This is a continuation in the Social Media for Contracts series.
Yes, Delicious is a great name for a site. Despite its size and history, not many people in contracting have heard of this website. It has the potential to save you time and make your work even better.
What is Delicious?
First off, Delicious is a social bookmarking site. Basically, it’s a cross between your browser’s bookmarks and Facebook. Unlike Facebook, the entire purpose is sharing ideas, not connecting with friends.
Find Better Resources. This is the greatest benefit of (and the central concept behind) Delicious. By accessing your friends’ bookmarks, you can find websites and tools that can make your life easier. This is the key behind what you may have heard as knowledge management, knowledge sharing or knowledge transfer.
Improve Your Reputation. You can also gain a reputation as the guru for certain topics by having access to a large amount of resources. Just don’t hog information. That’s not how Delicious works. Spreading helpful information is what it’s about.
Tags > Files. Most contracting professionals are familiar with the traditional bookmarking system of files. However, tags are far superior for organizational purposes. Once you accumulate 200 bookmarks, it can be difficult to remember what file you put it under. With tags, you identify the website with numerous phrases or words you know you will remember. Then you just find that word in the tag cloud, and you’ve found your resource. Boom! Far superior.
Use Any Browser. For those of you (like me) that switch between browsers at work and home, or just depending on your need – good news! Your bookmarks are not restricted to, say, Internet Explorer. This reduces dependence on a specific browser. And if your company recommends you change from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox (or better yet, Google Chrome), this gives you one less excuse not do it.
Access Your Bookmarks from Anywhere. Since Delicious is web-based, you can access your bookmarks from any computer or web phone. If you travel a lot, this can be a major benefit since you can access your favorite resources from all locations.
It’s Free. My favorite word. Just like virtually everything reviewed or promoted here, Delicious is free. The only catch is Yahoo! owns Delicious, so you have to have a Yahoo! account to access it. But it’s definitely worth it.
These should be helpful. Keep your eyes out for the next in the series where GovLoop will be covered.
Whether you’re just establishing getting into acquisitions or you’re the company’s Chief Procurement Office, this website provides you with incredible resources.
Learn About Contracting
The two core groups I recommend are below. Other can be added from there.
Contract & Commercial Management. For those with a commercial bend, this is a decent group. Particularly focus on things that Tim Cummins and IACCM post.
These are the two core groups that everyone should join. However, there are many more you can look at depending on your preferences like Department of Defense or TFCN (The Federal Contractors Network).
Exchange Ideas
Participate (or at least read) the most recent discussion threads of the groups you follow. This keeps you fresh and builds your knowledge. Need recommendations for your company’s new contract management software? It’s out there. Need advice on a troublesome coworker? It’s probably out there too.
And if it’s not out there, then go to the LinkedIn Answers section and ask a question. Just make sure the question is worded properly so it will attract an answer. People like to answer interesting questions, so make sure the question is intriguing.
Meet People Offline
Eventually, you can use LinkedIn to turn online relationships into offline relationships. This strengthens the relationship and makes the person and their ideas all the more real. And make sure you have interesting questions prepared like what is the secret to their success or where do they think the industry is going.
Try to do it over something like coffee or lunch though. After all, these relationships were formed on a website for professional networking. Keep the relationship professional. (AKA meaning LinkedIn isn’t Match.com).
Turn Offline Relationships into Online Relationships
The Internet makes it easier to keep in touch with larger numbers of people than every before. (Whether those relationships are more meaningful is a discussion for another time). Ask people to find you on LinkedIn, so secure your LinkedIn vanity name. For example, my is www.linkedin.com/in/sterlingwhitehead. That makes it easy for people to remember and find me. Even better, have a business card with your LinkedIn address on it. It’s unusual to do, so it’s memorable.
Hire a New Contract Specialist
If you’re a recruiter and you’re not using LinkedIn to at least filter your candidates, I have some harsh words: you aren’t doing your job. It’s a wonderful resource to finding out the positive things about a person.
However, it is just one social network. Compare it with other profiles on Facebook and Twitter. Look for inconsistencies. If there is not anything negative about the person on any of their profiles, you’re either looking at a saint or someone who knows how to cultivate a strong online image. (The later is much more likely0.
Network with Acquisition Recruiters
If you’re a job hunter and you’re not using LinkedIn, I also have some tough words: you’re not doing it right. Join now, but learntheetiquette.
On organizations always hiring, YRCI has good recruiters and is always hiring. My past experiences with their recruiters, particularly Burton Tu, have been very positive.
P.S. The more groups and recommendations you have, the higher in the search rankings you are. This means recruiters are more likely to find you.
Do you disagree with this analysis? Would you include anything else? Let me know.
Thisis the first in a new series, Social Media for Contracts.
Twitter’s potential for contracts is not achieved for the most part. Twitter is, at best, a noble tool used for sharing and learning. At worst, it is a distraction. Reach for those high goals with these ideas below.
Communicate with Your Team
Yes, email, IM, faxes, BBM, texts, etc. There are a million different ways to reach out to your team.
The beauty of Twitter is that it’s always-public nature lets anyone contribute to the conversation. Someone you didn’t know can add new facts and give you the solution you didn’t know existed. Added bonus: the 140-character restriction forces people to get to the point and not ramble like in emails and voicemails.
Monitor Current Issues
Don’t wait for the next Contract Management Magazine to come out. Just use hashtags to search for things like #contracts, #procurement, #acquisition, and #contr.
Announce and Stick to Your Goals
Previously covered in another post, publicly announcing your goals for the day can help keep you on track. Theoretically, it should help keep you on target because you’ve declared your expectations.
Publish Contract Updates
This has been proposed in the Better Buy Project, but it has yet to be implemented (as far as I know). This would be an interesting way for contractors to respond to new information.
Do you have an innovative use of Twitter for contracts? Suggest it here. People will find out. You’ll become famous. (At least with my readers).
You’re paid to do work, not to have people like you.
Your job is a lot easier if people like you.
Find that balance.
If you make friends, great. If not, it’s okay. Just make sure you are likeable because your job is a lot easier (e.g. your paperwork doesn’t get mysteriously lost).
Don’t go out of your way to make enemies. If you do make enemies, try to maintain good working relationships. Help people out on their shifts. Give advice (when asked). Helped then figure out how to format that Excel file.
This post can help you understand the huge power of using a simple service like TrackDailyGoals for easily implementing transparency. There’s also the added bonus of easy project management completion and goal tracking at the same time.
The Point
The real but unnoticed benefit for the government and contractors is thepublic openness of TrackDailyGoals.
An article on Web Worker Daily makes this brilliant point: publicly posting your goals for the day on Twitter may motivate you to complete them. At the end of (or throughout) the day, you post the goals you’ve completed. All you have to do is post your information to the hashtag #dailygoals on Twitter and TrackDailyGoals measures the goals over time.
Never mind the project management impact of easily posting your completed goals (which gets around using annoying project management software) or even the tracking ability on the TrackDailyGoals website.
The real but unnoticed benefit for the government and contractors is the public openness of TrackDailyGoals. If the public wants to know what is going on with a specific government agency or worker, it can check TrackDailyGoals. This really applies the idea that sunlight is the best disinfectant. (Especially in the contracting world, where our reputation is ruined by a relatively small number of corrupt people).
Issues to Resolve
Yes, I understand there is classified information you can’t post and talk about on Twitter. That’s legitimate. But publicly posting in 140 characters things like “(1) phone calls (2) meet clients (3) paperwork” isn’t harmful in most circumstances. It is also a good point that vagueness in posts can make specific project management tasks difficult to track. However, this is a good start.
P.S. It is my understanding that Google uses a solution like TrackDailyGoals for project management, but uses email instead. We could be onto something here.
Would you like to see TrackDailyGoals or something like it implemented in your agency?
This post gives you innovative ideas for getting a job in the contracts field. Even if you aren’t looking for a job, these ideas can help improve your reputation.
Charlie Hoehn put together an e-book for getting a job in any field. Simply put, it is one of the most brilliant pieces of writing I’ve seen. Below are two sections. One includes the best ideas from Charlie’s e-book that apply to contracts, and the other one is for thoughts I feel should be included. Let’s get going.
Charlie’s Ideas
Develop Skills. Self-education is the idea here. Improve yourskills. Get certifications. Join professional organization like National Contract Management Association or International Association for Contracts and Commercial Management. Read blogs like Tim Cummins’ Commitment Mattersand websites such as the Better Buy Project.
Ignore Monster, Yahoo! HotJobs and Craigslist. Don’t waste your time. Hundreds of people with experience willing to take pay cuts are responding to the same job announcement. Your energy is better focused on building and promoting your presence online. People will find you.
Get a Web Presence. This means several things:
Get a Blog. Blogging builds your credibility and reputation, the most valuable assets you have in your job search. If you do one thing from this post, do this. I recommend Wordpress, but Blogger is also a good choice. For the more casual blogger, Tumblr and Posterous can suffice. However, there are right and wrong ways to write effective blogs. Read articles like Copywriting 101 from CopyBlogger to learn it.
VisualCV. This is a really good looking resume site. And yes, it’s vastly better than resumes on sites like CareerBuilder and Monster. In fact it has even better features than LinkedIn. Encourage potential employers to go to it. Also consider putting a link to it from your blog.
My Ideas
Get Business Cards. It doesn’t matter that you’re a student or unemployed. Put something like “Contract Specialist Candidate” on it. IT WORKS. Business cards automatically make you look more authoritative, meaning you command respect. And people want to hire people they respect. Do yourself a favor: go to VistaPrint, pick a style you like, and order 250 cards for something like $10. They’re dirt cheap, and they pay big dividends. In addition, be sure to include your blog web address on the card. No body does this, and that’s what makes it so powerful.
Aggregate Social Media Accounts. This lets you time-effectively manage all your social media information on one screen. This makes sure you don’t have to go to each site to manage each account. I personally like TweetDeck, but other options exist like Seesmic (for Mac and Windows) and web-based HooteSuite.
Hopefully these will help you get a job.
Are there any other ideas or websites that you recommend for helping contracts professionals get jobs?
Just saw Avatar in 3D (from James Cameron, the same guy that brought you Titanic), and it’s awesome. Good story and unbelievably real graphics. And better yet, no crying teenagers like with Leo DiCaprio. Being a good nerd, I can’t help draw some lessons for you good folks out there. So here we go:
Big Projects Are Cool, but Costly. Around $400 million kind of costly. Make sure things don’t get out of hand. In this case, Avatar will likely draw a profit (as of 3 days and the time of this article, it brought in $232 million worldwide and), so it seems like a risk worth taking. They’re cool. In the same way as with contracts, big projects cost money, but don’t let that stop you from doing it if the potential benefits outweigh the potential costs. Be visionary and ambitious. Did I mention that those are cool too?
Believable Imagination Rules. The creativity in this film is probably unparalleled by anything out there. And that imagination is what draws you in. Yet it’s still believable. You honestly believe in flying mountains because the story explains it. (You just have to pay attention.) Creative contracts can end in better results for all sides, but make sure the imagination you bring to these contracts is believable. Have measurable evidence and cite precedents. Better yet, read Getting to Yesto learn how to persuade people.
Quality Takes Time. Nobody (particularly Americans used to instant gratification) likes to hear this, but it’s true. The director, James Cameron, wrote the original script in 1996. 1996. That’s a while back. Sure, quality usually doesn’t take that long, but you get the idea. Patience can result in amazing things. Same goes for contracting. Whether buying or selling, patience is a valuable ally. Look at the XM-25, a weapon shooting air-bursting bullets above enemy positions. It leaves no place to hide, so it’s a nice step up for infantry firepower. However, it’s been in development since 2005 and won’t enter into general field deployment until 2012. Just imagine what new fighter jets cost.
Recoup Your Costs. While quality is important, you’ve got to make sure you don’t end up holding a money snake – the costs can slither away and bite you. Avatar, like Titanic, will probably need people returning multiple times to see the movie in order to recover its enormous costs. Make sure your customers are lined up for the product or service by the time it’s ready to go or the money snake will get you.
Did you see the movie? Are there any other contracting lessons that can be drawn from this?
Well, Charlie Hoehn has put together the best way to understand pay. (By the way, if you haven’t read anything by Hoehn, do it soon. Like right after you read the rest of this post. He’s young, but he really knows his stuff). Below is the equation.
High demand for certain job + hard-to-learn skills for that job = high pay for that job
It’s really that simple. Below are the factors to consider for the contracts profession.
High Demand for the Workers
The contracts workforce is aging. A nice pie chart in the Executive Summary shows that 26% are aged 55+, 37% are 45-54, 21% are 35-44, and only 15% are younger than 35. An aging workforce doesn’t stick around forever, which leads into the next factor.
The contracts workforce is retiring. Robert Brodsky at GovExec.com says “Slightly more than half the acquisition workforce will be eligible to retire by fiscal 2018”. That’s a lot of people so replacements are needed.
Workforce size increase wanted. The feds want to increase the civilian acquisition workforce by 5% even at a time when a large segment of that same workforce is retiring or getting ready to retire. That means lots more hiring in addition to bringing in replacements for retirees.
Hard-to-Learn Skills for the Job
The skills are not easy to learn. The simplest, best list of skills I’ve seen is by International Association for Contracts and Commercial Management. The list is summarized in two sections, core and additional skills.
The skills must be proved. Your skills are of useless if you can’t get paid for them. Unless you have a contract management bachelor’s or master’s degree, you probably need to get a certificate from a respected organization. This shows that the certifying organization thinks you’re got the right know-how. Since the certifying organization thinks you’re good enough, then an employer is more likely to think better of your skills than without similar evidence. Here is a list of respected certifying organizations. Take your pick. Make sure you also read the comments section since readers have left good suggestions about other certifying organizations.
So when you consider these factors for the equation, what do they tell you? Employers will pay good money for capable contract professionals. Just make sure you’re capable.
Do you think there are other factors to consider for the profession’s high pay? Comment about it.
Knowing compensation facts can help you get a better job offer or even get better compensation at your current job. Hard, credible numbers are tough to refute in any negotiation.
The Facts
Overall, compensation (meaning salaries, benefits and bonuses) in the contracts field is pretty nice. The National Contracts Management Association does a nice job surveying its members every year on a whole slew of data, including compensation. The most recent data comes from the 2008 survey.
While the Executive Summary is packed full of information, three important findings are summarized below.
Where the Best Pay Is: The averaged best pay comes organizations with budgets of less than $1 million and more than $501 million. This means you should expect the best pay (on average) at very small and very large organizations. Keep that in mind for your searches.
Salary by Experience: Those with less than five years experience averaged a salary of about $60,000 per year. That’s pretty good, especially when bonuses and benefits are not accounted for.
Benefits Overview: 90% of respondents get a 401K or something like it, some kind of healthcare, and vacation leave. 75% get the benefits above and more like vision, dental and life insurance. Know these numbers so you don’t accept a bad offer. If you don’t get these benefits, you can use these numbers to make a case for benefits to your boss.
If you read the rest of the 2008 Salary Survey, you will be enlightened. I promise you.
These stats will play into the next post, which will be about understanding why contract professionals get paid so well.
Are there any other stats you’d like to see mentioned?
Last time we covered core skills as they are defined by IACCM. As a refresher, additional skills are not mandatory for all contract positions. Rather, they are required on a position by position basis.
Additional Skills
Knowledge of employer / industry: For employer knowledge, read company newsletters and keep up with office talk. (But beware of starting office rumors. since they can come back to haunt you. Instead just listen and observe). For industry knowledge, this means reading contract magazines like Contract Management Magazine and blogs such as Commitment Matters.
Client relationships: There are a lot of things you should do to keep up relationships, but it essentially boils down to two areas: (1) asking questionsand (2) recording/remembering details. By asking the right questions, you get the right answers. By recording and remembering details, you make sure you always have the answers to your questions.
Business contribution: Generally, this section is about value. More specifically, in the words of Tim Cummins, founder of IACCM, says:
“[B]usiness contribution is about delivery of value and having the ability to describe and measure that value. This could be in the context of a specific deal, or may be through broader change initiatives. We expect much of this category to be financially driven, either based on costs or increased revenue. It is also about [offering] ideas and creative solutions that increase either efficiency or effectiveness ([e.g.] ease of doing business, competitiveness).
Business acumen: Judgment calls are the topic here. Tim Cummins weighs in again:
“[B]usiness acumen is about the ability to make good and timely [judgments]. It relates significantly to a holistic view and understanding of risk (both downside and missed opportunity). Typically it requires someone who is good at stakeholder analysis [and] understanding stakeholder values and perspectives to achieve a balanced solution that meets the needs of the various participants (or indeed identifies if there is no such balance).
Technical: These are the actual skills you will use to perform your daily tasks. This includes knowing how to draft contracts and using specific computer programs to help you.
Cultural / International: Say you’re buying 5 million pencils from the Chinese. Make sure you have at least a basic knowledge of Chinese history and customs so you don’t offend the seller. Even better, speak their language (or at least have a minimal linguistic understanding). They will respect you for this. On another note, these skills are vital for contracts professionals with a global focus such as international deals. IACCM is especially valuable for these kinds of professionals since it is the only organization (so far as I am aware) that provides internationally-recognized certificates for contract professionals.
What other skills do you think should have been covered?
