Intranet Blog

10 dumbest interview blunders

Toby Ward — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:00:00 -0700

How many times have you said, or hear, “I can’t believe they hired that guy…” We’ve all been connected to a bad hire (or sometimes been that bad hire).

CareerBuilder.com recently asked pollsters Harris Interactive to survey hiring managers about the worst resumes they’ve seen. Some of the interview comments heard and resume statements were quite zany to say the least. Among them, some razor sharp candidates…

· Specified that availability to work Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays is limited because the weekends are "drinking time."

· Drew a picture of a car on the outside of the envelope and said the car would be a gift to the hiring manager.

· Listed hobbies that included sitting on a levee at night watching alligators.

· Explained an arrest record by stating, "We stole a pig, but it was a really small pig.”

I suppose there are worse hires. I once had a client’s employee come to me (13 years ago) with a wad of cash that a customer used to pay (rather than a cheque or Visa) and said, “So, let’s split it.” My client was a charity.

HIRING AN INTRANET CONSULTANT OR MANAGER

In honor of these bright lights and some of our own favorites, I’ve compiled my own fictional list of those potential comments you don’t want to ever hear from a prospective intranet manager or consultant:

1. “I’ve used the Web and that’s the same as an intranet.”

2. “It doesn’t’ matter what management thinks, it’s users that count.”

3. “The intranet is just a communications tool… like a newsletter.”

4. “You don’t need Sharepoint, my cousin designed the local Hooters site for only $900."

5. “I think it would be cool to take the Velvet Revolver website concept to the intranet.”

6. “What’s IBM?”

7. “What a CMS?”

8. “Wiki…? Is that the hot receptionist in HR?”

9. ”I write a lot better if I get a couple of crantinis in me!”

10. “I personally believe… that U.S. Americans…. And the Iraq, and such…”

I wonder what Alberto Gonzales will say during his next job interview?

BOOKMARK THIS:

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Who wants a job as an intranet consultant?

Toby Ward — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:25:00 -0700

I've done some writing on the intranet consulting profession over the past few months.

READ:

10 things to ask your intranet consultant

Avoiding dangerous intranet consultants

How to hire an intranet consultant

Hiring an intranet consultant or manager

Now it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. My company, Prescient Digital Media, is hiring. Although candidates who live in Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago, New York and Boston may have an edge, I really don’t care where the person lives if they’ve got the skills and the experience. The ideal candidate could potentially work from home.

Here’s the job description (feel free to poach this listing if your company or firm is also looking to fill a similar position):

Title: Senior Consultant & Account Manager
Status: Full-time Permanent (Part-time or Flex-time arrangement is an option)

Prescient Digital Media is a rapidly growing Internet and intranet business consulting firm. Based in Toronto, Prescient delivers strategic e-business consulting and planning services to organizations in both the private and public sectors throughout North America.

We are currently seeking a Senior Consultant who is attracted by the prospect of an exciting and fast paced work environment with great potential for career development.

Reporting to the Vice President of Client Delivery, as a Senior Consultant you will be responsible for managing all aspects of client engagements. You will employ superior analytical skills, proven project management expertise, excellent written and verbal communication abilities and a strong understanding of intranets and websites. You will be a member of a highly specialized team of consultants responsible for assisting clients to develop and achieve their business objectives for their Internet, intranet and extranet sites.

Major Responsibilities:

· Communication excellence: There will be a high degree of communication with clients and potential clients. Written and verbal communications will be one of your key strengths.

· Engagement: You will possess the ability to independently and efficiently manage a project from start to finish with minimal supervision.

· Analysis & Reporting: You will be able to gather and analyze client business specifics, as well as user requirements and develop detailed reports and recommendations based on this information.

· Planning: You understand the intricacies of strategic planning, modeling and facilitation including research techniques and tools such as surveys, and focus group testing, and are able to effectively execute these practices.

· Marketing: You will have experience in delivering powerful presentations and demonstrations. As well, you will be called upon to contribute web-related articles to Prescient’s monthly newsletter.

· Teamwork: Knowledge sharing and collaboration with colleagues, as well as our partners and clients is essential to your success as a Prescient team member.

· Business Development: Identifying opportunities to extend client engagements to help drive Prescient’s growth.

Requirements:

You will have a BS/BA degree or equivalent work experience combined with 6+ years of relevant online business and consulting experience. MBA preferred. Candidates must possess a strong e-business understanding and be comfortable dealing with senior management within client environments.

The successful applicant will have well-rounded, multi-vertical business experience; exceptional executive communication, presentation, negotiation, analytical and conflict management skills; and a high commitment to customer satisfaction.

The Reward:

If you are a self-starter looking for a challenging, creative atmosphere, then Prescient is the place for you. Our leading methodologies and innovative corporate culture keep us on the cutting edge of our industry, and fuels our exceptional year-to-year growth. We offer a flexible work environment with great career advancement potential. Compensation will be based on a combination of salary and performance-based pay.

Location is flexible and working from home is an option for the right candidate. Interested candidates should email a copy of their resume. No phone calls, please.

Please visit our Job application form if you wish to apply or to recommend a colleague.

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Avoiding dangerous intranet consultants

Toby Ward — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:58:00 -0700

To hire an intranet consultant, visit Prescient Digital Media to see their intranet consulting services.

Intranet consulting is a relatively new discipline. Intranet consultants are far more rare than their Internet counterparts (although some double as both), but almost always have a greater business acumen than the Internet consultant, but less advertising / marketing experience. A big-five consulting firm has some very smart people with mixed intranet and Internet experience, but can be outrageously expensive.

“The IT consulting jungle is full of perils and possibilities -- and it's a fine line that separate the two,” writes Paul Chin in his Intranet Journal article Avoiding Dangerous Intranet Consultants. “You take the left fork and you get exactly what you're looking for; you take the right fork and you wake up with the IT equivalent of a black widow spider crawling up your back.

Paul describes the “five deadliest intranet consultant species” to avoid:

· The Snake Oil Salesperson - Modus operandi: Snake oil salespeople push you to choose one solution over another too forcibly and enthusiastically without providing you with any legitimate justification for their suggested solution.

· The Lonely Derelict - Modus operandi: Lonely derelicts don't seem to take their job very seriously, show little enthusiasm for what they do, act as though they don't really want to be there, and only accepts a handful of small jobs a year.

· The Self-Proclaimed Idol - Modus operandi: Self-proclaimed idols are condescending, acting as though they know everything and you know nothing.

· The Doomsdayer - Modus operandi: Doomsdayers love to expose all the so-called faults with your current IT environment. They're extremely negative and like picking at, and highlighting, all your technological shortcomings.

· The Slacker - Modus operandi: Slackers appear for initial requirements gathering meetings and then disappear for days or even weeks at a time.

I have to snicker when reading these as I think many of us know people that fit into each of these categories. Fortunately, I don’t know too many “Idols” in the intranet space, but there are many of the others particularly the “snake oil salesperson.” Typically the ‘snakes’ are those with firms that list a number of ‘partnerships’ on their corporate websites (a.k.a. reselling partnerships where the firm in question is paid a commission to sell a certain off-the-shelf product such as Vignette, SharePoint or another software company). In other words, they’re not technology neutral or truly interested in finding the best solution for your requirements, they want to sell you software that pays them a commission.

As I highlighted in How to hire an intranet consultant, there are a number of things to look for when considering an intranet consultant:

Good:

· Intranet client case studies

· Detailed biographies with demonstrated project experience

· Experienced individuals that will be assigned to your project

· Client references with names and numbers (not just unnamed anonymous testimonials)

· Detailed pricing

· Corporate strength and documented financial viability

· Proven and detailed project methodologies

Caution:

· Only screenshots and mock-ups

· One or two paragraph bios that focus on favorite movies and hobbies with a cute or too-cool-for-school photo

· People on a list in some far flung office that won’t actually be working on your project

· Unnamed and anonymous testimonials

· Vague pricing ‘guess-timates’

· Tiny shops with no documented financials (P&L) & no methodology documentation

More pay for intranet managers

Toby Ward — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:51:00 -0700

Gerry McGovern says that you will earn more money if you start proving the value of the intranet. Sounds like something I would say (yeah, I know, a broken record).

Gerry is a firm believer “if you are in charge of your company's intranet you are in pole position to further your career.”

The bottom line: the vast majority of executives think the intranet delivers little value for the cost – and some believe it’s a waste of money. But most of these suits aren’t ignorant fools, they’re just ignorant. They need a sheppard to show them the way – to show them the money (see Measure your efforts).

Watch the vlog-like video clip Intranet Task Master with Gerry talking about the value of intranet measurement.

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How to hire an intranet manager

Toby Ward — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 07:20:00 -0800

A reader recently asked me how to find and test a potential candidate to run internal communications and the corporate intranet.

I’ve helped a few clients hire an intranet manager and here are some of the key duties and skills that I suggest are necessary – based on a job posting for the slightly more prolific Editor-in-Chief (feel free to take out some duties and skills for a less prolific position):

Duties:

Provide the editorial leadership for Intranet, editing and overseeing daily content and news production.
Support alignment of timely and effective Internal Communications by developing and maintaining an editorial schedule and by being a key writer of homepage content including corporate news and polls.
Develop, maintain and manage the necessary infrastructure for content publication including policies, process and procedures.
Create and maintain standards to ensure quality control of the content on the Intranet, working in partnership with Business Unit and Divisional site administrators and content owners to enforce content-editorial policy and corporate identity guidelines.
Chair the Intranet Editorial Board and be an active member on the Intranet Council.
Partner with the Intranet Council, IT, Business Units, web administrators, content owners and project stakeholders to identify opportunities and implement solutions that drive usage, streamline processes and facilitate communications, ultimately developing goals and strategies for future content growth.
Review and analyze employee feedback and site metrics on an ongoing basis, taking action where appropriate to drive usage and enhance content.
Support the implementation of the Intranet revamp launch communications plan.
Support the implementation of employee communication initiatives including quarterly employee updates, employee cascades, electronic newsletters and special projects.

Qualifications:

Accomplished and fluent business writer and editor, preferably with experience working in a daily newspaper, publication, news, business Internet or Intranet environment
Experience in communication management of Intranets including the use of Content Management Systems (CMS), internet content presentation and web writing style
Familiarity with web technology and how it can be leveraged as a communication/business tool
Strong relationship building and negotiation skills
Ability to work in a fast-paced, deadline-oriented environment with the ability to adapt to change and meet timelines without sacrificing quality
Basic knowledge of HTML and ASP and some experience in design software and web implementation tools/languages: Photoshop, Illustrator/Freehand, Flash, html,dhtml, javascript
Post secondary training or a degree in a related field
Effective interpersonal, communication, time management and collaboration skills
5+ years applicable experience

Keep in mind that the Editor-in-Chief is more than a writer. The Editor-in-Chief is a manager – they manage people, apply standards, and know a thing or two about stick-handling through corporate politics. Writing skills are important, but less important than management skills.

There are a number of personality and management tests that could be employed for testing these skills. My suggestion and one of my favorites is the DISC Profile Personality Test. This is to test apptitude, personality, and management skills. Other writing and skillset tests would be above and beyond this DISC profile test.

Intranet job: UI Designer (Miami area)

Toby Ward — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 23:01:00 -0700

The User Experience Design Group at Ultimate Software in For Lauderdale is looking for UI Designer. Ultimate has been using agile methods (Scrum) for over one year.

If you already live in the Fort Lauderdale / Miami area, details on the position are available on the company website (www.ultimatesoftware.com).

Intranet development amongst most sought IT skills

Toby Ward — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 18:43:00 -0800

A new UK survey finds that IT staff turnover is increasing, and so is the demand for both intranet and Internet development which are amongst the highest IT skills in demand. Also in high demand are business analyst skills... no doubt needed for project planning and aligning IT with business goals (something that is sorely needed in too many organizations; though consultants like myself can’t complain).

IT staff turnover, recruitment and retention problems and skills shortages have all increased over the past year according to respondents to this year's National Computing Centre Benchmark of Salaries and Employment Trends in 2006. The independent annual survey reveals:

Greater staff turnover

The rate of staff turnover over the past 12 months (staff leaving as a percentage of staff in post) was 12.0%, a significant increase from the 9.4% reported in last year's Benchmark. Systems and support staff joining respondents' organizations also increased from 12.0% to 13.1% of staff in post.

Shortages

Perceived shortages for all systems and support staff were slightly up on last year at 5.2%, but over 25% of the respondents identified specific recruitment or retention skills over the last year (up 5% on last year).

Projected demand in decline

41% of respondents expect their IT staff numbers to grow over the next two years, with 41% expecting numbers to remain the same. Last year more than 50% predicted increase in IT staff numbers. The most rapid growth is forecast by small IT departments and by those in the IT Services sector.

New skills in demand
26% of respondents identified specific IT skills for which they had encountered recruitment or retention difficulties (up from 20% last year), whilst a further 26% of respondents identified a requirement for new skills over the next 12 months. Prominent amongst the new skills were .NET and Java development skills, Windows 2003 Server, VoIP, and business analysis skills.

Significant numbers of respondents are seeking business analysis skills over the next twelve months and these tend to be recruited rather than trained in house.

Managing Director of NCC Membership Services, Stefan Foster said, "Last year's Benchmark reported an upturn in most IT labor market variables and in the short term it would appear that this situation is continuing. The only indicator that has fallen since last year is respondents' expectations of future IT staff requirements."

Stefan continued, "It looks like the dust will begin to settle on the labor market by next summer, but watch out, with certain skills such as internet and intranet development, demand will be high, so put your recruitment plans together now - or risk a fight for skilled staff later in the year".

"With many organizations implementing Voice over Internet Protocol technologies (see NCC's Benchmark of IT Strategy 2005) it is no surprise that skills in this area are highly prized."

The Benchmark of Salaries and Employment Trends in IT is based on an annual survey of the IT labor market, carried out by the National Computing Centre. The Benchmark published in December 2005 covers: salary increases, fringe benefits, bonus payments, staff joining and leaving, shortages and predicted growth in demand, new skills requirements and recruitment and retention problems. The analysis is based on an aggregation of the responses from 383 organizations, which provided salary and employment details for 9,346 staff. The main analysis variables used in the report are: industry sector, geographical area and department size.

The Benchmark report can be purchased at the NCC online store (£330).

Analysis

For those hiring people, it means the cost of hiring has just gone up. It’s becoming a sellers market once again for skilled IT and business analysts. If you’re looking for a job, then the future looks bright.

If you have an intranet job that needs filling send it to me I will post (no charge) jobs daily (about 1,000 intranet minds a day are reading this site and readership is growing fast).