Seattle Pixel

• Project management / business role at a small company, or development for a startup
• Seattle based (or allow me to work remotely). I like Seattle and I'm not planning on leaving anytime soon.
• Ideally consumer or mobile apps, but I'm open to other ideas.

When I was in high school, a teacher returned an essay of mine with the following written on the top of the paper: "Know your audience." The task was to write a persuasive essay on any topic of our choosing. I just so happened to pick a topic on which the teacher had extensive knowledge and strong feelings. I hadn't been thinking about this at the time I chose the topic, but he was right - I should have known this wasn't a good topic. Lesson learned.

Writing a resume is no different. Tailor what you're writing to the specific company and position.

[more on Cosmetics, Content, Software Engineering Resumes, Wording & Proofing, Customization, etc]

1. Do your homework. Call with relevant specific questions.
2. Customize your letter. Address it to me.
3. Don't treat your recruiter like they are stupid. They are your advocate, if you want them to be.
4. Know when to back off.
5. Don't lie.
6. Don't make excuses like "I'm sick."

1. Call your relevant positions. If I'm a Software Engineer at Google who already turned down a development position at Microsoft, I'm probably not interested in your testing contractor development position in Everett. Sorry.
2. Customize your letters to me. And please spell my name right.
3. Tell me how you got my resume. Did you find it on my blog? On another website? A recommendation from a professor? The more specific you can be, the less I think it's spam.
4. Know when to back off. Yes, I'm speaking to you, Friendly Microsoft Recruiter. I really don't need to be contacted every month. You're hiring! I get it! :-)
5. Call for a specific position - at least if you want to increase your chances of being interested. I'd have to be pretty desperate for a job to be excited to hear about a "development" position at some unnamed company - and is that really the person you want?
6. Don't call me for a position I already have. Ok ok, this only happened once, but it was still pretty funny:
   

   Recruiter: "Hi Gayle, would you be interested in a Software Engineering position at Google? We have offices in Mountain View, New York, Seattle, ..."
   Me: "um, I work for Google."
   Recruiter: "What do you mean?"
   Me: "I mean... I'm sitting here, as we speak, at my desk, in Seattle, at Google."
   Recruiter: "Oh."

7. If you leave a voicemail, leave your name, number and company. Speak slowly and clearly. I recently had someone leave two voicemails and each time I couldn't hear the phone number. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have called back anyway... but still. My point remains. The same person also claimed to have sent me an email. She probably didn't spell my email address correctly.

• If I know you (or you know someone I know), and you want to apply to Google, send me your resume. I'll submit it for you.
• If I don't know you, you're welcome to send me your resume anyway. If your resume looks good, I'd have no problems referring you. No promises though :-).

• If you know me or anyone I know: Yes, we have free food. It's tasty and free for guests as well. Join me!
  

• RSS Feeds listing the question of the day and the ten most recently added questions.
• A Google Module that you can add to your personalized homepage.
• In addition to grouping the interview questions by company or category, you can also sort them by date
• A feature to invite your friends to CareerCup or to email them a question

• Technical Interview Questions: Yep, all the same questions - and responses are there from before!
• Grouping by Categories: Questions can now be tagged as "Coding", "Algorithms", etc. This helps you more efficiently find relevant questions.
• General Questions and Comments: There's now a section just for all the general comments (or questions) about someone's experience
• Shout-Outs for Help: No more adding a comment just to say "can someone help me?" Instead, click the "Shout-out for Help" link next to any question and the question will be added to a special Shout-Outs for Help Page
• Question of the Day: Each day, one question will be advertised as the Question of the Day. See a question you think would be a good match for that? You can click to suggest it for Question of the Day
• Add a Question: Instead of having to add your questions all at once (which I think confused people), you now just add a single question (but you can add as many as you want
• Message Board: A messageboard for all your general thoughts or questions (What are the best courses to take in college to get a job? How can you improve your resume?, etc)
• Blog: What site would be complete without a blog? Right now I've dispensed a few pieces of advice on it: how to prepare a resume, and how to decline offers politely. Got something you want to write? Let me know!
• Job Search: Employers can post their job descriptions, and you can post your resume.
• User Accounts: You can now register an account which allows you to do all sorts of things. Employers can contact you, you can post your resume, etc. We even show stats about how much people have liked your questions and comments, to show off just how smart you are!
• Rate Questions: You can now rate questions as "Love It!" or "Hate It!" (or mark something as spam).
• Send Mail: You can send private mail to users. This will also be a way for employers to contact you.
• Favorites: Track your favorite questions with the click of a button, and receive an email whenever someone comments on them.

• Improved organization: Instead of throwing all the content up on one page, it's broken up across multiple pages. As we get more questions, this'll help it scale more.
• Grouping by Question Type: Now, you can view just the coding questions, just the algorithm questions, etc
• Message Board: A message board / forum for asking questions about the job search process.
• Blog: Only two entries right now, but more to come! (Want me to write about something? Let me know)
• Shout-outs for Help: A link you can click that'll flag this question as needing help. This'll advertise to people that this is a tough question and someone wants some hints
• Question of the Day: Each day, one question will be advertised as the Question of the Day. See a question you think would be a good match for that? You can click to suggest it for Question of the Day
• Add a Question: Previously, you could only add questions in bulk. Now, you can add a single question. I hope that this'll encourage more people to add questions, but it may take away value in that you can't see all the questions that someone got in a particular interview. What do you think? Is this a good move?
• BlackBoxJobs: The name is a reference to this idea of "Black Box" where you can't see what's inside. I'll be honest - I'm not thrilled with the name. Got any ideas for a different name? (It would, of course, needs its own .com address - that's my main criteria). Seriously, any ideas for other names?