job searching

Notes from a job search

After kicking the job search into high gear over the past three months or so, I'm happy to be joining Welchman Consulting as a Senior Consultant later this month.   As their web site states: "Welchman Consulting helps organizations develop effective Web Operations Mangement strategies that optimize the quality and impact of their Web sites" (see this powerpoint presentation on Web Operations Management). 

This was an interesting job search, so I thought I'd mention things that worked and didn't work, along with some of the most interesting places I interviewed with.

Some of the places I interviewed (and how I found the job in parentheses):

• Google Switzerland (through a blind resume submission at google.com), where they've started an engineering center (which manages it's own portfolio of global products).  I really enjoyed interviewing with Google.  The process was an intense game.  After thinking I bombed two phone interviews (with excellent questions like "How would you improve gmail?  OK, you're about to pitch your idea to Larry and Sergie now: Go!"), I ended up being flown out to Zurich for an interview there.  The best part of that interview process was the technical portion of the interview, which was mostly algorithm analysis (involving the Fibonnaci numbers) and then a sequence of "how would you compute that?  How would you compute it faster?  faster!  faster!?"  The worst part was with a product manager about a fussball tournament problem  -- I just was not reaching a breakthrough on how to solve the problem and the interviewer just stared at me sweating for 20 minutes (side note: they're a little too nuts about fussball -- during a break some guy got a bit too upset with me about not playing fussball well enough on his team).  Anyway, the process was a lot of fine and quite a mental game. 
• iapps/Bridgeline (from Potomac Tech Wire, a local DC mailing list).  Iapps has been developing web sites in the DC area for years now, and was recently bought by Bridgeline.   I was most impressed by their performance/incentive metrics which seemed reasonable and well-aligned to drive a strong, profitable company.  Also, their hosted CMS is quite strong. 
• LTU Technologies (through a colleague).  This is a visual search and filtering company, with offices in D.C. and Paris.  With more and more user-generated content, being able to identify offensive images becomes increasingly important.  Also, forensics and identifying stolen property are other applications of their technology. 
• Welchman Consulting (met through work).  When I met folks at Welchman Consulting, I was immediately impressed by their knowledge and ability to articulate their ideas.  I kept an eye on their site and contacted them when I saw a Senior Consultant job announcement.  Their focus on Web Operations Management seems timely since so many large organizations now have moved into Content Management Systems but are facing quality/management issues.

Tools used and my subjective impression of their effectiveness in my job search (1 being totally unhelpful and 10 being a sure thing):

• Blind inquiries to interesting people I found at various institutions: 2
• Joined a couple relevant associations / special interest groups (not totally fair to include these since I didn't dive into actively participating in them!): 2
• Blind sending in resumes through job boards like dice.com, theladders.com, simplyhired, etc: 4
• Using linkedin.com to reach out to colleagues of colleagues at places I was interested in joining: 5
• Sending blind resumes directly to organizations' job submission system: 6
• Various talking directly with friends/colleagues/vendors/clients (good old networking): 8
• Specialized mailing lists (such as Potomac Tech Wire and a non-profit CIO list): 8
• Publishing this blog: 9

Talking about my job search with trusted friends, colleagues, vendors, and clients has found me most of my jobs.  Perhaps that's the reason that specialized mailing lists are also helpful: you already know something about the person when they apply (or it would be easy to find out something about them in the small pool).  I found starting and maintaining this blog helpful in the job search for a couple reasons: 1) it forced me to think about what it is that I know and am good at and 2) it was a very quick and easy way for potential employers to learn a little bit about my skills (although it is a surprising amount of work to maintain the blog).