Double Journey

My girlfriend was reading a book called The World’s Greatest Resumes by Robert WM. Meier. In it he talks a lot about having the perfect corporate pedigree and how his book can help those that don’t have a perfect corporate pedigree. It tells you how to emphasize certain aspects of your resume, and how to work your way around some of your weaknesses. Overall, I think she would recommend the book, as her resume looks pretty good now.

I write about this because when I asked about the book, she told me I didn’t need it, because I have the perfect corporate pedigree. I laughed when she said this, except she was serious. I’ve never really thought of myself this way despite the fact that I’ve always seem to be able to find a job, and a good job, when I want one. So just what does make a perfect corporate pedigree? While not coming out and explicitly saying it, Meier seems to suggest that a great pedigree involves

• Having an Ivy League Degree
• Working for a big Fortune 500 Company
• Having a continuous work history that shows good career progression

I fit the bill because I graduated from Princeton University, I have worked for two Fortune 500 Companies, Accenture and Microsoft, and I have no large gaps in my resume. I believe I took a small step backwards with my move to Microsoft, but I can easily explain the move and to outsiders it looks like a smart career move. So having these “qualifications” supposedly makes me more desirable to potential employers. Is it true?

Hard to say. I would say there is no doubt that many doors have been opened to me because the Princeton and Microsoft name carry some clout. I have a pretty high success rate of responses to people who I sent my resume to. I would say that of all the resumes I sent out in my latest job search, I had about a 40% response rate. This is a phenomenal number. But I want to stress this. I think this allowed me to get a call back, I don’t think it helped me all that much to actually get the job. But considering the fact that getting the call back might be the hardest part, then this may indeed be a key success factor.

HR and hiring managers might look through hundreds of resumes to fill an important position. Lots of times, they will only scan your resume and look at your eduction, job history, and previous titles. It is important to have something on your resume that will let you stand out from the crowd in this case, and having the above criteria certainly won’t hurt you.

The point of me writing this post is that you need to understand what many employers are looking for in order to prepare for it accordingly. If you have the above pedigree, great, you are set. Just make sure your resume looks decent and that you use the advantage that you have wisely. If you don’t, you need to be sure that you are showing off your qualifications in some other way to stand out. Further, if you have the opportunity to enhance your resume in some way, like going to get your MBA at a top-tier school, or to go work for a Fortune 500 company, you need to seriously consider it.

That’s my admittedly bias perspective. What do you think? How important is having a good “corporate pedigree”?

Free Money Finance wrote a post the other day about when to not take a job offer. I actually think it is a pretty interesting topic. I’m touching on it a little bit earlier than I want but when I take into account that I just accepted a job offer, it makes sense to talk about why I took this one as opposed to other job offers.

As I started writing this post, I realized it really depends on the particular situation. Therefore, I’m going to write this post in a few different parts to address each situation. The situation I think most people will find themselves in is that they still are at their current job (company A) and they are looking for a change in scenery. For this exercise, I’m going to assume you are trying get as high on the corporate ladder as you can in the shortest amount of time. So given this situation, imagine you receive a job offer from Company B, should you take it? Here are situations I would not take a job offer.

You are not 100% sure that whatever is bothering you about your current job is not going to happen at the new job - Most people fail to realize that a lot of problems they have with their job is not specific to their team, company, etc. They fail to realize that whatever they hate about their current job is going to exist at their next job and so get stuck in a vicious cycle.

You are going to take significantly less money for the same role - This is actually an extension of above. If you are going to switch companies to do the same work, why would you take a pay cut? Pay is important. It isn’t strictly about what it will buy you. It’s the fact that it is a signal to you how important the job is to the company. If one company is going to pay you less, you have to wonder if it really is the same job.

You are going to take a lesser role - I have actually fallen trap to this. I was eager to leave Company A and took a position where my role would be less than what it was at the time (the money was about the same). While it worked out for me, this is generally not a good idea. If you want to reach the top of the corporate ladder, it is critically important that you have steady progression upwards. If you take a lesser role, and it doesn’t work out, this will impact you as you look for a new job at Company C. Here is a little secret. Changing jobs is often the BEST time to go for a promotion. That’s right. Often, it is easier to get a BETTER role going to a new company than it is at your own, so you should almost never take a lesser role. Keep looking if this is the case.

You haven’t mapped out what you want in your career - If you don’t know what you want, hoping to find it at your next job is the wrong way to find it. Changing jobs should be a very thoughtful exercise, you need to do it for the right reason. You should not jump from job to job hoping that someone will tell you what you should be doing. Nobody cares about your career more than you do. If you think you are going to find a manager who is suddenly going to tell you what you should be doing and how you will get there, you will be looking for a long time.

You haven’t really tried to make it work at your current job - The grass isn’t always greener. A lot of people just move from job to job hoping to find that “perfect” job. They don’t actually realize that their current situation isn’t all that bad, and haven’t tried to work out the issues they have. Most companies and managers want to retain good people and don’t want to see you leave. If it can be worked out, you should at least explore if staying is a legitimate option.

Despite all these reasons not to take a job offer, let me give you something to think about that was said by a friend of mine just last night. If the only reason you are at your current job is inertia, you need to get out. I can’t tell you the number of people I have talked to who have told me that they are “comfortable” at their current job so they don’t want to look for another. They only reason they are where they are, is that it is “too hard” to find another job or they are too lazy. That is the absolute worse reason to be at a job, and a sure sign you need to be looking hard to go somewhere else.

Those are my reasons not to take a job offer if you are deciding between your current job and a new one, can you think of any more?

As I was looking around my Adsense site, I noticed that there was now an option for a video option courtesy of YouTube. I have thus far only done a small adsense section in the lower right corner of my blog, but was curious to see what the Adsense/YouTube add would actually look like. So I'm putting the code here to see what it looks like. I'll post it up for a while, and share my thoughts on it after I see how it really works.

Update: Finally got this to work, but had to do a few things to make sure Javascript works in a Wordpress Post. It was surprisingly hard to figure out how to do this. So if anyone else wants to figure out how to make an adsense Video script work in wordpress you just have to do the following

1. Read this about Javascript and Wordpress. Specifically the section about Javascript in Post.
2. Download and install the text control plugin.
3. Set it so that the post is not formatted
4. Plugin the Script that YouTube gives you. Use the "code" section of the post.
5. Do not re-save the work as soon as you paste the code. Wordpress formats this for some reason, breaking the post.

Not a huge fan of this. Not sure how one would use it to integrate it into your site. Am I supposed to have a big section to the side to host this video? I also can't control the content on it at all so how do I know my readers would be interested in it? It's kind of big and obtrusive, unlike traditional adsense ads and the adsense area is kind of small in comparison to the video so not sure how well it will be as an advertising section. I don't see how I would use it on my site, but I'll search around and see if I can find anyone who actually does something creative or useful with this new ad format.

Just some quick thoughts on the market that opened this morning.  I’m watching it somewhat closely so that I can find my first trade which I will do this week.  Not quite ready to do it yet, but soon.

Two stocks I’m watching today.  The first is ETrade.  Still not interested in buying more of it at this point, just want to watch.  But it had a big announcement today that  Citadel investment has invested $2.55B.  For that money, Citadel got a lot from Etrade, including 17% of the company.  The deal looks bad from a shareholder perspective, but it’s good that a large fund is taking a stake in Etrade.  These funds don’t do this to lose money.  They do it to make lots of money, so it does give some hope to Etrade investors.  Still don’t buy the stock here though.

Dell actually looks very interesting to me.  Again, I don’t think I buy here, but there is probably going to be some action here after the bell.  Dell is going to have a conference call today, something they haven’t done in a while.  Michael Dell has retaken the helm and PC sales have been strong for the last quarter.  I think Dell surprises to the upside.  It has been strong as of late, but I think with strong numbers, Dell can push through the $30 resistance which has held it down for years (much like MSFT temporarily pushed through its resistance).  I think it has $4 of upside, maybe $1 of downside.  Not bad.   Will know what you should do here in about 3 hours.

A quick financial lesson. While this post may not seem relevant to me telling my back story, almost everything I talk about will be based on this concept, so pay attention. If you want to be rich, one of the most important things you will ever learn is the power of compound interest. This concept is best learned through example.

Let’s say you decide to invest in a Roth IRA, my favorite investment vehicle. You decide to start one today and invest the maximum $4,000 every year. You invest it wisely in an index fund that follows the total stock market which has historically returned 10% a year. In 40 years, your $4,000 a year, ($160,000 in principal payments) turns into $1,947,407.24, All of it tax free.

Now imagine if you were a good little saver and have saved the last 4 years. With a modest gain over the last few years you have $17,000 in your account. With the same investment strategy above you now have at the end of 40 years 2,716,814.59, All of it tax free. That is almost $800,000 difference for saving a little bit earlier. That $17,000 turned into $800,000!

Still not convinced? How about this? You do the above strategy from the ages of 25-35 and then stop. So for 10 years you invest $4,000 and then nothing after that. By the age of 65 you will have an account worth $1,223,633,58. Your $40K turned into $1.2 Million.

Or instead, you do nothing from the age of 25-35 and instead save from the age of 35-65 with the same strategy. Your final balance will be $723,773,70. Your $120K turned into $720K. Not bad until you consider that that’s a half-million dollar difference from the previous example of $1.2 Million! And you put in 1/3 the amount in principal and saved 3x as long!

The lesson? Save early, save often. I can’t stress this enough to my young friends. I know it is hard to save money now, but in the long run, it makes a BIG difference. This concept applies outside of finance as well. Doing the right things today, can pay big rewards tomorrow. You should always have an eye on the future and understand that small differences today, can have big repercussions in the future. This applies to you choosing what school to go to, what job to take, whether or not you should buy that new TV, pretty much everything you can think of. The younger you are, the more important this concept is. Understanding this at a very young age, helped me to get where I am today as I will explain shortly.

John Chow has a post today where he is offering to give away a Microsoft USB Lanyard. It actually isn’t even the main purpose of his post, it actually is only a small blurb at the end of the blog. But the number of comments he has gotten on it in a very short time is, as expected, very high as that is the way to enter the contest to win the Lanyard. I have TONS of Microsoft crap, as I of course worked there and received lots of stuff in my short time there.

This is of course a tried-and-true way to increase traffic in any arena. Give away stuff. I had one experience at Microsoft that actually scared me and made me shake my head at other Microsofties. At one of the product fairs that Microsoft has yearly for its employees, I was manning a booth. Some of the other booths were giving away SWAG like T-shirts, stress balls, etc. I made my way to the booth next to mine and tried to wait patiently in line for a T-Shirt. While waiting I was being pushed and shoved by people from all sides. People were grabbing T-Shirts out of the hands of other Employees! It was a mad house. And remember, these are Microsoft Full Time Employees. Almost all of them make close to six-figures. Yet they are willing to trample their fellow employees to get their hands on a free $5 T-shirt. Unbelievable.

I’m not sure I have the traffic yet to actually justify doing a give away. Also, I suspect that most of my readers actually work at Microsoft at the moment so not sure how effective giving away Microsoft stuff would be. Then again, given what I experienced above, maybe those employees would be the most aggressive at trying to get the SWAG. Does anybody want any SWAG?

One of the things I thought I would touch on before I actually start my mad dash for the double would be to continue on the topic of how I was able to get into the position I am in now. I started this conversation in an earlier post, but when I thought about it, realized there was much more to it than just save, save, save. Over the next several days, I will dive a little bit into my personal life and let you all in on how I’ve been able to get where I am today, creating a site where I just might blow $20,000.

I didn’t do all of this by accident. If there is one thing my life has been, it’s been deliberate. I’ve been relatively successful in my life, and I think it’s very important that you understand just who you are getting in the car with before we all take this journey. More importantly, I think I can share some advice and insight on the one thing I have been really good at doing thus far, managing my career and saving for retirement.

My ability to start this little project of mine is a direct result of my ability to manage my career and finances. These are two things I think are vitally important to people of all ages but especially so to people like me who are in the earlier parts of their career. I might go off in some strange directions that don’t make sense at first, but believe me, it will all come together in the end.

After doing some serious thinking (didn’t I say I always think a lot after talking to my friend) I’ve decided to make a slight course adjustment. Like any journey, you find things on the way, and new obstacles are presented to you which will make you rethink your strategy. A little more than two weeks in, I’ve had both happen to me.

The first, and probably most significant thing, is that I’ve decided to take a new job in Los Angeles. While I’m very excited about the opportunity, it greatly affects my ability to execute on my strategy for multiple reasons. I had actually planned on taking some more time off from the working world. Partially to just take a break, partially to get this project up and running. I had been interviewing with a couple of companies without any real intention to take the job. I was doing it to keep my interviewing skills sharp. Ideally, I wouldn’t have even considered jobs until after the first of the year. But when the right job comes along, you have to take it, and it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Of course, that means I have a lot less time to come up with my strategy and to execute it. Active trading is out the window as there is no way I’ll be able to monitor stocks closely enough to get in and out of positions when I should while simultaneously starting a new job. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to put my money to work in the market, I just can’t take the same approach I would have.

There is more data to suggest this is the right course of action. Despite the appearance of inactivity with the money, I’ve actually been monitoring the market and testing a few of my strategies without putting my capital at risk. Most of my strategy would have been positive (which would be good considering how down the market has been in the last month) but it would not get me close to what I need to do. It was a short time frame, so that doesn’t mean too much, but at the same time I know I can’t do this with a full-time job on top of it.

Despite this, THE DOUBLE JOURNEY IS STILL ON. I’m not one to put out a goal and then stop before I accomplish it. I will still attempt to end up with $40,000 on Dec. 18th 2008. I’m just going to have to find a different way to do it. I’ll get it partially through the market, but it is going to be a much smaller focus than it would have been otherwise. This site will have a slight change in tone. I still want to keep it up, and I still plan on blogging regularly about my progress, but in between my ideas I will focus on some other topics that hopefully you will all find more interesting. I love finance, I love talking stocks, but in the end, it can be a dry read.

The secret to a great blog, and great writing in general, is to write about what you know. If you write about something you are passionate about, and you write it well, people will come read. I’m passionate about a few things. My relationships, money, technology, basketball, and of course my job. I think I’ll leave my girlfriends and friends out of it, since I’m not so sure I could tell people how I’ve been able to get so lucky in this department. Technology has been done in a lot of different places and I don’t think I could do better than Engadget or Gizmodo. We have already been over the money idea. Tyler already has a basketball blog and will tell you it’s hard to keep up. Besides, I might throw something at my screen if the Lakers keep losing and I’m writing about it. Since I just bought this computer, and I love the huge monitor I got with it, I want to avoid that situation.

That leaves me blogging about my job and my career. I actually end up talking to a lot of my friends about their job and I love to provide job advice. I’ve been relatively successful in this part of my life and feel I have a lot to offer in this area. Since I’m recently unemployed, and felt I had a pretty successful job search, I will start off with that and see where it goes. I think its a subject with a lot of interesting areas to explore from finding the right job, getting the offer, and dealing with headaches once you arrive. Since I and so many of my friends struggle with these issues on a daily basis, I think it would be at the very least, entertaining and informative.

Today I had lunch at what anyone with a website would consider Mecca. More appropriately, it would have to be called Mecca Northwest, since I didn’t actually make it down to Mountain View. I didn’t go there to learn any secrets, or to find a job, but rather to have lunch with a friend. This was the “friend” who convinced me that it was a good idea to come up to Seattle. The last few weeks, with the biting cold we have been experiencing, I’ve been evaluating the wisdom of this decision. More about that later.

Google seems like a pretty good place to work. Food everywhere, no doubt I would gain weight if I worked there. They even had a massage chair, which almost convinced me to hand over my resume. Too bad they don’t have a place for a Microsoft Program Manager (than again who does? It’s a job that seems to only exist at Microsoft).

I always enjoy talking to this friend. Whenever we talk, I walk away having learned something or having something to think about. Today, we discussed this site a little bit, but mostly in the context of trying to do something outside of work. It’s obviously something I think about a lot, thus the reason for this site. I realize that it would certainly be possible to get rich doing what I do for my day job, but I’m not sure it would happen as fast as I would like or be as fun as building up something on my own. He of course commented that he would never do what I was doing (I didn’t think I would either) it was certainly good that I was doing something.

Of course, I don’t want to do this strictly through trading, but it is where I’m starting for now. If I can somehow make money in some other capacity, whether it being developing a widget or selling lemonade on the side of the road, I’m certainly open to do it. I’m just not sure how successful I will be selling lemonade on the side of the road in Seattle when it is 30 degrees outside.

I’m really tired of the media trying to make it out as if the market is in horrible shape. Every time I turn on CNBC, there is some expert talking about doom and gloom in the markets. Now there is no doubt that certain parts of the market are bad, particularly the financial sector. My own long-term portfolio has taken a beating since I own ETFC as well as some energy stocks which have done poorly as of late, but please stop trying to paint the market as bad. The S&P 500 is positive for the year by a few percentage points. Come talk to me when we are negative for the year. Despite what the “chicken” is saying above, the sky is not falling. The way my portfolio is structured, I’ve been waiting for the sky to fall, but thus far, it is still up there.