This week, Christina and I both took the PDA-plunge and upgraded to Blackberries.

Mind you, I had some serious qualms about getting a Blackberry in the first place, after reading a terrifying Newsweek article a few months ago about how your brain goes into constant partial attention mode as it waits for your PDA to buzz with a message, and you’re rendered unable to complete other simple, mental tasks. Then Stanford came out with a similar study last week about how multitasking is ineffective, if not harmful.

And beyond that, there’s the loss of brainpower and problem-solving. As my friend Ruth noted about getting her first iPhone, “I replaced my own brain with the internet’s brain.” Have you ever been in that situation where your Garmin or GPS loses service and all of a sudden you have absolutely no idea where you are or how to get where you were going?

Being connected is, ultimately, a good thing. I will hopefully get stuck at fewer bus stops late at night now that I can access the real-time schedules online; I can use maps and find local restaurants and buy my Harry Potter movie tickets while hanging out at the Berkeley Kite Festival. At Bright Green Talent, we use a lot of these different channels to reach jobseekers - for all of my grumbling, I am all over LinkedIn and Facebook trying to find people to fill our jobs. I’m all in favor of a device that allows people to respond quickly and not waste time sitting in front of a computer.

So, pushing my fears aside, I went ahead and bought the BlackBerry, and was immediately thrown into a panic attack as the Verizon staff pointed out that on one device, I could now simultaneously make calls, email, send text messages, Google chat, Skype, use Blackberry Messaging, Twitter, Facebook message, and use AIM.

Yikes.

I get worried about the future of human interaction (as well as getting “BlackBerry thumb”). Having all of these other types of interaction at our fingertips can make us lose sight of reality - what’s happening in front of us, the people we’re interacting with in person, and the experiences we have.

Here are three rules to keep you sane and productive as you and your PDA are jobsearching:

1. Have relationships with humans, not machines. As much as I love to talk to Christina (and trust me, we’re pretty chatty), I don’t really need to be connected to her by 17 different media.

With this blog as my soapbox, I’ve urged people pretty frequently to favor quality of interactions over quantity when they’re jobseeking - it will not help you to be a resume spammer, or Tweeting every 6 seconds about how you need a job. Think of all the time you spend Facebooking and LinkedIn-ing and Tweeting and emailing back and forth with people - it definitely adds up to much more time and effort than it would take to just sit down and have coffee with that person for 20 minutes and catch up.

It will help to go out and meet people and have real human interactions that we’re programmed to remember and value.  Those few minutes of human connection can be all it takes to get someone to understand and trust you enough to connect you with a hiring manager or remember you when they hear of an open job.

If you need a reminder of how potentially absurd our reliance on technology for social interaction can be, watch this MeetUp video (yes, I’ve plugged it before and will likely plug it again).

2. Keep healthy distance, and take mental breaks. Jobseeking is really stressful - it can weigh on you deeply, especially if you’re checking your Blackberry/email every 5 minutes to see whether you’ve heard back on any applications. As someone told me recently, a regular job is 9-5; jobseeking is 24/7 occupation. Sometimes, you need to unplug and disconnect. Change the settings on your phone so it’s not beeping, flashing, and buzzing each time a message comes in - this will make you less prone to neurotically checking it.

3. Mind your manners, and know when to turn it off. I remember this NYTimes article on BlackBerries in the board room and how distracting it is when people are blatantly paying attention to their phone and not what’s happening in real life. Being a good listener is a skill that companies really value, and continuously glancing at your phone is a good way to demonstrate that listening is not your strong suit. Turn off your phone while you’re interviewing - it’s not worth jeopardizing your shot at a job.

And so begins my tortured relationship with my BlackBerry…

Penned by Christina and Carolyn

At Bright Green Talent, we’re all in favor of not taking things too seriously and making sure there’s always enough laughter going around. Thus, we recently headed out to an amateur stand-up comedy night at a local club. During the show, we realized that there were some real overlaps in the Venn Diagram of stand-up comedy and interviewing…

Here’s what we came up with to help you avoid those moments of scattered, forced laughter (or blank stares) from the crowd:

10. Know your audience and cater to them. If you’re in a room full of women, don’t make sexist jokes.  Same goes for an interview or cover letter - figure out what you can say that will resonate with the reader.  Sensitivity and judgment will go a long way in warming the interviewer up to you; lack thereof will quickly get you blacklisted.

9. Just the right amount of eye contact… Not too much and definitely not too little!  In an interview, don’t look up or out the window too much when you’re considering a question…better to look down at your notes. We’ve had people disqualified for jobs because of wandering gazes.

8. Energy! The comedians who were too loud and energetic for the crowd seemed overbearing; those who were lethargic seemed like they were unprepared, nervous or just didn’t care.  Find the right balance of energy between sluggish and overzealous so that you can express both your passion and your composure.

7. Be confident and natural in what you are saying. Sounding too rehearsed will not bode well.  If you give canned answers that mirror your resume or cover letter exactly, it can appear as though you have no more to offer than what they already read about you in the application.  (Though practice does make perfect in this case - “mock interviewing” with friends is one of the most effective ways to prepare for an interview.)

6. Be concise. Know where the story is going and get there!  (With the appropriate tangents along the way…) For the comedian, if it’s obvious that your joke isn’t funny to the audience, don’t beat a dead horse — change tacks.  This goes for interviewing too — if something you’re trying to express about your experience or passion is drawing blank stares (or worse, offended looks), carefully exit from that strand of conversation and strike out in a new, hopefully more successful, direction.

5. Timing is everything. Hey, delivery matters.  Just look at Jon Stewart.

4. Incorporate others only as much as they want to be incorporated.  Actually, this comparison doesn’t actually work: Interviews are considered successful when they are a conversation between two people rather than drawing a clear distinction between interviewer and interviewee.  Whereas for a comedian, the audience may prefer to be passive and that’s okay!

3. Work with whatever makes you, you. The best and most successful comedians are those with a memorable, distinctive style which they have made “work” for them.  This is true for the rest of us as well.  Know your strengths and quirks and make them work for you.

2. Don’t be negative about previous employers. At this show, we saw an elementary-school-principal-by-day reference how ridiculous her students and parents were — with a fair number of expletives laced in — while her husband was enthusiastically filming the performance.  We couldn’t help but think if that video ever got in the “wrong” hands of her colleagues, school parents, or anyone else, she would likely lose her job and her reputation would take a serious hit.  There is never a need to un-constructively criticize an organization just to prove dedication to a job opportunity; rather, emphasize the things you would change and how you think the experience has prepared you to contribute to a new organization.

1. If you make people laugh, that is a very good sign! Interviews can be tense situations.  If you find that you have a good enough rapport with your interviewer, finding some (appropriate!) humor can take the edge off and make you seem poised, confident and likeable…all good things when they are evaluating whether they want to work with you!

Image: http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/

An article in NYTimes yesterday (”More Employers Use Social Networks to Check Out Applicants“) shared this flurry of statistics about how potential employers are finding you all over the internet:

“According to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers questioned are using social networks to screen job candidates — more than double from a year earlier, when a similar survey found that just 22 percent of supervisors were researching potential hires on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The study, which questioned 2,667 managers and human resource workers, found that 35 percent of employers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site…

The report showed that Facebook was the most popular online destination for employers to do their online sleuthing, followed by LinkedIn and MySpace. In addition, 7 percent followed job candidates on Twitter.

More than half of the employers who participated in the survey said that provocative photos were the biggest factor contributing to a decision not to hire a potential employee, while 44 percent of employers pinpointed references to drinking and drug use as red flags.”

Tips to avoid being on the wrong side of these statistics:

• As we’ve always said, google yourself thoroughly and see what potential employers are finding. Run a google image search as well.
• Set up a Google alert on your name
• Protect your Twitter updates.
• Jazz up your Facebook security settings.
• De-tag incriminating photos
• Check out this past blog post with other tips on hiding your indiscretions

Nick shared his two cents with Times reporter Kate Galbraith about the value of sustainability-focused programs:

“Amid all the growth, experts warn prospective students to take a hard look at the value for money offered by the courses. At some schools, “there is a very large gap between the theory that they’re teaching and the actual requirements of the field,” particularly the financial and technical aspects of sustainability, said Nick Ellis, a managing partner at Bright Green Talent, an environmentally oriented executive search firm in San Francisco. He advises asking prospective schools about their placement rates in various green industries.”

Here’s the full article:

Sustainability Field Booms on Campus

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

BACK TO CLASS Bob Gressens signed up for continuing education at two universities to learn more about clean technology.

After 25 years in the high-technology industry, Bob Gressens sensed a growing excitement over environmental issues — and a new business opportunity. He followed his instinct, quit his job and went back to school.

“I want to give the next 15 years or whatever to sustainability,” he said. “To give back.”

In May, Mr. Gressens, who lives in San Francisco, began taking courses on topics as diverse as green building and sustainability management at the extension school of the University of California, Berkeley. He also signed up for additional coursework at a continuing studies program run by Stanford. If all goes well, he will find a job with an electrical utility, or elsewhere in the clean-technology field, after finishing his courses.

Mr. Gressens’s trajectory will sound familiar at educational institutions across the country, whose continuing education arms have seen a striking influx of students interested in the relatively new field of sustainability. At Harvard’s extension school, enrollment in environmental courses has soared by more than 70 percent in two years, according to the university, which has responded with new offerings in fast-changing fields like carbon neutrality and environmental economics.

Berkeley recorded a similar surge: three years ago, the sustainability studies office offered just five courses; today it includes 60 courses over a wide-ranging curriculum. Since 2006, enrollment has grown to more than 400 students per semester, from 55.

“In spite of the recession, we’re seeing strong interest in subject areas such as sustainable buildings, transportation, energy, economic policies and, of course, LEED,” said Pat Rose, the media relations manager of the Berkeley extension school, referring to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a certification system established by the United States Green Building Council. Being “LEED certified” has become important for professionals in fields including architecture and law; Mr. Gressens will be taking the LEED exam this fall.

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education is just starting to survey whether colleges are offering continuing education courses related to sustainability, and not all are doing so. However, “we do have a sense from our members that these types of courses have increased in the past few years,” Paul Rowland, the group’s executive director, said in an e-mail message.

Many sustainability-focused continuing education programs offer certificates to students completing a certain number of courses. (At least four courses are needed for a certificate at Berkeley, for example, and 10 full-day workshops at the University of Oregon’s sustainability leadership program.) A few offer degrees, including the Harvard extension school, which confers a master’s in sustainability and environmental management.

Courses at Berkeley generally cost hundreds of dollars; at Harvard, they may reach $950 for noncredit attendees.

Business schools are also burnishing their sustainability credentials. A few, like Duquesne University’s business school in Pittsburgh and, as of this fall, City University of Seattle, offer M.B.A.’s in sustainability. Every two years, the Center for Business Education at the nonprofit Aspen Institute ranks the top M.B.A. programs with a social or environmental bent. The public management program at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business tops the 2007-8 list; the next survey is due out in October.

For homeowners who want to learn about energy-saving options, some institutions offer hands-on programs. The College of Continuing and Professional Education at California State University, Long Beach, has scheduled a three-hour workshop for later this month; attendees take along their utility bills for discussion. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, the continuing education arm offers workshops in straw-bale building and green remodeling. (This fall, its sustainable practices program, in conjunction with the university’s business school, will offer a program in sustainable management.)

Many universities are directing their programs toward managers, but another booming niche — occupied mainly by community colleges — involves training renewable energy technicians. Christine Real de Azua, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association, said more than 100 such programs were in operation around the country, at least 80 created in the last two years.

Amid all the growth, experts warn prospective students to take a hard look at the value for money offered by the courses. At some schools, “there is a very large gap between the theory that they’re teaching and the actual requirements of the field,” particularly the financial and technical aspects of sustainability, said Nick Ellis, a managing partner at Bright Green Talent, an environmentally oriented executive search firm in San Francisco. He advises asking prospective schools about their placement rates in various green industries.

Mr. Gressens, 53, said he was happy with what he was learning at Berkeley and Stanford. And he cited another advantage of the courses: the students.

At Berkeley, “you have people whose passion is to save the planet,” he said. “There are others who are just looking to make a buck. So that makes things interesting.”

[Also check out another article published today, "Ranking Universities by Greenness" to find the best of these programs.]

There’s been a lot of buzz about the sustainable transport industry - rounds of funding and stimulus promise bring hope that the industry will grow out and create jobs where they’ve been lost in Detroit. Just recently, General Motors announced that the Chevy Volt would get 230 mpg - a claim that has provoked a fair amount of conversation.

We found this great article about 30 Electric Vehicle Companies  Ready to Take Over the Road by Chris Morrison on GreenBeat. A few below… click the link to see all 30.

30 electric cars companies ready to take over the road

January 10, 2008 | Chris Morrison

It’s official: Green car madness has taken over. After seeing more electric and hybrid vehicle startups than we could keep track of, we finally decided to start keeping count.

We’ve compiled a list, below, of 27 (update: the list has reached 30; thanks for the comments) startups, listed according to their release date, with additional information on fuel type, range, top speed and price. Most haven’t yet taken venture funding, but where applicable, we’ve listed financial backing.

While we’ve got some overall favorites (Miles, Tesla, Think) and a few favorite oddballs (Aptera, Commuter Cars, Eliica), we’ve for the most part withheld judgement. Still, if you have any of your own predictions about which companies will succeed or — far more likely — fail, we’d encourage you to make them known in the comments.

A note on our method: While most manufacturers are planning more than one model, we chose the one that seemed either most commercially viable or closest to release, depending on our own (discretionary) formula. We didn’t included well-known consumer models like the Toyota Prius or Chevy Volt, or startups like AC Propulsion that only do battery conversions for consumer vehicles. We also rounded the price to the nearest thousand.

All details are taken from the companies, so we haven’t independently confirmed things like range and top speed details. In case we missed any, mention them below and we’ll add them to the list.

American Electric Vehicle — Kurrent
Update: Defunct, according to a comment below, although they seem to still be for sale. We’re looking into it.
AEV advises its potential drivers to “Slow down,” which seems like wise advice, given the golf cart-inspired design. Still, it’s ridiculously cheap.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $10K
Range / top speed: 40 miles / 25mph
Release date: Available now

Commuter Cars — Tango T600
The Tango is even odder than three-wheeled designs, in some ways: It’s less than half the width of a normal car, and two can fit in a single lane. It also accelerates like a bat out of hell. Future versions are planned to be much cheaper, and have longer ranges.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $108K
Range / top speed: 80 miles / 150mph
Funding: Less than $1 million in angel backing; open to venture funding.
Release date: Available now

Read more.

A recent NYTimes article highlighted yet another dark side of the recession -”Job Search Firms: Big Pitches and Fees, Few Jobs” explained how companies are trying to exploit the panic jobseekers are feeling with scams and offers to “guarantee” a job for a chunk of money.

What these companies are targeting is people’s desire to find a job immediately - which makes a lot of sense, given that bills need to get paid.

In the green sector, there are a lot of factors contributing to the reality that green jobs growth is happening by fits and starts and is hard to predict: companies are seeing funding wash in and out, start-ups that are hitting it big or failing to meet expectations, and stimulus funding is creating buzz.

As we’ve seen it in recent months, jobs in the green space are being landed by some combination of strategic searching, serious networking, inside connections, and a lot of serendipity. It’s a fight against entropy, and the results in terms of who’s getting jobs are, at times, essentially random.

There’s no guarantee for a job right away, but folks who are best preparing themselves are those who are getting education, volunteering, networking,* and trusting that in the coming months, things will pick up and the promise of green jobs will become more of a reality. Hang in there!

* Some upcoming networking opportunities - check out our Partners page for more info:

• RMI2009 - BGT members get a 10% discount, or just check out RMIQ, an evening networking/mingling event here in San Francisco.
• West Coast Green - BGT members get a 20% discount on full pass. We’re sponsoring the Green Jobs Pavilion - come find us on the Expo floor!

A great NY Times piece featured an 18 year old talking about the role of creativity in inspiring scientific minds to solve great problems like climate change.

My colleague, Tom, recently wrote that the recent financial crisis left him somewhat dismayed at our prospects of figuring our way out of this.

I must dissent.

Creativity as a core human characteristic has long helped us reach greater heights.

What I think the financial crisis has pointed out is that we need to rediscover and embrace creativity in our work if we are to find a greater purpose than profit itself.

It’s a difficult goal, but one worth striving for–if only because it may save the world.

Well, a somewhat heartening labor market report today - check out the NYTimes article that discusses how the worst might be behind us.

On the green jobs front, we found this video from Mother Nature Network that’s entertaining, if somewhat illustrative of how green jobs are a concept that many folks can rally behind but few can define:

Last night, I stopped by San Francisco Green Drinks (sponsored by the RMI2009 conference), which has become the place to “see and be seen” if you’re involved in a green business or organization in San Francisco. The event is jammed every month with folks who work on green from all kinds of different angles - activism, carbon investment funds, sustainable jewelry, nutrition, you name it.

Green Drinks is great for wide exposure and catching up with other greenies you know, but given the crowded space and the noise level, it’s not going to be great for an in-depth conversation about your professional background or talking about why you want to work for that person’s company. By the same token, I met about 4 different people last night who I’ve connected & worked with online and finally got to put a face to a name and connect with them on a more personal level, even if just by way of a brief conversation.

I liked Seth Godin’s post below - though he’s talking about the quality of interactions in terms of marketing, the same goes for networking. As he says, “There’s a huge correlation between how much interaction there is and how powerful a medium is (at least among successful media). Telephones changed the world because the interaction is so real. As you get more interactive, though, you exchange less dense media.” Chatting with a bunch of different people for 3 minutes at a network event is like Twittering to a big group at a low cost to you, but there’s a lot more value in following up with them on a “high bandwith” interaction like volunteering together or collaborating on a project.

O.K., not a perfect analogy, but the take away lesson is this: Leveraging different types of networking - online & offline - will help you balance quantity of interaction with quality of connection and allow people to get to know you on a variety of levels.

The bandwidth-sync correlation that’s worth thinking about (by Seth Godin)

Check this out. Every once in a while a cool graph pops into my head.

Here are a dozen or so forms of communication, arranged on two axes.

On the horizontal, they rank from asynchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are separated in time–like a letter) and synchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are in real time proximity to each other–like a phone call).

Up and down, I’ve charted the quality of the medium. Quality in terms of density of information exchanged. The 140 characters in Twitter is about as low density as you can get other than a stop light. A movie, on the other hand, is loud and bright and two hours long and there’s audience reaction and it is edited and designed to evoke a response.

To be clear, then: movies take a long time to make, but they’re high impact. Twitter takes a second to do, but there’s not a lot of info there. One on one coaching is high enough bandwidth that it can change your life and make you cry, in real time, and the Mona Lisa, while less bits per second than a TV show, has enough emotional bandwidth to matter, even if it’s 400 years old.

So, what can you learn here?

1. There’s a huge correlation between how much interaction there is and how powerful a medium is (at least among successful media). Telephones changed the world because the interaction is so real. As you get more interactive, though, you exchange less dense media. You can’t have a real time conversation online that carries the digital impact of a movie or some other high bandwidth entertainment.
2. The bottom left corner is the scrap heap. It’s hard to place a commercial value on this part of the grid and there’s not a lot of commercially interesting work being done here. People just aren’t interested in low bandwidth, non-interactive media. Graffiti, for example, rarely draws a paying crowd.
3. The top right of the corner is where huge value and difficult sales lie. Not everyone can pay for the scarce resources needed to deliver an in-person seminar or one on one coaching, but those that need and can afford it, love it.

If you had seen this chart three years ago, you obviously would have invented Twitter. Now that you see it today, what will you create?

This past Sunday, our new marketing intern Dana and I were featured in the Business section of the SF Chronicle in an article called Tough Job Market Requires that Grads Adjust.

The article is copied below, but I’d suggest you also check out the comments. Clearly, the job market is a hot topic - the comments range from fiery to frustrated to constructive. Lots of people suggested that recent graduates who are having trouble finding a job go start their own business. While I do know several friends who’ve been laid off and started in on their own projects, some of the same problems persist: recent grads’ networks aren’t as strong for funding and business support, they have a tougher time convincing investors they’re serious, and they don’t have the savings to back up the ventures on their own.

What this article is really about, then, is bootstrapping — that recent graduates are having to come up with creative ways to stay afloat and to pursue what they’re passionate about. That might mean working for free 3 days a week while supplementing with a restaurant or childcare job; it might mean working nights on getting a business up and running; or it might mean going back to school to get some more targeted experience.

For some of our job advice for recent grads, click here.

Tough job market requires that graduates adjust

Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Stanford graduate John Dryden didn’t have a job lined up before he got his diploma in June, but in this economy he feels lucky to have been offered a contract post.

“I look at it as a case where the glass is half full,” said Dryden, 22, a business major who had an internship last summer that, in better times, would have led to a job.

“The company has a hiring freeze but they’re still interested in bringing me back in the fall, not as a full-time employee with benefits but as a contractor,” Dryden said, adding, “I feel very fortunate.”

Young people nationwide are being forced to adjust their expectations and try new tactics as recent college graduates face the toughest job hunt in decades.

“The current situation compares to the early 1980s, which was also an extremely difficult job market for college graduates,” said Edwin Koc, research director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The association regularly surveys the nation’s largest employers about their plans to hire graduating seniors.

“Typically we have a positive story with an annual increase in the number of hires,” Koc said. “But when we asked employers what they expected to hire from this graduating class relative to last year, it was down 22 percent.”

The association also asked a sample of this year’s 1.6 million college seniors about their employment prospects and discovered a sharp drop from a prior poll.

“In 2007 when we surveyed students, over 50 percent of the class had a job offer before graduation,” Koc said. “This year it was 19.7 percent.”

Desiree Fabunan, 23, is one of those who beat the odds by getting a job with AT&T’s Western Region headquarters in San Ramon before graduating from Stanford in June.

“A lot of people were down in the dumps,” Fabunan said, recalling the mood on campus. “Back in January, people were really panicking because you know that at Stanford so many of the grads that had come before you had jobs by that time.”

Dana Lin, a recent college graduate who lives in Mountain View, said employers in this market are demanding more than a degree.

“Many jobs call for three or four or five years of work experience,” said Lin, 22, who earned her undergraduate degree in business from Cornell University in 2008.

April layoff

Back then, when the college job market was still strong, she got a marketing position with a Silicon Valley software firm. But she was laid off in April. To bolster her brief work experience, Lin is doing a part-time, unpaid internship with the San Francisco startup Bright Green Talent, a recruiting and staffing agency for the sustainable energy industry.

“We did not have much of a problem taking these internships when we were in college,” Lin said. “It allows me to learn new things in new areas.”

At Bright Green Talent, Lin works with full-time employee Carolyn Mansfield, a 2008 Stanford graduate who found that, even then, her anthropology degree didn’t impress employers. She also worked for free to gain experience, first as an unpaid media intern for the Sierra Club and later at Bright Green Talent, which hired her after a two-month trial period.

“It’s about getting your foot in the door and letting employers see your work ethic and how you perform on the job,” Mansfield said.

But while young college graduates face a tough job market now, long-term trends work in their favor.

“Many employers can forecast a large number of retirements coming up in the next three to five years,” said Tom Devlin, career center director at UC Berkeley.

Positions will open

Koc, the employment expert, said this retirement trend means positions will open up for young college graduates once the recession ends even if the recovery is too weak to create job growth.

But at the moment the circumstances are less favorable.

“Opportunities that may have been there in the past have not been as plentiful for our graduating class,” said Dryden, the Stanford alumnus.

E-mail Tom Abate at tabate@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/02/BU6I18SL7L.DTL

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle