Tips for Twits

About a month ago, Z wrote a collection of his thoughts on attracting top talent. Serving as HR Manager at Savant Degrees for about a year, it was something that I had to face on a daily basis. However, a lot of the challenges that I faced came from sieving out the top talent from the not-so-top talent.

One day late last year, I received a particularly bad application that put me in a very foul mood, sparking a rant on Facebook. I wrote a note on my pet peeves from a HR Manager’s perspective and I was pleasantly surprised by the positive replies I received.

So today, I hope you enjoy the view from the flip side. It’s a toned down, less ranty version of my thoughts on impressing your recruiters and getting that job at your fave startup.

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My pet peeves and what smart applicants should do instead:

1) Missing cover letter

As we are a small company, all of our applications are done by email. The great thing about email is that it allows you to attach files and documents application systems sometimes don’t allow you to. Furthermore, on the careers section of our website, it says to submit your cover letter and resume. (This is a particularly bad sign for developers, not getting conjunctions right… but moving on.)

However, I often receive email applications saying, “Please see my resume attached for the XYZ position. I hope to hear from you soon”.

Resumes are just a record of what you’ve done, which may or may not be relevant to what I’m looking for. Especially if you’re a fresh graduate and probably have a mish-mash of internships and student gigs. Sometimes I don’t even look at a resume until the interview cos most of the time, it doesn’t add much value to me when narrowing down candidates at the beginning of a recruiting process.

A better way to get attention from the recruiter is to write a letter to tell them why you want to work for their company and in this particular role. A number of our best performers now impressed us with the passion they displayed in their cover letters. We had someone come to us with 5 years of experience as an editor, but wrote us a very spirited letter about why she would make a good programmer. We gave her the job and she’s doing really well now.

2) The super long resume

Google “resume templates” and chances are you’ll get tips that say “keep your CV to one page, max two”. There’s a reason why all these websites say the same thing – it really makes a difference.

I’ve gotten resumes that were 12 pages long listing out the person’s entire work, school and life stories. I really do not need to know every last detail. This problem seems to be more for techies who want to show off what languages and frameworks they know how to use, but my point is, it’s TMI.

And in the words of Mark Twain, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” If you didn’t have time to apply for a job, I’m not sure how much effort you’re gonna be putting into your work. So keep it short. Seriously. (Note: this principle does not apply directly to the one-line “Here’s my resume attached” email)

Like I said on my previous point, the stuff you’ve done may or may not be relevant to the position you’re applying for. What I would suggest is that you pick conversation points for your resume, those jobs and experiences that let you learn skills that can be applied to this job or lets you demonstrate your personality really well.

If you really need to write all your experience down, just use LinkedIn. Then you can add a link on your resume. Tip: It makes great reading material for when your recruiter is bored and wants to look productive Extra brownie points!

3) “Err, what exactly does the company expect me to do?”

As the main inspiration for this post, this is really a problem you can easily avoid.

If you managed to dig up the email address to send your application to, I’m sure you can dig up the job description on my site too. Why would you send me your resume to apply for a job you don’t even know about?! Immediate big red REJECT stamp.

4) Subject title: “Job Application”

Again, this might not apply to big companies that make you fill in application forms on their recruitment portals, but more for smaller companies like mine that still make use of email applications.

I get a ton of emails and although Gmail is awesome with its labels and filters, I’m not diligent at keeping up with them. So if you want me to pull up your application fast, always include the title of the position you’re applying for. That way, when it’s time for me to go through them, I have them neatly searched and yours is definitely gonna be in the pile. Plus you’ve got your kick ass cover letter on that email so I’m gonna sit up and take notice.

Moral of the story: don’t fall through the cracks with lazy subject lines.

5) Don’t call me Mister

First of all, my name is pretty feminine. And also there’s Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. So if you had basic face-stalking abilities or met me before (this one takes the cake), please don’t call me Mr Bi Ying. It’s Miss Wong. Mademoiselle, if you so please.

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Well, there you go! So, if you want to get that job, you’ve gotta position yourself as top talent and it starts with the little things. No, hang on, if you think about it, it starts with the big thing – it’s you. Give yourself the best chance and we’ll do the same. Good luck!

Recently I took over the portfolio of our HR manager. Now, I can fully understand her pain. Thanks B, for putting up with all our complaints.

There’s a lot challenges when it comes to managing talent. The first of which is in attracting people to take note of Savant Degrees through all that noise. Everyone wants a rock star programmer, ninja coder or some other similar oxy-moronic titles.

So when I re looked at our previous job descriptions and studied the many others out there, I had an epiphany.

Instead of doing anything, I took a step back and I decided to spend time to talking to great engineers and hires. As I interact with them, I realized these are the people with skills and passion; and you immediately know they can do anything, anywhere.

From then on, I come to believe it’s not about what the company is doing, it is the raison d’être (reason for existence in French and I can’t find a better phrase) of a company that attracts people.

A similar parallel in marketing can be seen in the following clip many decades ago by Steve Jobs. It’s not about the how fast the processor is, how much ram it has or how big the HDD is. It is in what the company believes. The WHY instead of the what or how (Simon Sinek). In this case for Apple, it’s “Think Different”

An engineer with great skills can excel in any company that sells phones, laptops and music players. It can be LG, Samsung, Sony or Apple. It doesn’t matter. What matters is they believe in the vision of the company.

I tried a little experiment (I will probably talk about it another time) and we had a surge in number of applicants in a less than month. Interestingly, there were many who didn’t know what they can do in the Savant Degrees but they want to be in the company anyway. I guess this is a minor success but it got me excited to continue in this role.

Gary and I was in a sales and management class and we were sitting on the same table as a late 30 to 40ish entrepreneur, Greg. When we first introduced ourselves as product managers and designers, he could barely wait for us, these couple 20ish year old kids, to finish our introduction.

Into the class, we worked on a short assignment about selling a product and he went into details into talking about the features instead of higher order benefits. From the start, he was so sure he was to be the one representing the team. He was insistence about his answers. It was obviously wrong in this context and I could see his body language turned from confidence to hostility to frustration as Gary and I cogently put forward our points and the consultant trainer agreeing with us every step of the way.

It was clear that we turned him around and later he became more interested in what we do in Savant Degrees.

This incident had me thinking. When I’m his age, will I have the humility to listen and learn? I believe the only reason why we were able to grow so rapidly in the last few years is because we were like a sponge. We had to learn from everyone, including our peers, our clients, our mentors, our parents etc. Everyone has something to teach and we just need to listen.

I’m writing this now and in years to come, when I’m acting like Greg. Please forward me this.

The Greg Syndrome n. A condition where a person has an inability to learn through open discussion and listening due to pride, ego, seniority, age, expertise(lack of) or a combination of the following.

After a few years of doing freelance consulting for Wit.sg, we incorporated a new company, Savant Degrees in February 2009. We have since been trying to get people on board. It wasn’t the easiest job to do. Yes, sure, there’s that part about getting sales, talking to clients who wants it their way (even though we are the consultants) and everything else, but hiring gives us the biggest headache.

Most people tells us that the current economy is bad and people are graduating right now.  I hear all the time that it’s going to be easy picking someone out of that pool, but I totally disagree. It seems like there’s more noise from people that won’t fit in our company. We were discussing about it one day and was told by one of the new guys  that we were picky and we had to be realistic. “Who starts work the same day they finish their exams?”, he asked. The entire team raised our hands.

People

I learned that most fresh graduates look forward to that so-called graduation trip.  Most of us  in the company graduated twice from a polytechnic then college, and both times we dive straight into work. Perhaps we were a little different, perhaps we are weird. We all agreed that it takes someone a little different to work in a start up. Someone who wants to do something to leave behind a legacy. I started thinking about it and noticed a few things about us.
Insanely optimistic

We have to be. We gave up cushy job offers, Ivy league school offers, inheritance and other more certain opportunities to be here knowing we can get more.  Can we finish 3 projects in a week. Yep sure. Can we do something better than the bigger boys. We’ll beat them. Of course, there’s a thin line to thread between being optimistic and being delusional and we make sure we don’t cross that line.

“next working day”
Where “next working day” is literally the next day. Our social and work lives becomes intertwined and colleagues become friends and vice versa. Even without overtime pay or big bonuses, we get people here on Sundays. The average sleeping time of the team is probably 6 hours. I figured it’s the waking up to something bigger than ourselves that gives us that boost.  Also, hanging out together so often gives us time to bond and plan for crazy stuff like booking fifty tickets for Wolverine opening night where we got all our friends together. Nothing beats having a mass movie hang out for one of the best 2009 movie.

Penchant for DIY
When we first got our office, every one started playing music and very soon it becomes a cacophony of songs and discussions. We wrote a jukebox with an unbiased(sometimes i doubt it) queuing system tied to the main speakers. We are engineers at heart and we like to solve problems, big or small. Visit t.wits.sg and you might get some of our gems and great products we use in the office. We wrote it, we use it and we will made sure it’s good.

Guns, guitars and wolverine

Before we moved into our office, we knew that this will be our second home, and we rightfully made it so. Big screens, big tables, comfortable chairs and the lot. We started bringing stuff from home to the office. Piano, guitars, weights and personal mugs. Stuff that makes a place a home. Stuff that gives us  a little fun once in a while. That said, every one in the office gets a nerf air gun when they join.  It’s just not safe without one when there is a gun rack and the occasional all-out nerf gun war. Perhaps a little work culture is forming, a culture that will give us that energy and drive to strive for more than we should and to challenge the status quo.  One of the reasons why we want to work in our own start-up is so we can have the opportunity to work with smart, excited and motivated people. The people that will constantly challenge us to make things that we are proud to use and potentially make a positive difference. With that in mind, we told our new guy, we will continue to be very selective about who gets on board.

peek

Theming a file input field has always been notoriously hard. Thanks to the guys who wrote the Ext UploadDialog script, theres now a better and more aesthetically pleasing way to create a file upload. I tried using their script wholesale but ran into some problems with the layout. So i kinda hacked and extracted their Ext.ux.BrowseButton code.

So now you can use it simply with:

	new Ext.ux.BrowseButton({
		input_name: "uploadfile1",
		text: "Select a file"
		onInputFileChange: function() {
			alert("you chose " + this.getInputFile().dom.value);
		}
	})
 
	new Ext.ux.TBBrowseButton({
		input_name: "uploadfile2",
		text: "Select another file"
	})

The first chunk of code creates a Browse Button (File Input) control as with the name uploadfile1. and the second chunk of codes creates a ToolBar Browse Button with the name uploadfile2.

Hypothetically you should be able to add a ToolBar button but i havent quite gotten a ToolBar Browse Button to fit aesthetically well inside a form. Let me know if you all come up with any examples that do!

Meanwhile, 3 cheers for the guys who wrote the Ext UploadDialog script!!!

Download the jQuery progressbar here: EXT Browse Button
or view the demo here