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When I began this blog one of the areas on which I wanted to focus was job search. Specifically I wanted to blog my own job search. I had developed a methodology for targeting my resume and my job-related communications to the specific company and job I was seeking and felt it would be good insight to share. Blogging my job search was at the advice of Heather Hamilton, a Microsoft recruiter and blogger. At about the time I felt comfortable having enough material in place to go public with the blog I got my current job at ChannelAdvisor. I still feel I have a lot to share from my job seeking experiences, but an ongoing job search is not a part of my focus here at this time. I still read Heather’s blog and particularly enjoyed her latest post. Heather details some of the thinking from the staffing side on how candidate resumes can tell a story.

The last interviews I had before this job were, ironically, with Microsoft. The interesting thing about the all-day series of interviews I had in Redmond was how much fun I had. In fact it was the most fun I have ever had interviewing. The critical difference was that I approached it entirely as a conversation. Instead of answering open-ended questions with the standard interview responses I told stories. Over the years of thinking about this I have found anecdotes from each job I have had that demonstrate critical thinking, leadership, overcoming objections, working with teams, working independently, recovering from setbacks, and all the other standard “describe a time when you had to…” questions. I have turned those experiences into stories that not only address what the interviewer asked but also reveal who I really am. If you ask any of the six interviewers I met that day if they know anyone who is passionate about retail they will likely remember Scott Magoon leaning forward in his chair telling a story about his retail experiences and what he has learned and accomplished.

We remember conversations. We connect with mental images. All the standard interview advice and resume training focuses on parsing words and phrases to convey the right meaning. I think there is something seriously missing if we are not treating interviews as conversations and using stories to convey lasting impressions beyond the appropriate action verb and quantifiable result.

When I worked for Cisco I fully embraced the corporate mantra that Cisco would “Change the way we live, work, play, and learn.” By building the world’s networking infrastructure, we were enabling new forms of collaboration, new access to education, and new market efficiencies. It’s a great feeling when you believe that no matter your job position, you are not simply one cog in a great machine, but part of something important.

I’ve been thinking about whether most companies could adopt a similar posture of changing the world for the better. Would employees be better off if they felt part of something important? Would there be more pride, more sense of accomplishment, more dedication to excellence? Or would would the very idea collapse under corporate cynicism?

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I am a pathological resume tinkerer. My resume has a high degree of word churn. Everything except my name, employers, and job titles has changed in the past few years. The entire format and every word of description. I am constantly searching for the ultimate resume for my job search goals and have a few new ideas to share.
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In 1999, I was a member of the Charlotte, NC Company of Friends. Our national coordinator, and “Social Capitalist,” Heath Row was touring the South visiting several COF groups to learn about local activities and meet members. It was billed as “Fast Company magazine’s search for the New Economy in the Way New South.” Below is Heath’s online journal entry of his visit with me.

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Sept. 23, 1999

[…] it was a straight shot in to Charlotte, where I met up with Scott Magoon, a technology specialist for Kraft Foods, which has a regional sales office tucked in the back of an office park south of the city almost to the South Carolina border.
Scott worked for Kraft for three years as a market analyst and sales representative before moving in to IT. “I’d be happy if I changed jobs every year,” he says. “I like trying different things, and it’s easy to stagnate.” Since moving to Kraft’s Charlotte office from Chicago, Scott’s been working on a couple of change efforts. One, he’s currently deploying new laptops to the region’s 120 sales reps.
“It’s the biggest project I’ve had in my life. It’s huge,” he says. “Coordinating everybody is the biggest challenge. They’ve got to mail their old computers in. We’ve got to mail the new computers to them. And they’ve got to be home when they arrive.” Other than the deployment, technology training is a big part of what Scott’s working on. Instead of teaching people how to use a new tool such as Excel, Scott interviews people to learn what they need to do - and then he teaches people how to do it most productively using the tools at hand. “I always want to think of a new way for people to do something,” he says. “But skill levels vary so much, and some people just want to do things the same way. I want to teach people how to use the technology to be more productive, but I’ve got to get over the hurdle of, ‘I don’t have time because I’m too busy.’”
While I expected to spend some time with Scott to learn what he’s working on and learning, I did not expect the 14-person roundtable he’d organized with the regional manager and other Kraft staff based in Charlotte.

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