A legal, non-political question.

Let’s say John Doe is “under review” by the FBI. The FBI says “Give us all the email traffic you generated that should have been generated in-house and never out of government control to begin with.”

John Doe says “Ok ,after my dozens of uncleared attorneys and IT maintenance people review it for classified information.” John Doe then sends around 2/3 of it which contains the kind of information that should never have been exposed to anyone not having a TS SCI level clearance. Then the other 1/3 of the information shows up containing even more classified material.

At the very least…shouldn’t John Doe be charged with numerous crimes? Shouldn’t the uncleared reviewers be under investigation?

Bono Is Your Last Name Bo?

It’s been a while but I needed to write this one …I was in the fitness center listening to an audio book. Glanced at CNBC morning squawk or something. Can’t hear but the graphic on screen over some guy interviewing Bono in Davos quotes him “We have to keep public pressure to get money from government budgets.”

Sorry if this is an insult to Bonobos but Bono, isn’t it enough to buy a ticket that costs as much as a Chinese worker makes in a month to hear you sing? I don’t even need or want to know the rest of the story behind you encouraging people of any country to tell their governments to take their money and use it for any purpose you may deem worthy.

I might  change my mind if I found out your intent is to have that money given back to the people it was taken from in the first place.

Please go back to singing. I’ll go back to my audio book.

Willie Degel and Where Have I Been?

So, now that we seem to be past the “It’s all about me” age I am back to see my blog is still here after God knows what (I’ll check it all later). Meanwhile. Restaurant Stakeout has this Willie Degel guy dispensing the kind of advice I used to pay $250 for a 4 hour seminar to get. Tommy Hopkins, Rick Pitino, Stephen Covey got nothin’ on this guy. He sounds like …well…if New York had hillbillies he’d be Jed Clampett but everything he sees and says when he takes apart a restaurant is right on point. I don’t care if this is ever seen by anyone but if it is it’ll be a favor to whoever sees it and it’ll be a nice compliment for Willie. Train your staff! 🙂

P.S. Where have I been comes later 🙂

 

The State of AI

From a former contact in AI development.

“Or it may be that the problems people are using BRMS’s for are so simple that sequential rules, each checking a field on a claim, are all the reasoning most people need. Or it may just be that cheap low end junk always wins. Or maybe it’s IBM.”

I think this is one more factor contributing to my being completely out of this area now. I think everything you said is correct (mostly because it consists mostly of facts). It IS a combination of factors but the biggest is that…in many cases… crap is enough. It is why there are thousands of chain restaurants serving ribs and chowder out of plastic bags along with corn that went from the freezer to the glow light and tastes like cattle feed.

Maybe call it AAI? Artificial Artificial Intelligence?
I do think it is all many companies need. I think Artificial Intelligence has moved upstream. Artificial Mediocrity has taken over. We don’t need true intelligence to make decisions about loans and health insurance for the people who eat at Chili’s and Red Lobster.

It ‘feels’ like the real AI work has moved up to systems and levels that just can’t or don’t take advantage of all the guys like you who can do this stuff. It feels about the same as it did when there stopped being a difference between programmers and software engineers and when companies quit looking for people who know what compilers were.

Now it feels like there are so many under-employed people around. Like the Kurdish Physicist who works in my apartment complex or the Chinese MD who runs a fast-food outlet.

This is why I now am working only on IP attorney searches.

Let me know if the market ever comes back…

I miss all the guys I don’t get to call anymore.

Back in the Saddle Again

Great chorus for this Aerosmith tune. I’ve heard the song a hundred times since I first saw the band live in 1977 or thereabouts and never had a clue to the rest of the words. I can’t tell if the words were written while very drunk or if maybe they’d make more sense when heard in that condition. The first 42 seconds of the link at the end of this post is a nice loop to start the day.

Just the snippet of the chorus keeps running through my heard though because of the timing of a number of events.

After years of banging our heads against the walls doing search in the intelligence community…and then after a few years of the intelligence community banging our heads against the wall for us…we have become busy enough with other searches that we are only keeping two clients in this space.

This blog has been dormant for months while the realization of the futility of working this niche was combined with a couple other significant factors.

Our largest commercial account was sold to an unfriendly VC firm, our second-largest commercial account is re-tooling their open searches for a couple months and certain clueless, interested parties think we are making it all up.

Maybe someday those clueless, interested parties might realize it would be a lot better for them if they’d let me focus on what I should be doing instead of dreaming up new ways to distract me and make it harder to completely re-tool my business. On the other hand, maybe not since the clueless party makes a living stirring and spurring the interested party.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing the Aerosmith tune because we didn’t even need to go find a new niche. It found us. In a few months we should be blogging several times a week about all the fun and interesting things we are seeing in the field of legal search.

Within a week, I expect to post something here about the first major difference Clyde and I have seen. It is the puzzling and delightful phenomenon of the humanity and simple courtesy exhibited by the players in our new niche as compared to the folks we used to call so frequently and speak with so seldom.

Yeebaa!

http://clip.dj/aerosmith-back-in-the-saddle-download-mp3-mp4-bDKxUt9UkmU

The Reason for “Don’t Call Us,We’ll Call You”

It’s been a busy summer. Been away from the blog for a while. Feels like a good time to update the old idea of what I tell people who come to me looking for jobs. I think most people hearing this for the first time appreciate it. I know our paying clients appreciate it.

Dear Job-seeker:

I can certainly sense your frustration with the job market. It’s long been a frustration of mine that what people in my field do admittedly conditions people to have certain expectations when they come to us while looking for a new opportunity.

My frustration is that while any normal person would indeed think we’d be able to do something it’s normally the toughest time for us. 

Our clients hire us to go find their competitor’s best people…and if we are any good we usually have clients lined up wanting more of them than we can find. 

So what usually happens is I send this apology and I send along any companies I think might be a match for you that you can approach yourself. Then a couple years from now when you are happily employed a client sends a description for someone just like you. I call you and if you remember me then we see if our client can compete. 

That said, I never feel like this step is ‘wasted’ because sometimes there IS a match with a current search and we DO often go back later and do some good. 

I hope this helps with your overall effort and I encourage you to make these connections. It’s just better to have a good set of expectations at the beginning.

Google+

Just when I maybe,kinda’, halfway, sorta’, little bit, let myself think I may be figuring out facebook along comes GooglePlus. Who knows? Maybe it’ll overtake facebook someday. Right now though, I don’t see a single thing about it that is the least bit interesting. I hope I learn something more about it.

 Maybe it is more valuable than what I still think is the biggest waste of time in history…Twitter…Can’t wait to review this post in a year. Still loving all my Twitter-carping from years back.

Just a Few Questions

If this were “Jeopardy!” the correct response would be “What is a PCA?” We had to call it something. It is the big, scary thing many people never check out. These are handled best in a conversation but can also be done as written exchange.

Our biggest battle is just getting someone’s attention long enough to show that the only interest we ever have is whether or not we might be able to bring some kind of value now or years from now. I thought we should put this out there so people can see what we’ll talk about even before we talk about it.

We ALWAYS have ‘hot jobs’ and great clients just like doctors always have pills but we don’t go into a conversation assuming anyone needs medicine.

So, if we are calling you or “InMailing” or emailing you for the first time it is probably for this and we are happy to answer your questions first. Here’s the PCA.

====================================================

     Thank you for interacting with S e a r c h P a r t n e r. We specialize exclusively in the search for, and direct placement of, cleared technology professionals in the DC/Baltimore/N.VA. area. Most of our business is engaged (retained) so it is essential that we know the best people in our field as opposed to the ‘active’ people.

     One more reminder…We’ll be just as happy as you are if you never need to leave the company you are with now. A majority of people who complete this exercise are not planning any change at this time and it does not signal us that you are ready to do anything more than get to know us.

     Note that this form is for our internal use unless otherwise discussed with you. Please send whatever level of responses you are comfortable with. We are looking forward to possibly representing your interests even if that means confirmation you are already perfectly placed.

1)      Describe in detail what you would be doing in your ideal next position. What technology would you work with? Who would you report to? What types of projects would you be working on? Does it differ from what you do now? The more detail you provide the better for us to understand your career aspirations.       

2)      When were you happiest in your career and why?    

3)      Where are you willing to work?  How far are you willing to travel to and from work?  Is there any reason to even discuss relocation?     

4)      What is your total compensation package?  Please include base, bonus, incentives, stock, etc, and list each separately. Bear in mind this may need to be substantiated at some point. What kind of package do you expect in your next move?      

5)      Please tell us what you can about your security clearance. We are not fishing for info we should not have but we have found people usually can tell us about polys, badges and ability to work ‘on site’.      

6)       What could possibly motivate a decision to leave your current job? If you have not yet made that decision what factors would influence it. 

7)      Describe your search activity, if any, over the past 12 months. Please include any information about interviews and/or offers you have had as well as the types of positions you have evaluated. Who has your resume? If it is available publicly we need to know that now.      

 

 

Sold! To the Highest Bidder

I sent the message below to some folks on LinkedIn and regular email if we had it. We usually don’t do the ‘reactionary’ thing because we don’t have time, but this time it seemed worth a message or two just to make a point. We are offering people the ability to have choices about where they work. Some of the people who regularly discourage you from checking us out do so for a couple reasons.

One is that they know we are good at what we do.

Another is that it might make it more difficult for them to do the exact opposite of what we do. That is to send you an email or call on a  Friday or Monday and let you know that you and all your co-workers have a new employer and you don’t even get to interview.

Would it not be better to know senior management at a couple other companies? You might even end up making a bigger contribution to the mission if you end up with a different part of the customer. Or you could confidently choose to remain with the company you just got sold to if you know it’s a good deal instead of being told it is by the management team you just made wealthy.

It’s probably also good to note here that our clients have different budgets and they spend money in different ways. Some hire us. Some hire internal recruiters. Some drive really nice cars. It all comes from the money the customer pays your company. It’s just divvied up differently by companies that have varying philosophies.

We have no desire to cost the customer needless dollars. And we don’t when the occasional person ends up in a more productive position for money that is not a lot different because we all know money isn’t usually a reason to move. It can be if you are a bit behind the market but unless you talk to us how will you know?

Bottom line…if you all just did better in the acquisition, what does that say about the time you spent waiting for it? And if you didn’t do better why aren’t you getting to know us? What other fantastic planet has a situation where you get an agent/broker that you don’t even have to pay who wants nothing more than to see if he could ever improve you and your families’ lives ?

Usually we try to be a bit more subtle but this time we’re just spitting it out.  We spend a lot of time trying to help people understand that it is ok to have a contingency plan. A contingency plan is a good thing to have when you get sold to another company. Sometimes the new company is better. Sometimes it is not. Either way, it would be good to have a bit of an idea. Many of you don’t get back to us because you think we really mean ‘move right now’. Some of you know better. There’s never a bad time to confidentially get to know a couple other good companies without even having to fill out applications etc. Please send a regular email or phone for further correspondence. Maybe next time you’ll get a choice. For more, see Dave Staats’ blog link on his profile.

For the record, I don’t know many specific people at Pangia or CACI. I am just discussing the nature of the beast here. They are probably all fine people.

Everyone in those two companies was probably bought and sold at least once and some were placed individually by us.

Back to the Blog… LinkedIn Contact Settings

Since I just found the WordPress App for LinkedIn and it glaringly displayed the ‘xxx Days Ago’ by each post I thought it time to come back to my faithful reader more regularly. Let’s call him Tom.

Tom loves LinkedIn the way cats love mice. I have learned to appreciate a few more of the facets but something I want to make a theme on here is the “Contact Settings -Interested In” feature of the LinkedIn profile. I’d love help from anyone reading this to preach the gospel of Contact Settings Awareness to anyone with a LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn claims a value of ,and displays a price of, about $10 for an InMail. I don’t know if anyone pays THAT, but they do cost money. I ask people about hit rates all the time and they are not very high. LinkedIn gives me all these stars for my InMails because mine are rarely rejected. I think they are rarely rejected because they are rarely read.

Maybe I should not expect more than a 10% or 20% return rate but even a person still gob-smacked by the lovelieness of Jamaicans with an inability to get really mad about stuff anymore can still get pretty annoyed by people who invite contact about what we do and then do not even bother to say ‘buzz off’ or ‘leave me alone’ after 6 or 8 InMail attempts.

I am not talking about some of my friends in the intel community who have 3 contacts because they log on to LinkedIn once a year. I am talking about the ones who have 100 to 500 contacts and obviously spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. It is just kind of rude when you said ‘Contact me about Career Opportunities’ to ignore these messages.

I am on the federal do not call list for phone calls. I have a right to get pissed when the burial plot people call me…and anyway I want to be in a baggie until someone scatters my ashes…well wherever they want since I won’t be there.  Just don’t get them in someone’s eyes.

I have the utmost respect for people with LinkedIn profiles saying “Is not open to yadayada” I also respect people who turn off the porch light on Halloween. Heck, after Thank You and Hello the first word they taught me when I got my first daughter in China was Bu Yao meaning “I don’t want it.”

In the overall scheme of life, this is a pretty small thing but it also doesn’t take much time to correct. Please tell everyone you know, when LinkedIn comes up, to review their contact settings. We are happy to go to the next porch where the light is on and the door is open or the candy is sitting on the front step.

Have fun! I know I am.