job search notes: 5 steps - preparing for the interview

It has been awhile. You have sent out your resume into the proverbial "black hole" several times and not heard a word.

Finally, one of your submissions connects. You get a response. They like your skills and experience. Now, you have an interview to prepare for.

What do you do?
Panic? Heaven forbid, no!

1 - Remain calm
This is what you have been waiting and working for. This is the time when you get to show that you are THE skilled and experienced person that XYZ Company is looking for. Some butterflies will appear. That is normal. Now is the time to use them to drive the proper response, a calm and assured response.

2 - Research the company
It is likely that if the company is one that you have targeted, then you already should know some good information about them. Review the info. Is it what you want to have? If you need more use Google, Hoovers, LinkedIn or any number of other sources to find some information about the company.

3 - Don't forget to use your network
Reach out to your LinkedIn network to see if someone works there, used to work there, or knows someone who works there. See if they can provide some info on the company, what it is like to work there, etc.

4 - Get a good nights sleep the night before the night before!
Do you understand that? It is deliberate. The night before the interview you will be nervous. That is a normal human reaction. To ensure that some sleeplessness that night will not hurt you, you need to have gotten a good nights sleep the night before the night before. That night is actually very important. A good sleep then will allow you to still be fresh and alert even if you miss an hour or so due to the normal nerves.

5 - Be yourself.
Listen to all the advice. Thank the folks for their advice. Be sincere about it. They did take time to provide it, to provide some encouragement for you. Now, it is your turn to strut and show your stuff. Be calm, be yourself!

If you have something to add to this listening, please let me know.

job searching notes - information interviews

One of series of tips from a local networking group of folks who are or have been at one time looking for new work. These are considerations; one might provide a disclaimer that the mileage on these suggestions may vary. Through the sharing and collaboration, these may at least spark some useful thought process that will ultimately lead you to a successful position.

Once he developed his business plan, he was abandoning resume posting and instead spending time with informational interviews. He felt this was was working better.

Interview approach

I found this when catching up on the Feed Reader.

This is short, to the point, and well worth reading multiple times.

Thanks to Seth Godin for this You Show.

Interview with Patti Digh, "Life is a Verb"

Two great events are occurring this month:

1. The theme of "Citizen publisher" is being explored at the Joyful Jubilant Learning blog
2. Patti Digh is celebrating the publication of Life is a Verb

How cool is it that they are related?

Patti Digh, the wonderful writer of 37 Days, found her intention with the unfortunate passing of her step-father. That intention, leaving a legacy for her daughters, sparked the essays of 37 Days and has also spawned a book, Life is a Verb. I believe this is one of the better examples of defining your intention, focusing your attention, and developing a community.

I was very fortunate to spending some time talking with Patti recently. Over the course of a couple of phone calls I managed to obtain a good recording of our conversation. A couple? Yes, there was some learning involved. I needed to figure out the configuration settings for the software I was using.

The first time, it kept stopping after 2 minutes. The free version only allows two minutes of a recording but I had upgraded to the paid version. Alas, I also needed to restart the application. It was not smart enough to know it had already obtained the license key.

The second time, the conversation proceeded smoothly. Patti and I had a wonderful talk. As I exported the file to an MP3, the synchronization of our two voices got messed up. It sounded like we were stepping on each others voices eager to get our words in. This was far from reality. I couldn't publish this. It did not do justice to our conversation! Into the FAQ section, I delved only to find that in my eagerness to not miss a single word of our conversation, I had started recording too early. You needed to start recording during the conversation so it could learn and synchronize the voices. Duh!

The third time was the charm, Now with practice for our questions and answers, the conversation began yet again and this time, with some minor exceptions, our voices were recorded and play back appropriately. In those spots where the overlap occurs, I think the real discussion still comes through.

Note: there is one part where I calculate it would 8 years to do all the 37 days exercises. That is a miscalculation. It is really just over 3 years, still a long time but not quite so long as recorded.

How many connections do Patti and I have? There are quite a few.

• Her stepfather passed away at 53. My mother was the same age when she passed away in 1983.
• Patti has two daughters. So do I.
• She writes haiku book reviews. This was one of the inspirations for my own development of sherku.
• Patti's stepfather passed away on October 24, 2003. Is it just a coincidence that October 24th is my wife's birthday?

We did not even get time to discuss some of these in our conversation. There will be other conversations and time to explore our connections.

So without further ado, please click to listen to Patti and I as she talks about her writing on 37 Days, how Life as a Verb came to be, and what the future holds.

I hope you enjoy the conversation!

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A recorded phone conversation with Patti Digh, author of 37 Days and her new book, "Life is a Verb". There are some minor synchronization issues but hopefully these will not detract from the overall discussion. We were not stepping on each other as we talked, the recording occaisionally makes it appear that way.

Time: 30 minutes, 42 seconds



MP3 File


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The musical intro and closing highlights Jon Schmidt from the PodSafe Music Network where he has made available Game Day, one of his Powerful Exhilarating Piano Music pieces. I choose this particular piece to help provide a Scottish background to the conversation. One of Patti's wishes is for a Scottish accent. :-)