As a general rule, I advocate taking the high road when resigning, even if it’s a soul-sucking job where you’re treated poorly all day, every day. With all the raving I’ve been doing about loyalty and employers who expect more of it than they give, however, I thought I’d share Violent Acres’s take on the subject.. It’s a cautionary tale for employers, really.
For the record, Heather Hamilton agrees with me about the video resume: One Louder : The exploding video resume. Neener.
Video resumes will exacerbate, not relieve, the problems inherent to resumes in general. The reason text resumes are so universally awful is that people have no idea what to put in them. They get hung up on whether to center or left/right justify their contact information instead of worrying about how to succintly describe their accomplishments and skills. Sitting in front of a video camera is not going to magically make anyone better at presenting themselves- it just makes them take up more of my time to say nothing at all. Video is going to do for the resume what PowerPoint did for the presentation, which is to say, provide negligible benefit to the people who know how to use it properly, and be a poorly-used crutch that bores the audience to tears for people who don’t.
That’s not to say that video doesn’t have its uses in the hiring process- if someone is a particularly dynamic presenter/speaker/trainer/whatever, it makes perfect sense to have sample clips available online. I’d even watch that kind of thing voluntarily, provided that I have already decided that the candidate is interesting. And how would I have come to that decision? By reading a resume, meeting the person at an industry event, or any of those other ways people use to get the attention of a hiring manager. If a video is all I have of a candidate, I’m not going to watch it.
Ordinarily, I don’t really don’t interview walk-ins. For most of my time here at the MISF, I’ve been focusing on experienced interactive media people- developers, project managers, etc. If someone fantastic walked in, I’d stop to talk to them, but most people were politely encouraged to email a resume in and make an appointment. The fantastic ones usually had the sense to call ahead and make an appointment anyway.
My office has recently gone through some, shall we say, abrupt changes, and our specialty has changed to downmarket traditional IT positions- help desk and junior network administrators, mostly. So suddenly I don’t have any talent, and the talent I’m targeting are also the ones more likely to wander into a staffing agency to look for work. So I’ve been taking the walk-ins, and I had two yesterday.
The first one was a sharply-dressed gentleman in a black suit, holding a well-presented resume. He was well-spoken, personable, and knowledgeable about his field. We had a pleasant chat, and I made a few constructive suggestions for his resume- some additional information I’d like to see, etc. I asked him to take the suggestions and then email me the revised version, which he did within two hours of walking out my door.
Maybe, I said to myself, this new specialty won’t be so bad.
And then a few hours later, I got my second walk-in of the day. My partner handed me the resume wordlessly- it was folded in quarters and bent as though it had been in his coat pocket. It was half a page long with scant information about the person’s three previous jobs and two educational institutions. (Yes, three jobs and two education items, in half a page.) I noticed from what information actually WAS on the resume that the person had only recently arrived in the United States from overseas. Since resumes are kind of a cultural thing and I do need people, I decided to talk to him anyway.
It was like pulling teeth. He answered all my questions in one to two words, at times dismissively waving at the creased resume in front of me when I asked him about his experience, as if the answers to all my questions could be found on it. When I did finally succeed in getting a semi-complete sentence from him, I started coughing and gagging, because he had breath so foul it literally turned my stomach. I had to lean back and roll my chair away to get away from it. Even as I did it, I was mentally berating myself for not being a professional, but I was seriously fearing that I would be ill right there. Yes, I know, bad breath can be a health (and therefore ADA-relevant) issue, but it seemed pretty clear at this point that he wasn’t much of a communicator and not particularly qualified to do user support. I suggested some additional agencies that might be able to get him to work and wished him a good day.
The moral? I suppose it’s that you should always have a folder to put your resume in and a tin of Altoids in your pocket. And that it sucks to have to change your specialty unexpectedly.
Dear Clients,
I swear, I’m not making it up. Honest. There really is an interactive media labor shortage.
Love,
Tiff
I wanted to revisit the topic of loyalty in the workplace. A few days ago, I posted an extended discussion of how loyalty between a company and its employees is fiction. While I stand behind everything I said, I think I gave the impression that I was taking companies to task for not showing loyalty to employees. On the contrary, I was simply observing that companies have a different set of priorities than employees do, and that an employment relationship is simply a mutually-beneficial business transaction that allows both the company and the employee to pursue their priorities. Expecting loyalty out of that arrangement is just setting yourself up for drama later. And I don’t know about you, but I hate drama.
While we’re working for these faceless “companies,” however, we’re working with real people, and establishing relationships that naturally have an emotional component. Loyalty in that context is critically important to the success of not only the team, but of the future careers of everyone on that team.
But Tiff, you may be asking, aren’t you really just splitting hairs here? After all, a company is made up of people, and you’re trying to tell us that companies don’t have to be loyal but the people in them do? What’s that about?
I don’t think I’m splitting hairs at all- I think I’m making a useful distinction. Let’s think about what this loyalty should actually look like.
What do we expect from our team members? We want our team members to share in the teams successes and failures as a team, rather than trying to grab credit for themselves or point the finger at others for their failures to make themselves look good in front of the higher-ups. We expect that internal conflicts will be handled and resolved will be handled from within.
What do we expect from our managers? We want managers who will talk about our successes up the chain and ensure that their managers are aware of our contributions. We want managers who will support us in our professional development, even if that means that they have to lose a valuable team member to another department. We need managers who will stand between us and their bosses and, keep as much of that stupid BS that happens up the chain (and let’s be honest, it happens everywhere) out of our way as they can so that we can be freed up to accomplish things.
What do we expect from our subordinates? We want our team members to strive to do their best work. We want them to have enthusiasm for their projects. We want them to share their creative ideas for how to elevate the way we do business. We also want them to be honest with us when they aren’t entirely satisfied so that we aren’t caught by surprise when they leave.
In short, loyalty in teams comes down to not much more than recognizing the other party’s priorities (remember those differing priorities we talked about?) and cooperatnig as much as possible on them.
But that’s a double-edged sword. Sometimes, loyalty to your boss means recognizing that she has to make difficult choices, and choosing not to take them personally. When layoffs need to happen, managers are often asked to make the choice about which of their team members have to be let go. In that situation, the best kind of loyalty you can have to your manager is to not make it about you. That goes both ways- while it’s true that most employees quit because of bad bosses rather than bad jobs, if you’ve been a good and loyal manager and someone quits to pursue another opportunity that fits their priorities better, don’t make it about you.
So, perhaps what I’m really trying to say in all this is that loyalty doesn’t mean you get to keep your job at all costs. Maybe loyalty just consists of recognizing that everyone priorities they need to respect, cooperating so that everyone can meet their goals as much as possible, and not being a drama queen about it when those priorities come into conflict.
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You’ll find jobs in London at Canary Wharf Jobs.com.
I’ve got more to say on the topic of loyalty- for example, how loyalty between managers and team members can be the thing that turns a ho-hum job into a really fantastic experience, but it has been an exhausting day and the thoughts aren’t coming together yet.
Stay tuned, though; it’s coming. It’s not all cold calculation and self-interest here at the Magic Pot, no sirree…
Jason Alba’s got another winner with: YOU’RE FIRED! Will you do us a favor and sign this before you go?
The title kind of says it all, actually, but I did want to touch a bit about a throwaway line from his first paragraph, because I think it’s an important point that deserves more attention (and it’s something that has been an theme in my own career lately):
Employers talk about not getting loyalty from the workforce, but guess who created that environment (hint: it rhymes with m-plaw-r)? All of the ra-ra team spirit stuff is fun, but when you get terminated what happens to those hours of team-building warm fuzzies? Should they evaporate? I guess the employer misses that part sometimes, when they FIRE you, you will be upset, and perhaps even see them and their team building exercises as hypcrotical at best.
It’s the truth, people. Do not allow yourself to be guilted into some misguided sense of “loyalty” to the company when the truth is that the company will do whatever it has to do to advance its own business.
This might sound sort of bitter and cynical, but think about it: A company exists to provide a product or service, and to make money while doing so. A company has employees only because employees are needed to accomplish those twin goals. The company does not exist to feed your family or to help you achieve your personal and professional goals. Those are YOUR goals, not your company’s.
As a result, your relationship to your company (note I did not say “your boss” or “your team,” which is a separate issue) is a business transaction designed to maximize benefit to each party. The company purchases your work in order to meet its own goals, and you sell your work to it in order to meet your own goals. It is a business transaction, like any other.
Recognizing this simple truth allows you to stop seeing these things personally: Your company will not hesitate to terminate you if doing so will serve a business purpose, just like you would (or at least, should) not hesitate to leave a job if it is no longer serving YOUR goals. “Loyalty” between a company and its employees is fiction. Your employer does not owe you loyalty, and you do not owe any in return.
So getting back to Jason’s point, I am consistently shocked when executives complain about their turnover and that they can’t find loyal employees. Hey guys, your younger workers (like me) are the ones who watched our parents get downsized from job after job- we learned early on about employer loyalty. Do y’all remember when you outsourced your operations to India? How about when that corporate reorganization shuffled people around into jobs they hadn’t signed up for and never wanted? I’m not going to fault you for cost-cutting, but I WILL fault you for failing to anticipate the natural consequences of commoditizing your labor force. You’ve demonstrated that you can’t afford loyalty, so why be surprised when workers realize that they can’t afford it, either?
So what is there to do, then? You should update your resume at least quarterly- monthly if there are lots of organizational changes going on. You should be (as I have said many times) getting out there and building your network and contributing to it now, so that it will be robust and full of opportunity when you need it later. And most of all, you should remember that only you are in charge of meeting your goals, and you should be doing all you can to ensure that you can continue to meet them.
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For the most info on Internet recruiting, checkout Cheezhead.
This is sort of how I’m feeling lately, which is why I’ve been quiet. Trying to take my mother’s advice…
Dear Talent,
The law gives employers until January 31st to send out W-2 forms. They are mailed out at the corporate level, not at the individual branch level. So please do not start calling me in mid-January, panicking that you haven’t received yours yet. Also, please do not schedule your appointment with your tax preparer for February 1 and then call me the morning of to whine that you do not have your MISF W-2 yet. Do not call me at 9:00 AM, before mail carriers have even started their routes, panicking that it is now February 2nd and you do not have a W-2 yet. No, I cannot just fax you one- I don’t have access to those records from my office for very good reasons.
Do not ask me for corporate’s number, call it, and then call me back to whine about how long you’ve been on hold there. No, there is not another number you can call, and no, there is nothing I can do to help you. The reason for the hold time is because of the thousands of people JUST LIKE YOU who are prematurely panicking about their W-2 forms. They are flooding our corporate services center and driving up the wait times for everyone, INCLUDING ME, and since you are part of the problem I will not have sympathy for you.
Chill out for a couple of days. It’ll make us all happier.
Love,
Tiff
By the way, I finally got around to putting up a quick’n'dirty solution for my MPOJ del.icio.us links. You can view my links (and grab the RSS feed) at the Magic Pot of Links. It’s just a list of stuff I’ve been reading and thought was interesting enough to share, but didn’t want to write a whole post on.
I haven’t figured out how to make the script not truncate the page and eliminate the sidebar, but I’m sure I will eventually.
