A Note from a Hiring Manager to Our Students

**Reposted from http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=lf&forceClose=1#!/note.php?note_id=440716823110

**MMR COMMENTS** Were you at Career Day today? Well, if you weren’t, you should have been! Ebe works hard to put this event together and employers take a day of their valuable time to attend our event and meet YOU. If you missed it, then you should not complain later when you have trouble finding work. Career Day is not just a job fair – it is an awesome networking opportunity with people in the tech community that it will benefit you to know. I spoke at length with one of the hiring managers at Zimmerman today – they have hired a number of CCI students over the years and I am always excited about placing students with them as they are an awesome company with a lot of room for professional growth. My contact sent me this note this evening and gave me permission to post it to FB. As hard as Ebe and I work to teach you career skills, I am shocked at some of the errors that many of you made today. No resumes? Really???? No IR? No company research? REALLY??? Maybe you were sleeping or surfing FB or doing something else when we talked to you about what it takes to be successful at Career Day – or any interview for that matter – but believe me, the employers noticed your mistakes and this one was kind enough to take time after the end of a long day to write this note about his observations. If you see yourself in this note, I suggest you take steps to fix your errors before you interview again…..

• If you have any advance notice about the companies you may be talking to, do some research. It doesn’t have to be an in-depth search, but at least know what they do. After the umpteenth iteration of “Well, Zimmerman is a full-service…”, I mentally stopped caring about whomever I was talking to. There are lots of people at any career day, be the one I remember because you know at least the basics. I remember…oh, maybe five kids who knew something about Z, and only one who’d done enough research to get confused about TZA-> ZADV -> TBWA -> Omnicom.
• Have.A.Resume. A badly-formatted thing done on a manual typewriter is infinitely better than nothing. It was something like 1.5:1 no resumes vs. resumes. That’s just silly. That resume is most of what I’ll remember about you when I leave. I’m talking to probably a hundred people, you want me to remember your face?
• If you’re trying to get a job or an internship for Web Design or programming, have a bloody website. FSU-hosted, Blogger, WordPress, even LiveJournal. (In fact, you show me an awesomely customized LiveJournal site, I’ll be totally impressed. LJ is not easy to hardcore tweak.) Kid after kid is talking to Josh, almost none of them had any way for us to really see their work. Real examples of your work are at
• If you’re trying to get a gig based on design chops, make sure your resume shows that. I can think of four I saw that had any kind of color. If you want to be a designer, you’re not allowed to have an ugly resume.
• Talk to me. Please. Say something. Volunteer information. Don’t make me interrogate you. Don’t make me draw out every.single.datapoint. Because unless you have phenomenal datapoints, I’m not going to care anymore. I’m the one with the jobs, why are you making me do all the work? This leads to my next point:
  • You’re a student. My expectations of your real-world experience are low. Not because I think you’re stupid, or incapable, but because you’re too young to have a lot of it. Therefore, I don’t mind that you don’t have a ton of samples to show me. But you can talk to me, you can chat with me. IT is not like hardcore CompSCI. You’re going to have to talk to people. A lot. People who like you, people who don’t like you. Start now. Make small talk with the nice man who has a hiring budget. Don’t bullshit me, you’re not that smart, I’m not that senile. But tell me what you’re learning in class, tell me what you like to do, tell me what you don’t like to do. You’re a person, not a skillset. We can teach almost anyone the tech specifics of what we need as long as they have the basics. We can’t teach you to have a personality and talk to me. If you’re not good at talking, for whatever reason, don’t be afraid to say so. I can find something you’re good at that I can use you for better than you think. But you have to give me something to work with.
  • Be Very. Very. Very. Careful with cocky. I saw an example of awesome win and miserable fail with cocky today.
  • Awesome Woman with Dell tablet, (I forget her name (**MMR COMMENTS** It was Courtney Kallameres, who had the internship in her pocket before she left the Zimm table at Career Day…), who was totally cocky about her work, but was backing it up with awesome code, solid design, and one of the best resume designs I’ve seen in years? You win. You win at life, and if I’d had the ability and authority, I’d have steered you over to a nice private corner where we could discuss your new career path, salary, and benefits. You killed it. You were perfect. That was reason why you were the only person I approached. I was actually willing to block your path to make you talk to us. That’s how you do it. Bravo young lady. Bravo.
  • Guy with attitude and nothing else? Yeah. Fail. I’ve no problem with cocky, but pro tip: when you’re introduced to someone with a Director of IT title? Don’t say “Well, you tell me about your company, and then I’ll divulge some information.” At that point, walking on water would have not impressed me. No resume, no web site, nothing but making me think you watched too much Jersey Shore. Good luck with that, it may work, but I doubt it.
• Confident is good though, and less risky than cocky. Don’t be timid. The young lady who had a site, knew about the company, had a really good handshake, looked us in the eye, and knew her technical stuff. Yeah. We remember you, and well.
• Bad handshakes are bad. Don’t crush the hand, but shaking hands with a dead fish is just…ew. If you aren’t comfortable with handshakes, then don’t. There’s a few ways around those. But the “Queen of England Finger Shake” only works if you’re the Queen of England. If you’re going to shake, shake correctly.
• I know you put a lot of effort into your business card, but I need to read it. Black text over a busy dark design makes that suck. Also, give me space to jot notes on it. However, the kids with the badly designed cards still win over the kids with nothing, because something does actually trump nothing.
• Apropos of Awesome Woman with Dell Tablet: You’re in IT or an IT-related field. Yet in the entire day, I saw two laptops. No iPads. No Androids. Not even an iPhone. One Dell Tablet PC, one Macbook Pro. I know you have laptops/portables or have access to one. You bring me your work on something I can look at and “touch”? You win over the kids from the past. Awesome Woman with Green Macbook who was able to actually show us your work? You win too. You, we’re talking up. The rest? You’re in a pile of resumes. Ponder that.

Career days are for you as much as me. I have the job/internship you (hopefully) want. Show me some effort beyond wearing clean clothes and sticking a nametag to your chest. I can get a squirrel to do that. You don’t have a lot of experience yet, you’re trying to get some. What you do have, or can have are enthusiasm, motivation, and pride in what you’ve learned. Show me that. Show me what work you have. Show me something so I can see your potential, not just hope it’s there. My expectations are calibrated pretty correctly for fresh grads or undergrads. They’re pretty easy to meet. But, you do in fact have to some work to meet them.