Gyroscope. The best quantified self app I’ve found. Gyroscope collects all the bits of data you log across various services and devices. It then displays things in daily and weekly logs that are beautiful. Hat tip Bryce.
Year: 2016
Resume advice
In helping a friend with their resume this morning I shared some of the advice I wrote up with the Support Driven community. Folks seemed to appreciate it enough that I wanted to log it here for future reference.
These aren’t necessarily deep insights. They are things, though, that I’ve often seen job applicants forget or skip over.
- The more succinct your resume is the better. You don’t want to cut important experience. At the same time, though, 4+ pages is too long. If you can fit your relevant past experience into one page that’s ideal.
- Your resume’s brevity matters because a hiring team will only maybe look at the resume and if they do then maybe they’ll go past Page 1. The more complete Page 1 is the better chance you have of an accurate first impression.
- Visually it helps to make the content scan-able. If a hiring team has just 90 seconds to glance at your resume then how can you use font weights, color, and text size to draw their eye to the right things?
- For each job application read through your job summaries and focus on whether the descriptions are clear to your audience. Are there things you want to emphasize for one job but maybe not another? Are you including the right project samples and client names?
- For how you describe a job, cater to your audience. Your descriptions should be different depending on whether a hiring manager, an engineer, or the HR team is reviewing applications. Who reviews your resume may influence what they’re looking for. It helps to think that through.
If you follow that advice you’ll likely also realize that it requires writing a different resume for each job application. That’s intentional. When your resume is generic and not tailored to the company or role you are applying for it shows.
I think the main goal of a resume is to be interesting enough to get you a conversation with the company. If you don’t cover every project, client, or skill that’s okay. What counts is covering the sampling of things which will be most relevant toward getting you on to the next step of the process.
The IT Era and the Internet Revolution
people in the pre-Internet era didn’t read local newspapers because holding an unwieldy ink-staining piece of flimsy newsprint was particularly enjoyable; people read local newspapers because it was the only option. And, by extension, people don’t avoid local newspapers’ websites because the reading experience sucks — although that is true — they don’t even think to visit them because there are far better ways to occupy their finite attention.
Ben Thompson – The IT Era and the Internet Revolution.
SUPCONF: New York
One of the things I’m most proud of from this year was helping to organize the first ever SUPCONF in San Francisco. I spoke about how to build a career in support and helped plan pieces of the event. It was amazing to see a Slack community come together in-person and connect.
Later this month we’re holding the next SUPCONF in New York City. Over two days we’ll host speakers from Medium, SmugMug, Wistia, Help Scout, Automattic, and more. Beyond that we’ll have dedicated time and space to talk with other attendees.
That time and space for connecting with attendees was one of the things I was happiest with from SUPCONF SF. I think attendees walked out of the two days having gotten to know far more people than a traditional conference would have allowed for. A hallway track can be great for outgoing folks. Being intentional with how it’s organized, though, can give even those who aren’t outgoing the confidence to engage.
We also have many other events happening around the conference. From a pre-event cupcake social to a GIF battle to a hosted dinner and conversation there’s a lot going on.
If you find that interesting I’d recommend registering soon while there are still a few tickets left.
Hawaii
In late-September Leah and I headed to the big island of Hawaii for a week. We stayed in another great VRBO rental with a back porch that went right down to the Kapoho tide pools.
The hiking in Volcanoes National Park was (unsurprisingly) wonderful. The Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden was amazing and has a pretty cool backstory.
See the rest of the photos…
Timberline Trail Hike
Leah and I took Tuesday off work to take advantage of the nice weather and get some hiking in. We kept it easy and just drove up to Timberline Lodge to hike out to Paradise Park and back. It was overcast all day which made for sub-par photos but ideal temperatures. View the full gallery →