Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The second major explanation of what “not a good fit” means.

Now for the second explanation (the first was in the immediately preceding post). This explanation is a bit more complex. Basically, it is the interviewing organization is mismanaged, a.k.a., they don’t know what they are doing.

The interviewing organization is overworked. Their employees are working ten-hour days with no end in sight. Just when things seem under control, yet another disaster hits at 4:45PM on Friday.

These guys need someone to help them so they can go home on time each day. They’ve even hired a few people, but they are all still working too many hours. The new hires just didn’t fit and didn’t cut the hours and didn’t last more than a few weeks.

What is wrong with the job applicant crowd?

Aren’t there any qualified people out there?

Problem 1: The Job Description. The interviewing organization just can’t quite get the job description right. Each round of hiring brings the job description a little closer, but not what is needed.

Problem 2: Something Else. This is the one that hurts the most. There is something else out there that gets in the way. That something else is mysterious, but deadly. We just can’t put our finger on it.

The Answer 1: We don’t know how to manage the work, any of the work. This includes the work of writing a job description and interviewing candidates who are qualified.

The Answer 2: We need to hire our boss. None of us know how to manage the work. We should hire someone who will tell us what to do. That includes tell us to go home on time.

The Answer 3: We won’t admit to answers 1 and 2. Hence, we blame the persons we interview because they just are “not a good fit.”

by Dwayne Phillips

The first explanation of what “not a good fit means.”

I apply for a job. I interview face-t0-face with a team of persons. Several days later I receive the form email stating, “sorry, you are not a good fit.”

What does that mean? I have two main explanations. This post will give the first and the next post the second.

The first explanation for “not a good fit” is that a person is not the right

• race
• religion
• gender
• age
• veteran status
• disability status
• culture

Ouch. This is a bit ugly and more than a bit illegal, but hey. You can’t prove anything in court, and since you are unemployed, you can’t afford the legal challenge.

Almost all the above “you can neither inquire nor consider” items are plainly asked on all job applications. Someone requires this information for some reason, and certainly these items are considered.

“Not a good fit?” Too bad for you. That’s a fuzzy answer, and persons hide behind the fuzz with, “we really can’t put it into words, you know. Good luck to you. You have great qualifications and we’re sure you’ll find a job real soon now. Be sure to continue looking on our careers website and…”

by Dwayne Phillips

First you work on a small problem set. Once you learn from that, you expand the problem set.

Google recently started hiring speakers with accents to help train its speech recognition software systems. Why didn’t they do this sooner? Why did they only use middle-America, white-bread Americans, or some other Johnny Carson, no-accent accent cliche you like? Several years ago the creators of a a face-recognition system were embarrassed (actually scorned and derided) when their system failed to recognize faces of persons who didn’t fall into the middle-America…and so on. You get the picture?

Are tech companies run by racists who disdain those with accents or facial features they don’t like? I don’t think so. I think these companies are run by problem solvers who have some experience in attempting to solve difficult problems.

A common, experience-born approach is to attempt a subset of the entire problem set first. Why? Because it is easier. You learn. You don’t stumble so hard. You move on to a larger subset when you have an idea of what you are doing.

It appears unfortunate to some that middle-America, etc. persons—who are about one-third of the world’s population, a good subset—have about two-third’s of the world’s money. That is a public relations problem, not a technical problem.

Perhaps tech companies would be better served if they asked a public relations expert for some tips.

by Dwayne Phillips

There is a simple step that will push you and yours to produce better goods and services.

Want higher quality? Want people to delight in your products? Want to accomplish these and other quality improvement goals without spending any money? Yes, yes, and Y E S!

Here it is:

Put you name and address on your products and services.

Not some, Contact email address that no one ever reads. Not some 800 phone number that goes to a robot answering service. Your name and your V E R Y personal contact information.

It is amazing what that might do for your quality.

PS: thanks to Seth Godin for the basic idea here.

by Dwayne Phillips

Let’s be honest about all these calls for better personal digital assistants.

This one has to be the worst. This guy wants a drone to follow him, record his life, and do all the little tasks he mumbles during the day.

Where ever you are right now, imagine a small object hovering above the head of every person you see. Ridiculous? I think so. What is this? Let’s face it: a lot of tech “visionaries” have one thing in common:

They want their mommy.

I was blessed with wonderful parents. They fed, clothed, housed, and educated me. They put me to bed at night, woke me in the morning, washed my clothes, took me to the doctor, took me to baseball practice, and did all those countless other things I couldn’t do for myself.

I was a child then. I am an adult now.

Some visionaries don’t seem to get that last point.

Do you want to apply technology to real problems? How about a system of drones that work in disaster areas to enable the movement and delivery of rescue goods? How about software that coordinates all the non-coordinated organizations that try to help?

Software that anticipates your needs and makes restaurant reservations for your? Call you mommy.

PS: If the above sounds harsh, that was the intention. Some persons in the tech world need a different perspective.

by Dwayne Phillips

Contrary to famous success stories, writing comes one step at a time.

The writers most of us know are exceptions. I advise everyone else to take things one step at a time.

Write a story (fiction) or an essay (non-fiction). Start to finish. Done. Good. We got that out of the way. The piece may not be great, but it is finished. We have proved that we can actually do it—actually write.

Write something that is “published” somewhere. This is a bit more fuzzy than it used to be. Find someplace other than a personal blog to have my writing appear. No money involved, but that is another step.

Now, write something for money. The paycheck could be a free magazine subscription or $5. It is, however, a paycheck and now we are professional writers.

Agents? Maybe, maybe not. Million-dollar paycheck? Not likely, ever. That doesn’t matter. We are now writers. We finish what we start. Other people read what we write. We bring in a little money. That JK Rowling stuff, well, luck and random events have a lot to do with that.

by Dwayne Phillips

A new deal where we are offered something for nothing indicates that the provider has been delivering nothing for something.

This isn’t just a rant at McDonald’s or Starbucks. It holds for any situation where we expend some resource from some product or service. Someone is “improving” their offering at the same price.

• More computer memory, same price
• More burger, same price
• More coffee, same price
• More service, same price

Sometimes there is a technology breakthrough that allows a provider to offer more at the same price. Sometimes.

Nevertheless, in general, what have they been doing to us in the past? Why were they charging more money for the same product or service? Does the new offering come with an apology for over-charging in the past? Why not?

by Dwayne Phillips

Okay, I’m an old man. Nevertheless, can persons in the workplace show some respect to one another?

As I write this, I remain unemployed. There is always hope for a 50-something with a few job skills (advanced degrees, certifications, books published, etc.), but it is tough.

One request for those interviewing the unemployed:

Show some respect.

For example,

• arrive on time
• offer a cup of coffee or other beverage
• comb your hair
• shave
• straighten your shirt
• pull up your pants above your knees
• act like a professional (you do have a paying job)

“Come on old man, this is the 21st century. These are the fashions…”

Don’t give me that excuse. Go out of your way and do more than you “have to” that shows some respect.

Now to the “do not’s:”

• usher people into phone booths called interview rooms
• read from a script
• ask meaningless questions
• talk in circles
• promise things you won’t do

And so on, but please, just show some respect.

by Dwayne Phillips

Why do online educators put bad presentations in their courses?

I am taking yet another online course. My wish is to show potential employers that despite my advanced age I am not brain dead yet and still actively learning. My current online course—no names mentioned to protect the guilty—brings with it something that too many others do:

The presentations are bad

Far too often, the presenter attempts to speak English when English is not their native language. The result is broken, utterances and backwards sentences and logic that, well it isn’t logical and it goes no where. I find myself skimming the topics and searching the web for the definitions and formulas that I need to complete the course.

I don’t blame the presenters. I know a few other languages a little bit, but I would do terrible presentations in those languages, too. The presenters are doing their best, but I ask for more than that. I ask for clarity.

I blame the purveyors of these online courses. They are selling bad presentations for the price of good presentations. You can’t learn of these bad presentations ahead of time and avoid them either. They purveyors are good at hiding these things. My advice to these “educators:”

Hire an actor and have them read a script.

But actors don’t know the subject matter. But the person in the online course has a PhD in the field. But I don’t care about any of that. I want to learn something, and broken English doesn’t help.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sorry, the title of this post is true.

Several years ago, I managed a West Coast project from the East Coast. Every day I would send several faxes to the other coast to ask and answer questions. (I wrote that this was several years ago and faxes were the best means of written communication.)

On the header of every page of every fax was the title of this post. It emphasized that we were attempting something quite difficult. We all needed to focus and forgive.

Focus: what is the other person trying to convey? No quick glances.

Forgive: perhaps they misunderstood my intent. No blame.

There is nothing wrong with the persons on the other coast. There is nothing wrong with the persons on this coast. We are all working against something that plagues us all.