The coffee house connection

Interesting (to me) story by Malcolm Gladwell in the WSJ about writing in public places.

I’ve done this for years in the old-style way: journal and fountain pen, in cafés and restaurants across several countries. There’s something about the nib of a good fountain pen scratching across a blank page of lined paper that’s incredibly satisfying. In a pinch, I’ll use a roller-ball, but heaven for me is an Italian pen, a journal and a café table.

Up until my move to the Valley they call Silicon, however, I didn’t get the attraction of people sitting in coffee shops frantically tap-tap-tapping on their laptops, trying to look extraordinarily important instead of like cheapos who won’t spring for high speed broadband at home. (Or like the out-of-work waiting for the employment commission office to open.)

Now that I am myself unemployed (or “between gigs”, as we used to say in Hollywood), I’ve found that I quite enjoy coming to the nearest Panera Bread (where I am at this moment) and haul out the Mini 10 for a quick trawl through Dice’s latest postings or to answer a couple of emails. I prefer Panera to coffee shops because I can get free refills here, and the staff are actually quite amiable.

Starbucks is out of the question because if their coffee were free it still wouldn’t be drinkable. I’ve never understood how they retained market share once other shops opened that actually serve potable beverages.

A coffee shop is a great place to eavesdrop—business meetings (I learned a lot about the current state of non-profits and social networking here a couple of weeks ago), family dynamics and just plain gossip (there’s quite a lively discussion going on in Spanish at the next booth as I write this; I can make out about 20% of it). If you’re stuck for story ideas, coffee houses and beauty salons are the place to go.

(Reminds me—I need to find someone to cut my hair locally.)

But what’s important to me right now is that being out in public, in one place for a length of time, gives me the chance to interact with people casually—a change from talking with recruiters and interviewing with hiring managers. It may be a sad state of affairs that right now being greeted as a regular at Panera is comforting, but these days, I’ll take what I can get.

The job hunt

Anent yesterday’s interviewing farce, let me say one thing for the benefit of prospective employers:

Thirty minutes of face time isn’t enough to give the candidate a sense of what it is you’re looking for, no matter how many of these slots you string together in an afternoon.

Especially when you don’t seem so certain yourself.

Unless you’re planning on yet another round of togetherness to really talk about the need & my skills, I do not see how you can make an intelligent decision.

(I also don’t get you asking so many blue-sky questions—what would I do to change the overall product that would increase market share, put smiles on shareholders’ faces & make the cover of Time?—for a six- to nine-month contract position.)

I know it would be a crap shoot from my end, & I’m quite glad that my commitment would only be for those six to nine months, if I’m made an offer.

Recruiters...

What can I say—as a category, recruiters are scum. Doesn’t matter if they’re in-house or out, they have the mind set of used car salesmen. Ditto for the ethics.

By way of illustration, here are my most recent experiences with three of them—recent being in the past four business days.

You may recall that I was scheduled for an on-site interview with a healthcare company last week. I indeed had it—nearly two hours in & then out again on public transport to downtown SF for an hour with one of the two people I was to meet. The hiring manager straggled in about 15 minutes late, read her question from a print out, wrote her answers on the sheet like she was taking a junior high fill-in-the-blanks test & then shooed me out because she & her team member had someone else to interview.

Okay, that’s not the recruiter’s fault, although it is an indication that the organization & especially the hiring manager are largely clueless when it comes to how they bring on new employees. & it’s a huge sign that this person isn’t someone I really want to work closely with.

But all along the way this recruiter (on staff) has been late with his communications—always with a reason, but yet another indicator that this place can’t organize its way out of a paper bag. Immediately following the interview he promised faithfully that he’d call me that afternoon to give & receive feedback. The call didn’t come until late the next day—no feedback from the manager, just wanting my thoughts.

Then he swore that he’d get feedback from his people no later than Friday & he’d call. Not surprisingly to me, he finally got round to phoning me yesterday afternoon, to tell me that they’ve decided not to hire for any of the six product manager positions they have open (which he said they desperately need to fill), but instead to “focus” on a group manager of PMs.

This is a position that’s been open for going on for six months & for which the recruiter tells me they have no one in the pipeline.

If he’s to be believed.

(Whatever; really what this tells me is that there’s no way I’d want to work for these people, even if they were paying market rates.)

Recruiter #2 (independent) solicited me for a very interesting PM position, with a “very well-funded startup”, which turns out to be headquartered in London & would therefore entail substantial travel back & forth. He emailed me on Thursday, we set up for early Friday afternoon for us to have a call, & then I heard nothing. Late that day I rang him, got a bit more information & a promise that he’d send me the job description & more data on the company, its principals, etc., Saturday morning; then we could have a call early Monday (yesterday) to discuss.

Thank God he gave me the company name so I could research on my own, because there’s been nothing but dead air from him since then. No email, no call—even though I sent him a targeted CV and cover letter late Sunday to spark the conversation I expected yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll have to call him to see if his head’s out of his butt yet.

Finally, I’ve been working with Recruiter #3 on a contract gig with one of the area’s “Internet” giants” since sometime in July; maybe initially in June. I’m not laying the length of time this has been dragging on him; that’s on the client. But after a second phone interview with the client, on Friday the recruiter (representing the job shop that would run the contract) called to say I’d finally have an on-site interview Tuesday (today), which could last four to six hours.

Well, since my phone interview had brought up interest from the client for a position I hadn’t been aware of before, I asked if he could give me a job description, a list of the people I’d probably be seeing, an idea of the typical interview process, &—oh, yeah, where, exactly would this take place?

He promised he’d get me all that information, send it to me in an email yesterday morning, & then call me in the afternoon to go through it all.

Imagine my surprise when I heard nothing from him either electronically or over the wires. I sent him an email; no response. I left voice mails on his office & mobile numbers; no reply. Finally, this morning at about three hours before I was supposed to show up somewhere to meet someone & talk about something, I had to leave a VM in the company’s general mailbox. He called me shortly thereafter…with nothing concrete except the address (which turned out to be wrong).

He didn’t know exactly what this new job was—tried to talk his way around it by giving me more general info. Said I’d be meeting with this person; or possibly that one. Assured me he’d arrange a quick phone call with one of the PMs he already has working there on a contract to talk me through the process; never happened.

Of course, the client turned out to be, um, less than well put together. They had six PM candidates there, being interviewed by a phalanx of their people, but they weren’t terrifically good about communicating. For example, the person who was supposed to start the round with me never got a call from reception. Then they didn’t seem to be really clear about which position I was there for (as opposed to the other five interviewees).

That mass candidate thing is pretty low-class. Although it was amusing to see a German woman go postal because while she was in the loo, someone came to collect one of us, alone. When she returned she kept demanding to know why only that one guy had gone, & when would they be back for her, & did “they” know that “we’re all here together”? I’m glad that Belgium & Poland weren’t anywhere near, because she was ready to roll out the Panzers & start amassing an art collection.

My carousel of interviewers was interrupted by a fire drill (literally). It didn’t give me a lot of confidence about security that I was able to get back into the building without swiping a badge; I wouldn’t have done it except there was no one person in charge of me, so no one I could contact to escort me back in.

& a further warning sign: the group manager showed up 25 minutes late, addressed me as Nora & then went off on a call. When he got back & said, “I understand you’ve worked at [Internet Giant] before, I had to interject that I haven’t, nor is my name Nora. He assured me that he has actually read my CV before; but there’s no way of telling, & I’m not sure it’s a good sign that he apparently had Nora’s there, but not mine.

Well—that’s not recruiter-specific, but I did have to get it off my chest.

I called my guy after I got home. In keeping with much of our interaction, he didn’t really know anything at all, but he said he should have a go/no-go decision by Thursday.

Thank God I have a new inquiry from a recruiter for another position. Sadly it is a recruiter. You can’t live with them, you can’t kill them all.