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Read this first: Reassessing My Online Profile
I enjoy blogging, but I much prefer tweeting about my life. I find it much easier to keep things short and not waste my time ranting about stuff on a blog (which is what tends to happen). However, I’ve come to an interesting crossroads in my career…
No More Work
For the first time in 8 years, I leapt out of the “running a business” world into the “being employed” world last December. I have amassed enough experience to be seen by some very big companies as a Web Strategist and Consultant and to be employed to run a department producing Web Strategy and Delivering Websites for Blue Chip clients.
So I essentially moth-balled my business life and went to this job. The company went into Administration after me being there 7 weeks (about 3 weeks ago) and has left me with no business, has not paid for part of my time there and I now have no money.
Not a sob story
I’m not asking for sympathy here (although it’s nice – I’d prefer some consultancy work)! There are many in my situation in the economic climate, without work and without any means of earning any. I’ve run a business before and I know how things can change quickly, but it has to be the right change. Starting a business from scratch (again) is not a prospect I will take on lightly.
Where to now?
I’ve spent a long time over the past few weeks looking for a new job, or wondering how I can restart my business. There are many options, but not all are appropriate. The job market is shocking at the moment, and the last interview I went to, I was asked how long I was going to stay, as my CV just looked too good. Reading between the lines, I’m concerned that I’ve set my sights too low!
I do think my online profile is key to my next steps, but the question is…
What should I do now?
In the spirit of the internet, I should probably crowdsource my answer, and get those that read my blog and my twitter stream and know me (or at least, know my online persona) to help me out now. Answering questions for me like:
- What do you think I’m good at?
- What area do you think I add the most value to a business?
- If you were to start a new business now, what sector would you focus on?
- Should I just pack it all in and do something completely different?
I’m not sure that will necessarily help though!
Oh, and if anyone else says “do what you love” I shall scream – love and money do not always go hand in hand!
How should my profile change?
If I’m going to change, then I need to change what I talk about, and promote myself more. I’ve been told that I’m very bad at promoting myself but an excellent motivator and inspirational about how to utilise new technologies. Maybe I just need to learn some of the tricks of the online marketers who dominate because they spew out rubbish.
What I really want to do
If I’m honest, what I really want to do is setup a start-up business. But the key to a start-up is having a working idea/prototype, and almost all my ideas are currently not at that stage. I’d love to be involved in a start-up though, so if there are start-ups that require someone who is blue-chip consultant level then get in touch. Sales, marketing, PR, technical architect, strategy… any area.
This is a Wordle of my blog. It basically is a system that takes all the text in my blog, removes all the common english words and creates a picture using those the words. The larger the word, the more times it is used.
My friend Nigel Crawley pointed out that the most common words on my blog are:
- People
- Design
- Social
- Business
He reckons it’s trying to tell me something! Maybe he’s right! Maybe I need to sit up and take some notice of myself.
Maybe Wordle is a simple reporting tool to help you figure out from your blog what your true interests are.
Not for the first time I’ve had a client come back to me with a note saying that another company has “not understood” what my proposal was.
Over the past 7 years, I’ve been engaged by many clients asking for my expertise in how to develop robust and scalable database driven websites. This, of course, is the life-blood of many SME IT consultancies and I think I’m pretty good at it. However, there are problems with this.
It’s turned from being a market where an opinion with experience is valued, to one where the budget is king. The outsourcing of projects to India has brought about the downfall of many small companies because they can produce much more for much less. Experience of architecting and developing these solutions is cast aside to ensure that the bucks are taken care of.
So, when I’m engaged to propose a solution, I have to be very careful about what I propose. It’s turning into a situation where unless I propose the right solution for the client’s preferred outsourcing partner, that the outsourcing partner can quite happily turn around and suggest a different solution and the company will go with them. The upshot is that my proposed solution ends up being prefixed with “disappointing” or “over-budget” or “confusing” when it was anything but.
It’s a cut-throat world out there, and I readily understand that. Client behaviour of this sort isn’t new or particularly complicated to understand. The issue is that to produce the kinds of documentation and implementation plans required for another company to be able to deliver against that appears to be beyond the budget and understanding of a client to pay for. So you are left at the mercy of “other consultants” to ratify what you are proposing. Unless you can (of course) get the development work off the client too, but then, to do that, you’d have to be charging the same as the Indian outsourcing companies already established.
So then, why not just become another one of them? Because, being British, we are born to be entrepreneurial and creative, and the idea of being “one of them” isn’t my cup of tea.
Next business please…
I’m currently in the process of getting a startup off the ground. It’s not easy, and as the technical person in a team of 3, and with the main part of the startup being internet based, then I have to do a lot of work before the other members of the team can get out and sell.
So I’ve spent quite a lot of time developing a prototype. As no-one can ever be certain that a startup will work I’ve also had to spend a bit of time making sure I can earn money if this startup fails (for whatever reason).
I’ve had several interviews for work recently and even blogged about some of my experiences in Experience is obviously overrated which was an exciting and frustrating time. Well, I’ve just received feedback on another interview.
This time, the role was for what you might call a “head of technology” role for a marketing agency. They work with corporate clients in the UK, and are looking to expand their offering by taking on someone with experience in this area, who can take the bulk of the technical decisions but also get their hands dirty.
Now, I thought that this could be my fallback position. I spent the first 3 months of this year at Craik Jones pretty much doing the role that this other company were recruiting a contractor for. It wasn’t fantastically paid (then nothng in New Media is) but I loved being there and the atmosphere was great. I am experienced in this exact role.
So, I have the interview over 2 weeks ago, and through various HR people being on holiday and agents being on holiday and a whole mess of a situation, I get an email back stating that I’m too experienced for the role. To quote the email:
“However, I have spoken to them and whilst they felt you did a very good interview they thought that your experience was too senior for what they were looking for.” (emphasis mine)
On one hand I’m not experienced enough, and on another hand my experience is too senior. I do however, do a very good interview (it can’t have been that good then!). I know the two jobs I’m equating are not the same, but they’re not that different either. One person explained it very well when he said “you don’t get contracts because you don’t have a standard career path”.
So, I appear to be stuck in a situation where my experience of running a business, managing clients, finance, new business development and all of the stuff that goes along with essentially running a small consultancy means very little in the world of contracting.
If I’m not going to be able to get a contract (by being too inexperienced, experienced, senior, junior) then my only hope is that the contract market changes to allow “former small business owners with significant experience in web consulting” to get contracts (any companies wanting some experienced help would be much appreciated), or my startup has to work.
I know which I’d prefer. Watch this space!
Oh – and I’m not going to tell you any details of the startup until it’s launched, but we are looking for angel investment of around £50k at the moment. Any investors interested, please get in touch!
I’ve just been through 2 interviews for contract roles in the past week. They are more senior contract roles than I have gone for before as I believe my skills and experience warrant going for those roles, and it seems that I am at a disadvantage.
The disadvantage? That I’ve run my own business for 5+ years. (Note: I stopped doing that specific business when I had 2 clients fail to pay at once. Took one to court and won, the other I almost took to court, and they paid up).
Why is running your own business a problem?
Well, it seems that if I’m going for a “Project Manager” (PM) role, then there is an expectation that you will have on your CV “Project Manager”. I have “Owner/Manager” for my own business on my CV. I really don’t like lying on my CV.
So for some reason, in the brain of the interviewers I’ve come across recently, that somehow means that my “skills” are not specifically for that role, e.g. Project Management. I would argue that I’ve run a business (that survived for more than a few months!) and that means I must have PM skills to do that, and that I’ve cut my teeth in much more challenging situations. I can point to specific experience of managing various projects and what I’ve done in certain situations as well, but these don’t necessarily correspond to what they want.
One of the issues seems to come down to not being able to point to specific experiences that correspond to the interviewers situation. Case in point in the last interview was discussing booking engines. Now the company requires someone to project manage a booking engine development from requirements through to deployment. Now, I have experience of doing the above process with simple websites, social networking sites, content managed websites, intranet productivity tools, project tracking systems, XML databases, multiple integrated systems… and I could go on. But because I haven’t specifically done a “booking engine” (at least, not in the type of way that they want) then somehow I am unaware of what is involved in that process and that marks me down.
Another issue that has come to light is my apparent ability to remember processes (yes that’s ability to remember). I have been told in each of the last 2 interviews that I have explained very good processes for doing different tasks for the role. In one interview I was told that they could have easily got the processes I was putting forwards out of a book – and as they’d asked me to produce a hypothetical approach document, surely that’s a good thing! Apparently not. I get the impression that they asked me questions and expected answers based on my experience and not on hypotheticals. If that’s what you wanted, then ask for that.
The problem is, that when you’ve spent time being a business owner, you build skills up at very many different levels. The PM role, for example, is a big part of owning a business. So is sales, account/client management, financial (invoicing etc) and legal. If I go for an interview, I expect an interviewer to at least understand that I have well-rounded skills beyond just what I’m interviewing for. The fact that I may or may not know all the buzzwords for a specific role does not disqualify my other experience.
I have a suspicion that I’m not actually going to be content in what I do until I’ve got another new business to get my teeth into. My skills appear suited for entrepreneurship and startup and not for climbing any corporate ladder. Not that I wouldn’t take a job if offered (starting a business is not easy), just that it’s difficult to see what I would be happy doing.
I know this is a rant. Maybe it’s just that I’ve come across 2 poor interviewers, but the people that know me, know what I am capable of, and that understanding can never come across in an interview. Maybe interviewers should take more notice of overall business experience and less notice of the buzzwords they are waiting to hear.
Reassessing My Online Profile Part 3
September 18, 2009 in business, twitter, web 2.0 | Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, business, comment, communities, community, interaction, online, profile, reassessing, social, social media, startup, twitter, web 2.0, who am i | 1 comment
Read these first:
Reassessing my online profile:http://padajo.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/who-am-i/
Reassessing my online profile:http://padajo.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/reassessing-my-online-profile-part-2/
Before we start…
I’m not trying to be narcissistic here and tell you all how great (or otherwise) I am. This is just a series of posts that have come out of my experiences being online and trying to run a business.
What’s my situation now?
I’ve partially resurrected my business over the past few months after having zero joy with getting another job after losing my first proper job for 8 years (after running my business for 8 years – not being a slacker) in January.
The reason I couldn’t get another job? Simple – I’m too experienced. Now, I’m not just saying that to make myself look better, it’s the responses I was getting from prospects. Apparently, I’m too experienced (and therefore likely to move on quickly) to take on a job in a marketing agency lower than senior management level (which I’ve done) and not able to be a senior consultant in an IT consultancy, because my skills are too “varied”. What is frustrating is that I’m perfectly capable of doing both these jobs (having done them both as a contractor many times in the last 8 years).
So I’ve had to develop my own opportunities and as far as new business development is concerned, I’ve found that Social Media is a great term (er… buzzword) to start a conversation with people who need web and marketing skills. I’ve got a few new clients, including some large charities all wishing to utilise my Social Media knowledge and skills, but I’ve also found that most of the time, it takes a few hours, or a couple of days to tell them most of what they need to know to do it themselves.
The one big client I do have (at least, big for me) is a startup for whom i’m building an interactive online classroom. Great work, but hugely frustrating trying to complete it.
My Profile Online – What’s changed?
I’ve actually stopped a lot of interaction on Social Networks over the summer – mainly because it’s the summer, and I have a family, but also because of holidays and moving house. It’s caused me to really think about how much time I spend online and for what purpose.
I’ve adapted my thinking on what I get out of being online. As far as business is concerned, almost all of my work still comes offline from face to face networking and from existing relationships. In fact, I can’t think of a single piece of work from this last 9 months that has come from either an existing relationship (not online) or through new relationships via offline networking.
So… is Online really that important?
Well, now comes the contradiction. It is important to be engaged and developing online networks. Why? Well, I think it is much more to enhance and develop relationships that are created offline (certainly for me).
The users I follow on twitter (for example – my twitter is @pauldjohnston) are generally in these categories:
As you can see, the first two are people I’ve met, and the last two are generally not. The ones I take the most notice of are the first two and the last one. The interesting people I can dip in and out of, but I’m generally not too bothered what they say.
How does this make me reassess my online profile?
As I have stated before, I’m desperate to setup another startup (have done 3 – all failed – learned loads – pretty sure I know what makes a great startup now). However, now is a rubbish time to try and do that (whatever anyone says) and having no consistent work for 9 months means there is no resource buffer to try and develop something new.
I am having to rethink why I blog/tweet (not how much). I’ve realised that just getting involved in conversations, whilst fun and interesting, doesn’t always help me get my work done. So maybe I need to learn about Getting Things Done and productivity tools, but they’re only useful if I actually have a business to work on.
So, the crux of the issue is me
What it comes down to is that if I tweet/blog and comment, people interact, and if I don’t do those things, my interaction reduces significantly (and generally only a handful of people still interact). I have to figure out Who I Am before social media can really help me to develop a business or any othe form of relationships. Maybe I won’t ever figure out Who I Am though, and maybe that’s the point. The journey is much more important than the answer.
Well that’s just great! I’m pretty much back where I started a year ago! It seems that my next step must be looking after the clients I’ve got and coming up with a business idea that I can take to market.
Then, just maybe, you’ll start to see more of the real more on social media.