Growing Software Practices

Targeted Networking to find a Job– Part 4

Targeting your Companies
Here is the payoff from Targeted Networking: you now know how to network to get to the companies you want to join.  The top ranked companies on your list are your primary targets.  With these companies in mind, network to find people in those companies and people familiar with those companies.

Ideally, the people you want be introduced to in these companies are managers in a position to hire; If you are looking for a VP position, then the CEO. However, you should especially talk to employees at the company and people associated with the company to get their perspective. This includes:

• employees
• former employees
• vendors & suppliers
• customers
• recruiters

Creating a winning job search broadcast message - Part 1

You need every possible resource working for you while searching for your next job. One such resource is the broadcast message you use to describe yourself and the kind of job you are looking for as you seek out a specific job opportunity. Similar in concept to effective business advertizing, your broadcast message should be working on your behalf even when you’re not there in person. This general message is used to broadcast your availability and value to those that are looking for someone like you. It should be sufficiently brief and simple so that it can be used easily by your friends and networking contacts to pass on your message to others. Your broadcast message, however, is only intended to help you discover possible jobs. Once you uncover a specific opportunity, you will then want to create a message specifically targeted to the needs of that opportunity.

 

Finding a Job by Targeted Networking - Part 3

Building the company list
Building a company list is the next step in targeting your networking.  With this list, you have identified your target companies, so that you can networking into them.

Having read the earlier articles, you should now have an idea of what you are looking for in a job.  Ranking each quality as critical, important, or “nice to have” will give perspective as you are looking for companies with those qualities.  This information is useful to rank each individual company to build up your target list. 

Matrix Management - Part 1

Many believe that matrix management is the best organizational structure to use in managing the development of new services as well as new products. To understand how this perception arose and whether it is true for software development companies regardless of company size, part 1 of of our series on matrix management will look at the its definition and its general history of usage.

Finding a Job by Targeted Networking – Part 2

Understanding What’s Important
Targeted networking requires having a good idea of what your target will look like. When looking for a job, many people will first think that any tolerable job will do as long as it pays. Most people don’t really think what is important in a job until they are in it.  By then it is too late.

But a job isn’t just money or a short commute – job satisfaction most often is based on many other attributes, such as:

• Your Bosses Qualities
• Company Culture
• Management Treatment Of Employees
• Potential For Recognition
• Training Opportunities
• Career Growth

Leaving a meeting with a shared understanding

 A vexation of work life that is all too common is to carve a meeting out of an extended team's minimal available time and then discover after the meeting that individual members hold their own different understanding of what was decided. An example might be a systems analyst who supports the needs of multiple business platforms or applications, all of which have business managers competing for both priority service response and extensive product delivery from the analyst. In this example, agreements that were made in a team meeting begin to unravel just days later over disagreements of exactly what was decided and negotiated regarding which system was going to receive what functional upgrades first. Another example might be a technical management team that meets to decide on how a departmental reorganization should handle a proscribed 5% reduction in headcount, only to discover during the middle of implementing the re-organization that one of the QA managers has misunderstood how workflow was going to be restructured within her team.

Sometimes a lack of shared understanding can be a calculated attempt on the part of a meeting participant to be opportunistic in implmenting their own course amidst the busyness and confusion of hectic work demands that are further stretched by cross-functional team collaboration. Regardless if the reason for the confusion is due to calculated intent, inattention, or the occassional lapse of detail by an individual of goodwill, practicing strong meeting leadership can maximize a common understanding of what was agreed to at a meeting as well as clarify the observed behavior of meeting participants who chronically misunderstand meeting decisions. This leadership takes the form of 2 practices prior to holding the meeting and 3 practices at the end of a meeting.