elements of an interview and how I have gone about participating in one.

Re: Grants lists

So wonderful to hear all of this from you. I have spent a lot of time thinking about technological adoption - specifically how an individual would select a specific solution out of a large set of choices.  As a car free individual I have long been confounded by transportation and would like to use my skills to that end.  As a geographer my skills are in high demand but I almost always end up working for firms that are heavily fossil fuel based.  Hence, it has always been a conundrum how I would live up to my own principles while also attending to my needs.

I have been attending get togethers and sending emails to people about doing demographic research for quite a long while now but have yet to get too deeply involved because I have to find substantive work.

Having said that, I am certain that the research I would like to do is relevant to a funding organization of some kind - academic, industry or both.  I emailed you because of my intense interest in this area and am happy to ear that you are also interested in finding out more about students, seniors and or low income populations.

My focus up to now is in the wide disparity between what ridership or cycling/pedestrian activity shows and what community groups like the bike coalitions, pedestrian orgs or transit advocacies show.  I would also bring attention to the way that the US Census understates all of these modes.  I believe that there are potentially simple steps that may be taken to identify how these orgs and datasets may be analyzed and or improved to be more accurate.

I would propose that funding be provided to first develop a concept of the state of current research and subsequently a test case could be developed to show how current numbers may be used to show the real demographic make of - specifically of our local community.

--- I saw your email and immediately dropped everything to respond and looking back now I notice that I have said a mouthful.  I think you can tell I am relatively excited about these types of opportunities and would love to sit down and discuss them with you.  Please feel free to call or email about meeting some time.

This series of experiences are emails I have sent or received regarding my career or job interests. This Correspondence Series is meant to provide examples of my interactions with industry actors for future reference.

Send her Some Resources

On 24 January I wrote that that the day before I walked to the a local cafe and had a call with an HR manager at a local engineering and environmental sciences firm. She basically had dozens of questions for me because they were looking at overflow and would need to bring in more help for hundreds of hours of work.

She wanted to know what kinds of work I had done and if I was capable with the jobs that they had. She wanted to know about my bandwidth and how much work I could put in.  I noted that she thought I would be a 1099 and was surprised that I had actually been on W-2. I told her I would send her some resources.

Subsequently I sent this email:

You and I had a very productive conversation the other day.  I am emailing to touch base with you and see how your inquiry regarding options in the area of GIS went?  I told you that I would forward you some resources which may be of use to you.

The American Association of Geographers is my national association.  I have presented at their national and regional conferences on a number of occasions.  You can find their industry resources page here: http://jobs.aag.org/

The website for ESRI is really useful when it comes to getting technical help for GIS. They mostly provide high end consulting. This is their contact page: http://www.esri.com/careers/main/contact-careers

However, when it comes to getting help with small or short run projects I would suggest getting in touch with the User's group.  Dennis (SFBAGUG@gmail.com) is a great resource for this - I had a sit down with him only a short while ago.  This is their site: https://sites.google.com/site/arcgisgroup/

If software or automation is a problem I would suggest looking into FME from Safe.com.  In my line of work I have found that by and large the biggest issue requiring man hours is data transformation and FME is particularly good at this.  An example of this kind of translation is turning CAD into GIS data but there are myriad issues that will come up in the course of a project and FME addresses many of them.

As I said over the phone I am particularly interested in working in environmental sciences and your needs seem to be a perfect fit for my skill set (see my attached resume).  If you have any questions or comments on any of our communications don't hesitate to call or email.

This series of experiences are emails I have sent or received regarding my career or job interests. This Correspondence Series is meant to provide examples of my interactions with industry actors for future reference.

Got Off at Gough

At six it was difficult to get up. I noted that it was easy to catch the express but I did have to run. I got off at Gough and I went to the apartment before I took BART Oakland.  I walked to a well known East Bay agency and sat writing in my notebook for a while. My acquaintance came in a bit early. He told me we would go straight to Peet's.

On the way I described my interaction with my last informant. She had suggested I ask people to talk. He mentioned informational interviews. I thought it sounded strange because that's what I thought we were doing.

We got in line and we put our jackets at the table. We ordered – he needed food. I didn't offered to pay. I mentioned the president of our mutual association. Moments later I sat waiting and when he sat down I made small talk about traveling. I told him about my domestic situation.

He returned to the informational interview idea and I explained more about my last informant. Also I asked about his user group and the association president. He addressed my questions and I also asked about listservs especially with the association and mentioned.

He didn't mention this but I noticed I didn't actually say what I do – my skills -- while I was talking.  However, I did mention the two sectors I had interest in. I talked about the a bay area wide agency. He explained a lot about his experience. He had had a job at an agency in his community and mentioned a bit about his ex-wife helping him with interview questions. He also had a friend that did that.

I brought up the job I had applied to at his agency and explained my experience with the job posting. He said they have the prompts so that you can give them a really good answer. I explained that I didn't really know what to write because I knew I could do the work but wasn't able to speak to the specifics. He said I need to focus on myself and not dwell on the specifics.

I explained that I knew that interviews are complicated for a supervisor. He then explained that the position I had applied for was actually three jobs. He said someone had quit. They had two mid-level jobs and a high-level job. They couldn't fill it so they reposted it. He said they use HR filters, then he selects, then they forward the selection to an outside consultant and finally he tries to interview about five people.

He told me that my resume was too sterile. I understood. I also said it works on websites. He said I needed to use first person. He was surprised but also recognized that as a contractor this would be my perspective.

He said that contracting was often fine. He had worked with a private business that had been purchased but was not fully integrated for spinning off and ultimately failed. His old coworker was a shoo-in at his agency but quit for a private job. However, the public agency job was better in the long run and he returned.

I noted that this was one of the times when I needed to interrupt but I didn't because he was describing useful information. However he never told me the specifics about the people involved. He returned to interviews because that's what we were doing. He had a lot of enthusiasm.

He told me informational interviews should be planned and that I was interviewing them. I noted that they might not want to hire me but that's not why we sit down with them. My last informant had said the same. He described questions and said these things several times.

I discovered that he had brought my resume. He also brought several examples of what he thought were important. He thought it needed a summary and skills.  He also said that writing in first person was also very important. He also said that my resume was a good length.

I noted that at some point I asked about jobs he had heard about. He said that I hadn't really taken the time to describe myself. That was when he asked me about my favorite job. I told him about my favorite boss but he told me that I needed to talk about myself. I took the time to describe the job at this point and then he told me that I was being too broad. That was when he said that I should just say A, B and C and be done.

I described a job I had recently interviewed for and how they thought I had been too talkative. He told me that he had a friend that had worked for that company. I noted that I should probably ask him about that.

He explained two things. First they have specific needs/wants -I should speak to those in the informational interviews. Second, I should write everything brand-new.

At this point he made apologies for being critical but I tried to say criticism was welcome. He said that I should offer to buy coffee, make my resume first person and to Google informational interviews as well as cover letters to get the kind of sample questions I needed.

I told him I always want to cut and paste because I'm afraid to do the thinking. He asked for more information. I said that and analyst the boss always wants information quick with no frills. I told him I felt like I should stick to what works. He told me that he understood but also indicated I needed to insert things everywhere.  By this point we were way over time so I started hurrying up. Dennis was still putting a fine point on several things when we walked to the BART entrance. I said bye then.

This series of experiences are conversations that I have had with knowledgeable people about my career or job interests. This Interview Series is meant to describe the basic elements of an interview and how I have gone about participating in one.

Repose Was Too Small

On January 11 I wrote that I walked to Haight Street and caught a six to Divisadero. The coffee shop Repose was too small so I checked with my acquaintance and we agreed to got to to Vinyl.  We sat talking about a local politician we knew and the conversation I had had with another acquaintance the day before. I segued to what I wanted and who I wanted to emulate.

I noted I wanted to be a senior or supervising analyst and I noted that the local politician we knew was a good model. We started writing things down at this point.

I took pictures of the notes she wrote and she gave me some other stuff. She asked what I wanted to do it as a job because I explained my role as an analyst and described my commute. She asked about my resume statement. I said I wanted to be in San Francisco. She wrote down that I wanted to have more responsibility because that contributed to my long-term prospects. She noted that I didn't want to be a contractor.

I wrote these things down to but I noted her contention that I while it was clear that I wanted to be in San Francisco as an FTE, I still needed to further unpack that.

For instance she said I was a teacher, guide, trainer, advisor and liked to do research. I noted that she seemed to be segueing into a new topic. This is when she said yes and asked why I wanted a city job. Then she listed out ways that I person would work for the city. She listed out staffing agencies and suggested that there were many other avenues.

Before she started writing in her notebook – sort of to summarize – she said that yes the list of reasons/ways is long but I would also want to pay attention to benefits and opportunities. She said it was important to have many irons in the fire.

I noted yes I wanted benefits and the chance of promotion. However, benefits included remuneration and severance is well.

Here she suggested her planner friend because she was similar to our politician friend but was also more like me. She had hired a career coach that help her negotiate salary. She used to work at a city agency.

She went on to say that an informational interview was like a job interview except the questions aren't about what jobs the interviewee has but what jobs anyone has.

As a recap she confirmed from her discussion a different avenues to a city job by writing out the question, "who knows someone?” I listed out a few places and noted that her friend did 10 years at a biotech firm as a purchasing person after my acquaintance had landed her a job.

This is when we discussed the book What Color Is My Parachute which she had read. She wrote out some bullets: location, company type, the kind of people, skills and subject area.  I had noted already that I wanted to work in San Francisco and bike to work. I noted that I wanted to be at a firm that treated people well and had good benefits. My acquaintance added things like “not a start up” and said I wanted to be with people that were like the ones at the happy hour we regularly attended.

We discussed University work and our professor friend came up. I said however that the application process for those jobs (or any for that matter) were onerous. After this she suggested I change the job description in my resume to first person. I told her how it was optimized for CareerBuilder.

She started to say I wanted to second resume that had a stated objective. She said that it should be the kind of resume that describes job type, skills, etc. She said that I would want to summarize my skills – GIS, dB and research,

I noted that I would list expertise and accomplishments. From here I noted that I would list employment history but instead of what I had I would write first person. "I mapped… I research… I built utilities QA QC etc.…”

Here I shared my lifestyle ideas and said that I was kind of living it already. I also described the advocacy stuff but I had told her about this already. I also mentioned things about research ideas. I noted that I would go see a local transit advocate.

When I knew it was time to go so we said bye and she said she would email introduce her friend to me.

This series of experiences are conversations that I have had with knowledgeable people about my career or job interests. This Interview Series is meant to describe the basic elements of an interview and how I have gone about participating in one.

Only about Bike Politics

On 10 January I wrote that I heading out to meet my acquaintance who worked as a programmer downtown. I passed up a stop and thought about going to FedEx to print a resume but opted purely for conversation.

We were meeting at a cafe and I found a nice spot. We ordered and I spoke only about bike politics. That was around when he explained the four different things that his data operations team had. One was a QA QC product using JSON editor, another was a comparison tool.

After he explained that I would likely be a good fit for the job if it opened he started to get text from his coworkers and had to go.

This series of experiences are conversations that I have had with knowledgeable people about my career or job interests. This Interview Series is meant to describe the basic elements of an interview and how I have gone about participating in one.