Category: Personal

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Godin declares job interviews are dead

I’ve known about Seth Godin for a long time now and don’t read his stuff nearly as much as I should. CNet mentioned a recent post on his blog that declares job interviews being a thing of the past. It’s well worth the read, and a few of the points stuck out to me.

I’ve been to thousands of job interviews (thankfully as an interviewer mostly) and I have come to the conclusion that the entire effort is a waste of time.

At least half the interview finds the interviewer giving an unplanned and not very good overview of what the applicant should expect from this job. Unlike most of the marketing communications the organization does, this spiel is unvetted, unnatural and unmeasured. No one has ever sat down and said, “when we say X, is it likely the applicant understands what we mean? Are we putting our best foot forward? Does it make it more likely that the right people will want to work here, for the right reasons?” […]

The other half is dedicated to figuring out whether the applicant is good at job interviews or not.

I should have learned this lesson in 1981, when my partner and I (and three of our managers) hired Susan, who was perhaps the best interviewer I have ever met. And one of the worst employees we ever hired. Too bad we didn’t have a division that sold interviews. [sethgodin]

Godin goes on to basically say that the best way to interview some one for a job is to actually make them do the task you are hiring for. It’s the only, true way that you can assure yourself that you are hiring the right person for your company.

I’ve gone to a good number of interviews since coming to Vancouver, but my immigration status has prevented me from getting a handful of jobs. That doesn’t mean I won’t apply for a job. Getting an interview is always worth the time, if not making valuable contact with people you wouldn’t mind hiring you when the time comes.

Continue reading “Godin declares job interviews are dead”

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This is for my pal, Brian, in New York City

Brian, this is where I live (Google Maps)

And this goes for all the rest of my friends and family. Vancouver is on the west coast of Canada. No, I don’t live in Toronto, nor is Vancouver located in same area of Toronto.

And if you come to Vancouver, please drop me a line, eh? Brian, you’re my hero and good friend(from our days back in college radio). However, if I ever find out that you come up here for a weekend and we are within 500 meters of each other again, I might have to fly out to NYC and kick you in the ass, hard.

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The pains of not having the right papers

I had a job interview today. This is the most recent one since coming to Vancouver, and it continues the list of jobs that I can’t have because of my immigration status. It’s a topic that I plan on getting into more once the process gets closer to completion, but I don’t want to start on it yet. No doubt about it though. It’s a crazy one, and as an American coming to Canada, it’s not a simple thing to do. Patience is a virture, if not a must.

The interview today went well, but there is very little chance that I’ll get it. I don’t want to get into the specifics of who it was with, but it’s something right up my ally, on par with what I used to do back in the states. They want somebody in the next few weeks, and my status is set to come through any day now. That could mean this afternoon or in two months. That doesn’t help me too much.

It’s a pain. Maybe heartbreak is the better way to say it. Every job that I have applied for in Vancouver, since moving here, has given me an interview. Some of them have been radio stations, and some have gone as far as checking my references from previous employers. That says a lot. They want to hire me, but it’s that lack of go ahead from Immigration Canada that stops everything. I’ve had a company go as far as saying I was hired only to have the same problem. Seriously, if you know some one who can kick the process in the pants for me, I’d be forever in your debt.

The folks I met today were really great, and I wouldn’t put it past a few of them to fire up the Google and find the blog here. If so, hey guys, great time meeting you today and checking out the setup. Very, very cool stuff. Would love to be apart of the fun.

That’s probably the hardest thing, too. I like to take whatever I do and make it fun, including anything that involves “work”. Pride in your work. Enjoying what you do. I’m itching to start doing something in this city because there are times where I feel everything passing me by. Rebecca sees it, and I know my time is coming. All in due time, right? Trust me, I’m not whining or complaining. I’m just ready.

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Burn all you spam monsters! Burn!

I’ve been getting slammed recently with spam on all things WordPress related.  For a while there, it was subtle.  Just a comment or trackback every so often, usually on the same post for a series of days, even weeks.  I monitor a lot of the activity, and it’s fairly easy to clean up and block.

That was until I woke up one morning to nearly three hundred of these things.  They’re getting better at these things, too.  Comments with full sentences that actually convey thoughts across numerous posts.  The URLs are getting harder to spot for this crap as well, even if you try to moderate for people posting them into the body of the comments.

I’ve put some lines of defense up while holding my breath.  I’ve only been in the WP world for a hand full of months now.  This was bound to become a problem at some point.  Akismet is my hope for now.  Anyone have any success with it?  Or might there be something better?

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Folks in Cupertino make some pretty good stuff

Talking to Grandma during her visit in Iowa via iChatIt’s really no secret that I’m an Apple fan, even though I’m very capable of living in a Windows world. Afterall, my official title at the radio station I worked at was “IT Support Level 2”, but that didn’t change the fact that I was working on 5kW AM and 100kW FM transmitter sites. I’ve just been using Apples since I was four, maybe earlier. In fact, I was probably able to use a computer sooner than I was able to read, but I digress.

The brilliancy of iChat and the ability to communicate via video is pretty cool, and lots of users will tell you that. However, when my eighty-seven year old grandma has the ability to see and talk to me from my parent’s house in Iowa, that’s when you realize that this technology is pretty damn cool. Combine that with my aunt, uncle, and cousin that Rebecca has yet to meet, you begin to understand the gap that is bridged. The world seems smaller at that point.

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Restructuring the RSS feed of my site

I’ve been reading various sites lately where there has been a sudden revelation about RSS[wiki], or Really Simple Syndication, by several bloggers. As far as explaining this to those who still don’t know what RSS is, I really don’t want to get into too much explanation. For that, I’ll link to this post and that post. Those two gals have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on.

When I was using Blogger, I setup a RSS feed through FeedBurner, which is a great, free service that seems to syndicate damn near anything you direct at it. In fact, it’s what I still use to publish my podcasts. Making the switch WordPress, I let all my RSS needs be served through it and forgot about FeedBurner. I knew a few people were subscribed through it, so it has stayed afloat. That’s really about it.

Today, I dove back into FeedBurner and discovered lots of benefits in pushing my RSS feeds through their service. It makes total sense, and I think I might have screwed some people up when I changed the permalinks on my blog a few weeks ago. Hopefully you’re all still with me and will forgive the error of my oversight there.

I encourage you to subscribe to the (beefed up) feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/audihertzrss

I also emplore you to learn more about RSS and how to use it. I use it to swarm through sites and pages of information every single day. It saves a lot of time and keeps the latest news coming in as soon as I want it to. (Insert annoying voice over guy here) And you can too!

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Happy Fourth of July!

Fourth of July, 2005That always seemed strange to say. Wishing someone a “Happy Halloween” or “Happy Holidays” seems more logical than wishing good tides of American independence, but that’s what you do.

This is my first Independence Day in Canada, but not my first out of the country. That honor goes to my time spent in Japan, but even that day was spent on an American naval air base. Never did I feel like I was celebrating a true American holiday than that summer. The U.S. military is excellent at those types of events.

Life has gone back to normal after the Canada Day long weekend. I will miss the parade and times with my family, but the weekend I had with Rebecca was a pretty awesome one. Lots of beach and lots of discovering more about Vancouver. We also consumed our share of alcohol, so that detail was well covered, even if it wasn’t margaritas.

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Orange juice and cereal is desperate, not delicious

There’s part of me that has this memory of my brother eating cereal with orange juice in it when I was a kid. At least that is something that I recall happening, but it could be one of those things that you make up and it becomes a memory. I also recall seeing this in a movie at one point in my life, so maybe I took that scene and commited it into my own memory.

I can’t recall the name, but there’s a kid who constantly gets crapped on and ends up having things turn out positive for him in the end. I realize I just described the plot of hundreds movies out there, but this one in particular has a scene where there’s no more milk in the house for his bowl of cereal, only to have his mother tell him to use orange juice instead, just after some other sibling or something mocked him for using up all the milk.

The other day, the situation was similar in the apartment. In all actuality, we go for the soy milk here, being that neither of us can handle straight milk too well. Cereal is all we really use it for. Ice cream and gelato is no problem, thankfully.

So I tried it. I was really craving cereal for breakfast, and this thought about using OJ instead seemed worth a shot. I did eat all of it, but it was a little too much on the sweet and sour side, not to mention the whole, being very… watery part.

Bottom line, it pretty much sucked. I won’t suggest it, and my years of not being interested in trying it until the other day makes complete sense.