Career Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Job Search Journey: Management Potential?

January 13, 2020 by Kosmo Leave a Comment

This is a continuation of Kosmo’s Job Search Journey, but you can read it as a standalone article.

The Whole Job Search Series:
1. You’re Fired
2. Assessing the Situation
3. Networking
4. Learn
5. The Interview
6. Frustration
7. Success
8. Sink or Swim
9. Search for Stability
10. Job Search Journey: The Interview the Lasted for Seven Months
11. Advice

Two years ago, I was facing the impending loss of my job. I was nearly three months into my job search, and barely three months from the point where I would no longer have a job. Panic had begun to set in – I was wondering how long we might have to survive on one salary, and how I would avoid getting bored while unemployed. For that matter, what was the process for filing unemployment?

Happily, it never came to that. I ended up finding a job about six weeks before the clocked stopped. I coordinated my start date with the termination date for my old job, so that I’d qualify for my severance. After eight months as a contract employee, I transitioned to permanent employee status. My employer is one of the most prestigious companies in the area. Overall, things worked out really well.

Now, I’m looking to take the next step in my career. My boss left for another job. I applied for his job, interviewed for the position, and am awaiting the decision. My interview wasn’t perfect, but went well. I was able to make most of my key points. I think I have a decent shot at the job. If not now, I think it’s just a matter of time.

Why become a manager?

I was a regular employee at my previous job for more than twenty years. During that time, I never had an interest in becoming a manager. Why not? Mostly because I was always surrounded by very experienced teams members on autonomous teams. Honestly, as a manager, if you have a twenty year employee with a track record of success, you should have a fairly hands-off approach. Be available for guidance, make them aware of any new information (changes in policy, etc), help remove roadblocks, but don’t micro-manage. Stay out of their way and let them get work done.

At my current company, there are a lot of people who are less experienced. Many of these people are bright, but they simply don’t have the experience to have learned some life lessons. You learn a lot by making mistakes – and often times, they haven’t yet made those mistakes. They may need explanations of why things are done one way and not another. Many times, the answer is that the approved way has more safeguards and exposes the company to less risk. They may also be unsure of what their career path will be, and may need someone to show them the options, and help them take the next steps.

I’ve spent my career helping to build IT systems for people. This work is akin to picking the fruit from a tree. When you retire, your legacy disappears fairly quickly. I want to become Johnny Appleseed (Johnny Careerseed), helping employees become productive and happy (akin to planting fruit trees instead of merely picking up the fruit). The legacy of Johnny Careerseed will live on after Johnny has retired.

How to become a manager

Obviously, you can’t simply decided to become a manager and have your wish granted. You have to take some steps to prepare. Here are a few of those steps.

Be good at your current job

If you have a reputation as a poor performer in your current job, you’re not going to be seriously considered, even if the jobs are completely different. If you’re a mediocre performer at your current job, focus on improving your performance, before applying for manager positions.

Initiative

The analyst I replaced wasn’t someone who showed a lot of initiative. I was able to make an immediate positive impression by jumping in and taking some initiative to move my project forward. At this point, I am the project lead, and I do many of the task which typically fall to a project manager.

Interpersonal skills

You don’t need to become best friends with everyone you work with, but it’s helpful to at least have a positive or neutral working relationship with everyone. In your current role, you might be able to avoid interacting with certain co-workers. As a manager, you won’t have that ability. You’ll need to interact with all of your employees in a fair, non-partial way.

My boss also “volunteered” me to work on a committee for his boss. This ended up being a good opportunity to have face time with his boss – the guy who happens to be the hiring manager for the job I applied for.

Interview experience

If you become a manager, you’ll have the opportunity to hire new employees at some point. Interviews look very difference from the other side of the table. If possible, gain some experience on an interview panel. Be an active participant, but also pay attention to the other people in the interview. If you hear an insightful question ~~steal~~ borrow it for future use.

In the past year, I’ve been involved in about a dozen interviews. Recently, my project manager asked if I’d be interested in being on the panel for a position she was trying to fill. It’s not even a position on my team, so it helps bolster my reputation as a team player, while also gaining me valuable experience.

One thing I always try to do is smile and nod a lot during the meeting, to help put the interviewee at ease. The goal of an interview is to determine if the applicant can do the job; often, nervousness during the interview makes it more difficult to determine how well the person can do the job.

Fun fact: the project manager was initially interested in poaching me for the position, until it became apparent that she couldn’t afford me. That made me feel better about my negotiating skills – I’m apparently doing quite compared to others in my role.

Training

Take advantage of any training your company offers. I was able to take a course on “difficult conversations” that I found useful. Historically, I haven’t been great at confrontation, but I’ve improved pretty dramatically in recent years.

Advice

Finally, look around you and get advice from family or friends. I have several friends who are IT managers, serving in similar roles to the position I’m seeking. I’ve reached out for them for their thoughts and advice, and I’ll continue to do that in the future. Shared information makes everyone stronger.

How to Bribe Your Coworkers

November 20, 2019 by Kosmo 2 Comments

I have long subscribed to the adage that “you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.” If you’re nice to people, they’re more willing to work with you in the future. Keeping them happy makes your own job easier. It’s not fun going to work when you have to pull teeth to get information from people.

Toward this goal, I make efforts to be flexible, and to be available for any questions.

I’m also the guy who occasionally brings in donuts. Not every week, but probably once every 4-6 weeks. It’s not terribly expensive, but you can buy a lot of goodwill for the cost of a donut. Recently, when our business partners (accountants) were in the middle of their month end processing, I brought them a box of donuts, too. These people aren’t actually on my team, but on a team we interact with frequently. Imagine if someone in an adjoining department brought in donuts for your team. My small gesture was very well received – even the second level manager thanked me.

Was there an ulterior motive? Sort of. I knew that those people would be testing our new system soon. My company is in the middle of changing a lot of processes, and software deployment is currently not a smooth process. So I was giving them a positive impression of my team weeks before they got to the point of testing. In hindsight, this was a great idea, because the deployment is taking forever.

I also have candy at my desk. Most of the time, I’ll go to Costco and buy big containers of M&Ms, but I’ll occasionally mix things up a little bit. I recently found a great post-Halloween deal on Reese’s mini peanut butter cups. I bought six pounds. On a couple of occasions, I’ve handed out ice cream bars in the afternoon. Once, my boss’s boss was talking to my boss, and I handed an ice cream bar to both of them.

[Author’s note: I also have an incredible sweet tooth, so this is not entirely altruistic. So I end up consuming a lot of donuts and candy. I’ve been gaining a few pounds, but managing to still stay on the slender side of the spectrum.]

The end result of all this bribery is that when I have a question, others members of the team are always willing to drop by my desk and help resolve the problem. Chocolate has become the lubricant of productivity.

In the next few months, I will begin pursuing a position in management. There are many management styles. I’m more of a mentoring type of manager. My overall philosophy is that happy employees will be productive employees.

There are many ways to help an employee have job satisfaction. Donuts, chocolate, and pizza are definitely the easiest. But it’s also important to work with them to upskill and gain expertise in their areas of interest. I firmly believe that there is an art to finding the balance between what an employee wants and what is best for the organization. There will be time when an employee just needs to suck it up, because every job has tasks that aren’t fun. But it’s also important to work with the employee to identify that work they enjoy doing – or want to learn – and finding where they intersect with the company’s goals. Sometimes overall productivity might take a dip in the short term, but this may be necessary to build a base for higher long term productivity.

Because happy employees are productive employees.

The Art of Hiring an Employee

December 21, 2018 by Kosmo 2 Comments

I’m away on vacation. I’ll be back with original articles after Christmas.

Loyal readers may be familiar with my Job Search Journey series. While I saw much of the job search process from the point of view of the searcher, I was also on the interview panel several times, as my company searched for even newer employees.

You’ve all searched for a job at some point, and you know how difficult and stressful it can be. What you might not realize is that it’s a difficult and stressful process for the employer as well. Quite often, they are looking to hire someone because someone has left the team. That means the remaining members are taking on extra work until the position can be filled. The company wants to fill the position quickly, but doesn’t want to rush into hiring someone, either. Hiring the wrong person can cause lasting problems.

So, what can you do to increase your chances of hiring the right person? Here are a few tips.

Don’t search for a unicorn

Let’s say that there are three skills that are critical for the role you’re looking to fill, and seven other skills that would be a nice bonus. If your job posting has something along the lines of “the ideal candidate will…” and then list all ten skills, you will invariably scare off some candidates. A candidate might be a rock star at the three critical skills, but have zero experience in two of the bonus skills. You don’t want to exclude that candidate from your pool.

Instead, list those three critical skills as the required skills and the other seven as additional skills.

Make the candidate comfortable

Interviews are incredibly stressful for the candidate. In many cases, you end up finding out how well the candidate can navigate an interview process rather than how well they can actually do the job.

Do what you can to make the interview painless for the employee. If you’re setting up an on-site interview, make sure the candidate knows where the location is, and offer directions if they aren’t sure, so that they aren’t reliant on the whims of their GPS unit. Make sure they have the phone number of someone they can contact if they get lost or stuck in traffic. When they arrive, ask if they would like to use the restroom. (The nervousness always make me need to urinate. I’d always make sure to stop at a gas station close to my final destination).

During the interview process, don’t try to “catch” the candidate with “gotcha” questions. If you get an answer that doesn’t seem to be correct, ask it in a different way, to make sure the wording didn’t confuse the candidate. If there are multiple people on the interview panel, engaging in some light banter may make the candidate more at ease. Even a smile can help. The overall goal of the interview process is to be conversational, rather than adversarial.

Communicate timelines clearly and honestly

As a candidate, nothing is worse than being told you’ll be contacted in three days and not hearing anything for weeks. Be transparent with the candidate about the timing of the process. If you run into an unforeseen delay, shoot them an email and let them know it might be another few days.

Never “ghost” a candidate. When I interview with a company and don’t hear a peep out of them, I make note of it. When I’m talking with friends about job searches, I’ll mention certain companies that aren’t good at communicating. If your company has a habit of doing this, you can be certain that this is public knowledge among job seekers. You could have some rock star candidates who don’t bother to apply because of your company’s reputation. If you’ve decided not to hire a candidate, let them know. Even a simply email is acceptable.

Don’t go overboard with negotiations

You definitely want to hire the candidate at a salary your company can afford – but don’t go overboard when you’re negotiating. If the candidate is looking for $100,000 and you only want to give $99,000, don’t draw a line in the sand. You’re better off paying the ideal candidate $100,000 than paying a meh candidate $95,000. Good employees create substantial surplus value for your organization.

Support the new employee

When the new employee starts, help them get up to speed. If your organization doesn’t have a formal orientation program (or even if it does), have them shadow another employee to help them get an understanding for how your organization functions. They’ll certainly have some questions (and the other employee’s productivity will dip as they take time to assist the new employee), but think of it as a long term investment in the employee.

Lazy Man’s Thoughts

I was on the hiring manager a couple of times in my life. Both times I was 24 years old with just a couple of years or real job experience. These were the kinds of wacky things that happened during the dot-com expansion of 1999.

One thing I learned in recent years is what Kosmo mentioned here. Interviews generally tell you more about their ability to interview and communicate, which might not necessarily be the most important skills.

Similarly, the headmaster at my child’s school said that standardized tests often reflect the student’s experience in preparing for them. Some students pay a lot of money for prep classes and my understanding is that they produce very good results. Families who may not be afford such services appear to be at a disadvantage.

Get back to the actual process, there’s one thing that stood out from when I was a hiring manager. We were strongly encouraged to conduct our interviews in a neutral location rather than behind a desk in your office.

Job Search Journey: Advice

December 6, 2018 by Kosmo Leave a Comment

This is a continuation of Kosmo’s Job Search Journey.

The timing of this update is particularly helpful as I’ve been extremely sick the last couple of days and all my other responsibilities have been piling up.

Now that I have arrived at the successful conclusion of my job search, it’s time for me to turn my experiences into advice for other job seekers.

Get started immediately

If you’re getting a severance payment, it can be tempting to take a few months off and live off the severance. I know several people from my previous job who did this. I’d caution against doing this. Get started with the job search immediately, because you never know how long it will take you to find a job. If you get an offer, you can always negotiate a start date with the new employer. Most employers won’t mind delaying the start date a week or two if you want to take some time off. I found out that I would be losing my job a full six months before the termination date. Despite having this much notice – and a healthy severance – I started the search immediately. I applied for a job that night.

What did I do with that severance payment? Invested it in an index fund, where I’m not tempted to spend it.

Explore all your options

At first, I was only looking for permanent positions. It hadn’t even occurred to me to consider contract work until a staffing company happened to email my wife, asking if she knew anyone interested in a business analyst position.

I also left no stone unturned when it came to submitting resumes. I submitted resumes for nearly every opening within a 70 mile radius. (Note that I live in Iowa, so 70 miles is roughly a 70 minute drive). I submitted resumes at companies that employed thousands, as well as companies that employed dozens. I submitted resumes to companies hiring teleworkers. I did avoid a handful of companies that had incredibly toxic reputations, but only a few.

Look at all the benefits

Salary is the thing that most people focus on. Let’s compare two hypothetical job offers.

Employer A offers a salary of $100,000, 2% 401(k) matching, and two weeks of PTO.
Employer B offers a salary of $95,000, 5% 401(k) matching, defined contribution pension (5% of salary), and four weeks of PTO.

Which of these benefit packages is better? It’s B. The 401(k) matching, pension, and extra PTO easily offset the $5000 difference in salary.

Often, it’s not as clear cut. You might need to choose between a higher salary and a more flexible schedule or choose between a nonprofit and a large multinational corporation. In the end, you need to determine what is important to you.

Focus on your strengths

If you’re like most people, not all of your responsibilities fit nicely into a specific role. In my case, I had begun my career as a business analyst, but had taken programming classes and had done coding work on large projects that deployed enterprise level tools. For much of my career, I had functioned in a hybrid role, doing whichever tasks were needed at the moment. Most companies aren’t looking to hire hybrids, though. They’re looking to fill a specific role.

I had to decide whether to advertise myself as a programmer or a business analyst. In my case, it wasn’t particular difficult. My somewhat limited experience and background as a programmer meant that I was was somewhat weaker on those skills than I was as a business analyst. So I pitched myself as a business analyst who had some bonus technical skills.

Interview often

If you have the opportunity to partake in mock interviews, do it. I didn’t do this (despite having ample opportunity), and wish I had. Interviewing is a nerve-wracking experience, but it gets easier with repetition. It helps you get prepared for certain types of questions, as well as getting comfortable with the interview process itself.

Remember that the process is just as difficult for the hiring manager as it is for you. They aren’t trying to trip you up; they’re just trying to get a good feel for your skills. I’ve been on a few interview panels at my current job, and it’s very difficult to determine if someone is a good fit based on a short interview. Getting an insight into the person’s thought process is often more important than the specific answer.

Be positive

Always be positive in an interview. When asked why you’re leaving an employer, put a positive spin on it. In my case, I said that my company was consolidating its IT workforce into four locations, and that I preferred not to move because of my strong roots to the local area.

Enter the interview with a smile, exit it with a smile, and try to keep a positive demeanor during the interview, even if the interview is stressing you out. A key thing to remember is that the interviewer wants you to do well. They want you to be the candidate they hire, so that they can wrap up the expensive and time consuming search process.

The positivity shouldn’t stop when you get the job, especially if it’s a contract position or the job has a probationary challenge. See obstacles as challenges to solve rather than negative aspects of you job. How someone fits into a team is very important. We recently lobbied our boss to have a new team member assigned to a solo project. The team member wasn’t much of a team player and was killing morale and productivity. The boss agreed, moved some people around, and productivity skyrocketed.

Help others

So you found a job? Maybe you leveraged some connections to get a leg up. Remember that this is a two way street. If you become aware of former colleagues who are looking for a job, reach out to them. Offer to be a reference, a sound board, a resume reviewer, anything. Not only will this produce good karma, but you never know when you might need help from that person.

Final Personal Thoughts

It’s Lazy Man back for this section.

I think Kosmo hit on many things that were important for my job search journey. There was a big tech layoff in 2001 and the whole department was let go. I got a sizable severance, but I still did everything I could to find a new job. Unfortunately at the time, there were so many programmers and no one was hiring. That’s what happens when there is a technology bubble bust. The supply and demand was simply not on my side.

This experience played directly into me creating Lazy Man and Money with the idea of exploring financial independence and alternative income streams. It wasn’t like I could live at the time on just my dog sitting income, but it definitely extends your emergency fund.

Unfortunately for me, perhaps the advice that hit home the hardest was to focus on strengths. Though I have a background as a software engineer, I get bored doing one thing and got bored doing that. I started the blog and that has been good for awhile. However, I’m midway through year 12 and it’s getting more and more difficult to find interesting topics to write about.

Dog sitting isn’t a skill that’s in high demand. One of my other new gigs is being a blog editor. That’s interesting, because it’s a little different than writing personal all the time. Another gig is customer service for a cloud company. I don’t know too many people who love customer service jobs. However, they are necessary and the one I have is some people I like, which is good.

At the end of the day, my strength is almost like not having one. I am kind of good at blogging, very good in personal finance, below average in programming (I’ve forgotten a lot and technology has changed), good at dog sitting and customer service, and very good at reading legal briefs on defamation. Only a small company is looking for that kind of diverse skill set.

In the short term, I’ll probably just keep juggling the same hodge-podge of stuff. Financially, it’s been working for us and it gives us the flexibility we need with two very young kids and my wife’s demanding military job and college career.

Job Search Journey: The Interview the Lasted for Seven Months

November 2, 2018 by Kosmo 1 Comment

This is a continuation of Kosmo’s Job Search Journey.

The Whole Job Search Series:
1. You’re Fired
2. Assessing the Situation
3. Networking
4. Learn
5. The Interview
6. Frustration
7. Success
8. Sink or Swim
9. Search for Stability

Interviews are of varying lengths. Some are thirty minutes long, some are an hour or two. Some interviews last an entire day.

I recently finished an interview that lasted for seven months!

Ok, it wasn’t exactly technically an interview. It was a contract position, and my goal was to get hired as a permanent employee. In my opinion, the best way to do this was to perform at a high level for the duration of my time as a contract employee.

It was sink or swim from day one, and I swam. I’ve been in the industry for two decades, so not very much fazes me at this point. It was interesting to be thrown into the action with barely any background on my project, but it wasn’t insurmountable. I read documentation, combed through the existing code, and asked enough questions to learn what I needed, without asking so many that I was annoying.

Before long, I had righted the ship, gotten the train back on the rails, and utilized several other idioms. Once my primary project was humming right along, I got pulled into another project to back-fill for someone who had left.

I had even less background for the second project than I did the first. At least the first project dealt with some accounting concepts, which allowed my to utilized my dusty accounting degree. The new project was all data and reporting. To make it even worse, there were multiple sub-systems, and it wasn’t very clear how they interacted.

I jumped in and began to work on testing. This presented a huge challenge. Most of the requirements had been written months ago, by people who were no longer on the project. Many of them were very vague, and I had to lean on the veteran technical analyst to even understand what functionality was being added.

Eventually, the other business analyst (also new) and I were able to get things on track. We tested eight months worth of new functionality and regression tested the entire application. We had to restart regression testing a couple of times due to new bugs.

At this point, we’ve pushed that block of code to production and are ready to tackle the next big block of testing.

Originally, the idea was to loan me to the project for two months, until a new person could be hired to fill the position. That was five months ago. I don’t think the project is going to let me leave any time soon. I always come to work with a smile on my face, and it’s apparent that I care a lot about the quality of the code that gets implemented.

Finally, HR contacted me about converting to permanent employee status. I tried to push for 25 days of PTO, but they have a hard limit of 20 for new employees. That was a a bit of a letdown, since I had worked myself up to 30 days at my previous job.

Money, of course, would be the main point of negotiation. I knew that the local market for someone with my qualifications and experience was about 7-8% below what I had been making in my previous job. A friend of had been forced to take a pay cut when he switched job. I knew a pay cut was a distinct possibility and was bracing for them to make a low offer.

What did they offer? Well, they really didn’t. They asked my what I was looking for. I asked for a number that was 3% above what I was making at my previous position. This was the midpoint for someone in the lead business analyst role, and was, according to my information, about 10% above the market rate for someone in my position. It was a significant amount about what a friend of mine in a similar position recently got from his new employer.

I felt like I had a good chance I’d get what I had asked for. Although I was asking for a premium over what they were likely to offer another candidate, I had something the other candidates didn’t. I have seven months of experience in the exact role. I had clearly exceeded their expectations, and they knew what they were getting, both in terms of ability and temperament. I had essentially been on a seven month interview.

Finally, after being approved by three levels of management, HR was able to make me a formal offer. The offer was for the exact amount I requested. A small part of me regretted not asking for more, but all in all, it was a very fair offer. I’m relieved to finally be an employer rather than a contractor.

Job Search Journey: Management Potential?

Why become a manager?