Calculated Informality: My Approach to Job Hunting
As I just announced, I have accepted a position to join BatchBlue, a web app startup in Rhode Island. I’ve been looking forward to blogging about the process of this job hunt. I tried something a bit new for me—I’ll call it “calculated informality”.
You see, I was already in a great situation. Aptima was a great gig. I was a Team Lead. I worked on some cool projects. I kicked off our blog. In this job hunt, I was looking for a gig that was special. Specifically, I looked for a job that filled quite a few criteria:
- A small company
Aptima is a small business. But they are over 100 people now. That’s just not small enough for me. I’m looking for small. Like, less than 10 or 15 people. Why? I like to have my hand in everything. I love the responsibility. I love having your voice not only heard, but actually be a driving force in a company. At Aptima, I was certainly heard, but with a company that size there is inevitably red tape. - A local company
For the past seven years, I’ve commuted ridiculous lengths to work at exciting tech jobs. Moving is not an option. I live in an idea situation—small children and very close to family support. So, at Aptima, I commuted 70 miles each way, all by car on the brutal MA Rt. 128. Mazer was also about 2:15 each way, time wise. That one was a conglomeration of drive to commuter rail, commuter rail to Boston, walk to Red Line, Red Line to Orange Line, walk through death-wish-of-a-rotary to get to building… - A product company
I’ve done the agency thing. Time to work on something where I don’t have to worry about securing work, filling out timesheets, or coordinating labor plans. I want to bust my ass on a product of our OWN. Something that won’t leave my hands and die. - A flexible schedule
I have absolutely no problem putting in tons of hours doing the work I love. I just want the ability to pick and choose what these hours are. I want to be home to play with Ella before bed. I have no problem pulling out the laptop after that, though. Chances are, I’ve got it open anyway. - A forward-thinking company
It was important to me to work for a company that embraces open source technologies, open standards, and a open communication through corporate blogging and other means.
Not too much to ask, huh?
So, what is this calculated informality thing? A few things.
1. Appearance
Part “forward-thinking”, part “flexible”, I looked for companies that didn’t care about—shall we say—appearance. Let’s just say, I’m not a groomer. I’m a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy… and preferably a shave-every-few-days and wait-way-too-long-to-get-a-haircut kind of guy. I made a point of making sure some of this was “on display” when I interviewed. Why would I do that? Wouldn’t that hurt my chances of getting a job?
I made the conscious decision that if a place was going to hold wearing sneakers to an interview or meeting with them sporting some stubble against me, it probably was not going to be a place I would be comfortable working.
2. Software & Skills
I also made a conscious effort to leave the proverbial software and skills list off my resume. This means that I didn’t include a list that says I know XHTML, CSS, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc., etc. Instead, I wrote about how I do “interface design” and develop with “web standards”. Those should convey that I know how to get the task done and that the tool is irrelevant.
A colleague asked me, “but that’s not a good idea because a lot of companies’ HR departments won’t accept a resume if it doesn’t have Photoshop.” Again, my response was—I don’t want to work there, then.
3. Don’t Be Generic
Every company that I took the time to pursue got their own cover letter… not of this “swap out the name” crap. I would take a good amount of time looking them up, looking them up on Technorati, seeing if they blog (if so, reading that), and seeing what types of projects they’ve done. Then I could find tidbits of why I honestly, truly wanted to work for them.
If I didn’t find those tidbits, I didn’t bother sending them anything.
Every single word of the “cover letter” (just an email, for me) was customized to that company. Every once in a while I found a few paragraphs I wrote that I could reuse (my background, for example). But other than that, I was talking directly to them and not the field as a whole—and they seemed to appreciate that.
4. Let Your Passions Be Known
I made a point to let potential employers know exactly what is important to me. By the end, I was using this paragraph fairly often:
I am completely obsessed with XHTML/CSS, semantic markup, Microformats, “designing for data”, “bulletproof web design”, “letting go of pixel precision”, cross-browser/platform/device development, simplicity, cleanliness, transparency (in information sharing, not so much the reflective Web 2.0-logo-type), social media, usability, user experience, and my two-year old daughter.
I thought this paragraph summed up pretty well what I’m all about and what I’d really need to be doing day to day in order to be happy. Plus, I got to throw the “two-year old daughter” in there to let them know that work/life balance is very important, too. Once in an interview, I could elaborate. But I at least got it on the radar.
5. Be Honest
Many people embellish on resumes and in interviews. I can’t stand that. I don’t want to lie to a potential employer and then end up screwing up. I don’t like to disappoint people. So, I set the expectations in advance, say what I do… say what I don’t, and then kick ass at those things.
Here’s an example from the very first CSS-based position I went for. I hadn’t been developing in CSS very long, but I was offered the job (I didn’t take it, though). This job was 100% CSS, and the first thing I did was say I’m not a CSS expert.
I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve been developing in web standards for years. The standards movement is a relatively new passion for me, but that’s what it is—a passion. I have been developing validated sites with CSS formatting for years, but using CSS for layout, writing semantic markup, implementing and contributing to Microformats, and studying community marketing are more recent extensions of that—and I can’t get enough of them.
Hell, I even said “I’m not going to lie.” I think they appreciate that.
6. Cutting Out the First Step
There’s no sense in wasting anybody’s time. So, I put as much about myself as I could on my blog. As I’ve written about before, The Blog is the New Resume. And I really ate my own dog food on this one.
I hate portfolios that are just screen shots. So, on my Featured Work samples, I wrote a page-long description to explain what the heck my role was. That way, potential employers know what I did. How often do you have people say that they had this huge customer… and you wonder what exactly they did? For me, quite a bit.
I directed potential employers to blog posts they may be interested in (or categories). I told them about the projects they may want to check out. If they didn’t see a match, cool. I would rather have that out of the way now than later.
Did it Work?
Absolutely. Let’s go back to the five criteria I set out and see how BatchBlue matched up.
- A small company
Check. There’s only five more BatchBlue folks. A small good thing. - A local company
BatchBlue is located in Rhode Island, with the founders ranging from eight to ten miles from me. To top it off, there is no central office yet, so I’ll be working from home. - A product company
BatchBlue is working on developing BatchBook, their first product. More will follow. - A flexible schedule
There’s something in the water at BatchBlue. Everyone has little ones. They work around their family schedules. In my opinion, that’s the way it should be. Like I said—I have no problem working long hours. I just want to pick the hours. - A forward-thinking company
BatchBlue is a Rails shop that develops using web standards. The Blue By You User Group program really attracted me. They work hand-in-hand with users WHILE developing the software, not after development. Plus, they’re blogging and want me to be a big part of that as well.
Five out of five ain’t bad.
Congrats on marching to your own drum - pardon the cliche’. Your the envy of many cube dwellers.
You really made a great point about HR depts looking for specific things, Photoshop in your case. It just points to how much we are taking the thinking out of things and making everything a process. Large companies talk about diversity, but create square peg apatures through which all must pass. In turn, most are coached to get their resume’ through HR. I’m also glad that you had the luxury of finding what you really wanted, perhaps we all do, we just tell ourselves that we don’t, and have to take what we can get. That collective mentality keeps the current system in place. Great that you challenged it - and won.
Thanks, Mark. Great comment. I’ve always thrived on my “square-pegginess”, so instead of trying to fit in with traditional HR practices (which would result in me losing a lot of what I consider “my edge”), I figured I’d try it my way. And it worked.
Adam, no one is more jealous of your grueling down the hall commute you now have than I.
Mark makes great points about the diversity game that large companies talk, but in the end we are all walking through the same door into the same cubicles. ‘Settling’ on something is a term heard far too often in our society. I’m happy to see that for you and BatchBlue it died somewhere along the way. Congrats AD.
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