Career 2.0: Competitive Edge

Introduction

In part one of this case study we examined Intentional Software’s website to identify starting points for potential employment opportunities or means of contact with the company.

This column is intended to help you successfully stand out from the job-hunting pack.

In the second part, we show you how to:

• Use only free, public resources available over the Internet to identify companies you are interested in exploring for work opportunities.
• Customize results by applying these routines (and subroutines) to your targets.
• Increase potential success in securing an interview.
• Identify business challenges and opportunities that the hired person will need to solve, and then position yourself as the best possible solution for those business needs.

Our main resources are:

• Your target company’s website
• A good industry portal
• Logic and problem-solving skills
• A good internet connection
• A good web search engine (or two)^*

^*The search engines we use the most, and therefore recommend, are Google.com; Wisenut.com; and Teoma.com.

Through this process you will collect and track names, products and industry information critical to you gaining the competitive edge in your job hunt. You will continually uncover new industry information and peers to potentially contact, so use a scalable method to track your search routines and results. Microsoft offers a basic Access contact database template on its template site; other solutions could be mysql, or shrink-wrapped contact management applications, which include ACT! and Goldmine.

Begin by building a search tree. Search trees target the peoplewho work in your desired company’s area that best match your existing skills and experience. Your search tree must be built with your unique judgment calls based upon your evaluating and analyzing data returned form your searches and then entirely customized to your own goals.

Basic Truths:

• Companies don’t hire people; people hire people.
• You need a competitive edge to stand out in a large applicant pool.
• Managers hire the person they perceive is best qualified to solve an existing business problem or opportunity.

You create your competitive edge through identifying the hiring manager’s business problems, and by positioning yourself as the best solution throughout the application and interview process.

The search tree diagram below outlines a successful framework to identify and create your competitive edge:

Using Intentional Software as an example, each bullet of the founders’ biographies can, and should be, turned into Boolean search queries. The goal is to provide you with insight regarding various ways you may approach someone you don’t already know who works in an area, or for a company, you are interested in.

We previously determined this company is new and small. The staff consists wholly of the two founders; Gregor Kiczales and Charles Simonyi. We know from Kiczales’ bio he worked for Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

We begin our search (using google.com^**) with the Boolean query “Gregor Kiczales” site: xerox.com, which generated multiple results.

^**Google’s basic and advanced search tutorials are great resources to help you fine tune your search results.

We decided to go to Kiczales’ Xerox home page first, where we find:

• Kiczales is an associate professor currently on leave from the Computer Science Department at the University of British Columbia
• His PARC contact information
• His UBC email and website URL
• He is a member of the Software Design Area at Xerox PARC
• He heads the AspectJ.org project
• A summary of his technology passions and research history
• He designed the CLOS Metaobject Protocol

There are multiple page returns that include links to his many publications. Read his publications to identify his professional passions and interests.

The technical and professional interests you share with him offer potential bridges for outreach and contact.

We know from Simonyi’s bio he worked for Microsoft. Using the Boolean query “Charles Simonyi” site: Microsoft.com, Google returns six pages on his work on Hungarian notation, document and typographic conventions, publications, and presentation slides.

While reading through these links keep in mind what you may have in common with him. In larger companies, you will have greater success through bypassing overflowing company resume databases, and the gatekeepers between you and a hiring manager, and going directly to the (decision-maker? Area director/manager?)

Don’t stop after this first search. Build multiple Boolean queries collecting data from each branch of your search tree to design new ones. Sometimes your search results will include unexpected information that highlights potential paths to follow. Be creative.

For example, Charles Simonyi’s biography mentions he likes opera. I used Google to search on the Boolean query "charles simonyi" opera; which returned over 90 links.

By scanning the brief link summaries, I learned he endowed the Seattle Symphony’s Principal Horn player’s chair; endowed an Oxford University chair for Professor of Public Understanding of Science; is a major financial contributor for the Russian National Orchestra; and several Russian websites where “opera” referred to the open source browser. ?

After reviewing your search returns, you will have a number of questions about each of the founders’ publications and other works. Each question offers a good reason, and a good opening, for you to initiate contact, and to begin to build a relationship.

Kiczales’ Xerox home page includes hyperlinks for 3 Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) resources. Use these to help identify Aspect J, and aspect-oriented development community members, for example:

aosd.net, “a comprehensive source of information for Aspect-Oriented Software Development, and supports mailing lists related to AOSD.”

AOSD.net includes links to their 2003 conference, mailing list subscription info and archives; a tools & languages link, which contains an extensive list of supported systems and research prototypes; aspect-oriented software development applications; AOSD methods & foundations; and upcoming events. Each of these links leads you to many more people building and working with this technology.

We did “whois” on Network Solution’s site to determine who owned the aosd.net domain name. The listed owner is Mik Kersten. We did a quick web Boolean query “Mik Kersten” and discovered Kersten’s home page, where we learned he is a member of the Research Staff in Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Bingo!

AOSD’s resources page links to www.AspectJ.org, which automatically redirected us to www.eclipse.org.

The third link is to Xerox PARC’s Software Design Area, whose charter is to “Make it possible to cleanly capture complex design structures in software implementations.” Mik Kersten’s work email address is listed here as the contact for this team.

We returned to www.eclipse.org, where we learned Eclipse is an open-source platform for tool integration built by an open community of tool providers. The eclipse.org domain is registered to Object Technology International (OTI), at an Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) address.

Eclipse.org offers two threads to follow: OTI; and corporate and individual members of the Eclipse community.

Unfamiliar with OTI, we typed their URL in our browser and examined their home page. It was not very informative. On this particular site, we thought the tabs for the career, company, and products looked the most promising source for identifying people within the company. We clicked on the company tab, read their profile page, and learned they are a research and development company owned by IBM. We also learned which universities and organizations are affiliated with OTI. This offers us opportunities to further our knowledge and deepen our research.

For example, if we were really interested in exploring OTI employment opportunities in Raleigh, NC, USA, it would be important to note North Carolina State University (NCSU) is an affiliate, and potentially start a search tree to identify any NCSU professors and/or students working on OTI affiliated research and development projects.

Their career page tab says they are actively hiring. By returning to the company tab, and clicking on the location link, we saw there are six sites: Amersterdam; Minneapolis; Ottawa; Phoenix; Raleigh; and Zurich.

For those already in one of those locations, or who are willing to relocate, follow our diagramed search routine to identify OTI employee software developers; industry perception, feedback of OTI and its employees, and its reputation within the Java development community; as well as skills and experience necessary to succeed in an OTI interview.

Community sites, including Eclipse.org, offer many starting points, and hundreds of potential contacts for this competitive edge method of initial contact with prospective employers. Other sections to thoroughly explore would include “What’s New”, consortium members; consortium press releases; projects; articles; newsgroups; mailing lists; and community links.

The consortium members page lists 28 corporate members and one professional standards group, all of which offer critical – and different – data for search trees.

Another way to jump start your search would be to join the community and actively participate on Eclipse development and newsgroups. If you target any of these consortium member companies, closely examine their websites and track your search tree results for each.

Customer support areas offer great insight to the strengths and weaknesses of a company’s practices and products. Analyze all publicly accessible sites to identify company employees working in your target technology area, or customer names, and possibly individual contacts for each of the customers. You may also find bulletin boards with complaints and kudos that are usually worth a read.

You may also locate links to product newsgroups and user groups. Companies frequently post speaker lists from customer conferences on their websites. All offer valuable threads.

Summary

Once you have exhausted your search tree with regards to a specific target company, be sure to choose a contact strategy that will help you attain your goal. Considerations include:

• Do you have a good understanding of the person’s professional work?
• Do you have a good understanding of the person’s professional interests?
• Why are you contacting this particular person?
• What do you have in common with this person?
• How will contacting this person help you reach your goal?
• Have you identified the hiring manager for the area/position?
• Do you want insight on the company’s interviewing style? (Of course you do!)
• What skills, knowledge, experience, and abilities will you need to receive a job offer?
• What are the business needs and challenges the hiring manager wants to solve?
• Why are you the solution?
• Who can help you find missing information?

People respond to other people with shared interests. Few respond to e-mail or phone calls from people they don’t know.

To successfully start a dialog with a professional peer you need a message that interests the other person enough that they will respond to you. And, people like to talk about themselves.

Your best conversation starter with any contact is to give the recipient something of value; a compliment, a “thank you”, or a web link for an article you think will be of interest. If you have a question about the contact’s work, speech, publication, etc., thank them for making that available for you to find then ask your question.

Since you should personalize each contact to the recipient, your contact content will be different each time.

Below is a very basic template for you to use to structure your first contacts with new people.

-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 6:32 PM
To:
Subject: I really liked your Codeproject article on !

(Recipient name),

Hi. Your article really helped me understand/solve/etc. _____________. Thank you for writing it.

I have a question about one of your methods, and would really appreciate your help so that I better understand (insert question based on article content).

(and start a new conversation thread to keep the connection going): How long have you been developing web services applications?

Thank you for your time and your help.

(Codeproject member name)

 

Start developing your competitive edge today. If you get stuck during your search, please post your questions and share your frustrations and roadblocks here. If we can’t help you, perhaps a fellow Codeproject member can.

Editors note: Sending emails to article authors to thank them is immensely valuable but please be aware that many authors are extremely busy and may not be able to answer questions sent to them directly. An author may have dozens of articles, each of which may generate dozens of emails a week. If an author does not respond immediately they may be researching the question to give you a full answer, finishing up other pressing work or they may simply have been inundated and have chosen not to respond. Please respect an authors decision whichever way they choose to respond.

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