In February 2023, I got stung by government security clearance shenanigans which, despite Herculean efforts on the part of my bosses, left me jobless in the worst employees market in decades. Having now spent about 6 months having learn the ins and outs of job hunting, here's a breakdown to save you some time:

It's not a vacation

The first and most important thing to understand is that job hunting is a full-time job. You've probably heard that before, but do you really understand?

For context, I'm spending several hours a day, searching, reading, writing, arranging, networking, getting on calls – not really any different than a regular job, but this is 6 days a week and with an ever-present fear of how long this takes versus how much money I have left to pay rent. It's going to be rough, but when you know the storm is coming, you can prepare.

It's a hell of a storm

Thanks to 2023's massive layoffs, I saw desperation, pleading, fear, despair – people begging for connections, a job, a chance – anything that would get them working again. Before I even started looking, I'd seen people talking about spending months putting in hundreds of applications with little effect.

How is this relevant now that 2023 is winding down (or over, depending when you read this)? Because job hunting is always a numbers game. It's always about treading water.

Be prepared mentally to see a lot of "no's" in terms of automated rejection emails, ghosting, etc. That's true at the best of times, but especially in a employee-hostile market. Bottom line, expect things to suck for a while and don't get discouraged!

The ravenous field of "resume preparation services" made me instantly skeptical. I did a lot of research into services and resumes in general using online guides, videos, Reddit's /r/resume community, and more. Eventually, I felt the services couldn't offer more than I'd already learned which is as follows:

Format

If you work in a particularly niche field or it's an employees market and you can be more creative, then you might have more options, but based on everything I found and especially in the feeding frenzy of 2023, this is the format that most resumes should be using:

Your goal here is to make it as easy for recruiters, managers, and automated applicant systems to quickly read and understand the data. Creative might be nice, but think about the last time you had repetitive work to do and someone moved your button, your stapler, or something else you use to get the work done efficiently. Annoying, right? So be predictable, not creative – not at this stage anyway.

Formatting aside, here are the other things I learned to focus on:

One page only?

As someone struggling to keep it down to four pages, this one was really hard for me. I eventually got it down to one, but went back to two based on the advice I've seen that says decade-plus-long careers can exceed one page. Otherwise, one should do.

Compacting content!

You don't need to describe the job if the title is an industry standard (or fairly descriptive). Instead, focus on bullet point accomplishments. Not regular duties or activities: stand-out accomplishments.

I'm not saying you can't add the major project that was an assigned duty, but you add it because it was a major project. Employers want to see how you had real impact in your role so, as much as possible, write bullets in the What you did • How you did it • What was the result (with numbered metrics if possible) format. There's a great writeup about it here, but here are some examples (pic is from the linked post):

For readability and due to limited space, try to use as few words as possible to express your point clearly and impactfully. If that's not something you're great at, get some friends to help you. Ask, "how would I word this another way with fewer words?"

Which sections, which order?

Another hotly contested part of resumes was whether to include a Summary section and, to be honest, I don't know the answer. What I decided was that there's enough debate that it truly comes down to personal preference and I chose to have it – mostly because then I could include some key accomplishments that didn't fit in bullets. For example, mine says:

Over 5 years of total Product Management experience leading cross-functional teams to create products serving thousands of customers at cost savings of up to $300,000/yr.

Following that is a bullet list of key skills (in three columns) for the role that I change up depending on what the job description was asking for; just to prove that I have what they're looking for even if the bullets later don't demonstrate it as well (more on that later).

Experience vs Education vs Certs

Experience trumps, always. The only reason you'd put education first is if you didn't have strong experience coming right out of school. If you are a recent graduate, putting your graduation year and GPA might be good information, but in any other case, leave them off. Certifications will have their own section, even if it's just one. That said, if you have all three, go in this order: Experience > Certifications > Education for best results.

Tailoring

As everyone will say, you need to tailor your resume for each job. I say that's kinda true, kinda not.

Maybe it was just the 2023 year where you could expect months and hundreds of applications before you started seeing results, but it all gets kind of hypnotic after a while. Instead, I created different versions of my resume for each major job title I was applying for (Product Manager, Security Awareness Trainer, Compliance Specialist, etc.). I legitimately had the skills for each of these roles, but the resumes read very differently so I pre-customized them.

Granted, there are some jobs I pull out all the stops for and match my resume as closely as I can to the job description, but often one of the title-based resumes with a few changes to the summary and bulleted skills sections seemed sufficient.

There are other job sites out there, but LinkedIn (for the most part) has the cleanest interface and adds social aspects that are of debatable use in many cases, but clear value when building a professional network and job hunting. Besides writing your own posts and content, merely commenting on posts of others is a good way to get attention on your profile from people who agreed with or liked what you said (happened to me this morning in fact). I'm not saying you shouldn't use Indeed or others, but I would start with LinkedIn and work out from there.

Connections

In this process, people will send you connection requests, but don't just add everyone you see. Check out their profile and judge if they're a sensible connection. I use all of the following to get a total picture of whether I should add someone (not that they need all of this, but each is a reason to consider them):

• Are they in your target location? People from all over the world can be great resources, but locals are going to serve you best for job hunting on average.
• Are they a recruiter? If so, they can be a great contact no matter where they actually live so long as they're recruiting for the field your going for.
• Do they have meaningful posts/comments? A filled work history and profile details? If not, this might just be a bot/scam.
• Is their profile expressing someone you'd like to know and be connected to? Are they in the same/similar industry? Is their "thing" something you care about? Or is it just a sales pitch? Someone working LinkedIn to farm connections at random?

Jobs

Arguably the main reason you would use LinkedIn is to find possible jobs to apply to. Here are my tips:

• Have a solid idea of what job titles you're aiming for. If you're not sure, try looking up keywords that describe what you like/do and write down the titles that keep coming up. Doing a little research here helps a lot.
• Only apply if you are a match for most of what they're asking. Don't waste everyone's time (yours included) applying for something that you clearly don't qualify for. At the same time, many jobs are a description of the perfect candidate and that's just absurd. Assume that they're looking for an 80-90% match at best. If you can legitimately say you have strong experience in most of it and at least are aware (or can learn) the rest, go for it.

Most importantly, LinkedIn lacks very basic functions to keep irrelevant jobs out of your view. Check out my LinkedIn fixer script to clean up the results and make them far more useful.

Profile

There's a whole artform to this that would take forever to explain. Instead, check out mine and especially others in your target role/company. Generally speaking, a well-filled profile is better, though don't forget brevity.

If you'd like a step-by-step guide, I though this video described the process well:

LinkedIn Premium?

LinkedIn Premium has a few features that are useful enough that I'd give it a month at best. There are some learning videos that are helpful, you get extra credits to contact hiring managers and such, and special "job match" categories that free users don't get.

That said, you can already contact people that are 3 degrees separated from you so as you build your network (explained next), those "inmail" credits become less and less useful (I don't think I ever came close to using them up). I did get a few decent tips from learning videos. But generally speaking, it doesn't seem to be a good value.

The "advanced searches" like "Jobs you'd be a top applicant for!" and such rarely show more than the basic search and are often even LESS useful because you can't limit them by location or pay or other filters for some reason. So you end up having to go through a ton of meaningless jobs to see if there's something useful there.

Networking

It's always been said that networking is the most important part of getting a job and that's not changed. Especially when you're in a deep employer's market, finding a way to stick out is key and the resume/cover letter isn't going to do it. To connect with people, I did all of the following:

• If the hiring manager is listed on LinkedIn, follow the application with a message do them directly. Keep it brief, but engaging. Something like:
  
  "I just applied for your X role, and I'd really love to learn more about the company and role expectations as well as introduce myself. Would you have time to chat or meet to discuss this week or next?"
• If you don't know who they are, check out the company on linked in then look at the "people" tab. You should be able to find recruiters and staffing folks for the company. Specifically, you'd want to find ones who are in the right location to match the position, but it's far more important to find the ones who are actually using LinkedIn regularly. Check their activity and prioritize reaching out to the ones who are likely to actually see your message.
  

  As an example of what to write when you do message them:

  "I just applied to what looks like an amazing role (link). Are you the recruiter for the job or do you happen to know who is? I'd love to connect to hear more about the opportunity and introduce myself :)"

Applying

The process can vary widely, though most companies are using one of the key applicant services like MyWorkdayJobs or OracleCloud or Greenhouse.io. This helps standardize your process a bit, though here are some helpful tips:

• If you formatted your resume cleanly as advised above, the systems will be able to pull in most details for you and pre-fill the fields.
• No honest company is asking you for your birthday, your SSN, or other private information. Neither should you to pay for anything. If you run into this run.
• If you have your LinkedIn Profile set up well, you can often use LinkedIn to fill the fields instead. I rarely did this because my profile is a web page and is written and arranged for that purpose more than following resume standards, but it's an option.

Reach out to hiring manager Send messagees to recruiters and staffing folks Hunted down costco example contact through linked in if listed.

Interview Prep

I confess, I thought "I'm pretty good at interviews" and "I'll just answer honestly and it will be fine…" a little too much early on. I snapped out of it when I found a job I REALLY wanted with one of the toughest and most demanding employers around: Costco (yes, Costco). I realized that "winging it" was a poor plan and re-evaluated, reconsidered, and wrote an entire LinkedIn article about it (click here to read it). Feel free to read it too, but the summary is:

• Watch interview prep videos on Youtube etc. to cover the basic do's and don'ts. You don't want to fail the simple stuff!
• Write a prep document listing out the key questions that interviewers ask (which can come from the videos) and what your answers would be. Even if you can't read from this document in the interview, prepping this way puts it fresh in your mind. Later, you can skim through it before the interviews to keep the info on the top of your mind.
• Practice (of course)

The Interview

From more than a decade teaching briefing skills, let me give you a secret trick. Speaking events are like parachuting. You should practice and preapare the most for the first 20 seconds and the last 20. Everything else, you can drift and change direction and it doesn't matter much, but you definitely need to know how jump and how to land.

For an interview, this means you should know what to say when they say "Tell me about yourself". I don't know if I've ever had an interview that didn't start that way, so be ready for it. Write down an elevator pitch that not only describes your work history (in brief), but what you're passionate about, and what goals you have (that this particular job/company can help meet).

The last part of any interview is this: "what are your questions for us?" So… what are your questions? You know they're going to ask; just like you know the ground is coming when you're parachuting. So practice!

Write down a few good general questions at the least, but definitely try to have a few specific ones. Something like:

• "Is there anything you still have questions about or want to circle back to?" If they were holding back on something they had concerns or confusion about, this question gives them a prompt to bring it up so you have one last chance to address it or clarify.
• "In your own words, how would you describe what you like about company culture?" The goal is not just to learn the answer, but to see how excited they are about their own company. You can learn a lot from this question.
• "Are there core hours or is work schedule pretty flexible? What days are expected to be in-office? What does the work-life balance look like?" The goal here is to find out how much you're tied to a particular work schedule and location. This may or may not be a deal breaker so it's best to clarify now.
• "Let's say I'm the best candidate. What would your expectations for me be in the first 30 days?" Shows interest AND gives you and idea of how furious and painful the onboarding will be.
• "For this role, how would you describe a perfect candidate?" Gives you an inside look into what they consider important skills and behaviors. You can optionally follow this with something like "that's encouraging to hear because I think that fits me well, thank you!".
• "This sounds like a great opportunity so what can I expect next in the process?" Definitively show interest. That and you get clear expectations for how you'll be contacted next. This is the question I always like to end interviews on.

Interview cheat sheet

Since I wrote that article, I have a key tip to add. Since you're likely to be asked "tell me a time when" type questions, create a condensed bullet list of sample "time when" and a few keywords to remind you of a story from your history that would fit. As an example:

This is what mine looks like – separated into stories that talk about me as a person versus ones that empahsize my work ethic and history (which is generally how these questions will be split. Each lists the prompt and then a few words to remind me which story I can tell that would express (in STAR format), what the (S)ituation was, what I was trying to do ((T)ask), what I did ((A)ction), and what the (R)esult was. Remember, a RESULT can be either be a clear accomplishment OR that you learned an important lesson (which is, after all, an accomplishment as well).

General tips

• Tons of people are looking for remote work these days. Stand out by being open to in-office or hybrid work. Doing so cuts the competition for the role significantly!
• When you don't have anything else going on, use LinkedIn to find people at your target company or other people in your target role in your target work area and send them requests for an "informational interview". Say that you want to learn more about the job/company and would love to learn from their experience. There are two goals here: to actually learn and to build connections to people who are close to your desired role. On both counts you'll be better prepared to find and get the job you want!
• LinkedIn doesn't let you connect with people who aren't somehow "close" to you via connection distance, but that works in your favor. If you can get one person in a company to connect with you (maybe after that Info Interview), then all their connections can now be messaged/connected with. And depending how close that connection is, you may be able to message them without using any "inMail" credits.
• Recruiters are valuable allies! If you see one who is in your industry (ex. when I see a technical recruiter), add them to your network! Doing so will help you stay alert to new jobs and have a quick way to contact relevant people in the process. You can also search for recruiters in various desired companies ahead of time and ask to join their talent pool. Try to get a sense of what they hire for from their profile before bothering them, but otherwise, send a quick note stating the type of job you're looking for and ask to connect.
• If you see someone celebrating that they just got hired in the company/role you wanted, don't be resentful – take advantage! Send them a message or leave a comment congratulating them and ask for the name of their recruiter. They may be hiring more people and you could be one of them 🙂

2023 Sept 29 edit

I posted this article before I actually succeeded in getting a job because I felt it would be helpful regardless. However, I do want to share that I had a series of interviews lined up as of the time I wrote this and have heard back from 4 different organizations about possible jobs. One was a clear standout from the others and I've accepted an offer!

What I've written might not conclusively lead to a job, but I believe (and have experienced) that it will position you well to find one!

Tags: 2023, Indeed, Job hunting, job searching, layoffs, LinkedIn, unemployment

So I put some effort into getting my home office put together. I have dual monitors nicely raised to the right eye height. I have a motorized standing desk, nice keyboard, mouse… the works! But the main issue was switching between my home computing and my work. I had one laptop for each (clean separation between the two), but moving all those cables is a non-starter.

The first thing I tried was a Thinkpad USBC hub. It's pretty straightforward – just plug everything into the hub, then plug the hub into the computer. The only problem is that I have to move the one cable between the computers when I want to switch (technically two because it was too slow to run both monitors so I had one HDMI cable I plugged directly into the computer for speed reasons). But the next thing I tried was the combo Hub/KVM. What an improvement!

So basically, the KVM works just like the hub, but it's faster so I haven't had HDMI problems even when playing games. And because it's plugged into both machines at the same time, all I have to do is click a single button to swap between the two computers. All my devices and monitors swap semi-instantly and it's just such a better process that it makes my workday so much better! If I remember something I need to do on my home computer (or on an account that I don't want to log into on my work laptop), it's a button press, get the work done, button press again to go back to the work machine.

If you have two computers for your home office and want to be able to rapidly switch between them while using the same peripherals for both, this is a pretty sweet way to do that!

Tags: Home Office, Remote Work, RPS

According to a Cambridge study "Coca-Cola sought to obscure its relationship with researchers, minimise the public perception of its role and use these researchers to promote industry-friendly messaging."

Specifically, Coca-Cola has been found to be manipulating public information to minimize their part in the obesity crisis and instead blame exercise instead of sugary drinks. The paper mostly focuses on the mountain of evidence showing Coca-Cola's misinformation campaign, but links to several examples where it's been caught putting that campaign into practice.

Tags: Market Lies

Today I found this great infographic outlining several of the psychological tricks companies use to manipulate your spending. The best defense against this kind of thing is awareness. Make sure you know the basics and don't fall for their lies.

Tags: Customer Abuse, Manipulation, Market Lies

Given how bad Pizza Hut has become, Dominos has been my go-to. I like the pizza and breadsticks, but what I don't like is getting ripped off.

One of my kids prefers pasta so we order with every pizza night, but when we do, we get this. every. time:

Dominos can put as much pasta in their tins as they want and they can charge as much as they want, but what they can't do is give us the pathetic display above when what they advertise is this:

And now… ENHANCE.

I have never once recieved or seen a pasta from Dominos that has even close to the pictured amount of pasta. When we open it, it's half-full at best and we have to decide if we're going to complain and make one of their poor delivery people come all the way out to give us a second half-empty pasta or just let it go.

I'm generally a happy customer when it comes to Dominos, but being shorted over a $5 pasta dish over and over for years gets a little aggravating. Shame on you Dominos.

Tags: Domino's, Expectation vs. Reality, Pizza, Scams - Ripoffs - Dirty Tricks

It seems that the Airlines haven't managed to hire enough problem-solvers to handle the various issues they face on a daily basis. They suffer from slow boarding, irritable customers and employees, and, of course, reduced profits due to the above. Since I have about 20 minutes of time available, I thought I'd lend a hand and solve all their problems:

Boarding

So far, only Southwest does a good job keeping people orderly and calm during boarding. This is because they not only have enough space for all the passengers AND their carry-on items (unlike American Airlines), but they use a simple A-B-C and 1-60 lineup system. People calmly line up according to their letter/number combination so there's no rushing the gate or tension while others get in line before they're supposed to.

Southwest's one error is having unassigned seating. Because of that the plane fills up from front-to back in the window and aisle seats first which makes it harder for people traveling as a group and takes a lot of time as people shuffle around to let the middle-seat folks in.

Solving it

All airlines should adopt the letter/number system that Southwest uses, but each ticket should be assigned seating. Further, all planes should board from the BACK to the front. If the first-class people want to deal with all the bumping and jealous stares, I guess we can let them go first, but otherwise back to front because duh.

The only reason I can imagine why we don't do it this way now is because the people who get on first get priority for the overhead space and they can sell early access for more. The answer of course is to stop being such greedy pricks and just make sure you have no more seats than your overhead space can accommodate. Firstly because it's customary and completely reasonable to expect each person to bring one bag and a "personal item" with them and you should have enough room for it all without theatrics (right, American?).

If you're not playing stupid games with your customers and your gate and plane staff put in a minimum effort to make sure people have the proscribed number/size of baggage and only use the bin space above their assigned seats (you know, actually manage the boarding process), then boarding back to front would be much faster, far lower stress, and translate to profits due to efficiency every time.

Sales Pitches

One of the things that annoys me most about theaters is that I already paid a ticket, I participated in their back-ally mugging for snacks, and I even sit and watch commercials for movies that are coming out soon in order to watch the film I paid to see. On top of that, they have the nerve to play annoying and distracting ads before the movie AND after the movie start time before the other movie previews. And then they wonder why I might go to a theater once a year or less…

Likewise, you have airlines that are haven't been able to make enough money by cheapening snack and meal service; now they have to hassle you on the plane with loud ads or flight attendant sales pitches for your "club" or BS credit card, or whatever. I'm surprised they haven't already figured out that a 4-hour flight of captives is a great time to pitch high-pressure timeshares.

Solving it

The answer to that is simple: STOP. Leave us alone. You want to pitch us for your blather? Do it on the ticketing website or in the ads on our tickets (which they already do too by the way). Outside of that, your window of acceptability has long since ended. Once we reach the airport, your job is to get us to our destination safely and professionally; not beg or steal for your scam deals while we're trying to deal with the stress of flying.

Rude and Angry

I have dealt with a variety of stressed, angry, and rude airport employees, but I don't fault them. I know that poor customer services is always a reflection of the hiring services and company policies and not the individual. Especially when you see it over and over or compare it to the companies whose employees are generally helpful, happy, and friendly (Southwest).

Employees in this mindset are likely to make mistakes that can be costly or embarrassing (like the poor doctor who was injured during a forced removal from a United flight). Trying to lead by spreadsheet is failure seeds that will eventually blossom into disaster.

Solving it

Run your company in collaboration with your workforce – listen to the problems they raise and do what you can to fix it. They want the company to run efficiently, so let them help you do it! That, and make sure you pay fairly and provide good benefits. In an industry where small mistakes are magnified immensely in terms of consequences, making sure that people are treated well.

In closing

There's probably more I could think of if I put some effort into it, but these problems aren't that complicated nor hard to solve. It will mean cutting profit margins somewhat in the short term, but the efficiency and loyalty you create will be far more profitable in the end. If you can't manage it, here is my simple trick for responsibly moving forward: shut the doors and go home. If you can't run a business fairly and well, don't. Tags: Airlines, Customer Abuse

As usual with any airline that's not Southwest, boarding is a pain. People rush the line, desperate not to be the last on the plane and have to search for overhead space that might not be near their seat. That is, that's how it used to be.

Moving from inconvenience to outright abuse, American Air has started "gate checking" your carry-on baggage if you're boarding near the back of the plane (group 7 and up). Assuming they have competent engineers, there should be plenty of room for everyone's carry-ons even without their new practice of asking everyone to put their "personal item" under the seat in front of them. There's no excuse for American to not have plenty of overhead room for every passenger… but it gets worse.

The bags taken during the boarding process aren't guaranteed to be there when you land. They didn't lose them between the walkway and the tarmac, they deliberately separated them to go on a later flight. How do I know? Because the "lost luggage" counter where a full staff of 5 employees was ready and waiting told me so just before they handed me the "sorry, not sorry" toiletries bag (nicely embossed with the American logo).

It's pretty easy to put the pieces together. There's no legroom, there's no baggage room, and they won't even put the bags in the hold of the plane that was already there and had the baggage door open and waiting. This is about maximizing people on each flight and spreading the luggage weight around. Or, put simply, profit before service. Of course, I got my bag the next day because their contract-delivery service (which I imagine is busy every day), delivered it as promised, but that's no excuse for getting it right in the first place.

Besides my own two instances of issues, the other attendees of my business trip reported late luggage and cancelled flights; always on American. I will definitely be looking to fly with someone who doesn't play stupid games with passengers.

Tags: American Airlines, Are You Listening

I've never liked Mint.com. Not because they're bad at what they do (they're not), but because you have to give them too much access to take advantage of it. So you get a little money management help, so what? You have to give away your password to do it. Not only that, Mint is (surprise, surprise) using all that juicy data you provide for their own purposes.

For now, it seems that they're not actually telling you who purchased what, but there's no telling when and if they'll start selling your valuable personal data to 3rd parties. Until then, showing truly anonymous purchase information is kind of neat so long as they don't take it further than that.

Tags: Mint.com, Money, Password Mugging

Surprise, surprise. A company has giant data breach due to negligent security, but not to worry! They'll protect you by offering you credit monitoring for one year free!

Credit monitoring is a waste of your time and is likely only offered to make it seem like they're doing something for you when they probably don't. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the credit monitoring companies have a "data breach plan" where companies can get a bulk discount by offering monitoring to all their victims.

It's a classic win-win-lose. The breach company wins PR points, the monitoring companies continue to make money for not providing any real service, and we all lose.

If you're worried about id theft, just freeze your credit reports!

Tags: Big Business, Data Brokering, Identity Theft, WellPoint

Would it surprise you to know that sugary cereals really aren't healthy? Sure! They have a vitamin or two and probably some kind of grain buried under all the fat and sugar and chemicals, but why pay attention to that?

Instead, Kellogg's corporation has been busy touting the healthy benefits of their kid's breakfast "foods":

What did they get for such a misleading and blatantly manipulative campaign? An order from the FTC to stop making claims without proper scientific backing. Ooooh! Burn!

Tags: Big Business, FTC, It's What Plants Crave, Kelloggs, Regulation, Scams - Ripoffs - Dirty Tricks