How to select employees and Presidents

Presidential Candidate Ties

During the 30+ years that I hired employees I learned a couple of things.  You need to make an evaluation quickly.  Resume's went into the 'reject' or 'look again' piles after about 90 seconds...sorry.  Interviews that took a while were good.  Candidates need to ask questions that show they understand organizations and business relationships.  Without treading into the forbidden topics (gender, age, gender preference, race, marital status, children, etc.) you need to find out how they communicate, what they like to do in their work (e.g. management styles appreciated) and a bit about their personal life.  Musicians were typically good hires in technology.  Heavy metal fans were not.

You do spend a few brain cells determining how they fit in.  If it looks like they slept in their clothes it's not going to work.  My clothing guideline once hired was "don't stink," "don't wear clothes with holes" and "try not to wear the same thing every day."  I had to change the last qualification once I began hiring bicycle commuters.

Tassel Shoe

Odd questions are good.  Good employees need to be able to field those questions when dealing with a manager who like to run the bases backwards.  I also make a point of glancing at shoes if the candidates were male.  I never had good luck with employees who had shoes with tassels.  That included subordinates, peers and my supervisors.

It's been a contentious decade in Washington and the ongoing election run has left me watching the debates, following Twitter and Facebook feeds and having many personal conversations, too...like the old days when we talked to each other in person or on the photo...retro dialogue.

That brings this to the point.  The debates and images are all from the waist up, and with modesty panels on the seating provisions the tassel shoe criteria is off (or under) the table.  Yes, this is about male candidates, not because there are not qualified female candidate but because it's late at night, I'm trying to be serious and clever and I'll have to re-think this tomorrow.

It's down to ties.  Some of the candidates have official photos where the tie is just not snugged up.  I can see part of the button underneath.  My employees rarely wore ties but for a photo you should really check that.  I used photos for the candidates that were one of the first three yielded by a Google search.  These might not be the tie styles that each wears but it is what people are seeing.

One of the candidates, were I interviewing him, would have heard what I rarely said just two minutes into an interview.  "I think I've seen enough."  That tie should be obvious.  There is also another boldly patterned tie and a solid color tie that would have led to rejection.  The brighter red tie with the small pattern was just too bright..also a reject.  The purple tie person would have been asked back for a second interview.  My suspicion is that he'd have worn the same purple striped tie a second time and that would have led to rejection.  First time, interesting.  Second time...don't you have any other ties?

I do like ties but hope to never wear another one in this life.

The red white and blue tie was nice with a good balance and confidence about it.  Actually it was the best tie.  He also had nice hair (not that that influenced me).  The red patterned tie and blue patterned tie would have also been asked for a second interview.  From my Google search I know that the blue patterned tie must be the guy's favorite; it shows up all the time.  Perhaps he buys them in bulk, getting a good deal.  That would be a good sign.

For me it's down to three candidates without considering their party or shoes.  Later I'll find some similar meaningful approach to selecting female candidates.

"My cat is sick and I have to go home"

There's a scene in the movie "Mrs. Doubtfire" where Robin William is talking about families.  It's something like "some families have a mommy and a daddy, some have only one of them and some families have two mommies or two daddies."

During my career of attempting to manage employees it was clear that mentoring them, knowing a bit about their lives and being a resource and a buffer to the corporate world was the key to their growth and the organizations success.  Talented people have sick kids, unfaithful spouses, dying parents, broken cars, etc.  One worker, a single woman, confronted me and said "I don't have children.  Why should xxxx get an hour off to go to a school play?"  I suggested that she take an hour off and go do whatever she wanted.  The next day I asked about her cat which had been ailing.  This led to a suggestion that she take the cat to the vet.  "Don't I have to take vacation for that?"  Frequently we name our pets after someone we know and we all talk about dogs and cats with the expression "they're just like family."  "Just go to the vet but do me a favor and don't tell our department that you left to get a distemper shot."

You have to find a balance.  New age companies have pet days and strive to make the workplace like the home place.  It's a small risk with a huge reward.

Ethics, Vortex, Failure

As I evaluate organizations, their ethics, their market positioning and their 'brand,' how we recognize them and how they portray themselves, 'mission statements' and 'vision statements' are often suggested for review.  More time has been spent crafting those statements than living those statements.  Companies that ensure that these words are 'etched in stone' frequently have missed the changing of the seasons and probably still deny global warming, each of which is an opportunity for looking forward rather than wishing for the past.  It's a whirlpool (or vortex) of compelling but superficial thought.

During the past week I've woken up two or three times around 3:00 AM from a bad, bad recurring dream.  I'm in a corporate strategic planning meeting.  Ninety percent of the time is spent listening to executive presentations about issues most already understand.  Five percent of the time is spent on lunch.  The remaining five percent is spent wishing that it was over.  Since this was a dream I pinched myself and went back to sleep.  Some companies ban meetings that include more than three people.

Robert Deniro, Anne Hathaway

 Aging gracefully and progressively is good.  In the past I never would have gone to see this film, wishing for the Robert Deniro of "Taxi Driver" or "Raging Bull," but my better half thought it would be "fun."  He plays a 70 year old phone book executive.  My experience is not yet as pointless as phone book.

I only fell asleep once.

He contribution to her exploding internet fashion business was honesty, solving ignored but annoying problems and listening and observing more than he talked.  Working executives might want to watch this retired executive.

 Nine years ago we purchased this property.  The intent was to have a couple of steers in the pasture that we would not name and then would eat.  I've parceled off part of it for our orchard.  Not that the gate needs repair I'm thinking vegan.

 In the far distance there are twin towers which replaced a single tower half again as tall which came down during construction, no witnesses, bringing seven workers to their death.  There's also a raptor on a rooftop much closer eating a rabbit.  I've pondered the tower workers every time I've looked at the towers for twenty years.

Selfie Selfie

I guess I'm starting a new trend with the selfie selfie.  Being an early adopter is of little value unless you make money, get to name the process or thing or it leads to world peace.










Not making money is not a failure unless your only goal is to make money. 

Emotional Detachment...Various

About jobs...

Slowly finding answers

During my career positions where I had to lay off employees or terminate them...I guess 'terminate' is a pretty bad word...all the work was the preparation to do it.  Typically the meeting was pretty scripted.  You describe what would happen, simply did not negotiate or engage and described what nice things you were doing as part of the 'exit package.'  Usually an HR person was present; my goal is to some day have the opportunity to fire an HR person.  HR people provide some standardization to the flow of people in and out of organizations.  Good CEOs and COOs ensure that HR people do not drive the organization to 'industry standards' in practices, compensation, benefits, etc., where 'standard' is unfortunately 'average.'


Having been gone two years it appears that I've gone through my grieving process.  I miss about five people (it used to be eight).  I don't miss the commute, the politics, the wasted time, the opposition, the esprit de corps.  I miss the money but that can be replaced in other income opportunities.  The same work can be elsewhere.  Solving problems for the owners to make money is being replaced with solving problems for me to make money.  If I re-read this paragraph it appears the logical conclusion is that I miss nothing.  That's good.  I did not miss anyone under my management once they were gone I guess the organization does not miss me, either. That's what I'd expect. 

Someone I know via a blog has taken a job to provide 'security' or money that was inconsistent in his private business.  That's understandable.  Right now I'm glad to be rid of the security.  One my co-workers, himself 'terminated' a year or two before I left once received advice from me to perhaps temper his comments and style.  His response was that he would never change, never compromise his self-directed style and integrity (his description was actually more colorful in a Navy slang sort of way).  In the two or three years I worked with him I came to the realization that I'd compromised my character and become corporate.  This guy was an architect so I'll pay tribute to his influence on me with architect Frank Gehry's photo.

Architect Frank Gehry

Back to termination...once someone was gone I did not think about them much.  Some provided value or intellectual diversity and those were a loss.  Strange as it may be I'm friends with a couple of people I terminated on Facebook.  That probably means something.

Car Connection...
My commuter car became terminal with 140,000 miles on the odometer.  A new F-150 was purchased.  No one seems to want to buy the 2004 F-150 with 14x,xxx miles on it.  Is its' death imminent?  In the last month a left rear axle seal has gone bad, the passenger door window motor has failed, it incurred $1500 in damage from flying concrete and now the seat has worn through.  It looks like a rodent-chewed hole.  It's an ass wear hole.  Now I'm driving a truck where small parts of the seat leave with you, adhering to your pants.  I put some duct tape on the hole, first black which looked bad, later replaced with grey (the basic duct tape color) which also stuck to my pants.  My truck appears to not want to leave.  This, too, might be a message.  The plan was to let the truck go and buy a $6-8k vehicle to drive around.  A clearer head would recognize that I have a $6-8k vehicle to drive around.  The F-150 is trying to tell me that.

F-150 Seat Hole

Politics...
Congress is no longer able to discuss, negotiate, compromise and move forward.  We're becoming a laughingstock.  Organizations (profit and non-profit) clean house when this happens.

Small business...
It's been very busy at the small business.  Fortunately nothing has broken lately.


Job Search...

The arrow points at two things.  The first is a set of double towers about five miles distant.  They replace a single tower fifty percent taller that fell during construction.  Seven workers came down with that collapse.  I think of them every time I drive by, each time I see a base jumper climbing, each winter day as the ice peels off.

In line with the towers is a raptor on a ventilation stack about a block away consuming a rabbit on the roof of a Subway shop.  

Height has it's disadvantages and advantages.

I have just a few more things to work through before becoming more job-aggressive/income-aggressive.

 

Dead in the water...

Tree Spud

We plant far more trees than we cut.  The downside to planting is that some of the trees die despite all ceremonial requests for rain and convoluted attempts to haul and distribute water.  Planting is accomplished with a single tool, a spud.  Each spring, by the end of our planting week, I hate this device.  Other tools that I use  in the woods have been marked with bright orange paint to provide simpler 'lost and found' repetitions.

It was my intent to to provide a photo of my personal tree spud but it's black (re-read the first paragraph) and it's lost in the garage which is full of every long-handled tool one might need in rural life.  Actually I started writing this post a couple of weeks ago when I had a notion of looking for work; somehow that (in my head) was worked into a tree spud, but I've forgotten.

My time is spent keeping up on technology trends for the corporate world.  I still have notions of returning to that grind at a point in time when I'm a bit more refreshed.  The second third of my time is spent actually using technology which involves multiple devices (PCs) and printing devices for the small business.  We go through a lot of specialty labels, toner and ink.  I'll put in a plug for two suppliers for which there is no kickback.  Labels most often come from www.labelsonline.com and toner/ink from www.inkjetsupestore.com.  One remodeling project for 2015 is done and two remain.  What I really like to do is cut down trees and since I'm pitching vendors I'll include www.stihlusa.com and www.baileysonline.com.  This 'online' stuff caused me to do a quick search to see if 'www.getajobonline.com' was registered and as expected it is.  I could check to see if the 'blogger' name 'getajobonline.com' is register or if the Twitter name 'getajobonline.com' is registered but two sentences later it just does not seem that that good a name.  Isn't 'online' implicit with the internet age.  I should look up 'getajobonyourmobiledevice.com' or 'getajob.mobi' or ...

The references provided earlier were for toner/ink and saw chains, which each in their own category have a zillion variants and nothing 'close' will work.  Work is a balance of concepts/innovations and details and it's tightrope (or slack line) between the two.

Your Most Important Job Really Does Not End

Raising a child from birth to eighteen costs about $250,000.  College adds another $100,000+.  Obviously we can debate the "hard costs" and the "soft costs" included or absent from that estimate.  We advance our careers, shirk our careers, move, stay, develop and stagnate in pursuit of that child-raising job.

There is a bit of flotsom and jetsom left when they leave.  Original comment: "It's good when the flotsam and jetsam of a child's life contains at least one dead fish, perhaps taken with a boomerang." After checking the definition of "flotsam and jetsam" its' meaning differs a bit from my recollection, more precisely referring to worthless encumbrances, objects of no value representing wasted time and effort. So I'm changing the comment to: "Each of these objects were important, serving real and imagined purposes for a growing child, a developing mind." Of course I'm still pondering the boomerang, inclined to partake in its' departure and return. I'll throw it at a neighbor I don't like.


The refugee situation in the Middle East plays into our general annoyance with immigration despite the fact that we're all immigrants.  Currently the birth rate is 1.8 or 1.9 per woman and the bulk of those children are still young.  Life here, certainly Social Security, is not sustainable without practical and thoughtful immigration.  My mother's family escaped lack of economic opportunity in Norway.  My father's family arrived a couple of generations earlier from Ireland undoubtedly due comparable economic issue although it may have been tied to potatoes.  Both Norway and Ireland are now places many wish to visit strangely just a hundred or two after which people were dying to leave.

Donald Trump has been aggressive in his characterization of immigrants from Mexico while perhaps missing the fact most coming north now are from Central America.  I like to refer to my Norwegian ancestors as whale-killing bastards who left red-haired bastards from Ireland to Italy.  They, too, were criminals and rapists.  Now my relatives are more or less law-abiding.  That's what happens to immigrants.  Most assimilate into the new country.

The stories and images of those attempting escape from the illogical violence in the Middle East are stark.  Europe is attempting to open their doors.  The more controlled countries of the Middle East, like Donald Trump, are fixated on building walls and accepting no immigrants.

I don't want to think about dead children washing up on beaches.  My Facebook post yesterday was as follows:

"Asylum. You have to leave now or be killed. Walk. Carry your children. Nothing else matters. Rely on the compassion of the world's free."

This Friday I'm meeting with my former outplacement consultant.  He's hooked with someone working on Monarch butterfly habitat preservation and wants to integrate more beekeepers into his plan.  I've been a beekeeper for fifty years.  So this week I'll do nothing to save the world's children, other than my own, but perhaps have an impact on butterflies.  

Don't Look Back..

Find a place to write, minimize distractions

During a long drive last week I was thinking about small airplane crashes (that's been in the news) and thought about a former co-worker who pilots a single engine low-wing Beechcraft.  We shared a few common interests and a bit of a military background.  He was a decorated soldier rising in the ranks to E-8.  Temperamentally I was not a real natural fit for the military although I still dream about small infantry and artillery individual and crew-served weapons.  During my tenure as Chief Process Improvement Officer (CPO) in my 27-year gig my military experience arose.  The services are quite good at breaking down complex tasks to manageable pieces that literate but not necessarily educated people can follow.  My co-worker and I frequently discussed this.

A couple of years older than me he has experienced a few lifestyle altering physical issues and remarked once "I don't have long and I want to enjoy each day."  That was really good advice from a person who made sense about half the time.  Last week during our conversation he really wanted to know why we were talking after two years.  I said that airplane crashes has been in the news and I was checking to see if he was dead.  The response indicated that we would not be talking were he dead to which I responded "are you sure."  We chuckled about Verizon and "can you hear me now" and moved on to the next topic.  He'd heard that I was gone showing some surprise that I'd lasted as long as I did given the organizational changes.  With confidence and more happiness shown than during his working years he commented "I'm sincerely glad I'm gone, I have enough money and I never look back."  That was the second good piece of advice.

Obviously the focus was on finding new employment or sources of income.  Now as I approach two years of not having a good job or a dumb job I'm looking at the twenty-four months wondering what I've accomplished.  Certainly there are some tangibles, one house remodeled, a condo demoed and not remodeled, children's possessions removed and re-positioned, much progress in web monetization, new personal branding, small business stability, many old trees downed, far more planted, on and on.

One of the original goals was to post to this blog daily.  My son indicated that I'd fail at that and I did.  In setting goals one has to track the progress made, celebrating in that and re-considering the language and the metrics of the goals.  Doing that I have written a few hundred posts here and a couple of scores on our food blog.

Writer's Inc.

Both of my kids write well.  This past week I was going through books left by my youngest to donate and opened Writer's Inc.  My son indicated that my daughter used it in high school so it's been floating about our house for fifteen years and I'd never seen it.  Well laid out but written for a younger reader the first few pages addressed the challenge of all writers...no ideas, can't start, distractions, bad topic, no topic and I could say many more but the key is to start.

This afternoon after working on remodeling, donations, accounting, automobile sale and small business issues I stole an hour to do what one is supposed to do; find a place to sit and write.  Bruegger's is close by.  It's not crowed in the afternoon.

Of course you can spend more time reading about writing, planning a workout rather than sweating and complaining about government than being part of the process.  Not everything is epic.

Practical Items...

• My outplacement consultant has left the firm.
• I still have access to some of the online resources and have been beefing up on Linux
• Wordpress training
• It's pretty clear that from a branding perspective you have to use Wordpress, probably self-hosted.  That needs to be prioritized.
• Monetization, advertisements need to be jacked up.
• Downloadable content is important for blogs.
• Don't look back.  Organizations change, sometimes for the better or the worse.  They often discard their most valuable resources.  Leverage that perspective forward.
• The personal brand has waned.  Get cracking on the blogs (daily) and LinkedIn content weekly.
• The small business web presence needs work.
• There are a zillion food blogs, some of them very rich in return; leverage that into the "looking for a job" context.

Medicare...
Now in my six month window to sign up for Medicare I made my first pass at understanding it.  Everything I know:

• Medicare is comprised of parts A, B, C & D
• Parts A & B are standard essentially for hospital issues.
• Regular doctor visits are not covered.
• Part C is also known as Medicare Advantage.  You can work through local HMOs or PPOs who receive payment for Parts A & B.  
• Part D is drug coverage.  This is optional.  Some Medicare Advantage plans have drug coverage, others do not.
• Premiums are indexed to income.

That's all I know.  Thinking about Medicare and thinking about getting a dumb job are not incompatible thoughts.