I watched the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy. In one of my life times, I was a respiratory therapist and knew what it was to walk around with a beeper and be summoned for Code Blue’s. From all over the hospital we would come running to the room where a nurse had noticed that a patient was in respiratory or cardiac distress. No matter how we felt about each other, we all had to move in concert. I would get the ambubag. The intern or resident would be ready to intubate. A nurse had the electric paddles to bring the heart back. We were all ready to take orders.

This episode of Grey’s Anatomy was an accurate anatomy of a disaster due to a lack of team spirit. No one was looking to cover the other. There was no trust. Personal rivalries were still cooking in the forefront of everyone’s mind. A young mother died in the process.

On the other hand, the firefighters who came in to see one of their own who was burned had a camaraderie that demonstrated a working unit of professionals.

At the end, it was shown that it wasn’t even the dysfunctional team’s fault. It was the fault of the managing surgeon. He had not fostered teamwork. Although he had highly gifted employees, he did not encourage them work together. He felt as thought he killed this woman.

When will managers learn to foster team spirit at work? Why does fear allowed to reign at the work place. Why do team members turn on each other as the enemy and work against each other? Logic would tell you that you get more accomplished working together. No one has all the gifts and treasured skill-sets. No one is 100 percent on their game every day. There is so much to learn from one another.

It is up to the manager to deal with egos. But first, he will have to deal with his own. He will have to face his own fears and stop hiding his weaknesses. The truth will not only set you free, it will make you stronger and more powerful. You just need some character. If not, there will always be a plethora of unnecessary suffering.

Announcements will be out tomorrow!

I’ll be releasing all the specific details you’ll need to register for the classes.

I’ll also list some of the advantages and directions these classes will give you while

 navigating the “uncharted sea” of our current economy. You’ll gain valuable

information and ideas that’ll help us all survive & thrive within this

Brave, New & Different World of Work.

At any given time, online and offline, you can find opinions or “generally accepted standards”  of what to put on a resume. I would like to offer you a new perspective on this vital document by giving you suggestions on what NOT to put on your resume. I hope this will spark your thought processes and arm you with another approach to writing the document that markets YOU to hiring managers.

As a general rule, facts revealing extremely personal facts about your life should be omitted from your resume. From my experience with recruiting, talent acquisition, and hiring practices, I have compiled a list of facts to avoid. (Yes, believe it or not, I have run into ALL of these! Some you will find quite amusing…) When you are proofreading, drafting, or reviewing your resume (or the resume of someone else…) think about NOT including the following:

• An objective statement which uses up valuable “real estate” (space) on your resume. Tip: You only have two minutes (or less) and very limited space to quickly capture the attention of the recruiter, hiring manager, or computer screening software. Use it wisely. Your specific objectives could be different for every position for which you are applying. Instead of in the resume, briefly state your objective clearly in your cover letter as it pertains to the open position. Then concentrate on matching your skills to what the employer wants to see in a candidate. They state this line by line in the job posting. (There are a few instances in which the objective statement is appropriate and enhances your resume. Please ask your content medic for more information.)
• Breeds, colors, and names of your pet(s).
• Descriptions and names of your children.
• Your hobbies.
• Your religious affiliation and/or other preferences. This could create a pre-conceived notion of you in the hiring manager’s mind. You don’t want to take the chance of having your credentials dismissed before having the chance to be fairly reviewed. (For exceptions to this tip, please contact your content medic.)
• Skills that clearly fit a job other than the one for which you are applying. For example, if you are applying for an Accounting position, do not submit a resume that highlights your Graphic Design skills (unless you are somehow able to stretch and demonstrate a relationship…) Again, remember the two-minute tip…You have a very, very small window of opportunity for being selected.

             (Note: If you are applying for more than one type of position, have more than one type of resume and present the correct one for the job.)

• Personal email addresses that contain cartoon names like “Superman/Superwoman, “names like “VideoJunkie,” or strange combinations of numbers like 666, or 629, 00, or 1234. Many times, the email address can seem trivial or appear offensive without you being aware. To be on the safe side, while optimizing your opportunity for selection, obtain a free email address with just your first and last name only, or a simple variation of your name. You can obtain a free email address from many sources. One with your name gives a more professional image. Again, with reference to details, you never want to give the reviewer of your resume the impression that you are not serious about your application. You would be shocked at the names and words I have actually seen in email addresses.
• Paragraphs that describe and ramble about your job duties. Use bulleted lists or in a paragraph use concise language to expedite the review process.
• Word document file names that are not professional or do not link the resume directly to you. Online applications ask for Word attachments. When attaching or emailing a resume, do not name the file with a name that could be taken negatively. Use a simple file name using your initials or your name.
• References to yourself in the first person. For example, “I verified and matched documentation to incoming inventory.”
• Inappropriate grammar and misspelled words. Use the grammar and spellcheck feature in your word processing application before printing or emailing your resume.

This is not a complete list. I will be adding more as time goes on and as the ”resume culture” changes. Use these suggestions, and you will have a good start toward building an effective resume that sets you apart from your competition. If you require assistance with your resume and cover letter, please do not hesitate to ask. This is one of the many services of the content medic.

I myself have sometimes gotten into the rut of thinking that I need not be spending time on expanding my skill sets. I have grown at times content with my level of production skills, and think I need only to use them on things that are billable, or make me money.

WRONG!

I am sure most of you know that by doing this, we are only shorting what we can become. We postpone how quick we reach a higher skill level, by putting off any more learning or advancing in quality and ability. Take the time, no matter how much other stuff you maybe could be doing, and spend at LEAST a little time every week finding something to advance you!

I quickly have realized the mistake, and have lately been taking steps to move above and beyond what I am comfortable with. Its not easy sometimes, sitting and grinding through seemingly endless small steps and reading, to achieve something that I was before convinced I could already get, just through a different method or style. But, I have found that even if the project or technique I am studying is somewhat boring and uninteresting, I still find little steps and tricks that I never would have known otherwise.

So, note to self… KEEP LEARNING, Always!

In that light, I am going to post some links I have found useful lately and in the past for the continuing of knowledge building in a freelance designer’s career.

• http://tutorialblog.org/illustrator-tutorials/
• http://freelancefolder.com/seven-lies-freelancers-tell-themselves/
• http://www.noupe.com/tutorial/vector-illustration-60-illustrator-tutorials-tips-and-best-practices.html

These are just a few… I will come by and update this post as I run across cool or new tutorials or reading.

In the meantime, enjoy and keep learning!

Just wanted to get this category started.

These will be the things that you need to know in order to get started implementing the money making strategies on the internet.

Defining the roles within digital engagement at Helpful Technology.

Great little doc in presentation format. Describes the roles for an ideal web team, one with a social media focus and operating in a Web 2.0 mode.

Love especially the Commuity Manager and Social Reporter roles…  These are types of positions that government comms shops should be looking at creating if they are in any way serious about getting involved in the participatory web.

This comes from Steph Gray, who heads up the social media efforts at DIUS, a UK government agency concerned with higher learning and innovation.

I just got back from yet another trip to the United States and as I trolled through my ever-burgeoning pile of unread RSS feeds, I came across the following post about ghostwriting on the blog Lisa Romeo Writes.

I regularly subscribe to a bunch of different blogs about freelance writing and I’ve probably seen at least twenty if not hundreds of job listings for ghost writers over the past twelve months alone. But until today, I never thought much about ghost writing as a possible supplemental source of income for myself.

The main reason – as Romeo notes in her introduction to the post with respect to her own experience – is that I’ve always been so preoccupied with finding and expanding my own voice that I never wanted to deviate any of that energy into someone else’s work. Perhaps because I’m feeling just a tiny bit more confident about my own voice lately or maybe it’s just the pinch of these credit-crunched times, but when I read this post I suddenly thought: Hey! I can do that! (Sorry, but you must indulge my less-than-closeted love of Broadway musicals while I quickly link to famous A Chorus Line number of same title…ah, to spend the afternoon singing lyrics from A Chorus Line…but I digress.)

Why do I mention this here?

Because when I read this writer’s account of how she got started ghost writing and why she enjoys it – i.e. finding a way to tell someone else’s story in a way that respects their unique voice- I realized that I’d not only be very good at this kind of thing, I’d actually enjoy it. I strongly believe that the two keys to a successful career are a. finding things that you like and b. finding things you are good at and then identifying where these two intersect (much harder than it sounds). And so, it suddenly occurred to me that I ought to give ghost writing a second chance.

Which I’ve been doing…all day long.

And it’s something we all should be doing – i.e., thinking about our talents and interests and where these intersect. It seems like every day now, I get another email from a friend whose company has just folded or who’s been let go or who’s just had a baby and is going to try and make it on her own, and a lot of them ask me for advice about how to get started on a new career path. And while I have loads to say on this topic, the main thing I always tell people is: figure out what you like and what you’re good at and that’s where you need to begin.

Because if this economy is going to continue on its current trajectory, we’re all going to need to be a heckuva lot more creative in thinking about our skill sets and the many possible directions in which we can take them while still being true to who we are. Myself included.

So if you’ve got that burning life story you’re just itching to tell and don’t trust yourself to tell it, drop me a line…I’m listening.

Recently, I posted a question on LinkedIn in a effort to get some outside opinion on marketing skill-sets and how that is driving hiring decisions. While I was underwhelmed by the number of answers I received — three in total — I was intrigued by two responses.

My Question: What are the pros and cons of hiring a traditional CPG marketer vs. a Service Marketer? More specifically, what is the rationale you are using to make this decision.

I further referenced the following examples: CPG – P&G, Unilever, Kraft;  Services – iTunes, Scottrade, Netflix. Primary basis in these examples was a consumer-to-consumer apples to apples comparison.

The Responses:

Tough question – The necessity to qualify past performances and the other integral parts of the hiring process can’t be overlooked, but on a macro level this is [my humble opinion].
The traditional service marketer is able to move left to right brain more fluidly, based on the career choice to associate themselves with something that is fundamentally “untouchable”. The career progression of being successful in any one of your service company examples shows a high level of measurement as well as creativity. In my experience, the ability to think on both sides of the brain has become integral to any top performing marketing exec. — Matt Gill, Senior Vice President, Pile and Company- Executive Recruiter for Marketing Talent

Your service examples are really consumer products in that they are tangible goods. However, to answer your question: a traditional CPG marketer is usually working with a tangible product of defined value and generally a defined brand image. He/she is used to dealing with measureable goals and defining strategies against share of market objectives. Tactical tools are known and also quantifiable, such as promotions, packaging, collateral support. A good CPG marketer knows how to use these tools to best effect. On the other hand, a service marketer is selling something that is usually very intangible and tough to measure in terms of cost and value to its intended users. As Matt says, there is more need for both the left and right side of brain to come up with strategies and programs that will be of relevance to the user. In my experience, successful marketers of intangible services can more easily and effectively cross over to traditional product marketing. It is much harder for a traditional CPG marketer to cross over to selling intangible services. – John Fricks, CEO at Frix Group – Marketing/Strategists

The Bottom Line:

Flexibility, versatility are the highlights in favor of service marketers provided by Matt and John. Matt’s point that top marketing executives need the “ability to think on both sides of the brain” is more associated with service marketers. CPG marketers need to demonstrate they can sell what you can not see — a great analogy to selling the value you can create for an organization.

At CMG Partners, we have been conducting qualitative research with a number of top marketing executives across a number of industries and find that those with a “seat” at the executive table are best at working across the enterprise to drive transformation or change that enables growth.

Summary of relevant sales training and associated sales expert certifications and transcripts.

Professional Sales Training and Certification Profile.pdf

Summary of relevant career skill sets and strengths.

Skill Sets and Strengths Detail.pdf

Accredited Telecommunications & IT Solution Sales Professional with over 10 years of experience with large enterprise and start up companies covering NJ and PA and regionally throughout the northeast encompassing voice and data in telecom and IT hardware, software as well as engineering, professional and managed services.

Accredited Telecom and IT Solution Sales Professional – Resume' – Robert W Decker III v2.pdf

Accredited Telecommunications & IT Solution Sales Professional with over 10 years of experience with large enterprise and start up companies covering NJ and PA and regionally throughout the northeast encompassing voice and data in telecom and IT hardware, software as well as engineering, professional and managed services.

Accredited Telecom and IT Solution Sales Professional – Resume' – Robert W Decker III v2.pdf

Here are some good reads for Survivalists and Bushcrafters:

• Camping and Woodcraft (Horace Kephart),
• Bushcraft, Scouting, and Woodlore Notes (by Dr. RW Oelslager),
• The Sportsman’s Workshop (by Warren H. Miller),
• Woodsmanship (by Bernard Mason),
• Camp Craft (Warren H. Miller),
• The Way of the Woods (by Edward Breck),
• Survival Handbook (by Raymond Mears),
• Woodcraft and Camping (by George “Nessmuk” Sears),
• Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making (by William Hamilton Gibson), and
• The SAS Survival Handbook.

All can be found either in ebook format, reprints, used, or new in the case of the SAS and Mears books.
Start preppin if you haven’t yet!
PMZ

selection sort;

one of the simplest ways to sort an array

time efficiency o(n*n)

code (in c++)

#include <iostream.h>

#include <conio.h>

#include <time.h>

#include <stdlib.h>

#include <dos.h>

class ss

{

int items[5000];

int size;

public:

void input()

{

cout<<”Enter the number of items “;

cin>>size;

randomize();

for(int i=0;i<size;i++)

{

items[i]=random(100);

}

}

void output()

{

cout<<”\nThe array is \n”;

for(int i=0;i<size;i++)

cout<<”\t”<<items[i];

}

void sort()

{

clock_t start,end;

start=clock();

for(int i=0,j,temp,min;i<size-2;i++)

{

min=i;

for(j=i+1;j<size;j++)

{

delay(10);

if(items[min]<items[j])

min=j;

}

temp = items[min];

items[min]=items[i];

items[i]=temp;

}

end=clock();

cout<<”The time reqd for the sort is “<<(end-start)/CLK_TCK<<endl;

}

void sentinal()

{

input();

output();

sort();

output();

}

};

void main()

{

clrscr();

ss s;

s.sentinal();

getch();

}

Saving facts and artifacts to share with hiring managers and grad admissions

Among the most important things you can do during your term of service is to keep records of your accomplishments now to share later, during job and admissions applications.

By “records” I mean everything from numbers to writing samples to screen shots of web sites you helped design to photographs of you or your clients in action.

The Facts of Your Service: Numbers

At the very least, keep track of your numbers. What the numbers are will depend on your type of service. Hours of training is a common one.

If you are a teacher, tutor, after-school coordinator, or trainer, keep track of numbers of students or participants; increase in grades and test scores from baseline assessments at the start of year; number of classroom volunteers you recruited and managed, etc.

If you are a project developer, keep track of dollars you raised, community partnerships you developed, clients your program served, meetings you facilitated, volunteers you recruited and managed, etc.

A great way to measure the impact of your service is not only to count your direct clients, but also the indirect clients of your service. Two examples: if you are an AmeriCorps member working with adult learners of English, look at the help you’ve offered the adults, as well as the benefit to their children, and the community. If you are an AmeriCorps*VISTA developing a volunteer program, count your volunteers, as well as the impact of their service.

When you are ready to transition, use at least some of the numbers in your resume and in anecdotes about the impact of your work! Numbers help a hiring manager or admissions committee put your resume into context and understand the impact of your work.

(See these chapters from the Idealist.org Guide to Nonprofit Careers about preparing your resume and for the job interview.)

The Artifacts of Your Service: Portfolios

One way to present the artifacts of your service is to create a portfolio — similar to a professional scrapbook — of your service term, with sections for each skill set you have built or employed.

The portfolio can start off with your position description and/or work plan, your resume, your Description of Service (for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers), constructive performance evaluations, letters of recommendation, workshop evaluations, and thank-you notes or emails that describe the impact of your service from colleagues, community partners, and others.

Skill sets to include may be anything from trail and house building to grant writing, event planning, curricula development and teaching, program development, volunteer management, etc.

Mini-portfolios to leave behind

Rather than taking the whole portfolio to interviews with you, you can photocopy relevant sections and leave them behind at the interview, for the hiring manager or admissions counselor to look at in their own time.

I don’t recommend offering more than a few samples of your work, but I do recommend you wait till you are prompted to offer recommendation letters or reference contacts.

Online portfolios

Alternately, you can create an online portfolio like Beth Kanter — the guru of social media use for nonprofits — has done, through a tool like Wikispaces (public spaces are free). Include the link on your resume and cover letters with the rest of your contact information.

Online portfolios are especially useful if you’ve used multimedia to document your service. Linking to your audio or video podcast on iTunes or Youtube is easier if your portfolio is already online.

And a warning: Keep in mind that if you have designed web pages or developed web content, capturing the image of the web page through a screen shot is still the best route for documentation. Linking to the web pages is too risky. Once you have left your service site, you won’t know if your web pages will be updated, if links will have gone sour, or if your pages will have come down altogether. Because you have no control over the pages after you are gone, it’s best to preserve them visually through a screen shot rather than linking to them.

Writing samples

Writing samples are great to include in your portfolio.  A common question I get is what to use when you are asked for professional writing samples.

Depending on  your position this year, you should have a chance to collect a variety of these. Anything professional you’ve written should work — from grant proposals, brochures and newsletters, formal emails or letters, project descriptions, focus group or survey summary reports, web content, press releases, etc.

If you are in a direct-service role with few opportunities to write, try to create a reason to write tied to your service like a narrative summary of your service or a specific service project.

Hang on to your documentation

The problem many service corps alumni face is that they’ve saved all these documents on the computer at their old service site, and now that they are finished, can’t access them easily to share during the job or school search.

Save yourself the heartache by emailing documents and photographs to your personal email account, or backing them up on a thumb drive. You can also use online tools like Google Docs and Flickr to access documents and photos later on.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers can request a photocopy of their Document of Service from Peace Corps, to be sent to them directly or to their hiring manager or graduate admissions office. (Peace Corps keeps your DOS for 60 years.)

Other reasons to document

Documenting your service is not just useful for your next steps. Keeping good records helps during your term with grant writing and reporting, monthly reporting for AmeriCorps*VISTAs, communicating with your supervisor, preparing for your mid-term or end-of-service performance evaluations, and creating public relations materials for your program.

This blog post has been adapted from a section of the forthcoming Service Corps Companion to the Idealist.org Guide to Nonprofit Careers, due out this coming spring from Idealist.org.

Recently I did a skills inventory to see where we might need to add additional staff or build new skills in existing staff to keep up with our PPS pipeline and the expected deployments we see happening over the next 6 to 12 months.  I took into account the 3 components of PPS – Monitoring, Analytics and Planning.  What it comes down to is the fact that you need many different skill sets and no single person is going to have them all (or if they do, you probably can’t afford to hire them).  So what are the skills and skill sets I believe need in place to successfully implement a major PPS project?  Here they are:

• Business Consulting Skills:  Remember that a majority of your interactions will be on the business side of the house and not the IT side (probably 80/20).   Being able to effectively interact with CxO’s and department managers is going to be critical.   You can’t go in spouting off terms like SSIS, MDX and PEL and expect to get any results.
• Real Life Understanding of Business:  You have to be able to understand what drives business.   It is easy to discuss the theoretical value of a balanced scorecard, but in reality most companies have a lot of other fish to fry before they get to that point.    
• Understanding of the Client’s Business/Industry:   Whereas you don’t have to be an expert you have to be able to understand what they do, why they do it and the envrionment they do it in.   For instance, if they are a not-for-profit and all the end users are volunteers and they have high turn-over; , you may have to simplify the input forms and other screens to the point of reducing the quality of your data.  However the cost of not doing such may make dramatically increase the costs of managing the solution and push it outside of their budget.
• Accounting/Finance Knowledge:  For a monitoring or analytics project you can probably fake this as long as the client can point you in the right direction to the data and tell you what they want to see.  However, if you are going to do Planning, then a knowledge of accounting/finance critical.  If you can’t read/intrepret/understand an income statement or balance sheet, don’t undertand the ramifications of partial ownership which changes throughout the year and don’t know a debit from a hole in the ground, then you are in big, big trouble.
• SQL Server 2005 (2008):  PPS sits on top of SQL Server and therefore you are going to eventually have to mess around with it.  Either from an installation point of view, or maintenance or reporting.
• Other Data Sources:  In a perfect world, when it comes to Monitoring, Analytics or getting actuals into Planning, every host data source would be SQL Server based.  However, we don’t live in that perfect world.  The larger the client the more likely they will have multiple data sources and systems including Oracle, DB2 and databases you have never heard of before.   You will have to get at these somehow in order to complete your solution. 
• SQL Server Analysis Services:  M&A loves to consume cube data.  Planning stores the data in cubes.  You will be working with cubes eventually if you want to work with PPS.
• SQL Server Integration Services:  See my comment above about working with other data sources.  To get data into a data warehouse and cubes for Monitoring and/or Analytics or loading actuals in for Planning, you will be using SSIS.  
• SQL Reporting Services:  The Planning operational reports utilize SRS and as you are doing Monitoring or wanting to distribute Planning data the obvious choice will be SQL Reporting Services.
• SQL Scripting (T-SQL):  See my comments above about SQL Server and SSIS and you will realize why this is on my list.
• MDX and by extension PEL:  More advanced requirements will require more advanced solutions.  Whether it be doin some unique filtering and slicing and dicing within Monitoring or creating unique business rules within Planning you will need to know MDX and within Planning that extends to knowing PEL.  You won’t get though any real project without knowing them.
• Excel (including VBA and advanced Excel funtionality):  Part of your Planning solution is going to involve using some of the advanced functions of Excel.  Whether it be the cool data visualization components or the need to tweek the interface using VBA you are going to need to know more than basic Excel.
• SharePoint (WSS/MOSS):  Monitoring uses SharePoint to display your scorecards, dashboards, KPI’s and all the rest.  To do this successfuly and have it look good and to deal with things like security you will need to know SharePoint.
• Proclarity:  The base Monitoring and Analytic components lack the ability to create things like pie charts, heat maps or decomposition trees.  To get that functionality you will also have to implement PAS and Proclarity Desktop.
• Visio 2007 and Virtual Earth:  Anyone can knock out a simple chart or graph.  You want to make your data sing, then look at using Visio or Virtual Earth as part of your presentation layer.  By the way, Virtual Earth will end up requiring .NET development skills as well.

I may be forgetting something in my list, but I hope not because it is long enough as it is.   In short, to successfully do PPS, there are a ton of skill sets that are required.  Granted, not every project will require every skill set, but eventually you will need them all.