Jun 4 2018
Your New Career – Part 4: Your Resume

Boy time flies when you’re not writing.  It’s been a couple of weeks since my guest writer, Jordan Corn, posted his very astute piece, and its high time I get back to it!

This brings me to my next section, and it involves what is usually the first impression you will make to a prospective employer.  Your resume literally becomes your calling card, and you want them to call you back.
Now, there have been plenty of in-depth articles written a great deal about resume-writing.  I don’t intend to provide that level of detail; there are others who are much more qualified than I am to provide that.  However, I would like to provide some high-level pointers on the traits of a good resume.   And frankly, each year what looks good on a resume changes.  Remember that short time when applicants put small headshots of themselves on resumes?  Thank goodness that era is gone!
And now, in no particular order, some pointers on your resume.

  1. Minimize the colors.  I’ve recently been the recipient of resumes that were a Calliope of colors.  Reds and yellows and blues.   Kee your resume to black and white, or at worst case two muted colors.  You should be going for maximum readability and not vibrance.
  2. Drop your street address. Nowadays, all you need on the resume is your email address, your phone number, and the city/state where you live.  Keep it simple.  They’re not going to mail you anything!
  3. Use an email address that is professional. I covered this in a previous part.  Given that it’s so easy to create a new email address, pick something with your name on it, or something benign.  “TheDogPound@aol.com” is probably not a message you want to send.  Is that your rap name?  Are you a fan of the Browns?  What does it mean?  You don’t want it to mean anything, if possible.  Also, avoid mail domains that may reveal your age. “@aol.com” says “I got an email address in the early 1990’s and never looked back.  Avoid “hotmail”, “aol”, “myspace”, “earthlink”, “*.rr.com”, “msn.com”.  Stick to gmail, icloud or yahoo.com.
  4. List no more than about three or four previous employments.  Unless your vocation lends itself to short engagements (e.g. consultant), keep the number of previous employers short.  If you’ve held multiple positions at the same organization, perhaps group those under a single name.  Also, list years as the start and end date.  It’s not necessary to list months any longer.
  5. Leave certifications, education and accomplishments to the end.  Your experience is the most important part of your resume.
  6. Simply put “references available upon request”.  You should already know this one.
  7. No more than 3 pages.  Honestly, two should be sufficient, but three should be the absolute maximum length.  There may be some exceptions if you are applying for a C-level position.
  8. Spell and grammar check – and do it again!  Use the tools of your word-processor to spell and grammar check your resume.  Then have someone else read it.  And then someone else.  So many resumes I’ve received over the years have typos and incorrect punctuation.  Here you’re pitching that you’re detail-oriented and then you provide a resume where you use “your” instead of “you’re”.  Bad.
  9. Stay serious.  Unless you’re applying for a job as a comic writer (and maybe even if you are), avoid funny quips, images, sarcasm.  The resume is supposed to be a professional discussion of your experience.
  10. Optimize your resume for job scanners. Most organizations put your resume through an online scanner to do a quick review of it.  It’s vitally important that your resume is easily scannable.   JobScan will scan your resume for you and provide feedback http://www.jobscan.co  I would recommend using this or a similar organization to make your resume as easy to process as possible.   Below is a sample output from a resume scanning site.Resume scan sample
  11. Customize your resume for each job you apply for.  As noted in #10 above, your resume is likely to be sent through a resume scanning service.  This is then used to see if your skills match the job requirements.  It’s very important that you put words in your resume that meet the skill requirements of the job.
  12. Be honest on your resume. Most people tend to stretch the truth on their resume because often it’s difficult to tell whether an applicant actually has the depth of experience that is being sought.  However, if you start adding experience that you don’t have, you may ask a question in that competence area.  You don’t want to sheepishly have to answer that you really don’t have that experience.  Instead, keep your resume as honest as possible.
  13. Do include a cover letter in most cases. It can’t hurt to have a cover letter and in some cases, it can help.  Often a recruiter will scan the cover letter to determine whether the applicant has the appropriate level of writing skills.  Sometimes you can explain certain extenuating circumstances by using a cover letter.  But usually, it’s just considered professional to include one.  You can actually create a very simple cover letter template that you can re-use.  Make sure though that you customize it to include the date of submission, the name of the organization to which you are applying, and the position for which you are applying.
  14. No headshots, please.  That practice has thankfully died out.
  15. Drop the “Career Ambitions” section – or whatever you call it on your resume.  List a description of your strengths in a few sentences and let your experience reinforce those skills.  The days of “Looking for a whatever at a great place where I can show my whatever skills” are gone.
  16. Pay a company to write your resume.  This is well worth the money.

Other non-numbered points:

Do not despair if you don’t receive any feedback.  In the olden (golden) days, you would usually at least receive a rejection letter in the mail (or an email).  Nowadays, you may not receive anything.  Or you may not receive anything for months.  Part of the reason for this is that the application process has become so easy that a job opening may have hundreds of applicants.  Organizations typically can’t respond to each one.   Another cause of this is that the relationship between organizations and employees has degraded over the years and the modicum of effort required to provide a professional response to every applicant has been deemed not important enough.  In either case, log in to your Job Search Log (see the previous article) that you applied for the job and, if you don’t hear anything in a month, go on the job site and see if the position is still open.  If not, then you can assume that you will not be contacted about it. Note: in one case I received a response back three months later.  I had to go back to my job log to remind myself what position I had applied for.

Print out copies of your resume and bring them to your interviews. Always have spares in case someone forgets to bring one with you.  Make sure it’s printed on nice paper, though you don’t have to use expensive parchment anymore.

The perfect resume won’t get you hired. It doesn’t matter how good your resume is.  The thing that will get you hired is your interview (coming to a new part of this series soon).   The resume is just supposed to open the door for you to get a chance to speak to someone where you can use your charm, wit, and job experience to convince them that you’re the person they should hire.

You may have the perfect resume but still lose out to someone with a lesser resume but better experience.  Your resume is not a substitute for experience.

willrwills 0 Comments
May 14 2018
Your New Career – Introducing Guest Contributor – Mr. Jordan Corn

This marks a new chapter in my articles, a contribution by a guest writer.  I have known Jordan Corn for many years.  He, like me, spent many a night and weekend doing improv.  He’s also an IT person.  Also worked (works) for AAA.   However, he’s a far better musician and quicker on the wit than I ever was.  He was able to get along with people with whom I never could.  And his advice was always measured and well-reasoned.

Anyway, when I found myself in search of my next occupation, Jordan reached out to me, and was supportive and helpful, as you’d expect from a kind human being.  He forwarded me something he had written when he, himself moved on from a long-term engagement.  I found what he had written to be useful and pertinent, so I asked him if I could republish it.  I also asked him to please write a forward for it, which he graciously did.  So please enjoy this diversion from what The Monkey customarily writes.

About a dozen years ago, I was called to a “quick meeting” in a conference room I had never seen.  My sixth sense was tingling, and for about the only time in my life, it was 100% accurate.  To this day, I don’t know how I figured it out, but I was there to learn I was being separated after 23 years of a successful career.  I had worked in chemical process automation, quickly rose to manage a group charged with automating a global business’s manufacturing sites, later managed the company’s plant-floor Y2K program, then drove a knowledge management effort, and was now in enterprise IT architecture and strategy.  My resume read like a textbook from the era.

Thanks to that sixth sense, I was one of the few people who wasn’t utterly shocked by what transpired in that “quick meeting”.

For weeks and months afterward, people at my now-former company would reach out to see how I was doing.  Their outreach overlapped with the network I was building as I moved forward and met different people.  I came to realize that talking to them was very different from talking to my newer contacts.  This awareness prompted me to document the three types of transitional networking in which I was engaged.  To this day, I believe the model I discovered helped me put the past in perspective and accelerate my forward progress.
-Jordan

Three Kinds of Transitional Networking

Introduction

Career coaches heavily – and rightly! – coach professionals on the value of networking in order to land their next job.   So, upon the loss of a job, it is natural for a professional to embark on a personal networking campaign.

Unfortunately, the guidance on productive networking is spotty, and its successful execution is rare.  In part, productive networking is difficult because we generally tend to be more comfortable around people we know and find expanding our network to be a challenge.  Compounding this is the fact that employees in transition are emotionally wounded, and do not wish to appear as needy.

If you are an employee in transition, an effective networking model should successfully balance your needs for comfort, emotional support, and productivity.  It should provide opportunities for connection, catharsis, grief, personal development and growth,  and, of course, employment.  The three-tier model described here meets all of these requirements, and provides a mechanism to actively manage – or at a minimum, to be aware of – time spent in different forms of networking.

It is important to keep in mind that this is only a model, and as such, it is not perfect.  Activities that appear to fit into one classification in the model may turn out to cross lines, or be entirely misplaced.   Some activities may not seem to fit the model at all, or their fit may be apparent only in retrospect.  However, this model is useful in allowing you to observe and govern your own behavior in the quest for forward motion.

The Model

Backward Networking

“Backward Networking” is the act of connecting, staying connected, or reconnecting with employees in the place the professional has just left.   Wanting to do so is often a natural reaction to the loss of a job.  Typically, you are given a number of weeks’ notice before termination.  During your final weeks, you may spend significant time in the office, perhaps seeking employment elsewhere in the company, and in all likelihood, receiving emotional support – or at least friendly inquiries – from coworkers.
Upon termination, it feels natural to continue these relationships.  These people are seen as friends, and continuing to network with them offers a sense of continuity in a harshly changed world.  They offer an ongoing view of what is happening in the organization, and may even offer leads.  There is comfort in associating with them, a sense of connectivity to the past, and they’re generally easily accessible.  Early association with them is emotionally healthy.

As time passes, however, you should come to realize that it is limited – and diminishing – value in maintaining these backward connections.  As you move forward in your job search, much of what individuals at your former company have to say will seem unimportant, and will in fact be counterproductive.  Much of what they want to do is to commiserate.  Many of them are looking for a progress report; they want to know how you’re doing.  Some of them live in fear that they too will lose their jobs, and they are seeking to understand the transition process and its impact.  And, in all fairness, some of them do in fact simply miss you and want to stay connected.  So there is a strong possibility that you will continue to receive invitations from them.

As these invitations arise, or as you ponder the prospect of a lonely day and consider contacting someone from your former place of employment, consider the value in it for you.  Commiserating about your former organization and management is comforting, but after a point, it provides you with little value.  Progress reports are useful, but to those who receive them, not to you.  Furthermore, progress reports are risky.  There may be people in your former organization whom you do not want to update on your progress, and once you’ve started updating former colleagues, you cannot control how that information is disseminated.  Explaining the transition process and its impact to former colleagues is likewise helpful to them, but likely only minimally to you.  The only real value, then, in maintaining these connections is social.
This is not to suggest that you should completely avoid networking with your former colleagues; only that you understand that you’re doing it entirely for social reasons, and to have little expectation of a return on the investment of time, other than immediate gratification.  So network with your former colleagues, but with several caveats:

  • Recognize that it will not advance your search
  • Recognize that you are doing it for social reasons only
  • Limit the amount of time you spend on it! …and…
  • Exercise caution in what you report to your former colleagues

Lateral Networking

In its most basic form, lateral networking is exactly what it sounds like – that is, networking with people who, like you, are in transition.  People in transition can come from any number of places.  They can be colleagues who were dismissed when you were.  They can be people you meet at professional associations, job fairs, etc.  You might meet them in career networking groups, or via e-mail lists.

People in transition are excellent networking colleagues, for a number of reasons.  First, and perhaps foremost, they are going through exactly what you are experiencing.  This makes them prime – and much safer – candidates for commiserating, swapping stories, and sharing learning.  Second, they are on the lookout for job leads.  Therefore, they may be aware of the opportunities that you have yet to encounter.  Third – and this is especially true if they do not come from your previous organization – they know people who you don’t.  This can make them excellent sources of contacts in companies you may be targeting, contacts with recruiters you have yet to meet, etc.

People in transition can do far more than finding your contacts.  They are excellent sources of feedback on resumes, cover letters, references, job applications, etc.  They are good sounding boards, too; once they know you, they can offer you significant advice on how to advance your search, what avenues might be wise to consider, and where you might be wasting your time.  They will usually do this both constructively and sympathetically, as they are in the same position you are.

Much has been written lately about the benefits of job hunting in groups, which is of course an activity ideally suited to people in transition.  Among these benefits are having someone to ask questions of a potential employer that you as a candidate do not want to ask, strongly targeted leads, and the ability to effectively attend multiple networking events simultaneously.
There is also an enormous emotional reward in interacting with people in transition.  They understand what you are experiencing, and can be truly sympathetic.   You will want to reciprocate the help they offer you.  You will find doing so to be truly uplifting, both for the impact it has on those you are helping and for the feeling of worth it provides to you.

People in transition are excellent antidotes to the lonely days you will likely face during your transition.  With a broad enough network of them, you should have little trouble finding someone to talk to, have lunch with, or plan an outing with, whether it be to a job fair or the local coffee shop.  Be warned, though; when your colleagues in transition find jobs, you are likely to experience an emotional setback.  Just remember when that happens that your newly-landed friend may be able to help you find a job in his or her new organization.  And remember too that there are always more people entering transition, many of whom would benefit from your experience, and many of whom can open new doors for you.

It is important to recognize the role of people from your organization who lost their jobs when you lost yours.  While these people can be excellent lateral networking contacts, you need to ensure that your connections with them don’t take on too many elements of backward networking.  Just as with your backward networking contacts, reminiscing about the past and complaining about your former employer is of limited value.
Lateral networking can extend beyond people in transition.  A broader definition of lateral networking is interacting with people who may (or may not) be able to help you move forward, or whom you may (or may not) be able to help.  This broader definition would include:

  • Recruiters who might or might not be aware of opportunities for you
  • People currently employed at other organizations (including your former company) who you know are job-hunting
  • People in professional associations who might be able to connect you with leads

Forward Networking

Forward networking is the act of connecting with people who are likely to move your search along.  Clearly, these are the people with whom you want to spend as much of your time as possible or as much of your time as possible seeking.

The most obvious forward networking contacts include hiring managers and interviewers, HR staff at companies at which you are pursuing leads, and recruiters who have approached you with definite leads.  These individuals are clear gatekeepers as you approach specific jobs, and so must be treated differently than either your lateral- or backward-networking contacts.

There are other, less obvious people who fit the criteria of forwarding contacts.  You likely have friends or acquaintances who can either help you network into their companies or perhaps even hire you.  You may be connected to these people in any of an infinite number of ways – they might be neighbors, fellow volunteers, members of professional organizations to which you belong, members of your religious organization, former coworkers, etc.

You already know how to behave among the gatekeepers – attentiveness, a positive, can-do attitude, and a blend of assertiveness, humility, and curiosity are essential.  In dealing with these individuals, you cannot complain about the past, commiserate, or have down days.  While the less obvious forward contacts rarely are immediate gatekeepers, you must treat them as if they are.  By default, you should view every forward connection you make as an interview.  While most of your contacts will not be as formal or intimidating as a panel interview, it is crucial to assume that each person with whom you forward-network is judging you as a potential candidate.  This is true regardless of whether your contact is as simple as a casual e-mail request, or as involved as an office visit and lunch.

Finding forward contacts is a matter of talking to people.  Your lateral contacts are an excellent starting point.  Job postings often provide contacts.  Beyond that, the most effective way to find contacts is to be clear that you are job hunting, without appearing needy.  Don’t hesitate to let friends, neighbors, fellow congregants, and professional colleagues know you’re looking.  They will suggest contacts to you.  You may even make a few useful forward connections through your backward contacts, but approach these by initiating targeted requests (i.e. “Bill, I recall that you used to buy from GreatCo.  As I recall, Joe was your salesman there, wasn’t he?  I’d appreciate it if you could provide me with his contact information.”) rather than as part of general networking.

Spend as much time as you can finding and connecting with forwarding contacts, but remember, when you’re exhausted, having a bad day, or have simply run out of ideas, to go back and connect with your lateral contacts to get re-energized.

The Blur Between Lateral and Forward Networking

There is clearly a gray area between lateral and forward networking.  Some people you think are lateral contacts will turn out to be forward contacts.  Some people who start as lateral contacts may become forward contacts.  Some people who you think are forward contacts may lose their status as you learn more about them, or if their position changes.  Here are some guidelines for dealing with the blur between these two classes of people:

  • Assume that anyone you meet who is working for a company that might hire you is a forward contact, until you have reason to believe otherwise. Therefore, do not assume you can safely commiserate with them.   After all, you cannot control what they may say to a potential gatekeeper who asks about you, so why give them anything negative to relate?
  • Similarly, approach people who are in transition cautiously – do not simply assume that because they are in transition, they are lateral contacts. Use your early interactions with them to determine their role.
  • Take care in dealing with lateral contacts who have landed, and therefore have potentially become forward contacts. It is quite possible that you have shared more with these people than you would with other forward contacts.  The good news is that since they shared an experience with you, they are likely to be significantly more forgiving of your grievances than other forward contacts would be.  However, once they become forward contacts, you should shift your attitude in dealing with them, and look to other lateral contacts for commiseration.
willrwills 0 Comments
May 6 2018
Your New Career – Part 3: Social Media Presence

Hopefully, by now, you’ve prepared your toolset for the job researching and interviewing process?  If not, go back and read a previous article.  I’ll wait.
Until now we have focused on relatively simple areas to address, including your emotional health.  Look for a guest post shortly about what happens to your network of friends after you are unemployed.
Now we have to turn our attention to one of the more difficult tasks.  This one is particular will take some time and creativity.

It’s time you “professionalized” your social media presence.

By that I mean, review:

  1. Your Facebook Page
  2. Your LinkedIn Page
  3. Your Twitter Account
  4. Your Instagram Pages
  5. Your Snapchat Account
  6. Any other public social media (blog posts, Pinterest, MySpace, Tinder, etc.)

A Little Primer on Social Media and the Interwebs

Facebook has been in the news recently (April 2018 – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/06/cambridge-analytica-kept-facebook-data-models-through-us-election) due to a scandal with Cambridge Analytics where they scraped Facebook data and used it to build a persona for millions of unwitting Facebook users.  This persona was then leveraged to generate specific political ads based on that user’s likes and dislikes to guide them to vote for a particular candidate.  It was generally considered illegal not because of what was attempted, but because it was allegedly done without Facebook’s knowledge/consent.  It’s okay though, Zuckerberg apologized (https://9to5mac.com/2018/04/10/zuckerberg-apology-to-congress/).

Mind you, big data engines and machine learning algorithms can now categorize you based on studying all of your online presence, including emails and text messages.  You must know by now that your Alexa queries are used by Amazon to suggest products and services – and that this information is sold to others.  So it’s important to know what sort of footprint you’re leaving out there.

Try this – search for your name online using Google.  Too many hits?  Enclose your name in quotes.  Note how Google search often finds you very quickly and has links to a host of information including company career names, media posts, Facebook pages, ReverbNation (if you’re in a band), and others.  You are very easy to find, it’s hard to erase the Internet trail you’ve left out there, and it tells potential employers a lot about you.  See if you can find out where you live, who lives there with you?  Your property taxes?  Easy.  The cost of your home?  Yep.  Mugshots?  Check.

See a photo of the front of your house?  Yep, thanks Google!  note that in itself says a lot you.  Live in a dangerous neighborhood?  Is your yard full of weeds and is there graffiti on your garage door?  Search for your home on Google maps and use Street View to navigate to the front of your house.

And this information will be out there forever, or until aliens take it down with an EMF pulse (http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/14/emps-how-to-detect-blast-that-could-darken-world.html).  EMF is unbelievable.

The Folly of Using Your Actual Name

While it might be tempting to come up with user names that reflect your real name — especially since it’s often easier to make up a unique user name by using parts of your actual name – that’s a very bad practice.  This makes it easier for online searches and machine learning algorithms to compile a list of all your recent activity and associate it to you personally.

If possible, then, make up a user name that means something to you and your friends, but doesn’t generally link to your actual name.

Gmail is Your Friend (This Time)

Another way to find links between your accounts is to look at the contact email address (or phone number) on your profile.  First, you should resist the urge to provide a phone number except for some very specific security-related functionality (to text you to unlock a bank account).
But more importantly, if your email address is sammysosa@aol.com (see my previous post on not using AOL as a domain), and your name is actually Sammy Sosa, then you should not use this email in your profile information on social media.  Instead, use Gmail to create a new account called something like “baseballhero78@gmail.com” and use that in your profiles.  Set up your email client (Outlook, Mac Mail, Gmail) to receive emails from that account.  You can still use sammysosa@aol .com (or better yet, @gmail.com), but use it for professional correspondence and things that you aren’t ashamed of sharing with potential employers.

Google is Not Your Friend (Usually)

Keep in mind that by using Google Gmail, you’ve already agreed to allow Google to scan all of your emails, advertise to you based on your email content, and potentially share this information with others.  The same goes for searching.  Everything you search for is remembered by Google and your ISP’s to be used to market and study you.  The same goes for any events you put on Google Calendar.  And for YouTube videos, your search for, channels you subscribe to, and any videos you watch – all of that is owned by Google, but licensed for your use.  Thanks and Neat!

True Story => Recently I was in the market for a new car.  I searched for Mazda CX-9 to read up on dependability and see reviews.  After only a few of those searches I started getting ads for that Mazda, and emails from Mazda.  Creepy.  After only about 15 minutes of searches.

Twitter-mania

Twitter has made it easy to communicate with vast arrays of people, publicize your personal opinions, and follow organizations that may interest you.  Twitter rage is a thing, where a Twitterer will tweet angry things at various politicians, actors, social media outlets, organizations, etc.  Rarely do you get a response, but your Twitter friends who share the exact same feelings as you will Like the tweet.

Under the same guideline as “don’t use your real name”, you should not have a Twitter handle (or associated profile email address) that you use to tweet anything that a prospective employer should not see.

If you would like to stay on Twitter and rant, leverage a Twitter handle that cannot be linked back to you by name.  Or, if you have a lot of followers due to your clever tweets and amazing Twitter polls, change the name of that account to something that is not readily linked to you.  Then start a new Twitter handle that you can use for personal and professional tweets.  Then link the professional account to your personal email and take the time to follow a number of industry icons.  Do NOT Tweet anything using this personal account that would tip people on your personal political opinions, and don’t tag your “rant” account from your personal account.

“But I’ve Gotta Be Me!”

Sure, thanks for that.  That’s what the Russian bots said.
Listen, you don’t know what the political leanings are of the people who will be reviewing your resume.  TECHNICALLY, Human Resources and prospective interviewers are not allowed to look for any social media presence, but the reality is that it often happens.

Most mature employers and recruiters can set aside their personal opinions and interview you objectively.  But some cannot.  And when you are in search of a job, you need to be a clean slate.  Or at least a professional slate.  Heck, you can use your professional social media account to research a prospective employer and even Like or retweet stories the organization puts out there.  Great way to show that you support what they are doing.

Facebook

Another “same deal here”, but a little more difficult.  Facebook does allow you to mark your account private and not allow search engines to find you.  And you should immediately do that.  However, the world is a small one (thanks Disney!) and while it’s full of joy, it’s also full of fears, but there’s so much that we share, that it’s time we’re aware.  It’s amazing how many people operate in similar social networks.  A recruiter may be a friend of a friend who is a cousin of a family member of yours and stumble upon your information.  And that could be good or bad, but you’d prefer it was neutral.
Here are some things you can do on Facebook –

  1. Create a private and a public persona. That is, create two FB accounts and use the private one for sharing opinions about politics or Selena Gomez.  Come on, Selena.  Charlie Puth is adorable!
  2. Lock down your account.  FB allows you to control how posts are viewed, so do NOT allow your posts to show up publicly.  Create groups of FB friends that you want to include in your most personal views, and another group for views that are relatively benign.  Use the appropriate visibility when posting.
  3. Delete your Facebook account. A bit extreme, but Facebook popularity has been waning recently.   Deactivate or delete your account.  You can download all of your content in case you want to re-activate it at some point.
  4. Clean up your Facebook presence. Yep, look at the “likes” you have set up for movies, books, other companies, political affiliations —  and drop the ones that could be polarizing.  Looks through your recent posts and delete those that are highly political or extreme.  DELETE any photos that are suggestive, including a certain lack of clothing or where you were drunk and riding that Skeedoo up onto the dock, while holding a beer.
  5. Do NOT list your Facebook account on your resume.  See previous sentence.  Read it again.
  6. Create a business/organization Facebook account. If you use your personal Facebook account for another venture such as a restaurant, professional service, a personally run company, a social group, etc. it’s just as easy to create a second account and move all of that content from your personal account to your organizational account.  Then do not link the accounts, and be careful when you tag one account to the other.    Facebook provides some nifty tools for organizational pages.
  7. Remove information that would lead people to know your age, your marital status, your employment, your sexual preferences, your religious affiliations, etc.
    Mark the following bio items private or hidden:

    1.  Birthdate
    2. Relationship Status
    3. “Looking for a (man/woman/elf)”
    4. Job details, if not pertinent to your job search.  If LinkedIn says you were employed until last month, and Facebook says you’re now waiting tables at a Wawa, then remove the Wawa.  There’s nothing wrong with waiting tables at Wawa.  But it may not be pertinent to your desire to be a Vice President of Technology.
    5. Education years – people can figure out how old you are if you graduated from high school in 1983 or if all your likes are from 1966-1969 (Star Trek TOS!).
    6. Bio quotes that may not be funny to everyone: “I killed Amelia Earhardt”.  I mean, okay but why?

Remember that everything you do on Facebook, including Likes, Tagging, Comments, Locations are used by Facebook (and sold to others) to paint a picture of you.  What do you want that picture to say about you and your employability?

Profile Photos

Review all of your social media accounts and make sure your profile photos are professional. They don’t need to be a headshot in formal attire in front of a clearly fake backdrop, with mood lighting.  But they should avoid anything that suggests you’re not professional.  Also a blurry shot (or pixellated one) tells me that you don’t have many photos of yourself or that you’re not very technologically adept.  If you don’t know how to crop your head out of a photo and/or reduce or enlarge a photo without creating blurriness, ask a more techno-savvy family member to assist.

Update your photos every few years.  Using one from 15 years ago will surprise an employer when you show up as someone much older looking.  That’s not to say employers should be avoiding hiring older applicants, only that it’s misleading and may suggest to your employer that you’re vain, disingenuous, or haven’t paid much attention to your Internet accounts (or hair color) recently.  Do the same if your look has changed recently.
Select a photo where you’re smiling naturally, not making a “duck face”, not trying to be seductive, not brandishing a weapon,  not wearing a bikini,  not with any part of your body duly exposed, etc. – I think you get the… picture.
And as you take informal photos in your personal life, keep an eye out for ones that have a nice image of your face, smiling and natural.  Put a copy of those in a folder because a) we both know that we rarely take good photos anymore and b) it could be useful for a future profile pic.   At some point, crop the rest of the photo out and use that for your headshot.

Note: if you’re an actor/actress, there’s a whole other aspect to headshots that are beyond the scope of these articles.  That’s when you need professional services.

In general, look at your profile photo and objectively ask what it says about you.  Or better yet, ask your mother what it says about you.

LinkedIn

This is such an important one that I’m going to devote the next post to it (3.5).  THIS is the main online tool in your job search and it likely needs cleaning up and refined.  More on that later.

Sealing The Email Address Part 2

This is so important that I’m going to keep harping on it, like a seal.  Like a Harp Seal.
harp-seal-pup-1a-1996-xl.jpg
For your resume or for any correspondence to potential employers, you must have a professional email address. Drop the funny names (buymymonkey, anyone?) or antiquated domains.  Create a brand new and professional email address that reflects a polished and objective person.  Use that for professional correspondence, your resume, and social media profiles for professional use.

Summary

That’s just a quick take on what you need to do to your social media presence before you start applying for jobs.  It’s so critical that you appear professional, polished, and objective.  For me, it was surprising how much I was projecting about myself with my social media accounts all mixed and cross-referential.

It took me a few weeks to clean everything up but in the end, it allowed me to take two personas:  the guy you absolutely need to be employed at your organization and my informal social media presence.   Let no one cross the other!

And work to keep it that way, even after you’re employed.

willrwills 0 Comments
Apr 28 2018
Your New Career – Part 2: Your Toolset

Now finally we are finally getting into the meat of things with finding your new career. And it calls for organization and effort.

Note that my advice is based on my experience of seeking a professional, managerial position.  My previous position was just shy of C-level, so what I was looking for was a bit north of a lay position.  A lot of what you’ll read is about aiming at the middle to upper management.  However, most of the suggestions can be leveraged for any position you’re interviewing for.  And, as I’ve said, if you have specific questions you can always email me or post a question in the comments.

Let’s start by getting set up with the tools you’ll need to be successful:

  1. Make sure you have an electronic calendar where you can keep all of your appointments.  In my case, I used Mac’s Calendar app.  All my devices (all Apple products) use it and they sync using iCloud.  It’s vitally important that you know who you’re meeting with and when.  Missing appointments is a great way to lose a golden opportunity or send a negative message to your potential employer.  A paper calendar can make do, but why not instead make an effort to move into the 21st century and leverage a digital calendar?  Further, by using an integrated calendar app, the appointment contains the address where you’re heading to (and/or the phone number) and you can immediately link to Maps and get guidance and drive time, or you can click on the phone number and easily make a call if you’re running late.  Try that with paper! (…during the interview, slowly unfolds paper map to find the location of next interview…gets paper cut…).

    When choosing a calendar app, you can certainly also use the calendar that is part of Outlook.  That works best when Outlook is also your mail client.  Outlook, however, does not play well with Mac Calendar or Mac Contacts, not even Google contacts (at least for now).
    You can also use Google Calendar, which works well if you have a Google email address.  You can access it by logging into Google and going to calendar.google.com. The good news is that Mac Calendar can connect to the Google Calendar, but Outlook appears not to.  The bad news is that, as with anything you share with Google, it will be scanned and stored for use by their AI marketing monster.
    You can use a paper calendar organizer but imagine how “high-tech” you’ll look when you’re interviewing and have to crack open that journal and write your follow-up appointment down.

  2. Make sure you have an electronic Contacts list.  If you’re like me, a few years ago my contacts were scattered everywhere.  I had Outlook contacts, and Google contacts, separate contacts on my phone, iPad, Mac laptop contacts, and a mishmash of every person I’d interacted with for 25 years.

    I switched to using Google contacts.  Again, this is best when you already have a Google email address, and you can access it using http://contacts.google.com. See the pattern?  http://[content type].google.com and you can get directly to the page with the info you want.  I linked it to my Mac, and it works flawlessly with Mac mail.  However, it doesn’t work well with Outlook.  That’s another pattern you’ll find.

    This is the perfect time to go through ALL of your contacts, merge duplicates, and delete those that are no longer relevant.  Export all of your contacts into a flat-file and import them into Google, which has a nice “find duplicates” feature that lets you merge similar contacts.
    Make sure you have a “me” contacts entry that allows you to quickly send yourself an email.  This is great when you want to take down notes via your electronic device and send them to yourself for later.

  3. Make sure you have access to solid Word Processing software.  You would be surprised how many resumes I’ve seen that were clearly written in Notepad (or vim).  Nearly every platform comes with a decent word processor.  Certainly, Microsoft Word is the king, but Mac Pages is fine, along with a bevy of free writing tools you can download.  Or just invest in the Microsoft Office 360 license, at least for now.  All you really need is a way to do bullet points, bold text, paragraphing, and, for the love of God, spelling, and grammar checks!
  4. Setup a Cloud or backup storage location.  This is not directly related to your job search, but having a cloud drive that you can access from any device allows you to quickly get to your resume or other pertinent information.  Imagine you arrive at a job interview and realize you didn’t bring any extra copies of your resume.  With your resume being on a cloud drive, you can quickly print a few copies at Kinko’s, for example.

    And I should not have to convince you to have a solid backup of all your systems.  I use Apple TimeMachine.  You can use an external drive or the aforementioned cloud drive.  This has saved me even when all I needed was the last version of my resume.

  5. Create a Job Search Log.  On a shared/cloud drive, create a document that you will use to track every company that you contacted or sent a resume to, and every networking activity you participate in — and the result.  Below is a snippet of my log:
    Sample Job Log

    It’s basically a three-column table that includes the date, the activity, and the current status.  I used “orange” to indicate job applications, and white (or clear background) to indicate other activities, and gray for those that had reached a conclusion (good or bad).  These are all gray because they were from earlier this year.

    Also, you may forget where you have applied and apply there again.  Or perhaps you applied and never heard back – this is a great reminder tool to check the status of that application.

    Keep this log close to you and update it nightly (or more frequently).  As you’re looking for a job, networking, getting feedback and referrals, it’s easy to lose track of the last thing that happened.   It also helps you remember names and assemble your notes.

    Take any names of people or organizations and add them to your contact list.  Make sure you include phone numbers and addresses.  If you don’t know the address for a business, for goodness sake use Google to search for it.

  6. Get a decent email address.  Oh my oh my, how many resumes have I seen where the person’s email address is something like “deerhunter37@aol.com” or “babybabyloveme@hotmail.com”.  C’mon people!

    First, do you really want an interviewer to judge you based on your email address before getting to know you?  What if your email is “crookedhillary@yahoo.com” or “impeachtrump@gmail.com”?  Is that the right message you want to send professionally?  Hint: NO.   Invest in getting a decent and professional email address (they’re free!) that uses your name or some derivative of it.  Make sure it doesn’t send a message about your political, romantic, dietary, or pop-culture references (“hanshotfirst@greedo.com”).  You want to be a blank slate heading into that interview.

    Also, having domains that seem old or outdated (@aol.com, @myspace.com, @netzero.com, @me.com) again just paints a picture of your technology hipness before you get a chance to say a word.  AOL implies you use a dial-up connection (14.4K baby!) and the others are just old providers of email addresses.  Go grab a free email address from Google, iCloud – or create your own domain (https://www.melyssagriffin.com/use-gmail-custom-domain/).
    Here’s an article on the “mockability” of your email domain. (http://11points.com/11-email-providers-ranked-mock-ability/)

    As you progress through interviews and the ranks of interviewers at an organization, your email address will be seen by more and more people.  Make sure it reflects your professionalism.

  7. Find a tool to provide background information on an organization.  This is not absolutely required, but you really should know the details about the company you will be interviewing with.  If you were laid off, you may have been provided access to an outplacement service.  If so, they often provide access to Hoovers or Bloomberg, or others to be able to research the financial viability of organizations.  If you don’t have that, Google can suffice.

    Really this is more advice than a tool: make sure you research an organization before you apply for a job there.  What’s happened recently?  Did they just get acquired?  What’s their financial position?  What earnings (losses) did they report in the last quarter?  If nothing else, it gives you discussion material during an interview to show you’ve done your homework (more on that in a subsequent article).

  8. Pay for LinkedIn Premium.  If you’re already on LinkedIn, you probably have received countless offers to upgrade to Premium.  I eventually did and found it helpful.  You will get one month free, and then I paid for a subsequent month.   Premium Career (currently $29.99 a month) is sufficient.   In my opinion, it’s perhaps barely worth the cost, but worth it.

    Using premium you can see who looked at your profile and often see a specific name or organization that showed interest.  You get statistics on how often your name came up on searches.   To me, that was an important and interesting part.  It allowed me to follow-up with people who seemed to revisit my profile.  You have to be careful and not do this in a creepy way.  I’d recommend referencing the organization they work with and not “hey, I saw you skulking around my profile…”

    Also, you can turn on the “I’m looking for a job” switch on LinkedIn, which makes your profile show up on candidate searches.
    A future article will provide direction on cleaning up your online presence, including on LinkedIn.

  9. Pay for a Resume Writing Service. Oh yes, this is important.  We’ll get into your resume in more detail in a subsequent article, but this is so important.

    Resume structures and accepted formats change often.  What looked cool and hip a few years ago (your headshot on a resume!) is embarrassing now.  Multi-columns versus single column, using color, a “career goals” section, how you list employment, how far you go back and other key elements of a resume keep changing.  Having a professional service create a resume for you is useful and vital.  You’ll stand out from the others who still use outdated techniques, and you’ll be seen as investing in your job search.

    Also, the way companies scan resumes and look for keywords can be severely impaired if you create a cutesy resume with all sorts of “cool” fonts (papyrus, anyone?).

  10. Wardrobe Makeover.  This is absolutely a tool. The way you look is also seriously important to how you fare in an interview.  It’s unfortunate but true that employers will judge you on how well your clothes fit, how contemporarily professional you appear and the color combination you choose.  There are suit colors that are more appropriate for interviews than others not just the obvious (stay away from all-white unless you’re applying for the job of host of Fantasy Island).

    If you were previously employed at a casual or business casual organization, you may find that you don’t even own a well-fitting suit, or that your polo shirts are ratty, bally, and worn.
    If you’re serious about getting a decent job, you’ll have to spend some money on a few good interviewing outfits, new shoes, and even a new carrying case.  We’ll cover a section on the interview process, but please do NOT show up at an interview with a backpack, or any hat, or way colorful socks.

    Also, get a haircut, get your teeth whitened, treat that acne, invest in cologne (don’t slather it on!), practice smiling naturally, practice your handshake.   When you step into the interviewer’s office, you need to strike them as a great “first impression” person.  This is often a key, but unwritten part of the interview process.

    Finally, have your interview clothes dry cleaned.  Don’t just iron them or worse yet show up with wrinkled clothes.  After every two or three interviews, have them dry cleaned again.

Being prepared for your job search means having all the tools in place to react to opportunities, do research on organizations, and have that snappy outfit ready when you’re called in for an unexpected interview.

willrwills 5 Comments
Apr 26 2018
Your New Career – Part 1.5: Emotions in Motion

Alright, before I get into the good stuff I wanted to write another short article on attitude and emotion.

[The reader quickly closes the browser]

220px-SqmotFor those who continued to read, thank you.  I think it’s important to discuss some of the feelings you may be going through at this point.  And some realities.
Emotions in Motion, Track 2 from Billy Squier’s similarly titled album (1982)
According to some scientists, there are six basic ways you might be in the situation where you’re in search of a job, though there are many variations (for example, you could be a circus clown that caused a high-wire disaster and thus had to sneak off in the night before The Flying Garbanzos broke into your trailer and brained you).

The main reasons you may be looking for a job include:

  1. You are searching for your first job.
  2. Your organization shut down and you’re out of a job.
  3. You were fired from your job.
  4. You voluntarily quit your job.
  5. You were laid off from your job. (similar to #2 above)
  6. You working now but considering a switch.

This article on emotion may not apply to people in situations 1, 4, and 6.  However, forthcoming posts on how to search for a new job will apply to all cases, including the specific aforementioned clown situation.

Let me be clear.  You are valuable.  You have skills and talents that others want.  Or, you can develop those skills and talents into something that is very desirable.  But the last thing you want to do is to let your dismissal from a job be a commentary on your self-worth.  Even if you were let go because you were underperforming, that is a commentary on your skills and not you as a person.  Stuart Smalley would agree.

There is a natural tendency for humans to undervalue their worth [except for narcissists].

In fact, some of the most talented and amazing people suffer from something called The Imposter Syndrome. (Wiki: Imposter Syndrome).  In short, the work you do comes so easy to you that you start to worry that you really don’t have a skill; that anyone could do what you do, and eventually someone will find out you’re a fraud.  Everyone from Donny Osmond to Neil Degrasse-Tyson has suffered from this psychological affectation, and those are very talented people.  So if you are thinking that you have nothing to offer, you’re probably wrong.  When you get very good at something, it often feels like you’re just phoning it in.  But you’re not.

If you’re laid off from a company, you could be feeling sad, bitter, or shocked.  It’s like being dumped by your significant other.  You may feel isolated or just plain old sad.  And you may secretly hope that the organization suffers from your departure; that they never recover and eventually go bankrupt and close down.  Yeah, they didn’t realize what a mistake they made by letting you go! Not much chance of that usually.
Anyway, and once you get a new and better job (and you will!), you won’t care as much about that sentiment.  Note that I said, “as much”.

Alternatively, if the company that laid you off is in some sort of turmoil, that turmoil will continue with your departure (unless you were the one who caused the turmoil).  So at least be pleased with that.  But put your energy into the new search and not into casting spells against your former employer.  Be positive and embrace positive thoughts. “I’m positive they will collapse without me!”

If you were fired from your job, it could have been for a number of reasons.  If it was because you violated an HR policy, then learn from that and don’t do it again.  However, if you were let go as part of a performance issue, take the feedback seriously.  But please don’t take it personally.  You can either find a job that you have the skills for, or you can take the initiative to identify those skills that you seemed to be lacking and improve.  There are so many easy and often free ways to gain experience and skills.  More on that in a future post.

The worst thing you can do is let the dismissal play in your mind over and over, or think about what you could have done differently, or whose fault it was that you were let go.  Let it go.  You can’t change the past.  You can’t even predict the future.  You can barely control what’s going on in the “now”.  So, all you can do is take stock of where you are and create a plan to get back on your feet.

And, just as you move on, your former employer will move on.  Think about the things that the job provided you, be thankful for all the things you learned, and build upon those skills.  Or, take the traits of your former job that were less than stellar and plan on finding someplace that doesn’t suffer from the same deficiencies.

One special note for those who were employed for 10+ years before finding themselves out of work.  There’s definitely a benefit to the stability of being employed by the same organization for many years.  But nowadays it’s rare to work the same job from a young age to retirement.  The job market is just too competitive, and most employees and organizations are frankly not that loyal anymore.

One of the disadvantages of working that many years at the same organization is that you end up carrying a lot of accumulated baggage throughout that time.  Especially if it’s common at that company for many people to work as many years as you did.  Every mistake, every person you made angry, every dumb thing you did and said will follow you throughout your employment.  It’s hard to reset or atone for misdeeds, and it’s equally hard to impress on people who have traits that you haven’t shown before.

So, if you did work at the same organization for many a year, and you find yourself out of a job, you should be thinking about the things that you will do differently at your next gig.  You’ll get the amazing opportunity to reset and work with people who have no preconceived notions of who you are.  And that’s a blessing even if you were well-liked.  We all have things we would have done differently if we could go back and do it all over again.

But you can’t go back, as Eddie Money pointed out so repetitively.  But you could be his little baby by buying two tickets to paradise.  Shaking.
All the above encouragement applies to you if you are currently employed but looking for another job.  That’s a very difficult situation because the job search process is a full-time job in itself.  Don’t feel hopeless if you haven’t had much luck.   I’ll give you some tips and techniques to help you land that job while you’re working.

Now that you are hopefully feeling better about yourself and the situation you’re in, let’s start with the real meat of the program.  Part 2 coming soon.
Better-days-are-on-the-way

willrwills 0 Comments
Apr 24 2018
Your New Career – Part 1: So You Lost Your Job

If you’re reading this, you’re likely out of a job.  Maybe you were laid off, maybe something else.  Or maybe you’re in a dead-end job and you are longing for something better.  Maybe you’re more adventurous and you quit your current occupation without having another one waiting for you?  It doesn’t matter because this is about finding your next career opportunity.

There are certain people who go through life and experience hardships, and then success ,and are happy with celebrating their good fortune privately.

That’s perfectly acceptable. There are others who feel the same way but then have the urge to help others who were in the same circumstances.   I would fit into the latter category.   That’s why my blog contains articles on fixing PS3’s and touch-sensitive faders.

If I figure out something useful, I want to share it with others.  And that’s the purpose of the forthcoming articles.

Now I can’t guarantee that if you follow the suggestions I will present in this series that you will end up as gainfully and happily re-employed as I am.  But I know the knowledge I will impart can only make your circumstances better.  And some of it is not intuitive.

I took notes for myself through the re-employment process and based on those notes I think this will at least a six-part series, maybe more.  I won’t come back and edit this paragraph if the actual number is different.

Let me kick this off by saying that losing one’s job is painful and scary.

There are certainly financial implications. You may lose your health coverage, or it may suddenly triple in cost via COBRA.   It’s a “job” to search for a job; it takes a lot of effort. It can be twice as bad if you don’t have solid support behind you in your family.  But you can overcome it.

Be aware that nearly all of those people who were your work friends will remain your work friends. By that I mean, you will lose nearly all of them as friends.  Be prepared for about 10% – 15% of your former acquaintances reaching out to you to offer help after you are unemployed.   This could be because they are afraid for their own jobs and don’t want to be seen interacting with someone no longer working at their organization.  It could be they are uncomfortable or embarrassed and don’t know how to interact with you now that you don’t share that commonality.  There could be politics involved that would make it impossible for them to interact with you going forward.  Or in a few cases, you may no longer be useful to them now that you are not influential in their organization.  Don’t let any of that bother you.  The folks who do reach out to you are special and you should focus on them.  And focus on your network outside of work (more on that later…)

Finally, there is a book that helped me through the process and that I probably should have read long ago.  It was suggested by a former co-worker who turned out to be only a work friend unfortunately, but that did not devalue the suggestion.  The book is called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (Amazon: The Power of Now ).  It’s described as a spiritual book, and in many ways it is, but it’s really about how to live your life in a way that puts the most emphasis on what is going on at the moment, and not dwelling in the past, or having your hopes hanging on some future event.  It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it.  And it’s somewhat difficult to read; I had to read it in parts.  I often go back and re-scan sections.  It puts things in proper perspective and makes for a much calmer experience.

Look for a new article every week or less and please let me know your thoughts or share your experiences.  Let me know if anything you read actually helped you get interviews or, hopefully, landed you a great new occupation.

Are you ready for your next big opportunity?

Well, let’s go find it.

willrwills 4 Comments
Jan 20 2018
Coming Soon – Diary of a Job Search

In 2017, on 12/12 at around 12 noon, I found myself suddenly unemployed after 23 years of dedicated service to a single organization.  Since then, I have been gearing up for a job search.  The enjoyment of not having to work is now juxtaposed with the worry that I will need to eventually find employment.

I’m keeping copious notes and once I have found a place to land (or perhaps a vocation, since I may not land in one place), I will publish my experiences here in hopes of helping others find success as I will (did).
The process is far different than it was 23 years ago, trust me.  And it’s not intuitive.  And if you’re over 40 (guilty, your honor), it’s even more challenging.

My background is in IT leadership, innovation, product development.  I designed and built software by assembling a team of highly effective technicians and supporting roles.  I also did the marketing and sales for the products developed, demonstrations, and financial analysis.

Keep checking back…  in the meantime, I’m publishing some articles I wrote for another publication and this is me, below, earlier in December 2017.
IMG_6721.jpg
 
 

Will R Wills 0 Comments
Jan 20 2018
What’s all the Hubbub about Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency?

As technology and financial bubbles go, there’s nothing that feels more like a bubble right now than the mayhem associated with the various cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.  Holders are gaining and losing thousands of dollars (or more!), sometimes on an hourly basis.  And if that feels like hyperbole, it really isn’t. One of the draws of the various cryptocurrencies is the chance to get into ground floor of a nascent idea that either could be significant fortune or end up a bust – and that introduces volatility.  Here’s a high-level look at blockchains, cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin.  Be forewarned that while this is not a technical discussion, there are some technology concepts that will be thrown around.

Holders are gaining and losing thousands of dollars (or more!), sometimes on an hourly basis.

So, what’s so different about cryptocurrencies than say your average Alexander Hamilton ten-note?  To answer that, let’s start with a look at the history of money.

The History of Currency

Originally, money was literally anything you will trade for other goods and services, or for repayment of debt.  A live chicken might be considered “money” just like the modern-day Euro. Let’s review the differences and similarities between these two transactions.  Both are based on the value of what is being offered.  A chicken may have unique value based on its ability to be converted into a meal, or to be used to create additional chickens, or maybe even as a pet.   It has intrinsic value based on what it can be converted to.  A Euro is similar in that when you pay someone with it, the person is thinking about what in turn it can be converted to.  Why, it could be used to buy a chicken (but not for long in England)!

Clearly, it’s easier to exchange coins or notes on paper than it is to barter in livestock, so thousands of years ago the switch began to instead use placeholders of value (fiat).  Initially, the value of these placeholders was in direct relation to the precious metals they were made of. In fact, the term “salary” originated in ancient Rome (“salarium”) where Roman Centurions were often paid in salt, a rare and precious spice that was used to cure and preserve meats.  But trading salt, gold, or other precious materials became unwieldy and portion control became a problem.  Did I owe you a handful of salt?  Or a cup?

Coins made of more structured materials such as gold or silver began to be leveraged.  They not only were easy to handle and ration, they often carried similar values across cultures and nations. This ultimately leads to the notion of a gold standard, where paper money is freely and easily converted to an equitable amount of gold held by the issuer of the currency, often a government.  In the 1700s and over the following two centuries, countries began keeping quantities of gold to represent the outstanding amount of paper money they had in circulation. And this was ultimately adopted by all Western countries.  But as gold reserves dropped worldwide, there was a movement away from this standard, leading ultimately to the US dropping the gold-standard in 1971.   This conversion is technically called a move to “fiat”, where the value of the currency is not related to the gold it can be exchanged for, but to fiscal policies and economic stability of the individual.

When based on economic conditions however the value of a particular currency can vary and be manipulated artificially.   This is the problem that cryptocurrencies looked to solve.

But how can a currency be created that is not controlled by any nation or world bank?  How can it have any value?  How can it be legitimized and certified so that it cannot be forged or counterfeited?

Enter Block-Chain

Blockchain is the technology that makes Bitcoin (and other crypto-currencies) possible.  It was created in 2008 by a person or group (no one is sure) named “Satoshi Nakamoto”, who since has disappeared. In short, blockchain is global digital ledger that openly and accurately tracks a transaction between two parties, and allows those parties to remain anonymous. A transaction entry in this digital worldwide ledger cannot be modified or forged.   Blockchain technology is useful for tracking any interaction where security and integrity must be enforced but is not under the control of any particular person.  Financial transactions, rights ownership, medical records, land ownership transactions, identity management all could leverage this technology someday. But what does that have to do with cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is just a digital asset that can be exchanged as money.  Blockchain provides solutions for two fundamental cryptocurrency concerns: double-spending, and risks associated with control by a central authority.  Double-spending would allow you to use the same “dollar” to buy multiple items without handing over that dollar.  In essence, you could duplicate that dollar and use it repeatedly to purchase items.  Control by a central authority would allow cryptocurrency to be influenced by nations or world banks, or if stored centrally would allow it to be hacked and polluted.  Since a Blockchain is stored across the Internet on multiple computers, with redundant cross-checking to insure integrity, both of these issues can be addressed.  The Internet has made it possible for computers all over the world to communicate and maintain integrity in real-time, and ensure no central point of hacking or failure.

How is Blockchain used to create a secure and reliable cryptocurrency?  It’s all about “mining”.  Mining is a term that describes the process of making sure that blockchain transactions are legitimate and intact.  It’s a very complicated process that involves words like “nonces” and technical terms like “proof-of-work” algorithms.   But the process to do this takes significant horsepower; more than one computer can provide. Thus, the process is distributed to many computers across the Internet leveraging their combined horsepower.   Computers work together to verify that all transactions that are added to the Bitcoin blockchain are valid.  The complexity and scale of verifying transactions increases as more transactions involving unique Bitcoins occur, so there’s a practical limit to how many unique Bitcoins can be leveraged. The Computers who work together to mine and create additional transaction slots (coins) are rewarded with 12.5 new Bitcoins each time a new “slot” is created.  The limit on the number of total Bitcoins that can be created is 21 million and will be reached in 2040, over half of which having been created thus far.  At that time, these mining computers will switch to simply verifying the integrity of the Bitcoin blockchain transactions and will be paid in transaction fees.  No more new Bitcoins will be created and the ones in circulation will all be linked and validated to each other.

Bitcoins are acquired and stored in “wallets”, which are digital credentials for your owned currency that relate back to the blockchains where they were created and transacted.   The wallet owner is responsible for keeping their credentials secret.   Keeping wallets is significant technological tasks so often people use “wallet providers” who manage your wallet for you.  If you want to touch and feel a Bitcoin, there’s a standard hard-coin with a logo that can be created.  On the coin is the transaction id that refers back to your wallet, that refers back to the history of the Bitcoin and how you came to own it.  In fact, it’s easy to see all the previous places your Bitcoin was used to purchase something, with the identity of the transaction-placer kept private.  In this way, you can avoid purchasing Bitcoins that may have been used in dubious transactions.

“In 2015, there were over 100,000 merchants that accepted Bitcoin, including Dell, Microsoft, and PayPal.”   

I Wanna Play!

To purchase a cryptocurrency, you have to visit a “cryptocurrency exchange”, which allows you to trade assets (e.g. US dollars) for various cryptocurrencies.  In the US, you can use Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini, and the list is growing.  You simply log in and purchase the cryptocurrency you want at the going rate and place it in your wallet.

Since the value of cryptocurrencies is not tied to a standard but instead to a combination of supply and what they can be traded for, we’re talking about a very volatile market.   The majority of the supply appears to be controlled by very early adopters and miners. If someone who owns a large quantity of Bitcoins suddenly sells them off for US dollars, the value of the cryptocurrency dives.  And there’s some concern that artificial buying and selling by some large holders is creating millionaires under dubious circumstances.

As the chart below shows, over the last 3 years while steadily rising in value against the US dollar, there have been times of instantaneous dives that delivered masses losses to Bitcoin owners.
Bitcoing Chart

By Bitcoin Charts – https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg1460zigWeeklyztgTzm1g10zm2g10zl, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27802663

Is there nothing that can be done to stabilize Bitcoin prices?

Yes, actually.  In December 2017, Bitcoin were added as a “futures” commodity on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.  This is the first time Bitcoin has been on any regulated exchange.  A futures exchanges has to do with investors paying now what they think something will be worth in the future.  It can be based on company performance, whether a particular crop should have a good harvest, plans by OPEC to increase production. It enables investors to speculate on the price of Bitcoin without buying it.  And by adding some regulation, the side effect should be some price stabilization.

Finally, Bitcoin is but one of many cryptocurrencies in existence.  In fact, anyone can create their own cryptocurrency.  The programming code to create blockchain transactions and mine coins is open-source (freely available) so you can create your own variation, name it whatever you like, acquire a bunch of miners and have at it.  What your new currency is worth is based on what it can be used to purchase, supply, etc.  Examples of other cryptocurrencies in existence includes Namecoin, Litecoin, Swiftcoin and even one based on an Internet meme called Dogecoin.  (Here you can find a current list of the various cryptocurrencies in existence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies )

Will cryptocurrencies become the standard for transactions across the world?  Probably not in the short or middle term, but long-term there is something alluring about currency not controlled (i.e. manipulated) by a central authority – especially if the introduction of some regulation starts to stabilize its value.

Blockchain technology will definitely stick around as it’s a unique and certified way of creating verifiable and secure transactions in a digital ledger.  The use of blockchain technology unrelated to financial transactions continues to grow as well. Chronicled is an organization that is using blockchain to store contracts and legal documents.  A startup called Follow My Vote is using blockchain technology to address voter fraud concerns.  And MedRec is an effort to use blockchain to store private medical data.

While the technology behind blockchains, cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin is highly complicated and often confusing, the idea behind having a solid and verifiable way to exchange currency that is not in the hands of any government offers some interesting possibilities – and is not unlike the idea of “credits” in the Star Trek universe.

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