The story behind the post: Someone that’s very close to me (not naming names or companies) has worked at the same company since graduating at the top of her class in college. She’s an extremely hard worker (I have knowledge of this when I’ve seen this person working nights, weekends, etc.), and possesses very marketable skills for the current job market right now. Her company has treated her well for the most part, and she’s gotten some promotions throughout the way. However, she still makes a little less than market rate, and up until now, that’s been OK. So what changed you may ask?

During her recent review, which is generally a very positive experience for her, she received a rating that was way below what she’s gotten during her 10 years of being at the company. And this isn’t just a little low, it wasn’t even close to what she’s gotten before. This is after the fact that she led a fairly large project, put in a lot of hours, time, and effort, and delivered the project successfully (it’s even up for some internal awards). So you can imagine her disbelief when her manager informed her of her rating, which defines her contributions as “at or below the minumum required job responsibilities”.

The excuse for this? Everyone within the business unit has to equal out to a specific rating, no matter what. And since she just got promoted 6 months ago, and the rest of the business was working a lot of overtime trying to deliver another project, they figured she’s the likely target to take the brunt of the rating decrease (at least that’s what she was told for the most part). Now again, this is a rating decrease that isn’t even close to what she’s gotten in the past, and this rating effects your yearly bonus and is on your permanent employee record. Overachievers don’t like this.

So here you have a dedicated, valuable employee, busting her ass for a project for the last 6 months to help the company achieve better profits etc., but basically being told in her review that you suck (on paper). How frickin’ stupid in this? To me, it’s pretty absurd!

The big corporate policies in place have dictated that you have to maintain this rating average no matter what the cost, even if that cost is a significant drop in dedication, work ethic, and productivity of your employees. I’m telling you, this will NOT work for you in the long-term. I don’t care how great your company is; if your employees don’t feel valued or engaged, they’ll leave OR they’ll just check out and do the absolute minimum to get by. Is that worth your big corporate policies?

Now you have an employee that has an overachieving personality (which is hard to find these days), is smart, does great work, that just doesn’t see the reason why she should work hard anymore. Why should she? There’s nothing in it for her anymore.

In the last few years with the down job market and economy, some companies have developed an attitude towards their employees that they need the company more than the company needs the employee. While that may have worked when there’s not a lot of jobs available, things have changed folks. IT is hot, and it’s not slowing down.

Don’t treat your employees like this, it’ll cost you.

Lesson learned from Corporate America.

Cover Letters. I don’t receive them much, so I haven’t put a lot of stock into them. However, I do think they can add value if written right and put into the correct context. Some online career sites set aside a space for you to enter one, so why not do it. When emaling a resume to a potential recruiter or company, the email itself could and should be the cover letter. Why not? A cover letter should mimic your professional summary in your resume, but be a bit more personal, detailed, and specific. If you’re applying for a certain position, tailor that cover letter and summary to that position. I’ve gotten cover letters as long as a full page, and as short as 3-4 sentences. Just don’t overdo it.

The Summary. The summary is very important, I’d say the most important piece to your resume. It’s the first thing people see on a resume, and when someone is looking at multiple resumes for an opening, the first thing they see should stick out. Spend a lot of time on this, make it shine. Afterall, it’s your sales pitch. You are technically a product, learn to sell yourself. The summary helps you do just that.

It should be a 4-8 sentence knockout punch that screams hire me! It should cover your overall background, strengths, experience, personality traits, and education/certifications (if relevant to the job applying for). DO NOT USE AN OBJECTIVE. A little kitty dies everytime you do. Seriously though, do I really care if your objective is to “Use my skills and abilities to work at a forward thinking progressive organization as a Sr. Software Engineer”….or something….blah blah blah? Nope, I don’t. I care about your specific background and experience relevant to the position I have open. Use the first paragraph of your summary as your general background statement, then use the bullet points as the part that you tailor based on what you’re applying for.

Check out this example, I just grabbed it out of a few resumes I looked at recently, and I likey. It’s very detailed, and is borderline too long. But man, I feel like I don’t have to read any more of the resume after reading this. Isn’t that what we’re going for here? He tailored it to the Grails opening I had, why would I not talk to this person after that summary? Geeze, I’m thinking about hiring him/her without even an interview.

Senior Software engineer with a proven record of team leadership, system analysis, design, and development, with an expertise in object-oriented software development using Java (JEE, J2SE) and Groovy/Grails. Passionate about agile software development practices and quality improvement through the effective use of knowledge, information, and communication. Recently, have taught, led teams, and have successfully displayed the maintainability advantages of Groovy and Grails to both industry professionals and clients.

• Grails experience started in the spring of 2006, while working on a graduate capstone project. Introduced the framework to a team of C developers, and led them in the development of a Web application.
• As a Senior Java Developer at University of Minnesota, introduced Groovy to the development team by hosting a series of brownbag lunches on the language. As a pilot project, we converted a dozen Perl scripts over to Groovy, thereby greatly increasing the maintainability and test coverage of those scripts.
• Very recently, spent nine months working in one of the first Grails only development shops in the country. During those 9 months, our team produced two high quality Web applications on time and on budget.
• M.S. in Software Engineering from the University of Saint Thomas.

Here’s another example I just ran across. It gets the job done, but a bit simpler. Again, it tells me fairly quickly if I should interview this person or not.

An accomplished problem solver with six years of experience building web applications. Background includes strong knowledge of back-end development with JEE and Grails, as well as extensive experience of front-end development with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Excellent troubleshooting and analytical skills, well-organized, self-motivated, able to work well with minimal supervision, able meet deadlines and handle multiple projects, and adapts to diverse teams and projects, skilled communicator with exceptional interpersonal skills.

• Experienced with Groovy/Grails and its underlying technologies, Spring and Hibernate.
• Extensive knowledge of object-oriented JavaScript and popular JavaScript libraries including jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, and YUI.
• Strong background with page layout using HTML and CSS.

Here’s a very mediocre, borderline bad one. Ick.

I am seeking a programming position where I will be involved in the software design, new technologies, and java centric work. I also desire an environment that has a good supporting structure for developers, business analysts, project managers, architects, developers and a quality assurance team.

Technical Skills. The Technical Skills section should be a laundry list of applications, languages, databases, methodologies, or whatever other tools you use or have used to do your job effectively. This can be applied to Accounting, Finance, Engineering and many other professions. If you’ve touched on a particular tool/software/language, put it in here. If you’re not an expert with it, that’s OK, you still should mention it in the chance that your resume pops up in a keyword search. If you’re really good with one particular skill, it should be mentioned in your summary as well as your professional experience multiple times.

If you want to get really crazy here, you should order the skills based on relevancy, expertise, and importance. For example, you might have “Languages” as your first list. If you’re a Java developer and you’re applying for a Java developer role, you should have Java/JEE as your first “Language”, and so on. You should also keep in mind the position you’re applying for. If it’s a Grails position, you can put Groovy/Grails as your first technology listed. The first skills list should have the most importance. If you’re a developer, “Languages” and “Tools” should be first, and “O/S” and “Database Platforms” should be last. Here’s a standard example of a technical skills section, nothing ground breaking here.

Technical Skills
Languages: Java (J2SE, J2EE), Groovy/Grails, Ruby/Rails, Objective-C, Clojure, JavaScript, SQL, T-SQL, PL/SQL, CSS.
Development Tools: IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, BEA Weblogic, Tomcat, MyEclipse, JUnit, Ant, Ivy, Maven, CrusieControl, Hudson, XMLSpy, Subversion, CVS, Git, Fit/FitNesse, Selenium, Toad, RapidSQL, Checkstyle, PMD, FindBugs, Cobertura, Emma, easyb.
Methodologies: Scrum, XP, Test Driven Development, SDLC, OOAD.
Application Servers: BEA Weblogic, Tomcat, Glassfish, JBoss.
Database Platforms: Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, Sybase, HSQL.
OS: Windows, Linux (Red Hat, Ubuntu), Unix (Solaris, Mac OS X).

Professional Experience. Obviously the Professional Experience section of your resume is important. You need to be able to paint a clear picture of what you did, but also what you accomplished. I think a lot of people forget about the accomplishment piece, and just explain their daily tasks. But, adding accomplishments will tell the hiring manager you deliver. Mention that you were on a critical project that built an application that ultimately saved the business 10k per month. Mention that you were selected by your manager/peers for outstanding performance (or whatever). Now there’s always exceptions to this rule. If you played a fairly insignificant role and were purely a taskmaster, well then it’ll be tough to explain accomplishments. Also, if you’re a technologist, make it technical. It always sucks when I get a resume that has all these fancy bullet points but no specific technical detail in it. An example would be “Worked on a team do develop a large scale accounting system.” That’s great and all, but it should read “Worked as a developer on a team of 10 building a large scale accounting system using Spring, Hibernate, JPA, Maven, blah blah (you get the picture). You should also have the last bullet point be a list of the types of tools/technologies you worked with. In conclusion, for each position, use 4-8 bullets of your daily detailed tasks, but also 2-4 of your accomplishments.

Here’s a decent example I ran across, it’s a little longer but explains things pretty well. There are definitely better examples out there, I just didn’t spend a ton of time finding something suitable. This gives you a good idea at least.

Professional Experience
A Really Really Great Company, Minneapolis, MN 02/06 – Present
Lead Java Developer
Phase 1 for a new concept start-up company. In less than two months built a functional system to address the business need and provide a user-friendly work flow for customers not familiar with the business concepts.

• Lead a team of 5-10 developers through stand-ups and iteration planning meetings.
• Architected the application’s technology stack including Spring-MVC, Spring, JPA/Hibernate, and Acegi.
• Setup development environment infrastructure including an HSQL in-memory database to facilitate unit testing.
• Evaluated several Ajax toolkits including YUI and Dojo.
• Implemented numerous Agile User Stories for the HR application.
• Worked with business owners and analysts to define and implement new requirements for a more scalable and stable data processing application.
• Re-wrote existing batch processing framework that processed complete insurance information for roughly 300,000 members.
• Added a variety of functionality to existing eligibility web application, including new workflows, JSP’s, and controllers (servlets).
• Designed and implemented a new generalized SAX-based parsing framework for processing incoming XML files directly into existing hierarchy of Java domain objects.
• Delivered a mission-critical 40% increase in file processing application by designing and implementing a new multi-threaded frameword.
• Tools used included: Agile project using Java/JEE, Spring, Spring-MVC, Spring Security, JPA/Hibernate, Ant, Tomcat, Acegi, Sitemesh, Velocity and Postgres.

Education, Training, Certifications, etc. In a technical resume, I prefer Education and the like at the bottom of the resume. The exception is if you’re fresh out of college or fairly new to the industry. Then putting the Education under the Summary at the top is more useful. I always tell newbies out of college to list relevant courses to whatever position they’re applying for. So if you’re applying for a Software Engineer position that requires C# experience, you better mention the CIS class you took that was called “Building Web apps with C#”. I also always recommend any marketable education (which should be easy to know) be included somewhere in your summary at the top as well. If you have a Masters in Software Engineering from the U of M, a Scrum Master certification, or you’re a CPA, put those in a bullet point at the top of your resume in the summary.

Here’s a simple example to give you an idea.

Education & Certifications
M.S. in Software Engineering May 2006
University of Saint Thomas, Saint Paul, MN

B.S in Housing Economics, 1999
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN

Sun Certified Java Programmer (JDK 1.5)

You can also get as detailed as you want, if the courses are relevant to what you’re applying for. Check this one, I don’t mind it, some may think it’s too much. I don’t (if it’s relevant information).

Education
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (1998 – 2000)
M.S. Software Engineering
Professional degree program focused on established and emerging processes and technologies related to the development of software intensive systems. Core courses concentrated on software specification, design, implementation, verification, and maintenance, as well as project management, quality assurance, and process improvement. Graduated with GPA of 4.0.

Amherst College, Amherst, MA (1992-1996)
B.A. Computer Science
The degree focused on mathematics and computer science, but also included significant coursework in law, physics, and political science. Courses specific to the major included Data Structures, Advanced Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Graphics, and Discrete Mathematics. Other activities: computer science tutor, varsity hockey.

Font & Formatting. I’ve heard a lot of people talk in detail about formatting and where the dates should be, how and where your name and address should be, what font and size to use, etc. These things are minor, I personally think very little time should be spent on this topic. If you’re asking me these questions, I’ll tell you what I do (Times New Roman 11 font)….but it’s the last thing that should be discussed when putting together a marketable resume. Put you own flare in your resume, just be sure to not overdo it.

I also don’t agree with the notion a resume shouldn’t be over a page, or two pages, or whatever. Your resume should be as long as it needs to be. If you’re on page 4, yes maybe you should think about taking some details out of the position/s you had 5 years ago. But if you have a ton of experience and it’s recent and relevant, well than that’s the way it has to be. Just make sure to tailor and customize your resume to each position you’re applying for, take the irrelevant fluff out.

I know as well as anyone, resumes are a pain mainly because everyone tells you something different and it’s tough remembering all the things you’ve done at times. The main point is that if you’re not getting interviews, well then maybe it’s time to take a closer look at your resume. Otherwise, if you’re not having issues getting in front of the hiring manager, I highly doubt there’s much you need to change.

Social media, blah blah blah. Sick of hearing about it, but it’s not going away. To me, social media is about building relationships and community, simple. I use Twitter, but I was stupid and wasn’t as picky as I should’ve been initially about who I follow. And I haven’t been as diligent about setting up lists and weeding out the stuff I don’t want, or the people I don’t at least know a little (again, need time to do that). There’s still some good stuff out there, but my feed is overloaded with a lot of junk.

This is where Buzz comes in. I follow people on Buzz I really want to keep up with on Twitter or in my Google Reader (because you tie your Twitter account and Reader into Buzz). You’re not limited to 140 characters and you look at those selected tweets whenever you want, on your time, without needing Twitter lists or feeds or whatever. Check out my Gmail account below. Buzz is just another part of your inbox, and tells you how much activity is in your “Buzz”. If you get a response on a “Buzz” that is yours or that you commented on, you’ll get an email notification. Obviously, the caveat here is that you need a Gmail account, which not everyone has. But most people do, especially in IT.

As you can see from the 2nd screenshot below, and as mentioned above, you can connect up to 6 sites (at this time). Picasa, Google Reader, Twitter, Flickr, your Google chat status, etc. And you can see (from my buddy Lyle’s recent Buzz) the types of conversations you can have. It’s much more user friendly than Twitter, and a bit more collaborative.

Personally, I’m in Gmail quite a bit, so it’s right there without having to go to another app. As I’ve stated, time is short these days, and as you can see with some of the screenshots, I have so many applications popping up stuff, how do I keep track of everything? If they figure out how to really integrate Twitter (so tweets can come from Buzz or Gmail or whatever), and add Facebook and LinkedIn functionality, I’ll never leave Gmail. Anyways, I’m a rookie to Buzz, but I’m excited to see what else they come up with. So far, I like it a lot and feel I’ve had some really good conversations with some of my fellow Buzzers.

A few days back I saw the first ever job posting on Indeed advertising for a “Talent Community Manager”. (Kudos to Deluxe for taking a huge step forward in recruiting and leveraging this opportunity). Using social media for recruitment takes time, technology and people and they “get that”

Considering Facebook alone as over 300 million users, ½ of which log in to their account in a given day it would not be surprised to see other organizations follow their lead and take advantage of this untapped source of finding and engaging candidates.

Being that this is a VERY new type of position to any industry, let alone recruiting I can imagine how finding someone to fill such a position would be challenging.

Social Media Communities – It’s Not a Waste of Time

In addition to the enormous challenge of finding someone who can successfully build, manage and engage members of a community how do you convince the powers that be that social media is more than a big playground? The way I see it, there are a few different ways social media tools can be used in recruiting including;

• Finding candidates
• Building relationships with potential candidates
• Enhancing your employment brand

I don’t think many would argue with the above bullet points but how do you create a business case for allocating resources?

Measuring the ROI of Social Media used as a Recruiting Tool

Measuring the effectiveness of social media is another challenge because it means that people need to shift their way of thinking from quantitative to something more qualitative. That said, below are some ways to measure your social media success:

• Career Site Traffic – The more people coming to your career site and specific job postings the more people that are applying for your jobs. A free analytics tool like Google Analytics will help you track referrals. If you are sharing links to specific jobs on Facebook and Twitter, URL shortening tools like Bit.ly and Traceurl can measure click through rates.
• Influence – The greater influence you have in social media, the bigger your reach and of course audience and the more visibility your organizations employment brand gets. Your Twitter influence can be measured with tools like Twinfluence and Twitter Grader. Facebook has a similar tool that lets you measure the influence of your business pages.
• Buzz & Chatter – Are people talking about your organization? What are they saying? With any luck their talking about your career opportunities, what interviewing is like and how great your company culture is. Other important things are how often people are linking to you or mentioning you on Twitter. In addition to the tools mentioned above, you’ll want to use Google alerts to monitor both positive and negative buzz.

Social media is more of a long term investment; results won’t happen overnight. Simply creating a Twitter account and a Facebook business page won’t cut it – You have to take time to get to know people, the RIGHT people, listen, contribute and be transparent.

At the end of the day social media is an opportunity for your organizations to have engaging conversations with potential & current employees. Don’t be left behind.

Feel free to post a comment if you are actively engaging in a social media strategy, I’d love to hear what’s working and not working for you!

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Lately I have noticed a flurry of LinkedIn invitation activity. What bothers me is not the amount of invitations being sent or received but how users are going about the invitation process. So I’ve put together this brief blurb on LinkedIn invitation etiquette.

I do not mind receiving invitations from people I have never met (even though LinkedIn says you should really only accept invites from people you know.) If I feel that a connection would be mutually beneficial, in most cases I will accept. However, what irks me is when I receive inmail from someone I have never met requesting that I send them an invitation. I know you only receive a certain number of invitations from LinkedIn and it is NOT OK to request that I use one of mine to connect with you if: I’ve never met you before, have no clue who you are, and you have already used all your invitations. This is just poor form and will promptly get your message deleted.

If we don’t know each other, do not send a blanket invitation request. If you just send the standard invitation I won’t know who you are or why you want to connect. When I want to connect with someone I do not personally know I find a common link and then tell them about it. For example, I have not met all the other great professional resume writers out there but I want to make connections and learn and grow. So if I find someone’s blog that I really enjoy reading I’ll request to connect and tell them. I’ll say I really loved your blog, it’s very informative and I would really like to connect. In almost all cases the other person has accepted my invitation.

I have also connected with tons of recruiters. I connect with them because we have a career path that runs along the same track. We’re both trying to help job seekers, we just help them in two different ways. It is always a good idea to connect with people in similar industries who you could potentially partner with later down the road.

Don’t waste invitations on people that could really have no value to your job search or career. (Especially if you do not know them.) If you are in one part of the world and they are in the other, both in completely different industries, and the chances of either of you being beneficial to each other is slim to none – do not waste your invitation. Remember, you only get so many and when that one great connection comes along that you just HAVE to make – you want to make sure you have an invitation to send.

Scout out the right people and ensure you make connections ‘with a purpose’. Don’t just frivolously throw invitations away to connect on a whim.

Remember proper etiquette when sending invitations, let the ‘invited’ know WHY you want to connect and even what you can bring to the connection. The idea is that connections will be mutual beneficial and not just a one way street.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

My tip; ALWAYS disclose the bill rate. A former colleague/consultant of mine that went independent mentioned this on a post I wrote earlier. I’ve always done it, so I didn’t think it was a big deal. But after thinking about it, and talking to some other colleagues, it’s a rarity. In today’s consulting environment, people are going to find out their bill rate anyways, so why not disclose that before submitting to a client position? The way I look at it, they’ll appreciate the openness, and if they don’t like the margin you’re taking, they’re probably not someone you want to work with anyways. Do yourself a favor, open up your books to any incoming consultants. All parties will benefit from the information.

Flexibility/Adaptability

Huge huge huge part of being a consultant. Flexibility on commuting length, hours worked, clients worked at, technologies worked on, etc. You also need to be able to handle new situations, people, and technologies. If you only want to have a commute less than 15 minutes or only want to work with the latest and greatest technologies and projects, find a warm comphy place as an employee somewhere in corporate america, and just stay there. Consulting changes daily, and you have to be able to adapt to different challenges.. If I had to pick one area that was the biggest factor in consulting success (besides technical knowledge), it’s this one.

Team Player

I love working with good team players. The ones that really get a charge out of mentoring and helping others. They always make a project or job more fun, and really take a lot of stress out of the every day intricacies of working for “the man”. Good team players don’t have much of an ego, they typically stay under the radar, and are usually the quiet type. They make others look good, while not always taking the credit.

Looks (grooming, etc.)

Ahh yes, superficial us. But it’s so true. I don’t care what you say, good looking, well manicured people always have an easier time. Didn’t you see that episode of 30 rock? Now, there’s a fine line here too, especially in the software development field. Beautiful people are few and far between (no offense), but make sure you’re at least dressing appropriately for your situation. Shower, shave, use deodorant, don’t over do the cologne or perfume, and don’t dress like you just woke up under a bridge. Simple grooming habits go a long way.

Interviewing skills

Face it, some people interview great, and some people loathe interviewing. It’s a skill ALL consultants need to be able to master. Ultimately, you’re a product, and you’re your own sales person. It’s definitely something people take for granted, and something that needs to be rehearsed and practiced, just like anything else. If you can’t sell yourself, it’s going to difficult being a successful consultant.

Hunger for continuing education

Not everyone needs to go home and build their own network or web app, or whatever. But, the most successful ones do. You’re not always granted the luxury of working with the latest and greatest technologies, so how else are you going to learn it? By yourself, on your own, by either taking classes or from real world experiences. If I’m looking to hire people, one of the questions I ask is “how do you keep up with technology”? If the answer is “I don’t have time”, you’re probably not my guy.

Professional connections

This is all about the old saying “it’s not what you know, but who you know”. Oh how true that is. It goes back to the relationship piece. As a consultant, you’re meeting tons of new people, especially if you’re active in the local community at user groups and conferences. Make sure you keep in touch with those connections, you never know when you might need them. Use LinkedIn HEAVILY! It’s the easiest tool to keep in touch with past colleagues and managers.

Stay tuned, my next post will be the “Consultant Blueprint” quiz.

I know I say this A LOT, but I’m not perfect. I’ve made these same mistakes, but I make a diligent effort to help people out, no matter what the circumstance. After seeing people struggle to find jobs, it’s made me realize how much it hurts and how difficult that process can be, especially nowadays. If you’re a recruiter, please, please, please, make this one little effort. Respond to the candidates that you have interviewed or that have interviewed at your employer. I don’t care how big of a company you are and how busy you are, that is just simply common courtesy. I was a little disappointed to learn just how common this is. Simply ridiculous if you ask me, and something that takes so little time to do. If you’re afraid of hurting feelings, it hurts more by not responding.

A good example. We’ve all known or met a consultant that’s frickin’ brilliant, but when their end date is up, so are they. They don’t get extended. Feedback is always fine on these people. The client will say, “solid performer, I’d probably hire him again if the need arose”. But, they hop around on 6-9 month contracts, and never run into a real long term gig. These people are definitely employable, but they’re not going to get extended time and time again. They’ll continue their careers hopping from one gig to the next, making a decent living. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. But when really looking at it, it’s simple to understand why they don’t get extended often. Technical skills are only one piece of the puzzle. The may have an ego that’s tough to stand, or have a negative attitude towards everything. Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not perfect. And most people are in the same boat. But, if you’re going to be an “A” player in the consulting industry, you should read on and take bits and pieces from my “Blueprint” and incorporate them into your consulting toolbox.

Presentation Abilities

It’s all about personal branding these days, and being able to present your ideas and thoughts to clients with presentations in relation to your particular field is essential. Consultants that are heavily involved with user groups throughout the metro, or participate regularly at workshops at some of the local conferences always get noticed more. Clients and recruiters tend to drink the koolaid if you’re well spoken and can speak intelligently in front of audiences.

Political Acumen

Oh we all know how this can play. Some people just have that knack for being able to play the political game. And ask yourself this, how many clients have you been at where this is not an essential skill? If you say none, you’re nuts. Corporate america is political. Heck, mom and pop shops are political. Get to know the right people, and make sure you’re visible to those certain people. I know it sucks sometime to kiss ass, but it will help your chances of surviving. I’m sure you’ve worked with people that don’t really accomplish much, but they always know what to say and who to say it to. Unfortunately, most of the time those are the ones that keep getting extended. Play the game, become buddy buddy with the right people.

Technical Proficiency

This is obvious. You need some sort of technical competency to be marketable. Although, I do know people that don’t have any, and still remain employed. Key is, they’re not consultants! This is a very general category, but can be defined in many ways. Keep up with technology if you can. Read blogs, get involved, spend personal time brushing up. A lot of times your current client isn’t using current technology, well you better use your own time to learn the current technology, or else you run the risk of becoming obsolete.

Leadership Competence

Being able to lead a team is another piece of the puzzle. Not all people are leaders. And that’s fine, but people are drawn to leaders. That includes client managers and recruiters. I think leaders are just born. In fact, I consider myself a pretty good leader. I have a knack for being able to rally a team to a common goal, in a positive way. If you’re a leader, great. If you’re not, well you’re not. Hopefully you make up for your deficiencies in other areas of the blueprint.

Client Relationship Etiquette

Get to know your client/s. Pretty simple. Know them personally, not just professionally. A little ass kissing never does any harm, does it? But this is really more about maintaining relationships. Since the consulting industry is so relationship driven, it should be a priority to keep up with all of the current and past client relationships. Show some personality!

Communication Skills

Being able to speak, read, and write clearly is one of the biggest factors to marketability. If you can’t speak clearly, you can’t interview or interface with the client clearly. You can’t write? Your code, documentation, and emails will scream 6th grade arithmitic. If you can’t read, well that just sucks for you.

Attitude

This is so underrated in my opinion. I’m typically a pessimist, and I’m trying to get better. But working with negative people really drags you down. Those are the people that spread rumors and live on bitching about their jobs and co-workers. Their negativity spreads like cancer, and ultimately starts affecting others attitude and performance. You need to be able to shrug off situations at work, and grab positives from everything you encounter. A negative attitude will make it easy for a client to cut ties.

My next post will detail out the other 6 intangibles for consulting success; Flexibility/Adaptability, Team Player mentality, Looks (grooming, etc.), Interviewing skills, Hunger for continuing education, and Professional connections.

Twitter/Hootsuite

I’ll start by saying I think Twitter is great. I was a skeptic, but I’ve learned a ton from the people I’m following, and I’ve really worked hard to share valuable information to the people that keep an eye on me. Problem is, I can’t keep an eye on Twitter all day, it distracts me too much that it takes aways from the tasks I have on my plate at work. Granted, Twitter relates to work. But, it’s a small part and I have more important tasks to get accomplished most of the time. I know Twitter is a two way street, you have to interact with your tweeples. But how can you do that consistently when you’re following hundreds? It’s tough. I’m slowly using Twitter less. I have to, and I think I’ve gotten less and less out of it as time has gone by. I think it’s true as most things, you get out of it what you put in. The less you put in, the less you get out.

But in order to at least try and keep up with Twitter, I researched a lot of 3rd party apps to help me try and automate some of my tasks……some. I have my personal twitter account, and one for the company I work for so I needed an app that allows for multiple accounts. After a bunch of research, I found Hootsuite. At this point, it’s great….that can obviously change but it has some really cool features (it just needs an iPhone app). I’m still in the infancy for that app and for the corporate twitter page. But scheduling tweets, an RSS feed function, groups (with 2.0 release), and so many other features, it’s awesome. So for an hour in the early morning before I get to work, or for a bit late at night, I go through my google reader and read blogs and sites with relevant information for my industry. If I find some posts/stories that are worthwhile, I schedule those tweets throughout the day and week. So I’m kind of done with my sharing. I also use that time to see what the people I’m following are up to and try and RT anything that I’ve read and enjoy and think would benefit the people following me. I’m VERY picky who I follow, make sure you’re going to get something from following them. Since I have been picky, I’ve really learned a ton….I’m following some really smart people and not getting bogged down by all the crap out there. So by scheduling these tweets, it leaves me more time to interact with my tweeples throughout the day.

As mentioned above, there’s a neat feature of Hootsuite, it basically has twitterfeed (RSS) functionality built right in. Our corporate site is based on WordPress, so everything is an RSS feed. New blog posts, new news and events, and new job opportunities are all fed automatically into the corporate Twitter page (and some on my personal page). Again, this leaves me more time to interact, which I’ll admit hasn’t been my strong suit. I also have this set up for my personal blog, whenever I post something new, it posts into my personal Twitter account.

Digsby

I use Digsby for my chat client and for “popping up” recent tweets, Facebook updates, and LinkedIn updates. If something pops up that I’m interested in, I want to jump on it right away, and a little box that pops up in the lower corner of my laptop is much better than sitting on Twitter/Hootsuite all day. It’s a solid tool, but I use it mostly for my chat client (which works great).

Blogging

Speaking of blogging, I suck at it. I’m still not sure why I started a blog, but I’m trying (so you have to at least give that to me). This has been tough to find time to do, because this is not done on work hours as well. So, this means personal/family time has to suffer. If you have kids, you know how crazy things are when you get home from work. It’s great, I love it. But, there’s no way anything productive is going to happen when they’re awake. The only reading I’m doing is frickin’ Dora the Explorer books. So, I find an hour every so often after my kids are sleeping and I try and put something semi-intelligent on my blog. I then refine it the next night. I typically try and throw ideas and post topics out out on WordPress whenever I think of something, and then build on those ideas slowly. WordPress has a solid iPhone app that lets me do that when I’m on the go, so I don’t forget. My rule on my blog is no more than 1 post per week, no less than 1 per month. So far I haven’t lived up to that, but we have a newborn at home so give me a break.

Facebook

I use Facebook a little differently, but I’m still open for suggestion here. I don’t have all my tweets posted automatically to Facebook. The friends that follow me are typically closer than my tweeples. So I post select posts/stories to my news feed and update my status a bit more “personal”. I also have a corporate fan page setup, that I have mostly automated with RSS-Connect, but I do post pictures and some other odds and ends manually. I don’t spend a ton of time on Facebook during work time, it’s more for the later hours after my daughter goes to bed. I think it’s an extremely under-rated recruiting tool, and much more effective than Twitter.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has apps now, so my profile gets updated with new blog posts whenever I post something new. Hootsuite also has Ping.fm integration, so I set up a trigger to update my LinkedIn status from Hootsuite. Since it does have Ping.fm integration, you can update all the available accounts with Ping…which is a lot. But for me, I want Facebook to stay different and Friendfeed is already linked up with Twitter anyways (for now).

OK, holy crap. That seems complex. I’d really like to know how others handle the craziness of Twitter and other social networks. What applications are used the most, how much time do you really devote to Twitter and Facebook? I’ve talked to a few professionals out there, but want to hear from more. Please pass this on, let’s see how everyone is accomplishing this.