I’m terribly sorry, but tonight’s regularly scheduled post was interrupted by a serious snuggle session with my hound. After an extended period of belly rubbing, stinky paw smelling and ear scratching to the soundtrack of happy beagle wuffles, I’m no longer in the right frame of mind to finish my angry rant against the Bush administration.
I bet the world would be a happier place if everyone had a pet to cuddle with for a while. Personally, I highly recommend Beaglus Cutus.
I am currently trying to hire a marketing manager for my team. It seems like I have to do this every summer. Not because I am a bad boss – I don’t want you to get the wrong idea – but because that just seems to be the timing of things. Two years ago I was adding a new member to the team. One year ago a perfectly happy employee was lured away by our former sister company. I may still be a little bitter about that one. And then this summer I lost a wonderful team member who decided to relocate to Denver.
The ad I’m running clearly states the skills I’m looking for, and yet I’m getting all sorts of resumes from people who have no related experience whatsoever. I ask for a cover letter and a salary range. Strong writing skills are a must (also clear from the ad) and yet I’m getting half assed cover letters that are poorly written, or totally generic or riddled with mistakes. I did get one where the person made a valiant effort at composing a letter with some customization, but forgot to fill in our company name where it said [Company Name] in the letter. Then there are the two resumes I’ve gotten where people sent them with their tracked changes still showing. Oh, and let’s not forget the person I spent 45 minutes interviewing only to discover that she wanted $20k more in salary than I can pay. I’m never going to make that mistake again – I may stop calling people who don’t give a salary, and at the very least the person scheduling the interviews will have to ask the question. Speaking of salaries, don’t even get me started on the people who have no experience and want $50,000 per year or the guy who has three years of marketing experience and wants $95,000-$100,000. And then there were the two people who scheduled interviews and called back with some flaky excuse for not showing up. If you can’t make it to the interview, you’re not going to be someone we can rely on to get the job done, so no thank you, we won’t be rescheduling.
Here are just a few handy tips for anyone looking for a job, but most certainly for the people looking for a job from me.
1. Pay attention to detail, and proofread your stuff. If you can’t get your resume and cover letter error free when you should be trying your best to make a good impression, I’m not going to waste my time interviewing you. You’ll be a sloppy worker.
2. Actually read the ad and look at the job requirements. If you don’t have the necessary skills, or any related skills whatsoever, don’t waste my time applying for the job. If it says it is looking for someone with 3 years of experience and you’re a VP of something or other, don’t apply. It’s a marketing manager job. I can’t afford you, and I won’t call you.
3. Tailor your cover letter to my ad. If I say I want someone who has strong analytical skills, highlight something from your resume for me that demonstrates the analysis work you’ve done. Your cover letter is your chance to sell yourself to me. I’m looking for a marketer. Hey, here’s a chance to trot out the very skills you’ll be using if you get the job…dazzle me!
4. I can understand if you don’t want to give an exact salary. But when I ask for one, I’m just trying to avoid wasting my time and yours. At least give me a range to work with. If you’re outside my range, you won’t want the job anyway.
5. Do a little research on the company. We have a website. You can learn a bit about us before sending in your resume. And if we call you for an interview – do some prep work for crying out loud!
6. Also, you’ll want to get to the office a little early for the interview, not a little late. There’s this great thing called the Internet, and you can get directions off of it. Or failing that (although I work in ebusiness, so you had damn well better be familiar with the Internet, or we’ve got problems) look at a map and plan your route.
7. Don’t call us and ask if you have to dress up for the interview. I don’t care if your office is casual. Stop somewhere and change, moron. It’s an interview. You want to put your best foot forward.
8. Don’t send your resume into us 18 times in one month. If we don’t call you after the first two (because it is possible that we missed the first one), we’re not interested. Particularly when you don’t really have relevant experience.
9. I’ll refer you back to item #2, because that is one of the biggest problems I’m having. For example, marketing does not necessarily mean sales. I’m not looking for a salesman. What I am looking for is right there in the ad. All you have to do is read it.
10. Please keep in mind that interviewing you is no more fun for me than being interviewed is for you. Help me out here. Don’t give me one word answers. Show me who you are and what you can do. I want to like you. Just give me a reason – or two – to like you. Please?
Guess how I'm posting this? From my new Sidekick! Yep, I bought it. And I love it! And yes, I know being this excited about being able to post from my phone is silly. I don't care. :)
A large part of my week last week was spent in a series of meetings with people from outside my company. They were interesting meetings, for the most part. Still, I spent a good portion of the time sitting at the table, silently berating myself for letting my boss and her boss do most of the talking, while I sat there, lumplike, contributing nothing of value to the discussion.
In the end, instead of dazzling anyone with my brilliance, I made what I felt were a few common sense suggestions, threw out a couple of basic ideas, chatted a bit, laughed at their Matrix jokes, and had a brief bonding moment with one guy who liked my shoes (yes, those shoes.)
At the end of the day on Friday, my boss’s boss came by and asked me what I had talked to them about when he wasn’t around. “They loved you,” he said “they think you’re great.”
I guess maybe sometimes, being a common sense having, sci-fi/fantasy enjoying, shoe loving girl with a decent level of experience at her job is a good thing. I’ll have to remember that the next time I’m feeling down.
As I was lurking around Target this evening, hanging out in front of the magazine rack in an effort to avoid getting sucked into buying a bunch of random Target stuff while I waited for my prescription to get filled, I overheard a teenage girl make an ironic reference to a quote from the movie Bring It On.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is more pathetic, that she made the reference, or that I actually got it.
Does this mean that the incredibly cool and ironic references my friends and I made as teenagers to say, Repo Man, the Breakfast Club and the Lost Boys were equally lame?
Good news abounds today! I started the morning off with a visit to the former Dr. Negativo, who was really nice and human to me this time. Maybe she just needs a little time to get to know the patient or something, but she was more positive than she has been and even told me a story about her daughter. Plus, my scale and her scale are now only one pound apart. I have decided my clothes probably weigh one pound, which would account for the difference. She congratulated me on my weight loss – now at 23.6 pounds – said my blood sugars have been looking great, and cleared me to get pregnant. I still think I’d like to lose a bit more weight, but it is nice to know it won’t be a health disaster if I (ha!) should happen to get pregnant (double ha!). And just knowing that we could start trying again if we wanted to makes me feel better. Now the timing of the trying is up to me, not someone else. I do want to make sure I can have as healthy a pregnancy as possible though, so I think even though it is tempting, oh so very tempting…not quite yet.
Then this afternoon I quite unexpectedly came into $1,000! Nothing perks up even a good day like finding out extra money is coming your way out of the blue. Of course, I immediately thought about the Sidekick I long for so very much. Nothing has changed since last week. I don’t need one, not even a little bit. I am at a loss to explain why I want one. I think it may have something to do with my sci-fi/fantasy geek side, which loves gadgets, particularly ones that look like they could be used for some sort of futuristic purpose. There is still a part of me that is the little girl who pretended that her parents’ enormous standalone stereo was a spaceship control panel. Of course, John pointed out that what we need way more than an expensive cell phone that we don’t actually need is a china cabinet, and he’s right. We’ve got three boxes of my great-grandmother’s china and Depression glass sitting in our dining room/office because we don’t have any free cabinet space.
But a china cabinet is so not-frivolous, and will cost more than the Sidekick. Also not-frivolous: putting the money in our savings, making an extra payment toward the principal on our mortgage, or putting it toward a Roth IRA. And then there’s the vacation we want to take in October, but I’ve already got money earmarked for that. I’m trying to shut the voice of temptation up and talk myself into the more sensible course of shelling out $50 for one of those Razr phones and then tucking the rest of the money away. Or sticking with my current functional if not fabulous phone a while longer to see if prices start coming down…
…but that devil on my shoulder keeps whispering in my ear…the doctor said you’re ok to try to conceive…you really want that Sidekick…sensible shmenshible…
We’ll see where I end up.
Last night, after I posted my post and went off to bed, John came upstairs and said “You know, you might want to make sure you don’t have any typos in a post where you talk about not being a dumbass…” So I got up out of bed and trudged downstairs to fix my post. Here at Bad Penguin, quality is job one, even after I’ve brushed my teeth and put on my pj’s for the night.
The worst part is, I didn’t have just one typo – I had two! Neither one was because of adult onset moronhood though. One of them was due to the fact that sometimes my Y and T keys stick and if I don’t hit them hard enough, they don’t register. The other one was really a typo. Oops. What can I say, I’m usually pretty tired by the time I get to sit down and write in the evening. I consider myself lucky if I don’t accidentally start typing in French or Martian or something. Anyway, as John was giving me grief for proofreading and missing (more than once) two typos in a very short post, we actually had a debate about whether or not he could call typo number one a spelling error, which it totally wasn’t. There is a difference between a typo and a spelling error, and I’d like to point out that spell check would have caught a spelling mistake. The problem was that I had typed the wrong word, or rather, left an important letter off the end of the word due to my sticky T key. But last night, I was tired, and so all I could come up with was “That is not a spelling mistake! I can spell your ass into the ground!”
Because I’m a gangsta spella like that. Beware my mad spellin’ skillz, yo, or I’ll spell your ass something fierce.
When I mentioned to John last night that I thought my most recent post might make me look ever so slightly geeky, instead of replying with the obvious “might?” he said “Better to be geeky than a dumbass.”
Obviously I made a smart decision when I married him, because he is so very right. So what if I’m somewhat less than cool in my approach to life sometimes. At least I’m not a moron.
I’ll have to remember that one so I can use it on our kids. Because you know I’d rather have geeky kids than stupid ones. And let’s face it, the chances of us having a kid who follows their own path is pretty high. Either that or we’ll end up with some all-American football playing/cheerleading/beauty pageant liking/Michael J. Fox on Family Ties kid who mystifies us on a regular basis. Sullen and punky I can relate to, no problem. Mainstream might be tricky. We will, however, raise our children right, so at least Republicanism shouldn’t be an issue.
Holy Hannah, I think my job is trying to kill me. Or perhaps they are just making sure I really earned that promotion. My boss, who I totally stole “Holy Hannah” from is away at a seminar. My usual partner in crime for this particular project is on vacation. And I’m wading around in areas of the business that I usually do not touch in all that much detail. I’m getting quite an education though, so I guess we can hope that I come through this week as a more well rounded business person. Luckily, I do have a group of smart, hardworking people I can depend on to help me sort this all out. It’s exhausting and a little confusing (ok, a lot confusing at times) but it is also energizing to be tackling something this different from my usual routine, to dive in and work hard to overcome a challenge, to learn new stuff, and to think about our business in a whole new way. It’s fascinating. There’s all this nuts and bolts stuff that I knew was going on, but I did not have any idea how it all really worked. I still don’t, but I’m getting there.
And hey, they say learning to use new parts of your brain helps keep you sharp, right? If I’m still alive at the end of the week, I should be sharp as a tack.
P.S. The amazingly gorgeous shoes of great beauty gave me a blister on my left heel. But I still love them, and we’re going to work it out. Not only do they look fabulous, I think they make me almost 4 inches taller. I feel like a giant in them. If you can be 5 ft 5 and a giant.
I can be extraordinarily lazy when it comes to girl stuff. This wasn’t always the case – my mom is one of those women who does not leave the house unless she is perfectly dressed, made up and accessorized, which meant that I was raised to not leave the house unless I was perfectly dressed, made up and accessorized. My mom and I had different ideas about how I should dress and look, but in my way I was very well put together. Then I got to college and after a couple of weeks of showing up to class all dressed up, I realized everyone else was in jeans and sweats. The realization that I could knock a bunch of time off my morning routine and sleep later hit like a lightning bolt, and the less fancy Hillary was born. Wearing makeup and my contacts became more of a going out occurrence. Of course, I went out a lot in college, so really I just shifted to being well groomed at night, I guess. In a baby doll dress, black tights and Doc Martens kind of way. Usually with a lot of black eyeliner.
Anyway, I generally take a more minimalist approach these days. I’m perfectly presentable, but I got into the habit of skimping on the details. Now I find that as I’m getting in shape and losing weight, I’m becoming more interested clothes and makeup again. This weekend I reconnected with my girlie side in a big way. On Saturday I made my semi-annual trip to get my hair cut and highlighted. As a bonus, I now have so much grey hair that I have to have dye added in between the highlights. Stupid grey hair. It’s nice to go to the salon to get fussed over. Expensive, but totally worth it – curly hair is tricky to cut, and I’m picky about who does my color. Plus I really like my hair stylist. She’s fun.
After the salon I headed over to Nordstrom where I bought what may be the most beautiful pair of pumps I have ever owned. As I was trying them on, complete strangers commented on how great they are. Even John, who wouldn’t care if I strapped actual shoe boxes to my feet instead of shoes, recognized how gorgeous these shoes are. Don’t you just love them? Thank you, Michael Kors.
Then I went and made the girl at the Smashbox counter’s day by getting color correcting primer (I’m so tired of the red undertone from my rosacea), foundation, a foundation brush, eyeliner, eye shadow and lip gloss.
It was an enjoyable and satisfying day and I’m looking forward to doing it again. I’m not saying that I’ll completely abandon my minimalist side, but I’m going to have fun embracing my girlie side too.
For some reason unknown even to me, I’ve gotten it into my head that I want a T-Mobile Sidekick 3. And let me this perfectly clear right now – I do not need a Sidekick 3. The only person who needs a Sidekick less than I do might be a person living in a pre-industrial society in the Amazon with no electricity, no cell phone towers and no one else to contact via cell phone or email. I already have a cell phone, of course. I have the lowest minute rate plan that T-Mobile offers, and the only time I have ever gone over my minutes was when I was on a business trip and used up all my anytime minutes dealing with a crisis back at work, which does not count. That was in May of 2004.
My cell phone usage/ownership is a joke with my friends and family, because I only turn it on if I know someone might be calling me on it, or if I need to use it. I’m always slightly surprised when it rings, and they are always slightly surprised when I answer it. If you leave me a message on my cell phone there’s a good chance it will be days before I realize it. I don’t have anyone’s number programmed into the phone, which I admit is more out of laziness than anything else. I’m sure I could figure out how to do it, and it probably would be more convenient for me if I did. I’ve never sent anyone a text message.
And yet, here I am, checking out the Sidekick and its features on the T-Mobile website. It has an MP3 player – and I don’t have an MP3 player! It has a digital camera. Well, I have one of those, but not on my cell phone! It could be my PDA – I’d never miss one of my friends’ birthdays again! Maybe I could even use it to track my food consumption during the day and load that info into my blood sugar log at night! Plus sending email would be fun.
Right. I need to calm down and step away from the computer before I talk myself into spending way too much money on something I absolutely do not need.
I think this may be the coolest and cleverest viral marketing campaign I have ever seen. I know I called myself an evil marketer last week and bragged a little bit about how I'm good at what I do, but I bow down to the geniuses who thought this up.
Be warned, though. You will have to physically restrain yourself from sending this to everyone you know who has ever mentioned Samuel L. Jackson or Snakes on a Plane.
Guess what? I have excellent news. I am very pleased to say that you are now reading the blog of the new Executive Director of E-Business Development.
My boss told me I was getting a promotion last week, but I’m fairly sure there are still some people from my job who read this site, so I couldn’t say anything until they announced it at work today. Anyway, I’m pretty excited about the promotion. It was a total surprise, but at the same time, I have worked awfully hard, so I’ll say I deserve it! My boss said all sorts of nice things about me, and her boss said nice things about me, and I got a raise. It means a lot to know that they think so highly of me and the work that I do. I’m looking forward to taking on whatever new challenges and responsibilities end up coming my way.
Then today, many of my co-workers offered their congratulations and said even more nice things about me. Plus there’s that whole raise thing I may have mentioned. So as you might imagine, I’m feeling pretty good.
Yippee!
Lately I’ve been feeling a bit impatient. I’ve hit a plateau in my weight loss, which is frustrating me. I’m down 22 pounds, which is great. Every day I find some new outfit that I haven’t been able to wear in years that fits again. I can actually see muscle definition starting to appear, and I’ve made great strides in getting more fit. I did 5.24 miles on the elliptical machine the other day. Why 5.24 miles and not 5.25, which would be much more pleasing? Because I programmed it for an hour and it wouldn’t let me keep going to get to 5.25. You have no idea how much that offended my slightly compulsive side. But my point is, progress is being made.
And yet…I really thought I would have lost more weight by now. 22 pounds in just under five months is not all that impressive. I’m anxious to get back to trying to conceive, and I haven’t lost enough weight to do that yet. I’m pretty sure you have to gain at least 15 pounds or 20 pounds when you’re pregnant, and who knows how much I’d actually gain. That would put me right back where I was, which is bad. I think I have to lose at least another 20 pounds. And the thought of waiting another five months before we can even start trying again is damn depressing, particularly when you assume, as I do, that I’ll have to wait some more. Because it’s not like I’ll lose 20 more pounds and miraculously get pregnant immediately. There’s no guarantee that I’ll ever get pregnant. My fancy pants new RE that I started seeing in January did figure out that I had diabetes, so kudos to him, but he hasn’t gotten to treat me for infertility at all, and here it is, August already. Maybe my undiagnosed diabetes was the problem, but maybe it wasn’t the whole problem. Perhaps losing weight and getting my blood sugar under control will be enough…but perhaps it won’t. There’s just so much that I still don’t know and can’t control, and it is starting to make me itchy and impatient. I’m trying very hard to stay focused on the positive, particularly when I have so much to be positive about, but some days it is hard to believe that I’m getting any closer to having a baby.
Last night I went to the Legg Mason Tennis Classic (which I sometimes still think of as the Virginia Slims Tennis Classic, because I am old. Do they even still make Virginia Slims?) with my friend Amy and another person from work, who I didn’t know very well, but who turned out to be quite nice.
I had never been to a live tennis match before, and it was so much fun! I’ve always liked watching tennis on TV, and had crushes on such tennis players as Ivan Lendl and Andre Agassi when I was growing up. I was hoping we’d get to see Agassi, but he lost really early on in the tournament. The evening got off to a most excellent start when we hopped in a cab at the Metro rather than waiting in the really long line for the free shuttle bus. Our cab driver was a riot. He kept saying how smart we were to have gotten in his cab, made sure to point out all of the embassies we passed along the way, yelling “Indonesia! Poland!” as we went by, and pulling off a crazy left turn maneuver in front of a huge line of cars at one light. He was a hoot.
And then the tennis match was very cool. Really, I was sitting there watching the match from our excellent – and free, thanks Amy and Amy’s friend who gave her free tickets! – seats, loving every second of it and plotting how I could get up to New York for the US Open. We saw the Moodie-Safin match, which was very exciting, with both sets ending with tie-breakers and then some of the doubles match with the Bryan brothers, who are twins and apparently very good doubles players. I told Amy at the end of the night that between the tennis and her Superman/IMAX idea, she’d have made #1 on my speed dial, if I had speed dial numbers programmed.
In totally unrelated news, but linked in my mind because both of them live in New York and I was thinking about the US Open, I’m apparently kind of a jerk. Or at least not such a great friend, as I had to call TWO of my oldest and closest friends today to apologize for the fact that I completely missed their birthdays. I take birthdays pretty seriously, so I was mortified to have forgotten them. Even worse, it’s not the first time. Damn summer birthdays. I called Mary Pat, whose birthday I actually did remember on her birthday, but I got distracted and forgot to call her, and then I forgot for a week. A week! Not very good best friend from middle school behavior. Anyway, I called her on the way to the Hagerstown Outlets to look for new sneakers. Yes, that’s right, I’ve actually exercised enough to need new sneakers! I hit the sneaker outlets and eventually ended up with two pairs at Reebok. Nike had nothing in a size 6.5, and prices that I can only describe as not very outlet-y. Same for Addidas. Reebok had better prices and a buy one pair get one pair for half price deal, so even though they didn’t have any 6.5’s either, I decided to go for two pairs of size 7’s. I very virtuously did not even look at any non-exercise clothes because I am not buying any clothes until I reach my goal weight, but I do need a few new smaller exercise shirts so I can stop flashing the world when I lean over in yoga class. Once again, I discovered that there weren’t really any bargains to be had, so I hit the road and went to Target, where I got two tank tops with sports bras built in and a t-shirt for what one shirt at the outlet mall would have cost me. Good old Target. But while in Target, I got to thinking about my friend Julie and how I should call her. And then I realized that I should really call her what with her birthday having just happened. I actually briefly hoped that today might be August 3rd, but when I thought I about it, I knew that couldn’t be right. So then I had to come home and call her to apologize for missing her birthday. Sometimes, I just suck.
And finally, on yet another unrelated note, has anyone ever, in the history of making cookies, made Nestle Toll House cookies and gotten 5 dozen cookies in one batch? I made cookies to take to John’s dad tomorrow and I got 4 dozen. I have made chocolate chip cookies a bazillion times, and I always get 4 dozen, and the recipe always claims you’ll get 5. Just wondering if I’m the only one.
I’m an evil marketer. It’s what I do, and I’m pretty good at it. I spend quite a bit of my time figuring out ways to get my company’s customers to take the actions we want them to take, so I know all the tricks (or as we like to think of them, creative persuasion techniques).
And yet, they still have a power over me. Today I got a letter from a furniture store in Frederick that I have never even visited. It was addressed to me with my maiden name, which I generally don’t use anymore. They were sending me, as a preferred customer, a special invitation to their going out of business sale! But the only way to get in the door is to come and bring the letter. Now we still need a china cabinet, so I considered going by there to see if they have any decent deals. And then I thought to myself, I wonder if I really need to bring the letter? Which, no, of course I don’t! But you see how sneaky we marketers can be?
And then there’s Borders and Barnes & Noble, who have really got my number. Every so often they send me a coupon – Borders sends me one by email every week, although the deal varies, so I don’t always use it. Barnes & Noble sends them out by mail, but not as frequently. And I have to say both methods are surprisingly effective. Barnes & Noble’s because the way they space them out makes them feel more valuable, and Borders because I usually have to spend 20 bucks to save my 20% or 25% or whatever it is. And I can always find $20 worth of books that I want. Hell, today at Barnes & Noble I spent more than that and I didn’t even need to. I got Pamie’s book because I saw it on the table and then I had to buy it because I “know” her (although really, I just read her site. She doesn’t usually have comments on, and I’ve never emailed her or anything, so saying I know her is a stretch. I guess now her complex and yet surprisingly successful strategy of starting a website and writing interesting stuff on it so someday a girl in Maryland who she doesn’t know will spend $13 [-10%!] on her book has paid off. Cha-ching!) And I bought a hardcover book because it was 30% off, and then an additional 10% because I’m a booksaver member or whatever the hell they call it and then an additional 15% off with my coupon, which took this $26 book down to $12 something, and who could pass that up? Especially since the mass market paperback is going to cost $8 anyway. And then I bought this fantasy novel that keeps getting good reviews, so I finally broke down and bought it, even though it isn’t my usual type of fantasy. We’ll see.
Score:
Evil marketers who aren’t me: 3;
Me: 0.
