Category: neck deep in the zeitgeist

I got my job because of LinkedIn

Dave

I left Salesforce at the end of June 2015. I started at Leadspace at the end of August. I interviewed “without stopping to count” eight companies. I only actually applied for one of those jobs. The other seven opportunities “and the one that turned into this job” came because of a blog post “Pulse post, whatever — not just a status update” that I made on LinkedIn titled, “I’m ready for my next challenge. And by ‘challenge,’ I mean ‘job.‘”

Dozens of people reached out to me with ideas, thoughts, words of encouragement and contacts. Around a dozen people reached out to me and said, “You should come work with us.” Those weren’t all job offers; some were people I’d worked with before introducing me to colleagues or CMO. Of those interactions, seven turned into interviews, and one turned into the job I have now, as senior director of inbound marketing at Leadspace. And it’s great.

What I did “mostly” that worked:

  1. Be there. I’m by no means the first person to say this, but build your networks before you need them. Connect with current and former colleagues. Connect with your friends. Do it. Do it now.
  2. Be helpful. Don’t think of LinkedIn just as a job search tool. Think of it as a place you can help people and share interesting information. Because, just as in all social media, when you need something from your network, they will think positively of you.
  3. Be generous. Write recommendations for others: former colleagues, former bosses, former direct reports. Many of them will return the favor, and that looks good to a future employer.
  4. Be consistent. Think of LinkedIn as your persistent, realtime résumé. The days of updating a paper CV the night before an interview are over. Update your LinkedIn profile whenever something significant happens in your career.
  5. Be persuasive. Lots of professionals, myself included, dashed off their original LinkedIn summaries and listed bullet points for their job responsibilities, if that. Write a compelling summary that tells people who you are and why you do what you do, and make them want to work with you.
  6. Be specific. Did you create a new demand generation process in your company, or did you create a new demand generation process that increased qualified leads by 28% over the previous year?

Even if you spend all your social time on Facebook and think of LinkedIn as its boring business cousin, start devoting some of the time you spend liking cat videos on your LinkedIn profile. It may well be where your next job comes from.

I see a lot of people looking at their phones

Dave

That’s a thing about being on public transit every day, and being in the city. People are always head down, looking at their phones. 

Sometimes they aren’t quite looking where they’re going. It’s easy to get annoyed, especially if they’re standing in the way, or walking slowly in a crowded place. 

I look at their screens as I pass “I nearly always do”. I’m amazed by how often people are watching videos. That doesn’t seem like fun to me, watching a movie or TV show in the middle of a crowd, ignoring all the life happening around them. 

But a lot of times I see people walk out of a building, or out of the BART, or pause on the street, and look down at their phones and smile. 

They look surprised and delighted and content. I imagine they’re reading a text from someone they love, and it’s making them happy, transporting them to somewhere beyond the rainy street or crowded train. 

Here are a few life skills worth mastering

Dave

A friend asked on Facebook what he should teach his teenage daughter before she went out in the world. There were a lot of good answers. Here are mine.

Making an omelet. Sewing on a button. One dish you can cook for company. Sorting laundry. How to give a concise yet sincere apology. Parallel parking. Watching the car in front of the car in front of you. Simple strategies for talking to strangers at social events. How to ask for what you want. An unshakeable conviction that “No, thank you” is a decisive answer in almost any situation.

Public transit has taught me a lot about standing and waiting

Dave

 I spend a lot of time in my own head, wondering what I should be thinking about what people are thinking about what they think I’m thinking. I’m trying to change that, be more in the moment, address what’s in front of me.

You know, like everybody else. 

Now that I commute by public transit, I spend a lot of time waiting. I’m trying to use that experience in a positive way.

Some days I take the MUNI subway/bus/trolley hybrid thing from the Caltrain station to the Financial District. When you’re on the platform, you can see the train at least a quarter of a mile away, and it has several traffic lights to negotiate before it arrives. It often takes awhile.

Many of my fellow travelers reflexively check the progress of the arriving train every few moments, craning their necks to make an exaggerated display of their impatience. 

“This does not include those who pantomime looking down the track as a stratagem to jump the line. Folks, you’re not fooling anyone.”

I decided to try not to peer down the track, since it certainly doesn’t help. I just look wherever I feel like, and tell myself, “When the train stops in front of me, I’ll get on it.”

Sometimes it makes me feel less rushed, acknowledging there is no point in worrying about-or even paying attention to-something over which I have no control. But sometimes the effort of not looking feels more stressful than looking.

This point was brought home to me this morning as I was waiting on the platform at Millbrae, the origination of my morning train, for the doors of the empty car to open. I was at the front of a growing line.

“Don’t think about it,” I told myself. “The doors will open when they open and you will get on the train. You have no control over when that will happen, and the impatience of the others in line does not affect you.”

Then an app on my phone beeped and I nearly launched myself forward, like a coiled spring, into the closed doors.

Obviously I have yet to attain BART zen.

photo by me

A funny story about Kirk Ross

Dave

I just had an amusing Facebook exchange with one of my smartest and funniest friends, Kirk Ross. It reminded me of a cold, wet night years ago when he and I were sitting with a group of people in Henry’s Bistro in Chapel Hill.

Our friend John Cotter came in from the cold and walked up to the bar warming his hands. For some reason, John was wearing a belted tweed Norfolk jacket and a bucket hat, looking like he’d just come in from the moors, rather than Rosemary Street.

Kirk turned to me and said, “It was his dogs that found the body.”