Recruiters 27

Okay—if anyone wants to know why American business is in such a state of disarray, let me share with you a job posting for a software product manager. This was on the company—a Forbes 50 corporation—website. Yes, this is an actual screen shot; this is what you find on the site (except I’ve blurred the name):

Now, for those of you who don’t know what a product manager does—s/he is the vortex of all communication about his/her product. You’re collecting stories from users, converting them to requirements, horse-trading with development on how much can get done in this release, iterating testing with QA, creating all value propositions, building marketing campaigns, training & supporting sales teams and then doing it all over again.

You’re speaking to a wide range of audiences; writing and rewriting large, complex documents; interacting with senior management, techies and people off the street. There’s nothing you do that doesn’t involve critical communication.

So I just despair when I see that for a position basically drenched in complex communications to a whole universe of audiences, this presumably sophisticated global corporation is happy to have someone with only basic knowledge of English. And what is that—can order lunch at Burger King?

Their wish list is intermediate fluency. Is that—can order dinner at Applebee’s?

Please also note their spelling of knowledge. They just are not thinking.

But they are definitely communicating.

Hedgehog's dilemma

This has been making the rounds of the social networks:

Now, I can't confirm that there's actually an A. Hedgeh, Ph.D., which is what I'd assume the "Dr." would be in this instance. (Medical doctors would never have their name on anything, including a cocktail napkin, without the M.D. designator.)

What interests me about this is not the cleverness about adding "og" to "Hedgeh". It's the abomination of using the objective case ("whomever") for the subject of the clause. I shudder to think of the standards of any academic institution that would grant a doctorate to someone who hasn't grasped that difference, much less hiring him/her.

Also, I'm not wild about the merging of "door" and "sign".

The law is a ass

Ah. Of course. That lawsuit that the “concerned mom” in San Diego filed against Nutella last year—because it turns out that a spread of ground-up hazelnuts and chocolate has calories—has been settled.

The mom who’s apparently incapable of reading labels has won. 

And if you’ve bought a jar of the product in the past few years, you can get in on the settlement, to the tune of $4.

Of course—if you’re also too literacy-challenged to read a nutrition label, I’m not sure how you’re going to manage a legal claim, but whatever.

Public house

A friend who rings at the local church in Cookham (UK) sent me this story from the Daily Mail, as she knows my penchant for the oddity.

Seems that the other afternoon the bartender at The Crown pub turfed out a couple of farm workers for being dressed in “work clothes”. What they were wearing was “casual trousers” and polo shirts with the logo of the farm where they work.

In other words—they were wearing what most tech company employees would consider high-end office wear.

They’d evidently just come from visiting a friend in hospital, so it’s not like they were covered with manure. From the DM’s photo, the one on the left could have tucked in his shirt, but otherwise I can’t see any indicator that there was any imminent danger of them breaking out in Liverpool football chants or demanding a darts tournament.

If you go to The Crown’s web site—which is poorly designed and gives a minimum of information, never a good sign when it comes to choosing an eating or lodging establishment, right on the home page it says they welcome all visitors, with no mention of a dress code:

But from the photos you can see behind the text block on every page, the pub looks more like an ad for Conran than a country pub. Check out that faux-distressed bar, for one.

Also, its menu puts the Ploughman’s Lunch (or “Ploughmans Lunch, as it’s printed)—which is bread, cheese and paté—in the Salads category (although they refer to the paté as “Chicken Liver Parfait). And tags it with a V for “contains no meat, suitable for vegetarians. Which also applies to the Caesar salad—which is at least a salad, but which has anchovies.

Actually, their menu is a hoot in and of itself for jumped-up-ness. Which probably describes the place accurately, ergo the landlord’s apparent belief that money from the pockets of parvenus is better than that from plebeians.

Keeping in mind that you don’t really go to the DM for the highest standards of reportage, there were still a couple of things about this story that are particularly amusing.

The paper mentions that the pub reopened recently after an alleged £600K refurbishment, and names a local low-level has-been celeb as a highlight of that reopening. I happen to know this person, and you need to trust me when I tell you that The Crown was not setting the fashion bar anywhere above a mud scraper when it had him in, so I don’t get them going all snooty on the sons of the soil.

 

The implication of the story was also that the patrons in business suits were acceptable, indeed desirable, and that if they started admitting blokes in “builders clothes” (whatever the hell they are), all the toffs would scram due to having to mix with the smelly and badly behaved plebs.

My personal experience from several years of riding London buses and the Tube is that an Englishman being in a business suit is not a guarantee of any standard of hygiene. Or, for that matter, of any better manners than your average lager lout.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Working for good

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve being doing some work for an organization that has the potential to do a lot of good, helping the unemployed connect with jobs. I volunteered as product manager for the web site and application functionality—both of which really need a PM’s guidance.

But as part of this activity, the executive director asked me to help staff the group’s table at two events this past weekend, a job fair for a Chinese tech association on Saturday and a ministries fair at a local Episcopal church yesterday. I’m not wild about that sort of duty, but I believe in this mission, so I said yes.

The CASPA event was long—I was there from 1130 to 1600, hawking like a carny. “Are you looking to expand your job searching network?” Then the spiel about the group.

I think we collected about 60 names/email addresses; although how many of those will convert to members I can’t say. A lot of the people clearly had limited English skills, not many understood the concept of a networking group. They just wanted to leave their résumé with us.

In fact, when we were packing up, we saw that one guy had done just that.

But, by comparison, the ministry fair event was, well, “dire” is the word that comes to mind.

I happen to attend this church, which is in Cupertino, and I’d had, you know, expectations. Career Actions is based on the Good Samaritan principle—all our members, be they employed or not, have committed to helping people find jobs. No strings attached. We have a lot of functionality to work out in the technology, but on the human side it’s an amazing concept and an exceptional organization.

And you’d have thought that the whole “good Samaritan” thing would have played into the principles usually found in Episcopal parishes. (Although, evidently one reason why the ED wanted this push was because of the 17 or so communities of faith participating in Career Actions for three years, this is the first from the Episcopalian diocese.)

But you’d have thought wrong.

First of all, our table was set up outside the parish hall. One of two; all the other ministries’ tables were inside the hall, along with the refreshments table and the band (not making that up). We had no traffic.

Then, they paired us with what has been passing for an “employment outreach ministry” at a church in Mountain View. Let me tell you what they mean by “employment outreach”: a team of three people who from the looks of them have been retired since before this millennium, who “critique resumes [sic]”. Were I looking for a résumé rewrite, I would decidedly not be filled with confidence that these geezers would be, um, au courant with what’s wanted in today’s business climate. They don’t look like they even have PCs. In fact, I suspect there are inkwells and sharpened quills involved in their services.

But there we were, the ED, the host church sponsor and these three, all crowded around a single table—which the three of them had appropriated in its entirety while the three of us were in the service. And when anyone by mistake wandered past us they went into their pitch, making the prospects think that we were all from a single organization, which offers not a whole lot by way of job search help.

So, between the location, the brand dilution and the competing pitches, we didn’t have many people sign up, either as job seekers or employed good Samaritans.

The host church sponsor (who, and I am not making this up, is 92, and--while very enthusiastic and well-meaning, seems to be able to grasp only one idea at a time and sticks with it whether or not it’s really working) told the ED and me that the résumé crowd really wanted to stick with us at other events, because we “give them a new lease”. Well, yeah—I can see that. But they’re killing us. My heart sank.

But here’s what really bothers me: the Episcopalians I’ve rubbed elbows with in the past have been deeply committed to making a positive change in the community. We wanted to sign up both job seekers and company insiders. We understood that in an affluent parish like this in Cupertino (home of both Apple and HP; neighbor to Google, Facebook, Symantec and on and on), there might not be a lot of job seekers (although it’s truly unlikely that there’s anyone around who doesn’t know someone who’s looking for work). But we thought we’d get a lot of the employed who’d commit to help make connections to work.

I mean—where’s your commitment to loving your neighbor as yourself?

We got a total of 14 people to give us their email address, to get an invitation to join. I’m betting we won’t get even half of them to actually register. As for actually helping…

One woman, who serves some sort of leadership role in the parish, just flat out said she didn’t want anything to do with it.

What I really don’t get is that the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real has done so little in this arena and apparently isn’t much interested in opening themselves up to it. The résumé writers at one parish? They’re it. And they’re not even mentioned on their own church’s web site.

I get it that Episcopalians are in large part…comfortable. Professionals. And, apparently, even in this economy, not worried about losing their jobs. I don’t get that they’re not looking around them and thinking of ways they can help those who aren’t so well-placed.

Not only do I not get it; I'm ashamed of it.

Comic relief

I applied to a job posting for a (software) product management consulting company last week. As near as I can tell, their product managers swoop in on clients, develop requirements documents and hand off to developers to build and install.

Rinse and repeat.

I like consulting and I really enjoy collecting, writing and prioritizing requirements, because it involves developing a deep understanding the business problem and the people who use the system, and then advocating on their behalf. So I thought this was worth a shot.

As part of this company’s “talent acquisition” system, I have to complete a short questionnaire that includes such issues as:

·         What do you love about requirements? Why?

·         Have you worked with use cases?

·         What is the point of using use cases?

I was a little disconcerted when one of their questions began, “On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is the best”, and another started, “On a scale of 1-10, where 10 is the best”. You’d have thought that a group of people who want detail-oriented employees would have settled on one convention. In a single document. Five questions apart.

Plus, they sent a document for me to complete, instead of directing me to an online system, which seems weird for a company specializing in software requirements. Why would they use what’s essentially a manual input device?

But as I was squinting to read the questions, I realized that the questions and answer spaces are set in 10-point Comic Sans.

They just lost about 30 points on the competitive scale of 1-100, with 100 being best.

Workers of the world strike back

Well—this is timely. In my post Tuesday about how companies turn to crowdsourcing for creative work, particularly design and what they call “content” (meaning, you know, words that tell their story), I did not touch on one dirty little fact.

Well, perhaps dirtier, seeing as to how it’s dirty enough that corporations (and, actually, federal agencies) go to great lengths to extract the lowest possible price from their creative vendors.

(In the case of the feds, they actually have the chutzpah to open “design contests”, inviting designers to spend scores of hours designing departmental logos for risible “prize money” and the glory of being able to say that you designed the logo. E.g., Department of Interior last year put out the call for a new logo; total available: $1000. You should have heard the discussions on my various tech downloads on that when some woman posted the “great opportunity” to the list. Professional design guilds estimated that the job was worth $20K-$50K, approximately the amount of money the GSA paid for one breakfast at their recent taxpayer-funded Vegas bacchanal. One large wouldn’t even have bought cocktail napkins for one of their many team-building activities.)

Okay, so as if expecting people with years of training and experience, not to mention God-given talent to provide you with highly creative, professional branding material, that’s going to tell your corporate story at a single glance, for a fee that amounts to an hourly rate below minimum wage isn’t enough of a Scrooge for you, client companies often…just don’t even pay the niggardly amount they agreed to.

It’s appallingly easy to screw designers, developers and “content” creators. Take their work and just stop replying to their emails or taking their calls. And as for writing a check—fuggedaboutit.

For most of us, the only recourse is bad client ratings on the crowdsourcing site and small claims court. But here’s a designer who took the street-justice route. Here's what you see if you go to the offending website:

Evidently the client is in financial straits and there’s no one around to try to take back the site. Their difficulties are so great that perhaps they never will.

But it’s a lovely site to see someone from the corporate “job creators” class named and shamed.

Power to the people!

The subject is TV

So, it seems that the Military/History Channels don't have a lock on dysfunctional communications. You can't tell from this pic, but here's a bit from a promo for USA's In Plain Sight series, which is ending on Friday:

Apologies for the blur. But trust me: this is what USA Network thought appropriate in terms of subject-verb agreement.

But, back at the Military Channel, we have yet another disconnect in terms of where Mickey's hands are and what constitutes an hour:

I wonder if any of their execs ever watch their own programming?

I wonder if any of their execs can tell time?

Workers of the world

Today being International Labor Day, I’m going to tell you about a recent experience trying to get a logo designed for an organization I’m helping out.

It’s a really great group, dedicated to helping the unemployed find jobs by connecting them with people who know people in companies all over the Bay Area. I volunteered to be product manager and to lead the revamping of their website, because—although they call their connections concept Networking 3.0—their website harkens back to Web 0.5.

Maybe even Web 0.25.

I won’t even tell you their URL. It’s that bad.

(The current functionality isn’t much better, either, although the executive director keeps referring to the features as “apps”. They’re not “apps”; they’re lists of members, of companies and jobs, with some links you can click on.)

But I digress.

As part of actually making this outfit look what I call “web real”—like a viable, professional entity that has both gravitas and technological credibility—I created a full-on design specification, with positioning, organizational background, use cases, etc. I also finally persuaded the ED that we need a logo. We can’t get the site actually designed & built until we have some sort of brand around which to, you know, design it.

This being a non-profit, our original email blast for a pro bono designer didn’t net anyone. And we have two events to attend this weekend, so the production of a logo became a priority. The ED therefore opened an account on elance, posted an excerpt from my design spec and then handed it over to me to deal with.

Within 12 hours we had 16 proposals, and here’s where the issue of international labor came in.

I already had issues with the idea of crowdsourcing, because it essentially reduces every commission to a freefall to the lowest bid. For a while I was part of Guru, a similar site; but I realized that if I put forth a bid that was fair compensation for the talent and level of expertise I bring to the job, I’d always be underbid.  I wasn’t being outrageous, either; I was estimating the amount of time a job would take and what I would get if I worked at an agency to do it.

Sites like these pit creative vendors against competitors in third-world countries who will always underbid. And for many, many “clients”, getting something for next-to-nothing is the most important consideration. (Like people buying air travel tickets who’ll go with the carrier that’s $5 less. The result being that airlines compete for the lowest airfare and the lousiest service. Or the entire Wal-Mart business model.)

Keep in mind that, by my estimate, designing a logo will take a minimum of four hours of work: absorbing what the client’s business is all about, their market, their ethos, their competitors, etc., developing appropriate colors (in our case, since we don’t already have them), designing several possibilities; getting client feedback; editing the designs; and finalizing. It took me eight hours to go through the 16 vendors’ listings, look at the work they’ve done before, start sifting them out and supplying the winners with information about our organization.

We got bids from designers in the US, Pakistan, Mexico, Yemen, Colombia, Argentina, Trinidad/Tobago, Bulgaria and the UK. The highest was $383.56; the lowest, $45.

This is our global economy in a nutshell—corporations are doing this on a grand scale, offshoring jobs (and tax payments) to places where they can pay workers a pittance and not worry their heads about safe working conditions and extraneous stuff like that. And I was essentially being asked to participate in this in a very personal way.

Made me very, very uneasy. And not just because on something like this I prefer to sit down across a table from someone to tell the story and answer questions.

In the end, I chose two designers, one with a bid of $170 and the other at $80. Both from the USA. I filled out detailed questionnaires about our organization Friday morning; both replied that they had enough information to produce designs. I’ll get initial output from one today, from the other tomorrow.

I worry, though. I worry that without the actual human contact (not even a phone call—strenglich verboten in the elance model) my questionnaire answers don’t give the full idea of what this organization does so it can be represented in a logo. I worry that I’ve helped support a system that turns everything into a sweatshop. I worry that I’ll get useless designs back and we won’t have anything for the two job fairs this weekend—so I’ll have a crappy web site and no logo to give job seekers any confidence in our ability to help them.

I worry that the Internet, instead of opening real opportunity, just reduces everything to the lowest common denominator.

Theory of relativity

If you’re looking for something to put your life into perspective, I give you this site where it’s all laid out for you.

I have to say that your ordinary laptop display isn’t really adequate for the visuals, so if you’ve got a real monitor, definitely make use of it.