Life After the Buyout

I give Adell Crowe a lot of credit.

Not long after taking a buyout from USA Today, she called me. We have known each other for years, stealing ideas from one another and each other in a loose confederation of newsroom trainers that came together in the early '90s after the Freedom Forum's "No Train, No Gain" report.

Adell, out of work, called to ask whether we could use any training at the Detroit Free Press.

"Sure," I said, "what do you charge?"

"It's free," she said, "just cover my expenses. After all, I'm already getting paid for the year."

Rather than doing some side jobs to add to her buyout money and help her bank something for the years ahead, Adell was jumping headlong into a transitional year that she hopes will get her back into leadership at another paper or puther on a path as an independent trainer.

Brilliant!

While others might mope around about having taken a buyout, she was using it as an opportunity. And, rather than using it to open a soft ice-cream stand up north (a fantasy I share with co-worker), she is preparing for her re-invention in journalism.

She has created a pretty good online profile to market herself and she is staying busy and optimistic.

You could have seen it coming. In her digital stump speech for the board of the Associated Press Managing Editors, 2007-2008, she wrote that newspaper editors must "resolutely challenge with a united voice the predictions that newspapers are near death. We have a platform we must use to champion measurements other than circulation to show our value, our successes and in some areas, our growth. APME must become a champion of newspapers before the gloomy forecasts become self- fulfilling."

Everyone should go into a buyout -- and into the future -- with such enthusiasm.

Resumes on Twitter

In its June 2 cover story, BusinessWeek quotes a Twitter "Tweet" from 23-year-old Amanda Mooney, who just landed a public relations job: "The new resume is 140 characters."

Get a Grip

It has been commonplace to advise job-seekers to pay some attention to their handshaking.

Now, it seems, there is research to back up that recommendation.

At the University of Iowa, 98 student subjects interviewed with five local businesses and had their handshakes related by an independent handful of five raters.

Was there a correlation? Yes. Those who were rated as the best handshakers also scored as being more employable, extroverted, more at ease and with better eye contact. The weaker shakes seemed less outgoing and less impressive socially.

Managementtoday.com said it is ironic that, as employers tune u their selection tools, the handshake remains a powerful dynamic.

Perconally, I have never put a lot of stock in handshakes -- at least consciously -- because there can be so much variation in acculturation and physical strength.

When I advise people, though, I am going to have to tell them to work on their handshakes.

Study leader Greg Stewart told Live Science, 

"We've always heard that interviewers make up their mind about a person in the first two or three minutes of an interview, no matter how long the interview lasts. We found that the first impression begins with a handshake that sets the tone for the rest of the interview.

"Job seekers are trained how to act in a job interview, how to talk, how to dress, how to answer questions, so we all look and act alike to varying degrees because we've all been told the same things."But the handshake is something that's perhaps more individual and subtle, so it may communicate something that dress or physical appearance doesn't.

"We probably don't consciously remember a person's handshake or whether it was good or bad," Stewart said. "But the handshake is one of the first nonverbal clues we get about the person's overall personality, and that impression is what we remember."

The findings will be published in September in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Dealing with difficult people

I have been getting them for years, but I can never get used to them.

"They" are brochures for a workshops on -- well, you guessed it.

But how often is life that simple? Difficult problems, difficult relationships, difficult decisions -- but I balk at  labeling people as  difficult. Maybe  I'm a wimp.

The brochure arrives in my mailbox, at the office, of course. Often, I post announcements about upcoming workshops on a training board so people can see what training opportunities are coming through town. These, I just want to stuff into the bottom of a trash can. Do I really want people I work with to feel that someone has labeled them as "difficult people"?

The subhead on the brochure is "How to communicate with tact and skill."

Yeah, give me some of that.

Excel is the new Word

At the end of a meeting among the top editors at the Free Press, the discussion turned to how much more of our online work has to do with databases.

We have always published information. Now, we need to publish, categorize and store information so that it can easily be retrieved by users, even in ways that we ourselves did not intend or imagine.

We do that with databases.

A Metromix entertainment site we will launch has dozens of details on thousands of venues: hours, charges, menu items, locations, style, photos -- pretty much whatever goes into a person's decision to visit.

Databases  make it all searchable, If the information was just contained in the usual way -- in chunky pargraphs -- it be irretrievable in any kind of useful way. So, it is all -- even the photographs -- in the columns and rows of a database. In fact, the Metromix user interface pulls data from several different databases simultaneously.

As the meeting broke up, one editor said that databases have become much essential for what we do. The other said that the spreadsheet program Excel should be as widely known and used as Word.

I asked, "So, Excel is the new Word?"

They agreed.

Silence Really Can Be Golden

A co-worker said that this was the best piece of advice he ever heard from a professor:

When you get a job offer, don't say anything. That's right, respond with a long pause.

This can make the potential employer anxious and then sweeten the offer.

This co-worker says it has worked for him, bringing him a little extra money without subjecting him to the negotiations he likes.

This is the same technique reporters might use to draw more information out of sources -- and that recruiters use to elicit more information from candidates.

Journarants

Problems in the newspaper industry, as manifested in the newsroom, could give rise to a cottage industry in sites where angry journalists vent.

See AngryJournalists.com, hosted by Kiyoshi Martinez, web editor at 22nd Century Media LLC. He launched it Feb. 10.

One early poster said the site would cut their productivity but had also lowered their blood pressure.

Prediction: Blogs like this will provide an outlet for people whose Web skills are not being utilized at their newspapers.

Silence is Golden

We have all been in a situation where we have used a lengthy pause to elicit further information. Or maybe someone used that trick on us.

The silence, hanging like lead, just begs to be broken. So, we say whatever we think it is that is supposed to come next.

A colleague told me that the best advice he got in college was to remain silent if he ever got a job offer. He has tried it and says it usually works. The offer came, he said that was interesting and then ... nothing. A second, slightly higher offer came.

If this happens to you even once and if the increase is small -- say, $1,000 a year -- the tactic will be worth thousands of dollars to you. You likely would get the same thing by asking, but what could be easier than doing ... nothing?

How to Get Hired by the Best

This month's issue of Fortune Magazine features its annual "The 100 Best Companies to Work For."

Google wins. OK, that kills the suspense.

The magazine also offers tips on how to get hired by one of the 100 best.

A couple of my favorites are :

* "Do creative research ... A Google search won't do it. Says Jay Jones, recruiting manager at Alcon Laboratories, 'Detailed research, including talking to our customers, is so rare it will almost guarantee you get hired.'"

* "If at first you don't succeed, don't give up. Almost every Best Company keeps track of what FedEx calls 'silver medalists' -- people who barely missed getting hired -- and alerts them to new openings ... "

Make More of Your Money Online

Newspapers have been telling usthat online revenues are growing, but still amount to just 5 to 10 percent of total revenues.

The transition is difficult as we try to migrate resources toward the Web, where revenues are growing, without abandoning the traditional on-paper product, still the bread and butter. It seems there must be a tipping point out there where the turn to online will accelerate and then dominate.

As we think about our careers, maybe it makes sense to think about those two revenue streams and the idea of a tipping point. Can you mimic the big transition on a micro scale and adjust your workload or take on some freelance work so that a growing percentage of your income comes from digital media?

It seems like a wise thing to do.

The cover of this month's Presstime magazine is about eight trends for newspapers in 2008.

One is outsourcing and offshoring work. That is a scary trend for journalists who draw newspaper paychecks. What is a defensive strategy? Try two of the other trends: hyperlocal news coverage -- very difficult to offshore -- and multimedia.

Beat Notes for Everyone

I have one of those rare jobs in journalism that does not come with a lot of structure.

Some days I am on a college campus. Sometimes I am at a journalism convention. And sometimes I am meeting with groups in the community. Even when I am in the office, I might be at of our bureaus or working a 6 a.m. Web shift or a late shift as news editor.

I do not do a lot of meetings. There is not a deadline that I must meet every day so that people will know where they can consistently find me.

I need and value this flexibility. And although I know my editors trust me, I am sure they sometimes wonder what the devil I am doing. So, I send them a weekly note, like the notes that reporters might write for their editors. My note says where I'll be and what I am doing. A second part of the note shows my plans for the upcoming quarter and the last part shows my plans up to a year out. I send copies to my bosses' administrative assistants, too.

In addition to keeping my editors in the loop about what I am doing, it helps me organize my time more strategically.

For those who worry that their bosses don't know what they are doing, a beat note can be part of the answer.

For Road Warriors

If you've been stuck in an airport, looking for free wireless, you've likely been frustrated. Try this: Find one of the exclusive clubrooms that frequent travelers pay to work in and camp outside of it. You may be able to tap in to the free wireless.

Women, Looks and Interviewing

A new study says that people who are good looking get better job offers than people with average looks.

According to a United Press International story, female interviewers gave more high-status job packages to good-looking men than they did to average looking men.

This disparity did not show up among male interviewers, the research showed. However, male interviewers gave our more low-status job packages overall.
 
The study also found that average looking guys did less well than average looking women.

The study was by Carl Senior and Michael J.R. Butler of Aston University in Birmingham, England. In a statement, they said, "When someone is viewed as attractive, they are often assumed to have a number of positive social traits and greater intelligence. This is known as the 'halo effect' and it has previously been shown to affect the outcome of job interviews."

The Bouba-Kiki Effect and Interviews

I had heard of the halo and horns effect -- the first impressions that interviewers may have of job candidates -- but I had not heard of the Bouba-Kiki Effect until I read about it in the blog of Santiago Iniquez, dean of the business school at IE Business School in Madrid.

He wrote about a visit by Brett Steele, director of the Architectural Academy School of Architecture. Steele spoke about first impressions and how, when presented with the two figures shown here and a choice between the names "Bouba" and "Kiki," almost everyone associates the pointy one with Kiki and the smooth-edged one with Bouba. And it doesn't really matter whether the subject speaks English. People from many languages and cultures shared the same behavior.

The study was performed in 1929 by Wolfgang Kohler. He did not ask peole to express a preference, but the worldwide consistency in behavior makes you marvek at the power of first impressions.

Meeting Politics

Meetings are great for studying people.

Note how the best and brightest people express themselves. Are they prepared, or do they wing it? Are they long-winded or succinct? How do they speak? What is their body language? How do they handle questions and criticisms? What do they say when they do not know the answer?

Observing and adopting the best qualities of the best people around you can be as important as any seminar you'll ever attend.

Don't Play the Office Blame Game

This happened to a young friend of mine last week.

He was given an important assignment with inaccurate instructions. He completed the assignment as instructed, but the results were that the work went awry.

When the inquisition occurred, he did not blame his more experienced colleague. He simply said that there had been some miscommunication and worked overtime to correct the error. He knew that if things got really sticky he could always point out the erroneous instructions later.

He did not shift the blame to where it belonged and avoided looking petty and alienating someone he has to work with. An upper=level manager told him, privately, that the company does not allocate blame and that, if they did, he would not get any.

His stock in the company went up because he did not react defensively to a bad situation.

Morning Briefing Can Get You Ready

Free Press Business Editor Randy Essex takes a page from the book of some high-powered executives every morning.

He knows that they do not go to work without thoroughly briefing themselves on the latest news. So, he does the same thing.

And you can, too.

Executives used to live off clipping services. Now, with alerts and RSS feeds, you can make sure that your computer downloads the brain food you need while you sleep. A little early-morning reading consistently done will mak eyo something of a marvel among your co-workers.

Job Interviews and Smells

OK, this is a new one on me.

On the ArriveNet Web site, writer Sallie A. Peterson reports on the right ways to smell in your job interview.

I am with her at the beginning, when she says that fruity or seductive essences are not the way to get jobs. But then the article veers into something like recipes for getting hired.

She writes, "There are some essential oils that will have a positive affect on the interviewer at a subconscious level. ... Use just a dab behind each ear or a drop or two on a handkerchief in your top jacket pocket. Even if you don’t get the job you can be confident you did your best."

For job interviews, she recommends bergamot, coriander, melissa, neroli, pettigraine, verbena, lemon and orange. She advises us against jasmine, narcissus, rose, vetiver or ylang ylang. Well, duh! Who would wear ylang ylang to a job interview?

A surprise: the writer sells aromotherapy oils.

Seven Deadly Job Interviewing Sins

Check out Forbes' article on the seven deadly sins for job candidates.

There is not much there in the way of new ideas -- some of the sins are being late to the interview, dressing inappropriately or asking no questions -- but a clever slide show accompanies the story.

Never Without a Business Card

People's little techniques or time-savers always interest me. They are individual and they give us some insight into personality or history.

I always carry a Band-Aid in my wallet.

When our younger son was little, he was always coming up with some kind of cut or scrape and it really helped to have a Band-Aid handy. He is grown now, but I still carry a Band-Aid. They take up almost no room and it generallu surprises the people who need one when I am there to help.

More to the point of Newsrecruiter, I recently met Benjy Ham, editorial director for Landmark  Community Newspapers. We were at the Society of Professional Journalists conference in Washington, D.C. We were talking to students at the convention newspaper. One asked Benjy for a card. He said he didn't have them with him, but that he always carries three in his billfold.

That's a smart habit.

With a Band-Aid and business cards in my wallet, who needs money?

From the Mouths of Biddies

Folk-singing Biddies member Jan Krist has some advice for folk singers that can help job-seekers.

In a workshop on getting gigs, she suggested that artists research to discover which venues they would like to play and then call the organizers to say they would be sending out a promotional packet including what she called "one-sheets" and a CD.

Think of the  one-sheet as the resume and the CD as the work samples.

Without the advance call, Krist said, just sending out the material without any forewarning is like throwing money away. The same might be said of people who apply to places without even knowing whether there are any openings. Call first to ensure that someone is expecting your application.

(Photo by Ron Moore)

Silliest and Smartest Interview Questions

Lucian Vinatoriu, regional manager for Raiffeisen Leasing -- it's in Romania -- threw outrthis questionon LinkedIn, the job networking site: "During a job interview - which was the SMARTEST question you were asked? Which was the 'SILLIEST'?"

Here are some responses:

From Ray Miller, energy expert, educator, sculptor:

Smartest question:
What turns you on about work?
My jobs give me the chance to be challenged and solve problems no one else can solve.

Silliest question:
Would you be proud to say you work for GE?

At the time I was a college graduate and thought, "I guess so."  But I was far more interested in building power plants.

From Stephanie Weinstein, Public Relations Manager, Johnson Controls, Inc:

Smartest
Question - What are the five most recent books you've read?

Answer:
"Time and Again"
"It's not about the bike"
"The Dream Manager"
"The Jew Store"
"The Pursuit of WOW!"

Silliest
Question - Why do you want to work here?
Because I've passed this building a million times and have no idea what you do here. I want you to hire me as a P.R. staff person so I can 1) learn what you do, and 2) tell others what happens here.

David Miller, project manager, IBM Australia:

Smartest:
"What's the worst situation you've ever found yourself in, and what did you do to resolve it?"

Silliest:
In Singapore -- "Why should I hire you? All Australians are lazy."

Alison Rogers
author, "Diary of a Real Estate Rookie" :

Silliest and possibly smartest: When I graduated from Harvard, I interviewed with the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. I had heard all sorts of stories about their awesome creative interviewing techniques.

So I get in there, and the two interviewers asked me to read a pie chart. Not a fancy one with lots of statistics, but a little four-color USA Today-type graphic. I think my reaction of, "how do you guys run the world if you think someone can graduate from an Ivy League university and not read a pie chart?" told them everything about my ability to suffer fools that they needed to know . . .

Eileen Bonfiglio, IT QA Professional, Certified Quality Manager and Engineer & Owner of Web Development Firm:

Silliest: "What is your one biggest weakness and what are you planning or doing to improve it?"

Response: Chocolate, I don't go near vending machines no matter how much they beg.

Smartest: "What if your entire team quit in the same week?"

Response: Use on demand resources until full time staff can be re-established.

Jeremy Winterson, Vice President at Li & Fung (Trading) Ltd:

Most interesting- "Imagine a line of string that was taut around the center of a sphere that's the size of the Earth. If 1 meter worth of additional string was added to the string and the slack evenly distributed around the Earth so the string began to float in the air, could a mouse now crawl under the string?"

Suffice to say, the question is not so much about getting the answer right as how the interviewee comes up with the answer.

Win the Interview Hands Down

We give a lot of thought to what we will say in a job interview or what we will say to the boss in an important conversation.

How much thought do you give to your hands?

Not much, I bet.

But hands can say a lot.

Much -- maybe most -- of our message is carried in facial expressions and body language. While facial expressions can be difficult to control, we can do something about large-motor activities like posture and finer ones like what we do with our hands.

Use them --purposefully -- to make your points -- but do not let them fidget. Fidgeting can be a distraction or a sign of nervousness. Pointing at your work or using your hands to make a point can make you seem expressive. The secret is to keep your hands still or out of sight -- like in your lap -- unless you are using them to say something.

Be sure to keep them away from your face. Hand in front of your mouth can make if seem as though you have something to hide or can muffle your words.

Decisive hand movements can make your appear to be confident and passionate -- a key quality that all recruiters look for,

A Group Interview of a Different Sort

The Container Store in Cherry Hill, N.J., has a unique way of interviewing people for jobs.

First, they apply online. Then, the finalists are selected.

Then, they all are invited to come in and be interviewed TOGETHER. We usually try to keep candidates separated to keep them from running into each other, but the Container Store takes the opposite tack. The job-seekers come together for interviews, videos, role-playing and discussion.

In an article published on NJ.com, recruiting director Karyn Maynard said, "The benefit of taking time is finding more productive, more committed and more enthusiastic people which then results in lower turnover."

Candidate Rich Bartnik of Philadelphia said, "I think it's really important in retail to see how people interact."

Steps to Brand You

Here’s one of the smartest and most practical paragraphs you’ll read this week.

It comes in the letters pages of the Sept. 10 Business Week.

Roberta Guise of Guise Marketing and PR in San Francisco was commenting on an earlier article, “Creating Brand You,” a popular career success strategy.

Guise wrote, “Here’s what it really takes to be a branded influence or ‘thought leader’: Start with unusual depth of knowledge in your field. Without knowledge, the world will brand you a fake. Check that you have the ambition to make a small piece of the world a better place. Then you must own an idea, brand it, publish it in book form, and hold sway in front of many audiences. If your idea does become part of the popular or industry lexicon, you’ll be known as someone who influences many.”

She wraps it up by telling us we need to have thick skin for the people who snipe at opinion leaders.

Yes, Thank-You Notes Work

I am shaking off a minor case of writer's cramp from sending thank-you notes to dozens of people I met this summer.

So it is nice to read Hanah Cho's piece in the Baltimore Sun.

She writes: "Sure, e-mail is the fastest and the most convenient way to communicate in the business world these days. But if you want to stand out -- whether in the job search process or in snagging a new client -- give what some may call an old-fashioned practice a try.

"It works."

She cites Emily Post etiquette and an Accountemps survey for backup. You can find her article here.

I sit on the other side of the interview table, but I try to send notes, too. I mail handwritten notes -- even though e-mails would be easier to read -- because I find high-touch to be a nice alternative to high-tech. They're not long -- just two or three sentences -- but each one is customized to the person and what we talked about.

.

CareerBuilder and Facebook

A couple new wrinkles this month from CareerBuilder.com.

Most recently, the job-search site announced Tuesday it is now offering job and internship matching applications on Facebook Platform. Jobster jumped out in front on Facebook. It will be interesting to see how CareerBuilder partners there. Clearly, Facebook is becoming much more of a job networking site. What photos do YOU have on your page.

Earlier in August, CareerBuilder launched CareerPath.com, a site to hep the 35% of us who say we are looking to make a move to figure out just where we should be moving.

Before You Go to HR with a Complaint ...

Author Cynthia Shapiro can expect a bump in sales this week for her 2005 book, "Corporate Confidential."

MarketWatch columnist Marshall Loeb cited five common mistakes that can be career

MarketWatch's Marshall Loeb this week popped out five common mistakes from the book that Shapiro says can be career killers. Here's one from his column:

Complaining to HR: Companies tend to portray HR as a service for employees, but that isn't strictly true. "The HR people are really there to protect the company from you and they do that by keeping you close," says Shapiro. If you bring an issue to HR, they will only work to address your concerns if it is in the best interest of the company to do so. If your problem threatens the company or your job performance, the "help" they offer may, in fact, be an attempt to minimize the company's liability or to collect the evidence they need to push you out of your job, cautions Shapiro.

Is Leadership About Control?

James Heskett, a Baker Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School, incited a lively discussion about workplace ledership and fellowship when he asked, "How Much of Leadership is About Control, Delegation, or Theater?"

The top of his summation on the comments is instructive and concise for people who are newsroom leaders -- or who aspire to be:

"The strongest messages I received were that if leadership involves control, it is only over setting an organization's course and priorities. As Brady Finney put it, "… companies growing value the most are the ones with leaders that have a clear vision, continually communicate that vision, and then get out of the way …." On the other hand, theater plays a role. Grant Koster reminds us that " … as a leader, you are always on stage … being watched, analyzed, and interpreted." But as Adam Lawrence, an actor, warns us, " … acting, or theatrics, is never about pretending to be something you are not." Combining these ideas, Sharika Kaul commented that " … like a movie director the leader incites, excites, and pushes the team or, you could say, choreographs an output that (moves) the company towards the vision.

Women, Work and Anger

This could make you mad:

A report study says that men get points for getting angry in the workplace, while women get punished.

That conclusion comes from  a post-doc student at Yale, Victoria Brescoll.

She quizzed participants who watched men and women expressing anger or sadness over workplace frustrations. She also had the study participants assign salaries to the people they watched.

Across the board, anger in men was viewed as more acceptable than anger in women -- and higher salaries were assigned to the men.

Brescoll presented her findings Monday, Aug. 6, at the at the meeting of the Academy of Management in Philadelphia.

Dressing for Success is Causing Stress

It used to be so simple. We all more or less knew what to wear to work.

"But in recent years, as one workplace fashion consultant told USA TODAY, "It started with casual Fridays and got out of hand."

Out of hand?

People are blaming a recent backlash on dot-com dress standards with its wild blue jeans and golf shirts.

The Society for Human Resource Management found in a 2006 survey that six and 10 employers allow a dress-down day at least once a week. However, the number allowing workers to be casual every day is down from 58 percent in 2002 to 38 percent.

For cues, pay attention to the bosses. Their sartorial choices speak loudly (especially some of the ties). If the bosses dress down on Fridays, they're sending a message.

One recent workday, I left my usual corporate uniform at home and wore the back Hawaiian shirt with the big yellow flowers.

While talking with two of my bosses, who wore neatly pressed dark shirts and nice ties, I remarked that I must have missed a memo on dressing.

But it was a Friday. In the summer. And I had no interviews. And I was leaving early.

If I go Hawaiian on a Tuesday in February, I'll be sending a message -- like aloha.

Business 2.0 on Butt-Kissing

I don't know what this means, if anything, but Business 2.0, which brought us an article earlier this year that said brown-nosing can help your career, just heard that it will NOT be going out of business after its September issue.

Here's part of what the article said:

"To measure the value of sucking up, Jenny Chatman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business, grilled 120 Northwestern students who were interviewing for jobs. Those who told corporate recruiters what they wanted to hear -- 'Your company has a reputation for being team-oriented, and that is something I truly value' -- landed jobs at twice the rate of their more reserved but equally qualified peers. 'Targets eat it up,' Chatman explains. 'People are happy to be ingratiated upon.'"

I would be sad to see 2.0 go. It always had something interesting to say about hacking the job.