(this must be the article I am referring to in my e-mail below…)

> —–Original Message—–

> From: thefacebook – Advertising [mailto:advertise@thefacebook.com]

> Sent: Saturday, May 08, 2004 5:36 PM

> To: Marc Cenedella

> Subject: Re: interested in advertising

>

>

> Dear Marc,

>

> I look forward to working with you. What are your advertisement

> intentions, in terms of placement, timing, duration and level of

> exposure. We will target your campaign only to alumni from the class

> of 1998 and before.

>

> Sincerely,

>

> Eduardo Saverin

> CFO, thefacebook LLC

> business@thefacebook.com

> advertise@thefacebook.com

> (305) 345-9638

>

> PS. We are considering the Google Adsense Program, but we have not

> made a decision yet.

> On Sat, 8 May 2004, Marc Cenedella wrote:

>

> > Hi Facebook folks -

> > I’m HBS ’98 and was up speaking on campus yesterday where I saw the

> article

> > in the Harvard Crimson.

> > TheLadders is a high-end jobs newsletter and we’d be interested in

> > advertising to the alumni population of your audience.

> > Can you please provide details?

> >

> > Warmest regards,

> >

> > Marc

How can all of these people be getting hired?

Well, the answer is in this graph:

Thousands of hires per month in the US 2002 – 2012

This graph shows the number of hires, in thousands, each month over the past decade here in the US.

Most importantly, what this graph shows you is that even when the economy is rough, most hires are replacement hires — hires, that is, to replace employees who have departed the firm.

Now, there’s no doubt that things have gotten tougher:
- The average number of hires from January 2002 through December 2008 was 5 mm hires per month. (4,999,000 to be exact)
- Since January 2009, that number has been 4 mm hires per month (4,024,000 to be exact).

So the overall level of hiring has dropped by one million hires each month. That’s why unemployment is stubbornly high, and why millions have given up looking.

But, looking on the bright side, what this graph also tells us is that even in a crummy economy, there are still about 4 million new hires every month.

And that’s because companies are always replacing people who have left. Yes, some who have been fired or laid off, but the vast majority to replace those who retired, quit, or left for better opportunities elsewhere.

So the important thing for you to remember is that while the economy as a whole might not be creating more new jobs, companies are still hiring plenty of people, all the time, to replace those workers who have moved on to greener pastures.

Hiring people like you.

So keep up your good spirits this week,I know there’s one job in those four million for you…

Have a great week in the search!

Some of you thought I was a hero, some of you thought I was a goat, for this passage:

Which reminds me… I had a very bright young woman in my office this week. She was bright and educated and clever and fantastic, but I have to admit, I wasn’t buying her very well-expressed desire to join our team, so I said:

“Hey, look, I do career advice for a living. When you put the kids to sleep, and you have a moment in your day, and it’s just you, what do you dream about doing?”

And she was passionate, she was engaging, she was alive!… alive in the way that only the fire can bring, and she inspired! — and I’m a guy that lives for inspiration!

But her passion wasn’t for my business — online recruitment — it was for something else. Maybe that something else could be considered a hobby, maybe it could be considered a small business, maybe it could be considered to be not so quite very prestigious as the other fancy names and pedigrees that popped like fireworks from her resume.

But it was passion and it was hers!

I loved it!

So I asked “Why don’t you go and do that? That’s what makes you passionate, that’s what makes you alive, that’s what makes you happy. Why don’t you go and do that and be amazing at it?”

And her answer comes rolling back, quieter now, eyes turned down, “Well, my parents / friends / colleagues / classmates don’t think it’s very impressive and that I should be doing something else with my time — something more valuable.”

And I asked her: “When have great things ever been accomplished by doing what other people wanted you to do?”

And you know, Readers, it’s true.

There’s no storybook about “The Boy Who Followed Somebody Else’s Dream”.

No movie rights sold for the tale of “It Wasn’t Within My Purview To Consider Alternatives”.

No Sinatra tune entitled “I Did It The Way My Critics Requested I Do It”.

All the songs, all the movies, all the books say the same damn thing about you and your dream for a reason — because it’s true!

The bright young woman who was in my office a year ago has written back with an update. But before we get to that, let’s revisit some of those cheers and chew-outs from your comments last year:

Travis B didn’t like what I said:

I have to be honest, if I was the girl in your post I would be genuinely upset you brought me down to your office only to look at my credentials and give me the thumbs down because working at The Ladders wasn’t my dream job.

While JazzingItUpNow said:

I never respond to any blogs, this will be my first. I am a single mom with 4 kids, 1 left at home and raising two grandchildren. I have dealt with homelessness, joblessness and fallen short of what I considered to be my life dreams. Through all the challenges and obstacles, what I thought was going to make me happy wasn’t it at all. I had the big house, fancy cars, money, great job.

I have less now and am much happier now, less to maintain, simple, low stress life. More money in the bank and my dreams are to see others happy. It took me going through the challenges of life to see what God really purposed me for in life.

I always had a deep passion to help children and people in bad situations, guess I had to go through them myself in order to really appreciate what my passions were in life.

And now for our update. The young woman writes:

Marc,

I am writing to thank you for your guidance in helping me to find a place in the food industry. I recently accepted an offer to join a prominent New York restaurant company. Truly, this is a dream job, and I hope to do justice to the role!

It’s funny, through all these months, I kept repeating your question to myself, “What would you do if no one paid you? What do you actually do when you have that free moment in the day? What are you really passionate about?”

The answer became apparent quickly — I’m obsessed with food and food businesses — I spend all my time reading about food, writing about food, cooking, watching cooking shows, observing the smallest details in dining establishments and pondering about them, remembering details of everything I’ve ever eaten. Even though I couldn’t initially figure out how to find a job in the food industry without real experience and with having been out of the traditional workforce for a number of years, I found that people were willing to talk to me and were also kind enough to put me in touch with other people just based on the fact that I sounded passionate. Perhaps clueless, but definitely passionate.

The other question I asked myself after I accepted my new offer is if I would like to work at say, Coach or Limited Brands for double the money. The answer was a resounding NO.

I guess my choice is made!

I will stay in touch, and hope to have the opportunity to meet with you again in the near future. Thank you again for your support, guidance, and belief in me.

warmly,

“V”

I know it’s not a choice everybody can make, but I do believe it’s one everybody should:

Do what you love.

You’ll be a better person — happier, more fulfilled, a better parent / child / friend / peer / boss.

And, in the end, you’ll make the right amount of money. Even if you’re in a low-paying industry that doesn’t attract a lot of great talent, you’ll find that your passion, skills, and capabilities lead you to the top, and beyond, more quickly.

Your pay rises to meet your passion and purpose.

In my experience — and I’ve been doing career advice for over a decade now — I’ve never met somebody who made the decision “V” made and regretted it. Perhaps they had become more sanguine about the trade-offs, or a bit more world-wise, but I can’t recall anybody ever telling me “I followed my passion and I regret it.”

And on the other hand, I’ve never met anybody who was happy they “did it for the money.” Pursuing a paybump over passion rarely leads you to your best work, and that shines through in promotions, plaudits, and personal satisfaction.

Now, within your field, and day-to-day, you’re going to have to do exciting work as well as boring work, so I’m not asserting that you can avoid the drudgery, the pain, and the hard work that come with passion. But what I am saying is that all of those efforts feel so much more fulfilling in pursuit of something you love.

“V” agrees.

What draws you into the show is the live pitch that the two agencies do against each other to win new business, with a real account being awarded at the end of each show. It’s intense, there are incredibly tight deadlines, and the two teams are playing for real stakes.

And watching the show, I thought about how you might feel going in to the interview.

Do you fret uneasily — maybe even ungraciously — about the competition? Do you worry about being over the hill? Are you pretty sure you’re not good enough?

As one competitor on the show says, do you fear that “try not to embarrass yourself” is the best you’ll be able to do?

Well, here are ten things you can do to chill out and relax a little before, during and after your big “Pitch”:

1. Show up with a “good” level of knowledge after doing a “reasonable” amount of research. You’d be surprised at the number of people who haven’t looked at the company’s homepage, Googled its name, and checked out the stock ticker, before showing up for an interview. In tonight’s show, for example, I liked how one ad guy actually went and took pictures of the client’s business “in the wild.” It shows interest.

Likewise, you might be surprised at the number of people who overdo it and show up with eight pages of questions — single-spaced — and start off with an inquiry as to why margins in the Southwest region have declined by 10% since seven years ago despite favorable currency rates. There is such a thing as overdoing it.

2. Be on time, unflustered, with a clean, well-presented copy of your resume. Sure, this sounds like “Interviewing 101″, but you know that you’ve violated this rule at least once in your life because you didn’t leave the house ten minutes earlier than you “thought” was safe. Do yourself a favor — it’s far better to be wasting 10 minutes in the lobby than stressing out in transit.

3. Dress the part — businesslike and professional, no matter how party-rocking the company is. Except in cases where the culture is aggressively anti-corporate, a coat and tie or string of pearls never makes you look bad. Even the super-groovy adman in “The Pitch” pops a necktie for his big presentation — you should too.

4. Be kind to every employee you meet. As a matter of fact, be kind to everybody within 2 miles of the interview building — the receptionist, the parking lot guy, the janitor and the intern. When I ask our receptionists how a candidate behaved, it is shocking to hear the number of people who think good manners and kindness are only to be trotted out in the interview room.

5. Remember JFK? (Or remember what your parents told you about JFK?) Ask not what the company can do for you, answer instead “what can I do for this company?”

6. This ain’t “Real Housewives” or “Biography” — “The Pitch” is about winning a business battle. Same thing with a job interview — it’s a time and place for you to explain and sell your ability to do the job. Stick, mostly, to the business side and how you can solve the problems your future boss is currently facing. Don’t go into a half-hour long disquisition on the relative merits of Mozart and Beethoven, the reasons you love or hate (but mostly love) the Yankees, or the intricacies of your college rivalries. The interviewer does not want your life story, they want to know your business capabilities.

7. “Bad mouth thee, bad mouth me.” Whenever you trash-talk your former or current employer, guess what the interviewer thinks? “Oh boy, if we hire this guy, I’m next on the firing line!” Never, ever say a bad, mean or unkind thing (especially if true!) because that just shows off your ability to be an ingrate, gossip or ne’er-do-well.

8. Save the money talk for last. You should get a range from the recruiter or HR person before going in (“in the interests of saving everybody time, I would need to know what range this position is budgeted for, before considering”) and side-step the grilling about your current compensation (“I think we’re talking about what I’m worth in the future, not what I was worth in the past for a different role, with different responsibilities, at a different company — am I right or is that off-base?”). Don’t bring it up in interviews until after they know how excited they are about working with you, because that’s when they’re most likely to get excited about paying you more.

9. Thank the interviewer for their time and ask (a few) good questions (especially my “single best question to ask in an interview“). A great all-purpose question to ask at the end: “Is there anything else I should’ve asked about this role or my future boss that I haven’t asked?”

10. Send a thank you email. Thank the interviewer again and reiterate (very briefly) what you discussed and how you can contribute. Three sentences is a good length. Five sentences maximum. Walk out of the interview with a note taken on one specific thing you discussed: “I enjoyed our conversation around the changes in the mobile ecosystem and how my background could be useful in designing the advertising strategy for the Big Mick in McDowell’s upcoming national campaign.” This helps the interviewer remember why they like you when time comes to make the go/no-go decision on hiring you.

Now one of the biggest differences between a job interview and “The Pitch” is that you’ll find out right away who wins tonight on “The Pitch.” I enjoyed the show and the competition a whole bunch, so tune in tonight for the two-hour premiere at 9pm/8pm CT for the big fight!

And I hope these tips will help reduce some of the anxiety or nerves you feel during your “pitch” in the interview room. Have a great week, Readers…

I’m rooting for you.

“Hey Susan, it’s Stan. I think you’ll agree that I’m perfect for the Director job we discussed four weeks ago. When I spoke with your CEO at our Alumni Conference last week, he mentioned what a great background I have for the role. Please call me back — I’m ready to get started on Monday!”

Susan isn’t going to call back. Why?

1. No last name! No phone number!
2. “I think you’ll agree that I’m perfect for the Director job.” This is presumptuous, obnoxious, and untrue. Three strikes and you’re out.
3. “…four weeks ago.” If this is your first follow-up, four weeks seems like a long time without even a thank you note! How serious are you, Stan?
4. “When I spoke with your CEO at our Alumni Conference …” — the appeal to old school ties and the vaguely threatening hint referring to the person who signs the paychecks do you a disservice.
5. “He mentioned what a great background I have…” OK, well, if you’re going to handle it yourself, you don’t need the HR person to help you out. You just got put into the “limbo” category from which you shall never escape.
6. “Please call me back — I’m ready to get started on Monday!” Being available is good, sounding desperate is not.

The bottom line is, you never want an employer to think “He sure leaves annoying voicemails!”

The telephone can be one of the most powerful tools in your job search when it’s used correctly. But used inexpertly — as Stan has done — it can also sink you. Poor voicemails can really bog job-seekers down. Long-winded, wordy, winding voicemails turn off recipients and decrease your chances of success.

So let’s get you set up to do this right and show you how to leave effective voicemail.

First off, you’ll need to realize that recruiters and HR people are very, very busy people. All day long, they interview candidates, do phone screen interviews, extend job offers, negotiate offer letters, and coordinate with their hiring managers. It’s talk, talk, talk, all day long for them.

Your voicemail is not going to get them to change the job to be an entirely different kind of job, enable you to develop the required skills and talents if you do not have them, or make the hiring manager move any faster than he or she intends to.

What your voicemail can do is to pleasantly remind them of your presence, interest, and qualifications.

By giving the recruiter, the HR person, and the future hiring manager a pleasant nudge — did I emphasize pleasant? — you and your capabilities stay active in their thinking.

Here’s what you’re going to leave in your voicemail:

● Name (twice)
● Phone number (twice, slowly)
● Reminder that you exist / have previously interacted
● An upbeat message
● A pleasant reiteration of your interest
● A graceful exit

What does that sound like?

“Hi Susan, it’s Jim Ablebody at 867-5309. Just calling to let you know how excited I am about the opportunity there at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. As I mentioned last week, I’ve spent 17 years in nuclear safety, so I feel there could be a great fit. Hey, just like Mariano Rivera, I’m getting better with age! Thanks, Susan, and, again, it’s Jim [stop and tiny pause]. Ablebody [stop and tiny pause]. 867-5 [stop and tiny pause]. 309 [stop and tiny pause]. Thanks, Susan!”

What’s right here?

1. It’s short.
2. Jim gave his phone number and repeated his full name (slowly) twice. No need to replay the message to get his information.
3. Jim is upbeat — “how excited I am,” ‘I feel there could be a great fit” — without being needy or pushy.
4. “As I mentioned last week” — my advice on phone follow-up is: call one time per week for five weeks. That lets them know that you’re consistently interested, without appearing desperate. And if you don’t hear back after five weeks, it is time to move on.
5. “I’ve spent 17 years” — he reminds Susan of his highly relevant qualifications without giving his whole resume.
6. Humor — even slightly corny humor — is good if you can pull it off. It shows good adjustment and implies that you’re not too desperate if you can crack charming jokes by voicemail. And maybe, just maybe, if you make them smile, it will be a tiny bit more likely that you’ll get the return call.
7. He doesn’t try to do things that voicemail can’t — close the deal, set a time to talk, make long-winded arguments about his fit for the position, or push the timetable faster than it is going.
8. It’s short (about 30 seconds is the right amount of time) and pleasant. That increases the odds that the next time the job is discussed, his name will come up. And the next time his name comes up, it will be in a positive light. And that’s the most you should hope for from a voicemail. Trying for a bigger result is ultimately just going to set you back.

As Jim Ablebody demonstrates, you should leave messages that will get you noticed for your pleasantness, qualifications, and charm.

And that, Readers, is the goal of effective voicemail.

Good luck this week…

I’ll be rooting for you!

It’s no secret that one by-product of our government schools is the driving out of the formal educational system of creatively-inclined and inspired people.  Our greatest actors, artists, and musicians too often fail to graduate high school, and relatively rarely complete college.  Ken Robinson does the most beautiful TED talk on the need for our schools to do a better job of keeping the creative kids engaged and blossoming.

As a result, a depressing feature of being pro-growth or wanting to encourage entrepreneurialism, is that most of your favorite music is made by high-school dropouts, who are too often innumerate, unschooled in economics, and ill-prepared to look beyond first-order effects.

Factory shutting down? Must be the greed of the owner.

That the true cause may be differential returns to improving educational attainment and capital deployment across differing tax and regulatory regimes not only escapes the typical bard, it doesn’t even rhyme.

So when I bought the entire back catalog of Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits that I didn’t already own earlier this weekend, I had no inkling of the growth paean within.

There’s a catchy tune on the album Shangri-La called “Boom, like that”.  Have a listen yourself:

It mentions going up to San Bernadino, and has aggressive-sounding lines like “my name’s not croc, it’s crok with a ‘k’” and “it’s dog-eat-dog and rat-eat-rat.”

I just presumed, without even thinking about it, that it had something to do with drug runners or a gang of shady characters or somesuch personages that typically haunt rock verse.

Well, dang, the song got stuck in my head (what the Germans call an “earworm”) and I put it on repeat this morning.  After a dozen times through, I had to find the lyrics:

I’m going to San Bernadino ring-a-dng-ding
Milkshake mixers that’s my thing
These guys bought a heap of my stuff
And I gotta see a good thing sure enough

Oh my name’s not Croc, that’s Kroc with a ‘K’
Like ‘crocodile’ but not spelled that way
It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat
Kroc-style, boom, like that

You gentlemen ought to expand
You’re going to need a helping hand
So, gentlemen, well, what about me?
We’ll make a little business history

Oh. My. Goodness.

It’s a song about Ray Kroc founding McDonald’s!

And it celebrates his entrepreneurial vision and drive!

And it rhymes and rocks!

Fantastic!

The whole album, Shangri-La, is great, by the way, but I think this song is a special treasure.  Thanks Mark Knopfler!

How do we encourage more of this?

I don’t think you can. Directly.

There’s an old saying that my high school English teacher taught me: “If a poem is written to pay a bill, chances are it never will.”

And I think the same works for political or message-driven music.  You can’t ask for, or request, creative output on a topic, theme, or idea.

There’s nothing so ponderous as a song written to Enlighten. The better art patrons throughout the ages have understood this.

But what you can do is inspire: sharing stories, engaging in the conversation, building the community.  To the extent we entrepreneurs make creatives a part of the drama, we’ll encourage and allow for more works celebrating growth and entrepreurialism.

And to the extent we overlook our creatively-minded colleagues in the world, well… we’ll be missing out on more great songs such as “Boom, Like that.”

~~~~~

By the way, my favorite book on the McDonald’s story is McDonald’s: Behind The Arches.

In addition to depicting Ray Kroc’s lunatic vision and personal energy, the story is expertly told.

For the business-minded, the most fascinating aspect is that — restaurants costing a lot of money to build and the tastes of the public being notoriously fickle — the fast food industry was almost impossible to finance before McDonald’s came along.  Their genius CFO, Harry Sonneborn, figured out that pitching the business as a real estate business to the banks made those banks feel a lot more comfortable and secure than pitching it as a foods business.

Sometimes the success of your venture is sown in surprising, hidden corners.

Thanks to Google books, I’m fascinated with this 1916 tourist handbook for New York City: Rider’s NEW YORK CITY: A GUIDE-BOOK for TRAVELERS.  Cities change, and yet stay the same, over the years, the decades, the centuries.  This depiction of New York, as explained to visitors almost one hundred years ago, reveals as much about who we are today as it does about who we were at the beginning of the 20th century.

So here are 16 things I’ve learned from “visiting” the New York City of 1916:

1. Quite clearly, the pace and the hustle and bustle have not changed:

“The first characteristic of New York which impresses the stranger from abroad, and in a less degree from other American cities, is its atmosphere of breathless haste, its pervading sense of life keyed to an abnormal tension.

Everywhere and all the time the surge and roar of traffic goes on, varying only in degree; everywhere is the same feverish energy, the same impatience over a minute’s loss.  The New Yorker makes equally hard work of his business and his pleasures.  In the chief centres of wealth, the gorgeous shops of Fifth Avenue, the theatres and restaurants of Broadway, the one element that is missing is repose.  It seems as though the whole brilliant crowd that frequents these pleasure palaces feared if they paused to rest they might fall out of step in the ceaseless ‘rag-time’ of metropolitan life.”

2. You talkin’ to me? New Yorkers have always had an attitude:

“One direct consequence of this unending hurry, which the visitor is quick to feel, is a certain brusqueness and lack of civility as compared with other cities.  Not that the great, motley, democratic middle class is deliberately rude to strangers; it simply lacks time for the little courtesies of life, and grudges two words where one can be made to answer.

Considering the size and mixed character of the crowds they have to handle, the guards and conductors on the various city lines are probably as civil as could reasonably be expected; yet their lack of deference towards the general public is well summed up in their favorite curt injunction to ‘step lively.’”

3. Subway ridership is about the same now as it was 100 years ago:

“The street railroads of New York City, including subways, elevated lines, and surface cars, have 1,666 miles of single track… The passengers carried during the year ending June 30, 1912 numbered 1,680,914,025.”

According to the MTA’s website, in 2011, subway riders “swiped their MetroCards 1.64 billion times”.  Given similar populations, perhaps it’s not remarkable to see similar ridership, but I’d suppose that most New Yorkers wouldn’t expect our predecessors of a century ago to be just-as-good at subway commuting as we are.

4. Prices are about 100 times higher than they were a century ago.  Particularly for higher-end or specialty items, the prices seem to be 100x, or more, today compared to one hundred years ago.  Lower-end items seem to be about 50x.  Disconcertingly, the Fed’s offical inflation number indicates an increase of approximately 20x since 1916.  So does that imply that New York has gotten more expensive more quickly than the rest of the nation?

Hotel Room
The St. Regis Hotel, Double bed
Then: $6
Today: $755

“Largest salaries paid to baseball players”
Then: $10,000 to $15,000
Now: $20 to $30 million

“Chop suey” at a Chinese restaurant
Then: $0.15 to $1.00
Now: $4 to $14 

Subway fare:
Then: 5 cents
Today: $2.50

Catching a show at the Loew’s Lincoln:
Then: $0.10 to $0.25
Now: $6 to $20

5. We’re still fashion victims:

“Another characteristic of New York, and one that applies to all grades of society, is the lavish and conspicuous mode of dress adopted by New York women on the public streets.  The styles for street wear change more rapidly and more radically than other costumes; and no sooner has a new mode found favor on Fifth avenue than cheap imitations of it make their appearance on Fourteenth street and the lower East Side.  It is no exaggeration to say that to-day the fashionable women of New York venture upon the streets clad in garments which in brilliancy of hue and scantiness of neck and sleeves would have been considered ten years ago as appropriate only for afternoon or evening receptions.

The custom adds much to the picturesqueness of the passing crowd; but it naturally is viewed with some degree of surprise by strangers accustomed to more sedate street apparel.”

6. To the disappointment of ancient Carrie Bradshaws, however, there is only one mention of “cocktail” in Rider’s Guide-book, hidden away in sub-section “J. Other Foreign Restaurants”:

“Hungarian. Little Hungary. 263 E Houston st.  Known also as Cafe Liberty.  Figures largely in stories of New York ‘bohemian life.’  Is patronized by sightseers and a certain sporting class.  A la carte Dinner w. cocktail and 3 wines, $1.50.”

.

An advertising blurb for Rider’s New York City in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly.

7. Cars were just beginning to make the transition from wealthy novelty to mass transportation. ‘Driving’, apparently, was what you called it when High Society was behind the wheel, whilst ‘motoring’ was the appropriate term for schlubs-on-the-sideboard:

“Driving.  In New York, as elsewhere, driving as a pastime for the wealthy is rapidly being superseded by motoring.  And on 5th ave., where less than a generation ago, one of the sights of New York, any pleasant afternoon, was the long procession of fashionable equipages with liveried coachman and footman, a private carriage today in the endless stream of automobiles, is almost a curiosity.  The fashionable drives, so far as the custom is still maintained, are through Central Park and along Riverside Drive.”

8. There were no Vincent van Gogh paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1916.

9. Just as it is today, 16 Mott Street was a Chinese restaurant one hundred years ago.  Then named Suey Jan Low, Rider notes that it is “(less prententious, but good)”.

It is interesting and somehow compelling that the same space in the city persists, on and on for centuries, as a Chinese restaurant; now under one name, later under another, now under new owners, later under different  proprietors. What dramas, what scenes, what histories, what stories, go through a New York City Chinese eatery over the course of 35,000 or more days?  In 2116, will 16 Mott Street house a still-yet-differently-named Chinese restaurant? What stories will its walls tell a hundred years hence?

10. We’ve always been more democratic, less chauvinistic:

“Contrary to the usage in many foreign theatres, there is no section of the house in American theatres from which women are excluded. In some of the vaudeville houses, where smoking is permitted in the balconies, they will probably find the orchestra seats preferable, but there is no rule debarring them from the upper part of the house.”

A movie of street scenes from 1916 New York.

11. We were the restaurant capital of the world then, too:

“The restaurant life in New York is of great interest to visitors. The eating places vary from the world famous Delmonico’s on 5th ave. to almost unknown foreign houses on the side streets, and each has its own peculiar personality. The restaurants of the larger hotels are so distinctly independent of the houses that they are here listed as separate enterprises. Tables may be reserved by telephone.

Although the distinction is properly made between American and foreign restaurants in New York, in point of fact the city practically has no strictly American restaurants, with food cooked in the native manner and served in the simple home style. The few exceptions are some of the oyster houses, dairy lunch rooms and an occasional tea room that specializes in southern dishes.

But in general, the whole New York restaurant service rests on a basis of Continental cooking.  In the leading houses the chef is French; in a considerable proportion of the others, he is German, Viennese, or Italian.  The waiters are almost uniformly foreign.  In fact, the main distinction between the American and the foreign restaurant is that the former professes to cater to the American taste, while the latter tends to exaggerate its foreign features and make the most of their advertising value.”

“Culinary vanity and pretension” in gastronomy?  That’s our New York!

(BTW, for more on American style dining in the 19th and early 20th centuries, see this collection of links.)

12. The Village was boring… too many foreigners(!!):

“The Downtown section from Canal to 14th st contains in its lower part, little of interest to the visitor.  On the E. is the Jewish quarter; in the center an Italian neighborhood; and W. of Broadway a hodge-podge of small factories, shops, warehouses, and the shabby homes of people of many nationalities.  The few interesting buildings are up toward 14th st. clustered about Astor Place, extending to 2nd ave. on the E., and Washington Square on the W.”

Manhattan map from Rider’s New York Guide-Book of 1916

13. For New Yorkers and visitors of this time, “Old New York” was the time of the American Revolution.  The leaders and generals of that earlier time are described as real people.  Even if their actions are described in the most glowing and heroic of terms, they come alive in the pages of Rider’s New York as they have not yet transcended into the mythical, distant, unrelatable figures they are today.

George Washington, for example, appears time and again in this guide, not as a statue, or a bridge, or a Square, but as a person who “landed” just south of Laight Street, bid farewell to his men in an Address at Fraunces Tavern, or was greeted on kicking-out-the-British Day (Evacuation Day) at Union Square.  Same history, different level of intimacy.

14. Our obsession with ourselves predates Friends, Seinfeld, Sex in the City, and Mad Men:

“Since most American novelists live in New York for at least part of their lives, and since there is plenty of inspiration to be found in all the extremes the city covers, there has been enough FICTION written about New York to keep any reader supplied for more years than he would care to devote to the one subject.”

15.  This advice is strictly true, even though we no longer approach visits to far-away places and tourism with this mindset:

 ”The most tireless sight-seer cannot hope to cover the sights of Greater New York, even in a most cursory way, in less than from two to three weeks, and only then by devoting practically all the daytime to sight-seeing, uninterrupted by shopping or social intercourse.”

16. For all the similarities, it was a very different place from the New York of today.  In the entire 1916 Guide-Book, there are no mentions of Sunday brunch with the paper, bagels, the Hamptons, or pizza!  Heaven forefend, what an alien land!

So that was my enjoyable visit to the New York of the past.

I wonder what it will be like to visit New York City one hundred years from now?  With all their brilliance, I hope those Google boys figure out a way to get their hands on that guidebook.

I’d gladly visit.

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What if you were able to be very knowledgeable in showing that you were familiar with their history and their current initiatives, that you already knew more than a dozen of your future colleagues, and that you were ready to roll up your sleeves and start helping out right away?

Don’t you think you’d have a leg up on the competition?

Sure you would. So this week let’s talk about the company-centric job search — it’s another useful method to include your search repertoire.

Starting with companies, not job listings or contacts

With the company-centric job search, instead of starting with open jobs that might be appropriate for you, or asking your contacts about positions they know about, you start with the companies you’d like to work for, and work your way backwards into the information, people, and positions you’ll need to secure an offer.

By starting with the companies first, you’ll become an expert and an engaged outsider, which will allow you to come across in interviews heads and shoulders above your competition. You’ll have a compelling reason for why you belong at their firm, you’ll get to know multiple people in the HR and recruiting functions, and you’ll be able to cross-network with future colleagues. Compared to the typical unprepared and unconnected candidate that sits in that interview seat, you’ll be somebody who they can put to work right away.

Which local companies inspire you?

First, make a list of all the local companies that you find interesting. Don’t worry about whether they have open positions for you right now, but start with what intrigues you. It might be products that you find fascinating, a company culture that suits you, or friends and family that have already made that firm a second home. Make a long list of candidates.

Then, being practical, whittle down the list to the eight or ten most promising firms — those companies with the growth or stability that might make an attractive new workplace. You’re going to be spending a lot of time studying and understanding these companies, so don’t pick ones that doesn’t really make sense for you.

Research those companies

Taking your list of ten companies, seek to understand as much as you possibly can about them. For larger firms, there will be a lot of information available on the internet. For smaller companies, you may find research on the industry makes more sense.

Use your local paper’s news archives to read all the articles that mention that company over the past three or four years. You’ll read about successes and setbacks, failures and flashes of genius.

Read the companies’ entries on Wikipedia. See if they’ve been mentioned in any recent books published on Google book search. Check out the blogs and search on Twitter for mentions. Look up their stock symbol and financial information.

Who do you know who works there?

Now that you’ve boned up on the basics, network into those companies. Find the friends, family, former colleagues, and classmates that know the place, and ask them what it’s like to work there, the upsides and the downsides, and the future prospects.

You’ll also seem a lot smarter when requesting “informational interviews” because of your research. Requests that come across with detail are much easier to accept, such as: “I’m interested in working at ACME, and I wanted to know your opinion about how their Future 2020 initiative is going to work out, given what the competition is doing with their new product technology, and ACME’s history with private labeling. I understand you worked a lot on that in your time there.”

Build the big picture

By being informed, showing your knowledge (but not showing off), and putting your requests into context, you’ll find that far more people are willing to help you.

For each person you speak with at that company or in the industry, you’ll discover one more bit of information. Like pieces in a puzzle, they’ll all start to fit together and make sense. In fact, sometimes it takes an outsider to really understand the big picture — you may come up with insights that your interviewers haven’t considered.

When you’re well-informed, you’ll be well received.

Put it all together

By building a network inside of your ten companies, and acquiring and displaying a mastery of the knowledge and insights that you’ll need to be successful there, you’re making yourself a much more attractive candidate than the competition. To the hiring manager on the other side of the interview table, you look less risky and more immediately productive. To the HR person who is screening, you’re becoming a known commodity and an easy way for them to look smart when they put you in front of hiring managers. And for your future colleagues, you’re showing a passion and a commitment that increases their desire to begin working with you right away.

The company-centric job search shouldn’t be used to the exclusion of other methods. But when used wisely, it can teach you a lot about how to be successful in every aspect of your search — the depth of understanding that you get from knowing a few companies very well will have applications across your hunt.

Good luck in the search this week, Readers!

Before he was famous, before he painted the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, before he invented the helicopter, before he drew the most famous image of man, before he was all of these things, Leonardo da Vinci was an armorer, a weapons guy, a maker of things that go “boom”.

And, like you, he had to put together a resume to get his next gig. So in 1482, at the age of 30, he wrote out a letter and a list of his capabilities and sent it off to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan.

Here at TheLadders, we like to celebrate Leonardo’s birthday — coming up next Sunday, April 15th — by sharing his wonderful resume with you. You can click on the image below to see the full-size version.

The translation of this letter is quite remarkable:

“Most Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled contrivers of instruments of war, and that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Excellency, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.

1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy.

2. I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining to such expeditions.

3. If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is impossible, when besieging a place, to avail oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, etc.

4. Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment and confusion.

5. And if the fight should be at sea I have kinds of many machines most efficient for offense and defense; and vessels which will resist the attack of the largest guns and powder and fumes.

6. I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a designated spot, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river.

7. I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them. And behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance.

8. In case of need I will make big guns, mortars, and light ordnance of fine and useful forms, out of the common type.

9. Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense.

10. In times of peace I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in architecture and the composition of buildings public and private; and in guiding water from one place to another.

11. I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.

Again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.

And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency — to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.”

What a fantastic piece of personal marketing! There’s none of his famous backwards-mirror writing here — this letter was intended to be read and to persuade.

I’m a hopeless pedantic, so here’s what I think we can learn from Leonardo’s resume:

You’ll notice he doesn’t recite past achievements. He doesn’t mention the painting of the altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard; he doesn’t provide a laundry list of past bombs he’s built; he doesn’t cite his prior employment in artist Andrea di Cione’s studio.

No, he does none of these things, because those would be about his achievements, not the Duke’s needs.

Instead, he sells his prospective employer on what Leonardo can do for him.

Now imagine being the Duke of Milan and receiving this magnificent letter from the young prodigy of Florence. The specific descriptives paint a vivid picture of siege engines and bombardments and mortars and trench-draining and bridges to defeat the enemy. You can imagine the scenes that ran through the Duke’s head as he held this letter in his hands and read through Leonardo da Vinci’s bold statements of capabilities.

What Renaissance Duke wouldn’t want “kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; [that] can fling small stones almost resembling a storm”? Sounds pretty enticing.

And that’s exactly what your resume needs to do, too. Not the laundry list / standard bio that talks about you, but the marketing piece that talks about the benefits to your future employer and how you fit into his or her needs and desires.

So it turns out that even on his 560th birthday, this remarkable fellow Leonardo da Vinci is teaching us about the future. What a genius…

Here’s wishing you an illustrious week, Readers!

As the Italians might say…

Sto tifo per te!

Interestingly, the Soviets even had “20% time”, the innovation that Google has made famous in our own era.

The Soviets wanted to create the “новый советский человек”, or New Soviet Man, who would transcend limits, achieve heightened consciousness, attain a new plane of human development, yadda yadda.

Inevitably, these types of experiments in forced utopianism devolve into a cult-like messing around with your food, sleep, and time-keeping: it makes it easier for the unenlightened noobs to get with the program if physiological exhaustion curtails critical thinking.

So it wasn’t much more than a decade after the Revolution that the Soviets experimented with altered bio-rhythms and heightened capital equipment utilization by introducing the five-day week, as seen in this 1930 calendar:

The immediate purpose behind the short-week calendar was enabling “continuous production” in which factories stayed open 365 days throughout the year.  Not closing for the weekends meant no wasteful idle time for the machinery. And more stuff produced meant more record statistics for the apparatchiks to hail.

To accommodate the all-too-frail human flesh required to operate that continuously-producing equipment, the Soviets created the five-color-encoded calendar above.  Under this calendar, 20% of the workforce had any given day off , depending, of course, on which color they’d been assigned.

Predictably, the whole thing didn’t work.  Human beings don’t perform highly under conditions of forced labor, forced productivity, or forced relaxation.  The Soviets fiddled around with the five-day calendar from 1929 to 1931, at which point a six-day continuous week was introduced, until finally scrapping the whole thing in 1940.

Instructively, the same workforce that failed to do much of anything during the forced-production-1930s became the actual engine behind the defeat of Hitler in the 1940s because their motivations became, well… their motivations: their own love of country and hatred of the enemy.

It is also, I think, why Google’s benefits (and 20% time), superficially similar to the Soviets’, nonetheless produce an entirely different outcome.  Humans motivated by their own desire to contribute, to create, to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and to use to their own talents borne, developed, and mastered, to do so, will create beautiful, useful, delightful products for the rest of us.

Among free people, Reward will always, always defeat Punishment.