How do you write a job ad.

Wrapping up 2012 in preparation for Tet holiday brings back many cheerful memories. I had a chance to rewind things have gone by and numerous lessons the job has taught me, many in the hard way. I ran across this little job poster that we made back when there were 6 people in the team.

Cogini Vietnam first job ad 2011

The poster looks nice, but it fails all the current standard of us, mostly fails to envision the job and motivate potential applicants. But it was fun, crawling in the dark for a path. As we all grow up and get wiser, our approach becomes more methodical and less ad-hoc. Time goes by and there are a couple of things about job ad that I would like to share. To support my points, I crawled sample job ads from famous local and overseas tech firms.

Job ads

A well-written job ad helps a candidate screen him or herself in or out for the job. A job ad template typically consists of

• Main attractor
• Deliverables and activities
• Essential quality, preferences, and skills
• Contact information

Major attractor 

Major attractors define what will attract potential candidates. This is the most important pitch that sell candidates on the company. It is a common belief that this is the place to show off. I agree. Reading job ads, candidates are constantly asking themselves "What's in there for me?". Answer that one question right out of the gate will grab people's attention and keep them engaged. Skunkworks addresses itself as a Silicon Valley startup in the heart of Saigon and takes pride in the work environment it has to offer.

Our team is everything, so at Skunkworks.vn we pay close attention to the work environment:

• 100% product/innovation-focused startup company with experienced founders

• Flat organization - don't come to work for us if you want minions working for you!

• Open communication - we listen to our team

• Friendly, flexible, and fun culture 

But I also agree that bullets are a very ineffective way to deliver information intended to be recalled and acted upon. Images and stories are way better communication means to deliver the sales pitch.

Each company is a unique combination of its people, fields of expertise and culture. Any passionated employee can go rampant about the story of his company's genuineness. However it is well established that we can only hold small amounts of information in short-term, or "active", memory. Among all the possible number of key message points one can make, three (3) emerges as a magic number. Studies showed that the number of items we can easily is between three and four. In reality, number three is more common than four. Every great movie, novel or play has a three-act structure. Comedians know that three is funnier than two. The rule of three is one of the most powerful concepts in communication theories. 

Google and Twitter follow the rule of three closely. Each provides candidate three key messages about careers, with the third point prompts for action.

Google's Job Page

And Twitter's

But as programmers are spoiled these days, firms are going all their way to attract top-notches, there are more to say about the offer than just main attractors. Other benefits and perks are developing upon money (present and future), career growth, work/life balance and working environment (Have you ever turned into a green-eye monster just by looking at Google's office? I have). This is one of a few areas where bullet points are proven to be useful in attracting people attention. Bullet points are specialized in paralyzing readers with information. But the list is filled with benefits and perks, it leaves the candidate with an overall impression of "many good things".

I find Dropbox's job ad delightful

Deliverables and activities 

Deliverables and activities effectively describe the kind of work the hire is expected to perform. I usually construct this part with the same strategy used on main attractors, start with a short paragraph and follow up with bullet points to cover more details. A short paragraph describing the nature of the work is not something common among local tech firms' job ads. But as jobs are getting more diverged from each other, the need for a story to enable candidates to envision themselves in the work is receiving more care. Bullet points are hard to avoid in this section, but make sure that you have someone scan the list to make sure it reflects the actual job.

KMS' job description is pretty lengthy, but after all doesn't reveal much about the work

Dropbox once again scores with nice combination of story telling and bullet points

The more high level the position is, the more sophisticated the preface paragraph should be and the fewer bullet points. This is simply to reflect the fact that a senior position requires a completely different set of skills and responsibility from a entry-level job. At some point, the criteria of evaluation is no longer doing what one is told well and on-time, but the ability to take on unassigned work and responsibility, and deliver what one's firm values. Even though I am not fond of Rocket Internet as a business model and a company, I am convinced that its job ad for CTO in Vietnam is a well-crafted piece of work.

As our CTO you are a well-rounded strategic thinker responsible for establishing, executing and communicating the technical vision across all aspects of software development. You will be leading a top-flight technology team while overseeing research, development and quality management. Furthermore, you will be responsible for the establishment of an appropriate architecture and technology for our innovative projects. By embracing a culture of continual improvement, passion for technology and cross functional collaboration and communication, you will play an integral role in the company's strategic direction and growth. At Rocket, you will help us develop fast growing Internet companies and benefit from the broad expertise of our high-energy IT team. In return, you can expect an attractive salary and various opportunities to grow on, both, a personal and professional level.

Essential qualities, preferences and skills

They define the company's interest in the candidate professionally and personally. Many hiring managers get too deep into describing their ideal employees here that I often find this section of job ads unclear and unrealistic. This part is best done by giving details about how the candidate with perform activities and deliverables. E.g instead of writing "Must have negotiation skills", try "You will negotiate with suppliers and with the project team about milestones and tradeoffs". The second approach brings a breath of reality to the ad.

Skunkworks' ideal employee sounds pretty much a workplace super hero

• Open-minded and comfortable in an intense, high-growth startup

• Innovative and love to find new ways to resolve problems

• Able to adapt according to changing project schedules

• Self-motivated and can work independently

• Totally committed to quality

• Professional and responsible

• Able to communicate well in English (written and spoken)

In general, I try to avoid putting many soft skills here but the critical ones. This poses a similar problem as hypothetical questions in interview. Hypothetically, I am perfect.

Also unless I kept running into candidates with really bad cultural fits, I am not a big fan of explicitly points out desirable personal qualities. Again, many people have the tendency to idealize their personality. On the other hand, different personal qualities do not always need bad cultural fit (and diversity should always be embraced). Best personal qualities requirements I have read do not have their own section but are embedded into verbal descriptions in job ad, which in turn drive the way readers perceive the firm in the way it desires.

Similar to Dropbox's, Foursquare's job ad makes use of plenty verbal description to reflect the company cultural fits.

There isn't much to say about Contact Information so I am wrapping up my writing here. Hope you find it useful.

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Note: By the time the post was finished, Skunkworks.vn was going through a restructuring process and its website therefore was inaccessible.

Code Refactoring P.1

Branding pitfalls

So far we have looked at the psychology of job offer selection and how to gain advantage from that knowledge. I hope my thoughts back you up and give your more confident when approaching potential employees. But there are some pitfalls to watch out for too.

Wage war

The number is one of few objective things in the offer Tèo can rely on to imagine a bright future ahead, the rest is basically a leap of faith. So unless a company has a good reputation in the job market, matching the going rate is for the position is the first step to get the company to any shortlist.

A place in candiate's shortlist is good. However that is not enough to have a strong influence on his decision. In today's job market, companies want to stand out and make them the desirable destination for everyone (think about the power Google has in the software engineer world). However relying on the wage alone to become an outstanding talent magnet is highly risky at best and suicidal at worst. The move triggers an arm race among employers. A deep pocket grants you certain advantages in the race. But in the software industry, where talent is the most important resource of each company, other competitors will respond in kind if you pose a serious enough threat and just hope you burn out before they do. This is especially true when your competitors cannot afford to lose and have no option but to fight to death.

Expose key employees to competitors and recruiters.

Every successful tech companies spends its resources massively to build up a team of experts in its field of expertise. Not only this matters to company's products, it also has a psychological effect on potential employees. The investment provides a reassurance that the company knows what they are doing, with high quality. A chance to work with people on top of the technology stack is a compelling learning opportunities. It directly affects Tèo growth and reflects in his CV, both eventually lead him to a better career.

Don't forget to watch your back. When you are busy attracting the next generation of technical leads, your competitors might have already craven for your A team and started poaching. No-poaching agreement is quite common among key partners and alliance members. But in general, it is not possible to protect/shield/hide employees from recruiters. It will just be counterproductive to have policy restricting employees from doing their personal branding. Provide the right environment and they will stay. Happy employees are financially satisfied, professionally developed, and individually secured and respected.

Oversell

Every employment goes through a stage where the candidate is sitting on the fence considering options and you need to sell the vacant. But bear in mind, never oversell. It is not like you shouldn't sell on the bright future the company is heading to, the potential of the market or how exciting the working environment is. When the company is being successful and adrenaline in blood is high, it is hard not to do so. And in fact, you should. You want everyone you interviewed to spread the gospel whether they join or not. But many companies in the effort of recruiting people are promising things they can't deliver, like benefit packages or revenue/growth exceeding what the company and its market are actually capable of.

Once people know the truth, they are frustrated, they feel cheated. they express this to others. Now you have gained one more problem. And it is never a good thing when a high-profile hire quits unexpectedly. It causes otherwise happy people to second guess.

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So that's it. The last post in the company's perceived values psychology trio. Hope you enjoyed it.

Increase perceived values of a company

Last time, we talked about several factors that can affect the way Tèo - a well-trained software engineer - perceives a company's image and offer. In this post, we are looking into ways to increase perceived values.

Increase the wage objective value.

Perceived and objective values aren't identical, but they're still correlated. The offer-letter numbers are similar to the tip of an iceberg in many ways. Typically only one-ninth of the volume of an iceberg is above water yet it is the only visible factor to estimate the shape of the under water portion. The number is one of few objective things in the offer Tèo can rely on to imagine a bright future ahead, the rest is basically a leap of faith. So unless a company has a good reputation in the job market, matching the going rate is for the position is the first step to get the company to any shortlist.

Give the company a personality. 

There are a fair amount of profound articles, books and university programs on company culture and visual identity, I would make a fool of myself trying to cite these numerous theories that people have formed and practiced for centuries. However, I believe people in each profession have their own niches that are not so common to find, so do software engineers. When talking about a company, a normal engineer talks about offer, product and what kind of toys he is given. That's ok, that is a basic need of a human, just that it is superficial and can't tell anything about career growth in the coming years. A trait of a great engineer and contributor is showed via his genuine interest in deeper technical and organizational aspects such as process, field of expertise, type of projects, etc. Pitching on one of these field and promoting it in technical event the company takes place give it a bit of control on how people perceive the company.

37signals is not the best project management software shop in the world, but it has personality. The 37signals team stands for something: uncompromising simplicity. Other domestic examples are numerous: Greengar is specialized in mobile applications, East Agile etches its beloved management methodology into the name, Skunkworks is applying Silicon-Valley-approved product development in the heart of Saigon, etc... Ultimately, it comes down to differentiating the company, it almost doesn't matter on what, more or less anything will do.

Link the company with its top-notch team. 

Every successful tech companies spends its resources massively to build up a team of experts in its field of expertise. Not only this matters to company's products, it also has a psychological effect on potential employees. The investment provides a reassurance that the company knows what they are doing, with high quality. A chance to work with people on top of the technology stack is a compelling learning opportunities. It directly affects Tèo growth and reflects in his CV, both eventually lead him to a better career.

And really, if it is a job a tech rock star nods his head to, why bothers?

When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. And when companies aren’t growing quickly or their missions don’t matter as much, that’s when stagnation and politics come in. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.

Read more: http://read.bi/11ZOSEh

Lot of expats in the team structure helps too! For international corps, this shows a strong connection between the company and head-quarters. For others, it is a demonstration of the budget (yes, that the company is not running out of business and Tèo and his friends are first targets for layoff) and an international vision the company is approaching. This is a growing pattern of globalization and Vietnam, certainly, is not outside of the circle. (1000% bias, but Tèo grew up in the middle of nowhere. To him foreigners is a sign post of civilization and advancement)

As mentioned in the last post, Vietnamese education is sadly years behind developed countries and the country is crying for capable people in STEM. Even a big corp can't just hire a team that it wants. And when that happens, talents need to be raised, for the most vivid sample, Intel cooperated with RMIT to grow its team.

There are many ways a company can raise its tech team, but none of them is cheap.

"Quality is free, when you pay dearly for it" - Peopleware. 

Local companies are catching up with the trend in Silicon Valley by striving for an environment where every effort to master the technologies stack and get more productive is appreciated explicitly. In Cogini, we have been organizing weekly TechTalks where everyone is given chances to share about basically whatever they find interesting. Put it another way, it is like our weekly BarCamp. Leveraging that spirit, in the coming time we are having compulsory research hours and hack days, times when engineers can be completely creative, free from the constraints of their normal jobs. These research and sharing are endless source of blog posts, tweets and status updates - the first step to promote the team to the outer world. We are also sending engineers to conferences so that they can keep their skills up to date (we went to BarcampPP a few months ago). Allow engineers to buy books that contribute to their knowledge on the company’s dime. Permit engineers to express their ideas about the projects they’re working on.

Create a tribe. 

A tribe that links itself to the personality the company is building. This is an advanced form of #2 and #3. Like company's culture, the tribe needs time to grow and everyone participates to controlling - not just individuals. But once it is formed, the tribe is the driving force behind every success of the company. I was taught a classic example of this, the IBM's Black Team when I was in the Software Testing class of Mr. Quang Tran. If you haven't known about the "nefarious" team, take some time to read it. Please, I'll wait.

IBM was delighted about the team, as every defects they found was one that customers didn't. And their colleagues outside the team were jealous at the apparent fun they were having. And others too.

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So far we have looked at some humble opinions of the silly me about talents acquisition in Vietnam. Hopefully, you have got some ideas of how job market works here. But there are some pitfalls to watch out for. Stay tuned. Check it out

Perceived value of a company

"Hiring is the most important decision a manager can make"

That is if you can attract enough people to interview, filter and finally hire. When the number of CV you receive doesn't even meeting the number of vacancies you are having, your decision is highly constrained.

Now that I have set foot in the software industry of Vietnam for a while, I learned a couple of things. The job market in Vietnam is abundant in quantity yet desperately low in quality. The situation keep improving over the years with the coming waves of overseas students and local international colleges. But that hardly meets the thirst of this growing country (for many years, Vietnam has been one of the countries with highest growth rate). Despite of this huge demand on high quality workforce, a majority of college programs is sticking with impractical knowledge. The sad fact turns the middle to senior job market in Vietnam really really competitive. Big corps and small startups, both local and multinational, are drawing from a small talent pool and there are obviously not enough fishes for everyone.

Companies of all sizes are positioning themselves different to take advantage in the head hunting game. Hilariously, the ones who are winning the game are the preys, the talented engineers. With an overflowed number of offers and a few mainstream technologies choices that ensure the engineers to be useful in any firm (iOS, Android, Django, RoR, etc..), how are they making their decisions is a very interesting topic. My view point as an engineer is different from that of a professional recruiter and might turn out to be entertaining.

The story of Tèo

Tèo is a well-trained software engineer that has been living in Ho Chi Minh for the last few years. He was an active student that won several merit awards and found a club for hobbyists in his school of computer science. He is the new generation of Vietnamese that every recruiter loves. An hour of Tèo drawing class diagram and slamming the keyboard with customer worths $10. That means Tèo should nod his head at an $3200/month offer, assuming he generates value to the company for every hour he works.

Of course that assumes that Tèo is a rational, decision-making machine that economists love. In fact, Tèo is flesh-and-blood irrational human being who doesn't price his time and calculate the costs and benefits. He has a perceived value of an offer which may or may not be linked to its objective value.

The perceived value of an offer may be higher than its objective-value. Just look at how many people want to be a Apple genius in comparison with the wage. But the perceived can also be lower than its objective value. MailChimp is a successful company and can make good offer, but worried that its PHP developer is not as appealing to others as it actually is.

Back to Tèo, if a recruiter wants to get his nod, then changing the offer is an option, but she can also change his perception.

How people set their perceptions

For a start, it is extremely hard for them to do so in a vacuum. Isolate a fresh grad from the rest of the world and ask him the offer he wants. If he somehow manages to find the question make sense in the situation, the answer is probably derived from his monthly expense during college years, not the value he can possibly generate for the company.

People base their perceived values on reference points. Whenever an offer arrives, Tèo is making sequence of subconscious and intuitional calculation that scans through what his friends are earning, a relative comparison of their capability and employment history.

Software industry of Vietnam is not so young that reference points are hard to find. The industry of Vietnam is pretty outsourcing-centric. Big outsourcing firms, the trend-setter a decade ago, have all stabilized and paychecks are standardized. These references are pretty well-known, like FPT with its own education system and Japan-centric business, VNG with the tendency to localize Chinese games or TMA, the popular first stop for all students from HCMUT. If a new company wants to break through the circle, there is a chance that it is triggering an arms race and the winning chance is equal for one with either deeper pocket or better local relationship. This is the minefield that no startup ever set its foot in for years.

That doesn't mean one needs to copy the reference point. If the company is genuinely positioned higher than its competitors in term of career development, growth potential, working environment or any other unmeasurable factor, a new reference point is set.

The value people perceive an offer to have can depend on their taste. By the time I was a student, I struggled with the question of being a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond. Some might like it this way, others like another. However, the tribe people belong to can affect their taste. It is not a surprise that there are so many startup and tech companies in Silicon Valley. There have been students coming to the area for un-related programs such as philosophy or geography and end up being engineer in a very ad-hoc way. They are essentially the same people, the changes were in the expectations and sense of value of those around them.

Knowledge is yet another factor influencing people choice. "An intense, self-motivated environment" might sound innovative and exciting to someone who spent a few years in a big bureaucratic corp. The same sentence sounds like extremely stressful workplace for team members of an unfortunate startup. Over the years I have found some other mismatches in wording and what actually happens.

"Our fast-paced company" - We have no time to train you. 

"Must have an eye for detail" - We have no quality assurance

"Good communication skills" - Management communicates, you listen, figure out what they want and do it

So many factors are getting between Tèo and his right employer. In this competitive market, how can one company stand out to catch Tèo attention while not being an attention ho? Stay tuned. Here are some inner thoughts http://bit.ly/QUNCyT

So I attended Barcamp PhnomPenh 2012

Barcamp Phnom Penh 2012 was organized in September. The blog post wasn't published until now because its owner was busy cranking the code and .. lazy for the rest of the time.

So I attended BarcampPhnomPenh 2012. The main purpose was simple because many dudes in my company made it last year but I didn't and it sounded like they had real fun there. The other purpose was to employ an Cambodian geek, because we are having a project with a major ISP of Cambodia and it is nice to have someone on-site. And in general, I always welcome diversity in my team.

A Vietnamese at Cambodia

My friends described their experience at the previous Barcamp as "just like celebrities". Cambodian loved to take photos with them and treated them really nice. From what we were taught about the Cambodian-Vietnamese war, starting from 25 December 1978, the communism government of Vietnam erased Khmer Rogue's Democratic Kampuchea. And as Khmer Rogue is described as such a rotten government, responsible for death of million Khmer citizens and the trials to judge its leaders occurred till a few years ago; the act of Vietnamese government seems to be a pretty good thing, doesn't it? Given that piece of historical knowledge, I found the nice treatment my friends received understandable. 

However the same treatment didn't happen to me :) It wasn't not nice, not at all, the Cambodian we met were friendly to us as to any random foreigners. Just that I was curious about the difference in my friends' description and my experience. After reading this article, I was glad that we were treated well as any other foreigners. Vietnam and Cambodia have a long lasting political relationship, and no matter how do I look at it, it is completely a  ugly mess. Under certain aspects, the relationship is similar to that between Vietnam and China. The idea of celebrity Vietnamese was erased from my mind shortly.

Meet local people, for real

The Facebook stream of the BarcampPP page was very lively. I took it as a reflection of a healthy community. Turned out, I was not really impressed by the quality of the people I met there, technically. I had two talks, one about advanced JavaScript, the other about entrepreneurship. Despite some tiny incidents such as the organizers misinterpreted the word "entrepreneur" and tried helping by changing it to "enterprise" or I had to load my slides using a 3G dongle, I think I did some good speeches and made the message clean. However, the developers attending the JS talk didn't know JavaScript. They seemed to be familiar with C/C++, pretty old-school and low level stuff. And they barely spoke, so no discussion was generated. The entrepreneurs in the second talk were a bit more talkative, but they were not really into sharing their thinking, ideas and resources. Somehow I had a feeling that few people there actually were carrying out their plan. Anyway, as there was a big language barrier, any judgment is hardly justified.

Another mismatch, not only at Barcamp PP but also Barcamp Saigon, is the expectation of the organizers and mine. I want to meet brilliant people and listen to astonishing speeches, learn from them and share the knowledge. The size doesn't matter, as long as good discussion can be found. But the organizers aimed at a large event, with thousands of people (it must be 1k+ attendants in the first day). Most were students, who didn't know many things nor know one thing well. And the sharing spirit was definitely lacking. It was more like lecturing (I'd not even call it educating because there were limited communication from the two sides).

A glare at Cambodia-Vietnam economy

Despite of its rapid growth in recent years, Cambodian economy is still relatively weak compared with most neighbouring countries. The shadow of uncontrolled inflation in the past is still haunting the country. Although Cambodia official currency is the Reil, the sign of dollarization is strong here. USD is used widely for all kind of transactions. Outside of Phnom Penh, VND and Baht are used at areas close to the border crossings.

A prospective and well-paid career in another country has always been interesting to me. At the very least, it is a great travelling experience. I had high hope that many other young Cambodian share the same idea. We placed our posters at the job board, and I had already had two talks (about technology and economy) but that didn't make a clean hit. Thinking that we could explicitly raise the interest of the attendants about a career in one of the most dynamic city in South East Asia, my colleagues presented the last talk of us in the event, "Job opportunities in Vietnam". Any nothing has ever surprised me like what happened there. Before any talk was made, few people showed up in the room, and 70% of them are expats living in both Cambodia and Vietnam. It wasn't because of the bad speech, nor useless information, the people just actually had little interest in working in Vietnam. And at that point, perhaps you might also have realized, all my expectations at the beginning of this trip failed desperately. 

Conclusion

There is no conclusion. I am glad that I came to Cambodia. That gave me a chance to feel the country by my own senses rather than having my mind stuffed up with pre-judges and stereo-type thinking. I'm glad that once again I am reminded about how big the world is and how much left out there to learn.

5 JavaScript Tips

I made this presentation for BarCamp Saigon 2012. It was an interesting experience from head to tail.

The slides were made the night before the event. That was the first time I made a presentation that rush. To many out there it is nothing special, but as an introvert and a clumsy speaker, I typically need longer period to prepare.

The speech was original meant to be made in English. Last minute change, there wasn't any foreigner in the room. My first technical presentation in Vietnamese ever :)

Enjoy!

http://khang.cogini.com/JS-tips/