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.

Stuff to Do

At some point in the last two months I opened the last Jobspage post to identify stuff to do.  Then I grabbed the notes from the resume folder.  My notes in there say that I have a variety of resumes but they can be seen as either short or long one.  I had a long resume that I would like to rebuild as a short one.  This newest version places the education elements on the top because I recently graduated.

I had identified what kinds of terms and formats I should use to list my MA.  While it seems that Job seekers use simple postings because education is less important than employment, the academic listings showed a little more.  First degrees should be written as initials and there should be a minimal note of specialization, concentration or emphasis.  I may add publications or recent conferences.  I should also have a section where I describe my background supervising classes, caring for equipment and coordination.  I should also have a section on skills, techniques, interests, training or research.  I noticed that resumes listed skills (GIS, surveys, English) as a narrative or in a special section and I shouldn’t list my certificates (GIS, TESL) but may discuss qualifications.

Next, my review showed I found that experiences referred to work.

In the employment section I have a single entry that lists my four years of projects with PG&E.

Things that I focused on in a reread in the jobs areas were companies, departments, projects.  I noted that each job comes with benefits.  However, I am not certain what I meant by this.  I think that each job come with things that you may do that you can’t do at other jobs and not medical or etc benefits.  I noted that I would need to list out how these are referenced.

Announcements

On 100814 I believe I wrote that I wanted to make an analysis of jobs offered and an analysis of jobs received.  I think it would be good to collect announcements and do a context analysis and then list out objectives and then produce an open coded categorization.  Then the analysis could interview or survey the employed and ask if the objectives were achieved and how to further develop the open coded categories.

A Reboot of My Job Search

While rewriting my job search notes I have hit on a lot of the necessities in making my job search work.  I reviewed the folder where I keep everything regarding work.  It has the principle tools for my job search and serves as a directory of my work history.  It covers jobs in general, state agencies, jobs to which I have applied and more than one type of group with which I have worked.  There were several items and I have reorganized them, there are mostly two types: Jobsearch and the jobs folders.

The jobsearch folder holds specific search tools, like my Resource Bib.  This is the material record of my job search and lists out categories of places where I learned about jobs.  These include recruiters, aggregators, government, corporate, non-profits and other types.  For instance, I have lately been thinking about contacting a specific recruiter that called me a few times with opportunities.  I have also been interested in looking a little deeper into the GIS exam with the State of California.  I have an email from Steve at Wildlife saying that the Research Program Specialist and the Research Analyst I/II exams would open sometime this summer.  I recently emailed Gabriel at Fire and Karen at Wildlife to inquire about them.  Meanwhile, I have learned that I should not be using my employer’s internal site to find a job there and use the “external site” instead.  I have noted several times that I need to return to the process of changing my profile for many of these resources but must be ware since my present employer may happen upon it when visiting the aggregating and integrating jobs sites.  Finally, I want to more thoroughly investigate my email labelling since I should find ways to integrate the nonprofits into my research.

My work folder also has a place for my resume, which may take various forms (as CV or Cover Letters).  I am presently interested in completing my long form resume and comparing it to older versions so that I can produce a new short form resume.  I have also been considering how to reboot my two-every-other-day process, where I make day to day steps in reviewing my resource list.

Meanwhile, my Jobspage blog has four different keywords Bib, Correspondence, Interview and Notes.  The bib keywords cover my bibliography notes: Recruiters and Aggregators.  One of them got a lot of views because I posted it on social media.  I also posted a couple of resources about the Academy of Sciences and I also made a post about CalOpps.  The Correspondence keyword had numerous posts.  These are mostly reposts of my emails to people and their responses.  There were several for GIS positions that got as many as six views.  However, there were two posts that got more than that and they were more about planning.  I also posted several things pertaining to interviews that I have had.  I tend to write about my interactions in the process of getting a job.  In some cases these posts get a lot of views but generally they only garner three or four hits.  Finally, I have a few posts called notes but they didn’t get very many views at all.