How to Ace the Second Interview

I read a great tip on how to ace a second interview.  You have done well enough to be asked back for a second interview.  Normally a second interview is a serious sign that you are seriously being considered for the job.  Often times, you actually already have the job and the interview will be used as an opportunity to sell you on the potential job.  This is especially true in competitive industries or for very talented people.

But how do you ensure that you will get that job offer after your second interview.  The secret is to pay good attention during your first interview and ask the right questions.  You should leave your first interview with the following knowledge

• Why are you hiring this position?


•  What are the problems you are facing now and how do you want someone in this position to help out?


• What would you consider to be success in the first 30,60,90 days?

After you get these answers, you should prepare a plan on how to address all these issues.  Make sure you talk to your future boss and explain a plan on how you would address all these issues.  This does a few things for you.  First, it shows you are paying attention.  Second, if the plan is good, it shows you can think through the challenges and you can actually do the job.  Third, and most important, it is going to get your future boss envisioning you in the position and you can discuss reasons why or why not your plan will work.  As soon as you start having this dialog with your future boss, s/he will already be thinking of you in the role, and will be more likely to give you the job.

What do you think?  Does this sound like a rational plan?  Do you have other ideas on how you should approach a second interview?

Doing Nothing is OK ... Sometimes

I often don't think doing nothing is OK.  Most of the time, it is better to make forward progress and then correct later.  I take this as a general approach when determining if I want a piece of software to go out or not.  Often times, people fall into the perfection syndrome.  They hold on to releasing because there is one last bug or one last feature they want to shove in.  This is often the wrong approach and leads to stagnation.

But right now, doing nothing is the exact right thing to do in an ugly market.   The market is too volatile.  I keep trying to find a good place to come in, but the market moves so fast that I can't find a place to get comfortable.  I'm 70% in cash and I'm feeling good about it.  I might be only earning a little more than 3% on my cash, an in reality I'm losing money when you throw in inflation, but it is certainly better than losing double digit percentages which is exactly what will happen if you are on the wrong side of a trade in the market.

If you have to be something, be short.  The market still has about 7%-10%.  I will look to get into the QID if we have a relatively flat or slightly up day in the market tomorrow.  If you HAVE to be long something, I still want to be long the dollar, UUP.   If you are thinking long term, I would want to be in the financials soon.  Not quite here, but soon, because these stocks have been battered.  You have to be in a stock that has no chance of going out of business.  A company like Goldman Sachs.

So if you haven't been able to figure out what to do, like myself, consider yourself lucky.  You probably saved yourself a lot of money.

Traffic Getting Worse

What is going on with Traffic lately?  It has gotten noticeably worse for me no matter what route I take or what time I leave.  Is it just the post-summer bounce and people are all coming back from vacation at the same time?  Is it that oil continues to get cheaper and gas is now under $4 per gallon in California?  Did people just get used to the high price of gas and decide that the alternative means of transportation just doesn't work?

Should the Government Have Saved Fannie and Freddie?

I'm sure you know what I'm going to answer about this before I answer it because you know how I feel about governments stepping in to "save" private businesses.  And of course, you would be right.  I really wish the government had not done anything here, since I really worry about moral hazard.  It also really bothers me that I'm sure the executives of these companies got rich and handsome bonuses based on taking on tremendous risk in the market.  They bought these high yield, high risk assets and made a killing for years.  I'm sure they had bonus structures tied to this performance.  Now that the bill comes due, they are off the hook because the government decided to bail them out.

But I digress for now.  What I really don't understand is what the government is trying to accomplish.  Do they think that by taking over these two failed institutions, they can somehow turn the tide of the housing market?  If they do, the government is even dumber than I thought because this will do nothing to help the average American who is struggling to pay their mortgage.

Let's think for a moment what caused the housing crisis in the first place. Put simply, it was a typical asset bubble.  Nothing more, nothing less.  People got caught up in the real estate myth that housing is the best investment you could ever have and that home prices never go down.  So people bought houses and kept buying houses despite souring cost because they feared being "priced out forever".  All this despite the fact that incomes were not keeping up with the skyrocketing mortgages.  When the music stopped playing, and the chairs were all taken away, we were left with a glut of houses.  Simple economics took over.  When supply starts to outstrip demand, prices fall.  This has caused the underlying value of all the mortgages to fall as well as the asset backing them is plummeting in value.

As these mortgages and derivatives start to lose value, it causes a ripple effect.  Nobody wants to buy an asset falling in price, causing there to be illiquidity in the market.  As nobody will buy these products, new ones can't be created either, meaning the financial markets freeze up.  This cascades even further and makes a system that feeds back on itself and creates even further price declines.

So given this, how will the bail out help?  The bail out has a net effect of ensuring that there is  more money made available to make mortgages.  This might have the effect of lowering interest rates which in turn could make mortgages more affordable.  But look back at what caused the problem in the first place.  Too many houses are out there for too few buyers.  The average income is not able to pay for the average mortgage.  Having more money available doesn't solve this problem.  Housing prices will fall until affordability comes back into line with incomes.

So who does it help?  Definitely not average joe American.  It does help a few institutional investors who have Fannie or Freddie debt.   It helps out the stock market in the short term, but it won't reverse the mid-term trend of the decline.  So we just spent upwards of $25 billion for what?  The short term benefit of a couple of wealthy investors?

Quick Market Thoughts

Market tumbled today and things looked pretty bad.  Just have some quick thoughts on this one.  I'm looking pretty smart the last few days.

• Given the market volatility, market will be up in the next few sessions


• Medium term, we are nowhere near the bottom.  Down another 10% or 20% is easy to see


• Still like the dollar going up.  Buy UUP


• Tech is going to go down even more.  QID is going to be  a buy


• I don't know what to do about Financials.  They are beaten down, but it looks like there is more to go.  If you don't mind it going down another 10%, these are starting to be good long term buys.

Leave the Irrelevant Degree Off Your Resume

I look at resumes all day so I can be pretty critical.  But some people just do things I don't understand.  Case in point, putting a advanced degree on your resume that has nothing to do with the job you are seeking or the career that you have had to date. Now this doesn't apply to your undergraduate degree.  Everyone understands that you likely majored in something that has nothing to do with your current job. This was true for me as I majored in Economics but now work in technology.

But a graduate degree is something different.  First off, you made the decision to go after a graduate degree is totally voluntarily.  While technically getting an undergraduate degree is too, an undergraduate degree is basically a requirement for almost any white-collar job in today's world.   Not only is it voluntary but a graduate degree is also very expensive and time consuming.  I understand that you may be proud of the degree.  I understand it may show you can work and study hard.  But if you got one, but aren't using it, I'm going to want to understand why.  It goes to my assessment of how and why you make important decisions.

Now even if the degree is on your resume, it might not be a death sentence.   What is a death sentence is having a bad answer to the next question, "Why did you pursue this degree and then end up not using it?"  There are a number of OK answers to this question.  None of them involve you telling me that, "I just didn't know what else to do" or "I needed to grow up".  Both responses I have heard.

I will grant two exceptions to this rule

• You have a gap in your resume you can't explain any other way.  A gap is worse than having an irrelevant degree.  However, it is only slightly worse since I may assume you just took some time off for family issues.  This is a path I usually won't (and can't) go down too far.


• It is your first job after you got your degree.  This you should explain away by being honest.  Either you have discovered you don't like what you went to study or you can't find a job in that field.  Both are acceptable answers. Just don't expect me to pay you for the advanced degree that is irrelevant for the job.

So what do you think?  Is it a good idea to put your advanced degree on your resume even if it is irrelevant? If so, under what circumstances?

What's Going on With Oil?

Oil dropped precipitously today, off as much as $9 in today's trading.  This seems to be the exact opposite of what happened just a few months ago as oil skyrocketed to over $140 a barrel.  What's going on.  I believe it is two things.

Normal market activity.  There was definitely speculation on the way up.  There is now the reverse trend happening.  This is a GOOD thing.  Over the last few months, "speculation" has become a dirty word.  However, I am of the belief that it is a good thing when markets are allowed to function the way they are designed to do.  This is exactly why.  As fast as the market was able to go up, the market is able to take it back down.  While this volatility may be painful to some, it allows there to be liquidity in the market.

The dollar is getting stronger.  Don't look now, but there have been a few weeks of sustained gains by the dollar after years of a downtrend against the Euro.  As much as I'm not a fan of the U.S. market, the foreign markets are looking equally weak.  I have a lot of money invested in foreign funds, so this is probably not a good trend for me.  Just might be one of those things where I have always imagined that the grass was greener when it probably was not.  If this continues, I will probably try to make a bet on the dollar.  Easiest way to do this is to play the dollar ETF, UUP.

What do you think?  Do you think it likely that the US economy will perform better than foreign economies over the next few years?