Recruiters 33

I know I sound like an ungrateful cow, but why is it that the only companies that seem to be interested in me have dull software products and don’t want to pay market rate for a senior product manager? It’s like being in junior high and the only boys who want to talk with you are the dweeby ones.

I spent about three hours on the phone yesterday, being interviewed by three people from the latest of these. I feel like Henri le chat noir.

The thing is—this is my own fault. A week ago Tuesday, I saw a posting on LinkedIn and put my CV into the company’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS), without actually paying much attention to who they are/what they do. (And when I finally looked at their web site—well, it’s always a bad sign when you can’t tell what the product does from their site.) 

My bad.

Then, within hours, the recruiter was on the horn saying that both he and the hiring manager had spotted my sterling qualities and the hiring manager wanted to talk with me tout de suite.

Well, tout de suite (I just like using that phrase) turned out to be a couple of days later because the recruiter is kind of flaky, but I duly spoke to this guy who was so enthusiastic about me I felt a little creeped out. I mean, he asked questions, I asked questions; then he wanted to know my job search status. “Oh, I’m actively interviewing,” I said breezily. Then tacked on some, ah, lies to add an air of verisimilitude to the concept of “active interviewing”.

He said, “Well, I’ll move the process on as fast as I can. Please don’t make any decisions until you’ve given us full consideration.”

I’d feel happier about that if their idea of compensation were actually within market range for the position. (And they’re so far below it that the recruiter actually apologized for their range, saying that they’d recently bumped it up by $10K because no one would even consider it at their previously bargain basement upper limit.)

It’s always something.

Truth & consequences

A couple of weeks ago I spoke with VP of Marketing about a product marketing role with his company, a start-up in SF. I’ve undergone some, ah, introspection since I tanked my last interview, so I entered into this conversation in a somewhat different frame of mind.

It helped that he didn’t ask for examples of consumer SaaS applications, nor did he seem interested in what I do outside of work. Perhaps because, when I asked him what type of person is successful at his company his answer was, essentially, “someone who works all the hours God sends.” So, as far as he’s concerned, there is no “outside of work”.

However, when I inquired as to what, by way of sales tools, he needs most immediately—brochures, customer success stories, sales decks, etc.—he replied, “You’ve been to our site (I assume)—you tell me what we need.”

Well, as it happens, I had indeed been to their site and the thing that struck me was their blog. As I told him, a corporate blog is an opportunity to connect in a very human, conversational way. Stuffing it full of press releases, ah, doesn’t quite feed the bulldog. I mean, I get it that the people who provide content (corporate-speak for the ones who write the posts) have full-time jobs (and that, in that company, “full-time” obviously means round-the-clock), but, truly—if you go to a blog all all you get is announcements, you’re not going to return.

Thing is—it’s always a gamble telling someone that, in effect, their baby is ugly. So I guess I’ll have to wait to see whether or not when he asked for the suggestion, he really wanted it.

Creative differences, Pt. 1

I’m taking a massive open online course (MOOC) from Stanford University’s d.school. (Look, that’s what they call themselves; I wouldn’t make that up, much less foist it onto anyone else.) It’s called “A Crash Course in Creativity.” I think there are several thousand people all over the world taking the course, which consists of video lectures and then weekly assignments.

So far we’ve had two individual assignments—post a “book cover” and 200-word autobiography, and post a mind map and narrative for an exercise in observation. I’ll post separately about the latter; you don’t need to know anything about the former.

But let me just say this: I do not get why the user experience (UX) for this course sucks so badly. Stanford is supposed to be at the cutting edge of technology—it gave us Google and recombinant DNA, for crying out loud. Why, then, does every page on the course site take about 15 seconds to load? And why do they have an archaic online editing tool? And what’s up with not being able to archive messages?

In short—why does the whole web application look like it was designed and built in 1998?

Could this be part of the “creative” challenge?

Cooking justice

They’ve found another alleged Nazi war criminal—a 93-year-old German man who’s number four on the Simon Wiesenthal list of most-wanted. The charge is that he was a guard at Auschwitz.

Hans Lipschis, who actually lived in the US until we deported him in 1983 for concealing his Nazi background, says yes, he was in the Waffen SS at the extermination camp, but he was just a cook.

Well, Steven Segal was “just a cook” in Under Siege. We all know how that turned out. I think the "just a cook" defense is in the same category as "only following orders."

That aside, I’m kind of disturbed that there are apparently another 49 old men who are known to have been guards at Auschwitz. What the hell does it take to bring these people to justice?

Gratitude Monday: Natural wonders

Last week was one of those that makes me just want to stamp my feet & toss my toys out of the pram. Well—not at the same time, of course, because if I were in a pram it would be hard to stamp my feet to any good effect. Also—it would have to be a pretty big pram. Um.

Whatever. It was really…not my finest hour.

And I was still scuffing my metaphoric toe in the dirt andpouting this morning, so I hauled my cranky, ungrateful ass out to the Stevens Creek Reservoir to stomp around in nature. It makes a nice change from the gym, or even the paved Stevens Creek Trail.

So imagine how chuffed I was to be graced by coming across more wildlife than I’ve ever seen there: two bunnies hopping right across my path (at different times), a hummingbird, a robin, a California blue jay, a deer (first ever I've seen in this area), a raptor bird and some sort of large-ish, sleek water-type bird (perched on a tree limb).

With each sighting I felt better and lighter.

So—huge shout-out for whoever sent those critters my way. I take your point.

Decoding the past

An interesting WWII story—letters sent by a British POW in Germany back to his family actually contained intricately coded messages that no one has understood for about 70 years. The letters passed German censors, were read by British authorities and then sent to his family, who didn’t know anything about the hidden information.

Sub-Lieutenant John Pryor was taken prisoner at Dunkirk and spent the rest of the war at Marlag und Milag Nord camp, where he wrote the letters. Following the war he pursued his career in the Royal Navy. By the time he got round to writing his memoirs he couldn’t recall how the code worked. It wasn’t until his son, an academic, turned it over to a Ph.D. student specializing in PoW escape plans, who collaborated with mathematicians, historians and geographers, that it was finally deciphered.

Here are a couple of the things that strike me about this story:

Pryor spent five years in Marlag/Milag. He was 21 when he was taken prisoner. I cannot imagine what that kind of confinement at that age must do to a man. According to Wikipedia, the camp housed (give or take) 5000 men; it had a library of 3000 books. Up until I downsized a couple of years ago I had a library of 3500 books. My mind boggles.

Yet following liberation he returned to the RN, raised a family and led what we might think of as an ordinary life (if there be such a thing). He died in 2010, aged 91.

And that’s the other thing that I can’t shake: So many of the men who fought that war endured terrible conditions, did terrible things and must have had terrible memories. Yet, like Pryor, they came home, largely packed those memories away in an attic (literal or metaphorical) and got on with their lives. They neither boasted nor whined.

So I’m really glad that Stephen Pryor found someone who could uncover part of his father’s history, and that the world knows a little bit more about his life.

Phenomenal women

I love this story, from NPR’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton: a Nigerian woman on a mission has founded a program to train other women to be first-rate auto mechanics.

Yes, we’re talking the No. 1 Lady Mechanic Initiative. (Apologies to Mma Precious Ramotswe.)

What I particularly like is the quote from a 2009 graduate, Faith Macwen, who’s now working for what must be a sought-after auto company: When male colleagues put her down, she says, “But we made them realize—I made them realize—we can do it.”

It’s the fact that she changed the first-person pronoun from plural to single that drives the point home. She’s fully aware of her own achievement.

You go, girls!

Bells on the battlements

I wouldn’t ordinarily comment on a state visit by a foreign head of state to Britain, but this time I have A Connection. My friend Marcia was part of the band who rang the bells in the tower of Windsor Castle to as Queen Elizabeth II welcomed Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

It’s interesting to me that HM is probably investing more money in horseflesh than in the bells of the royal residence. Marcia told me that the bells were on a long draught (distance between the ringing chamber floor & the ceiling), & the longer the draught, the trickier the ringing, since there’s more room for the rope to swing about.

Also, the ringing chamber could do with some guides & better lighting. & it had bare boards & no carpet; they put down rubber mats & small carpet squares for the ringers.

(Why does this image come to me of Scrooge stopping Bob Cratchit from putting another lump of coal on the fire? “Poke it, man; poke it!”)

At any rate, the Brits do know how to put on a show. Here’s a clip from The Telegraph—fragmentary, but still, you get the drift:

Two comments on this whole thing. There were military bands & carriages & flags & limos & squadron after squadron of mounted troops. That must have cost someone a few bob. But the ringers got paid £4 each for supporting their country at an official royal residence on a state occasion. I think they typically get paid around £20 or so when they ring for weddings. & I’m not sure whether £4 even buys you a pint of bitter down the pub.

I really like the final frames of the video—focusing on the very attractive butts of both the horses & their riders.

Damn.

Not so cruel after all

It was a blast getting through April, National Poetry Month. I shared 31 poets in 30 days, and every one of them brought out something from deep within me. Some thoughts from the month:

Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” practically sings itself. In the very rhythm and the vibrant images, you see a woman striding into the place, just taking charge and enjoying the hell out of it.

I keep finding myself sneaking back to archy—I can’t get enough of that cockroach. Honestly, between him and mehitabel, who needs cable TV?

My visceral response to “Ulysses” really disturbed me. I’m thinking about that one. Poetry’s meant to provoke emotion, I know; but even so…

I realized who Ozymandias reminds me of: Larry Ellison. Am I right, or am I right?

There are some poems that you have to hear to understand, and some that you have to see. Some poets distill the big ideas into just a few syllables; others give us lush word dreams. Poetry is a broad tent that way.

Some poems get you laughing because they’re purposely silly, like “Jabberwocky” and “The Pobble Who Has No Toes”. And then there’s “Pied Beauty”—which just makes you smile for joy.

You can see terrible things through poetry—a concentration camp, a gas attack, hell itself.And you can aspire to great things.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog. Don't you dare touch the remote.

Fear & loathing on the high desert

I was talking with my sister yesterday and what she told me made my blood run cold.

She’s taking a ceramics class, and she made a ferret.

Then she told me that she made a prairie dog, but didn’t hollow it out properly, so, “My prairie dog blew up in the kiln.”

Well, you don’t hear that sentence very often, do you?

But that’s not what scared me. It was the notion that she’s even in a ceramics class. Back when she lived in the Springs, she used to spend time at this place called Kiln Time (or maybe it was Killin’, I can’t remember; but it was something sickeningly cutesy).

And she made stuff.

And she sent it to me.

I can’t recall all of them, but I do recall a bunch of ovoid things that were painted like Easter eggs, and little chickens.

And here’s my fear: that some time in the foreseeable future, I’m going to find a UPS package on my doorstep, and there will be a ceramic prairie dog in it.

Or a ferret.