How to start your job search the 2.0 way

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Why search jobs on websites won’t work
Sure the internet has made it so easy for you to search and apply jobs right from your bedroom. But you are not the only one feels this way - 1.9 million job seekers are doing exactly the same thing.  For any job you found online, you are competing with 100 others who are just as good as you are (at least on their resumes).  Still wonder why you are getting so few responses?

Beat your competitions before the games ever start
The only way to avoid the competition is to know the job opening and get your message across before the companies post anything on the internet. This is why cold call still works. If you don’t feel like cold calling, then the next idea is for you.

Find a friend inside
You need to get a job through people, not random submissions. Internal referral remain the best way to get hired. If you don’t know anyone inside the company, google it, chances are, you can find them on blogs, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Make friends with them by commenting their posts and engage their conversations. Ask if they know any job openings when the time is right.

Go after the HR and headhunters
These are the people who have the motivation to help you. Google them out and be around them.

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Re-think your first impression
If you still think first impression occurs only during the first encounter, think it again. We are in a world where everybody is only one click away. With a few keystrokes, potential employers can know a lot about you and whatever they find out is going to be your first impression. So be prepared, and google you name at least once a week.

Blog yourself
Your blog should be your place to showcase your work, demonstrate your expertise and build your credibility. It gives your potential employers the real opportunity to see and connect with you. Every candidate gets a face to face interview. Your blog is your ultimate weapon and put you ahead of your competitors.

A little advertising goes a long way
You don’t need to be like the dallas woman who advertised herself on the billboard, but just like sell everything else, you are selling yourself and you need to advertise.  Setting up a Google Adwords campaign is fairly easy and cheap. The results are track-able. Place your ad on the websites where HR and headhunters can see it.

Get a dedicated phone number for your job searching
Buy a dedicated phone number and forward all the calls to your home or cell phone. The benefit:  it shields you from the spammers, and alerts you the incoming call is job related before you answer it.

Build a brand for yourself
If find a job is your short term tactic, build yourself a brand should be your long term strategy. An established brand can not only bring you job offers, but also give you an edge of everything else you are competing with.

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Comments

Why ‘Feature Rich’ is a Recipe of Failure

I think the term ‘feature rich’ and ’start-up’ don’t go together. Here are why:

  • cost more to design, develop and maintain
  • adds complexity to the site
  • adds barrier to understand and use the site
  • there is no guarantee user will use or like it

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It is also a sign that the start-up does not know which function attracts the users, so they throw in everything and use ‘feature rich’ as a nice cover.

The solution:  Build one and only one feature, grow your user base from that one feature. Perfect that feature and keep growing your user base from that one feature. At one point, your users will start asking for new features, add new feature cautiously,  never implement a feature if no user is asking for and TEST FIRST.

The bottom line:
Features are bad(really!) avoid adding new features like avoiding cancer -  until you have to.

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Agile product management - Test first

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In agile practice, developers write test first before they write any system functions. New functions are measured against these tests as well as all existing tests, and work is done only when all tests pass.
benefit:

  • clear goal in mind
  • easy to detect side effects introduced by the new function - old tests will fail when un-intented change happens.

Product managers should do the same  - for every changes we make to the product, we want to make sure 2 things:

  • the change make the product better
  • the change doesn’t make the product worse

So before we add a new feature to the product, find out how to measure its success and failure.  Establish the measurement matrix for that new feature first before its implementation. After implementation, measure the new feature against its matrix as well as all existing features against their matrixes. This allow product manger to:

  • measure the level of success or failure for each feature introduced
  • protect the product from any un-intented side effects introduced when adding each new feature.

The bottom line: adding new features without a way of measuring it is irresponsible. so be agile and test first.

Comments

  • Posted on: March 14th, 2009
  • By: Eric
  • Under: life 2.0

Information Overload

After 20 mins staring at some 2000+ articles in my google reader, I realize only one thing - there is no way in hell I can read them all.
So ‘Unsubscribe’ is a must, but the choice and process is painful. To ease the pain, I gave myself a new rule - only subscribe blogs with people I know - personally or over the internet.

Because -It is not the information, but the people that we read about and interact with.

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  • Posted on: February 24th, 2009
  • By: Eric
  • Under: web 2.0

Picanno - A picture annotation tool for web designers

Picanno has kept my and my friends life busy for the last 2 months and it is finally ready to roll out(almost). It is a little picture annotation tool that let clients make pretty comments on the design itself. It is somewhat similar to conceptshare, but simpler. We try to make it easy for the users and we think FREE is not enough( everyone is doing that nowadays), so we made it registration free - no one needs to register, just use it, and tell us how to make it better.

Compare with similar products on the market, we think Picanno is

  • simpler to use - no complicated drawing tools,  arrows or  markers. Only boxes with comments - on the picture of course.
  • easier to use - we decided - if you don’t know how to use Picanno in 3 seconds, then we have a failed product. It is that easy to use.
  • registration free - we hate registration, you hate registration, and your clients hate registration. so we made registration optional.

thanks and here is the intro video clip


Picanno - A Picture Annotation Tool for Web Designers

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Self checkout service in costco, is it really a good idea?

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I went to Costco this afternoon, and noticed they have opened 4 new self-service lines for express checkout.

At first this seems to be a good idea and  a logical choice - it saves time ,  labor, and hey everyone else is doing it.

but is it really a good idea?

Unlike Safeway, Target or Wal-Mart, Costco makes money depending on the fact that its consumers, on average, spend more money per trip than any of its competitors. they also spend more time and wait longer in the line. People buy more partly because, subconsciously, they need to  justify the additional time and effort they have put in.

so I think - express checkout  in costco?  be careful, it might not be a good idea since the customer tends to buy less with express checkout.  This might change their shopping habit and expectations for a Costco trip in the long term.  Makes Costco less distinguishable from its competitors.

What does it mean to a product manager?

a. deliver a product that meets consumers’ expectations consistently and fit their lifestyle behaviors is different, but often more important than delivering a better product.

b. measure long term benefit as well as short term benefits. Unfortunately, most traditional testing methods only focus on the short term

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