Meanings- Aug

de·te·ri·o·rate  (d-tîr--rt)

v. de·te·ri·o·rat·ed, de·te·ri·o·rat·ing, de·te·ri·o·rates

v.tr.

To diminish or impair in quality, character, or value: Time and neglect had deteriorated the property.

v.intr.

1. To grow worse; degenerate: The weather deteriorated overnight. His health had deteriorated while he was in prison.

2. To weaken or disintegrate; decay: The nation's highways are deteriorating at a rapid pace.

suc·cumb  (s-km)

intr.v. suc·cumbed, suc·cumb·ing, suc·cumbs

1. To submit to an overpowering force or yield to an overwhelming desire; give up or give in. See Synonyms at yield.

2. To die.

Can You Learn Willpower?

We all admire people who seem perfectly in control of themselves. They exercise regularly; they finish projects on time. In a study of one million people, most said that self-control was their biggest weakness. So can people build up their willpower? Or are some people just born that way?

In their fascinating new book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, Roy F. Baumeister, a professor of psychology, and John Tierney, a New York Times reporter, argue that all of us can learn to become better masters of our impulses. We just have to learn that willpower is a muscle, and like all muscles, can be exhausted through overuse, but also trained to be made stronger.

Baumeister, who directs the social psychology program at Florida State University, agreed to answer a few questions on willpower, and how to get more of it.

Q. What is the biggest misperception people have about willpower?

A. I think people fail to understand how everything is linked together. You have one energy resource that is used for all kinds of acts for self-control. That includes not just resisting food temptations, but also controlling your thought processes, controlling your emotions, all forms of impulse control, and trying to perform well at your job or other tasks. Even more surprisingly, it is used for decision making, so when you make choices you are (temporarily) using up some of what you need for self-control. Hard thinking, like logical reasoning, also uses it. And this energy source is tied into the body’s basic energy supplies, including your immune system and the processes that regulate your heartbeat. That’s why you’ll score lower on a math test when your body is fighting off a cold. Willpower is part of all that.

Q. If willpower gets used up during the day, does that mean we should schedule the most important matters — or at least the ones that require a lot of discipline — first?

A. Yes. Most productive people do their best work early in the day. To be sure, some people are naturally “night persons” or have their best energy late in the day, and so it’s necessary to work with that. Plus, some of your energy is replenished by food, so you may make better decisions after lunch than before. But in general, yes, there is a slow deterioration in willpower across the day, if you keep using it for various tasks and challenges. (If you spend the morning getting a massage or lying on the beach, you will still have plenty of willpower in the afternoon.)

There seems to be a general pattern that major self-control failures and other bad decisions occur late in the day. Diets are broken in the evening, not the morning. The majority of impulsive crimes are committed after 11pm. Lapses in drug use, alcohol abuse, sexual misbehavior, gambling excesses, and the like tend to come about late in the day.

Q. So we should schedule important matters first…but after a good breakfast, right?

A. Willpower uses energy, and the body gets its energy from food. Skipping breakfast is a bad idea for anyone who wants to be physically or mentally effective. In some well-designed experiments, for example, large groups of children are told to come to school without having eaten anything, and by random assignment half are fed a good breakfast while the others get nothing. The ones who ate go on to learn more and behave better throughout the morning. Then everyone is fed a mid-morning snack, and the differences disappear.

Q. In your book you claim that daily rituals boost willpower, which is why 19th century Africa explorer Henry Stanleycontinued to shave daily even as he and his crew were starving, afflicted with malaria, being chased by cannibals, etc. Why do daily rituals boost will power?

A. Several things are at work here. First, maintaining such rituals as keeping up appearances provide cues to self and others that the rules still apply and standards are being maintained. This prevents an escalating breakdown. Second, small daily exercises of willpower do “build character” as the Victorians used to say. Self-control is like a muscle, and it becomes strong and stays strong only if it is exercised regularly. Third, getting things down to routines and habits takes willpower at first but in the long run conserves willpower. Once things become habitual, they operate as automatic processes, which consume less willpower. If you never shave, of course, you don’t expend any willpower in that domain, but most men can’t really manage that. So it’s a matter of shaving every day, as a habitual routine, or shaving now and then when you decide to do it. It takes willpower to establish the habit, but once it’s set, it doesn’t take willpower to continue. In contrast, if you have to make the decision to shave every time, this takes some willpower every time, because it means exerting control to decide when and where to do it.

Readers, have you managed to “train” your willpower muscles? What kinds of daily habits keep you from succumbing to temptation?

Are Personality Tests Required For the Job You Want?

It’s hard enough to get someone to look twice at your resume and now, more and more, you need not only the right resume, but the right personality.

That’s right, personality testing isn’t just for online dating sites anymore.  MarketWatch reports that 56 percent of companies do some form of personality testing before hiring people.  Am I a fan?  How about a  resounding maybe.

Turnover is actually really expensive.  Not only do you have to pay for a recruiter’s time to find someone, all the interviewer’s time to interview and consider, and your current employees are overworked covering, or the work doesn’t get done (which means whatever income was generated by the job is lost), and then when you hire someone and bring him on board there is a learning period.  For some jobs it’s a few weeks, but for a lot of jobs it takes a lot longer to get someone up to speed.

So, companies are motivated to make good hiring decisions in the first place.  (Or rather they think they are motivated to do so, but they don’t “waste” money training managers on what to look for and how to interview because that would be too easy.)  And training managers is hard, and most managers don’t hire that often.  So, enter the short cut–the personality test.

In theory, this test will tell you if you’ll be a good fit in a department.  In reality, unless you run the test on your current employees, how on earth will you know?  You won’t, and you’ll just be guessing that “this” particular personality is the one that will fit in your group.

And let’s face it, managers always say they want “independent, hard working, self starters!” but then they micro-manage these people until they are shells of their former selves.  Or, they reward face time instead of results.  No manager is going to tell the recruiter, “I need someone who excels at sucking up!” but that might be the exact type of person this manager wants.

So, you end up with a disconnect.  Of course, these problems can be avoided if personality tests are used and interpreted properly.  Again, this means that a manager that hires one or two people a year (if that!) is not the person to look at the test results and say, “Yep! Perfect fit!”

I tend to think that such tests work best for people at the far ends of the scale.  For your non-technical call center employees, of which you have hundreds, it makes sense to use a test to figure out who fits. Because of the high volume of people in that type of job you can put together a set of skills that have been shown to be effective.

For executives, for whom the costs of hiring the wrong one are even higher, doing extensive pre-employment screening tests make sense.  (If you’re responsible for all North American sales and you implement a really bad program, that’s far more costly than if you’re responsible for Iowa sales and implement a really bad program.)  Because the cost of errors are higher, you should be willing to spend a bit more to making sure errors don’t occur.

Tests for these types of jobs don’t tend to be short multiple choice tests that spit back, “Self starter!” because anyone who has the requisite resume skills to be considered for the SR VP of Sales is, presumably, already a self starter.

Fortunately, people who do executive recruiting understand this principle.  MarketWatch reports:

Dana Landis, vice president for global search assessment with executive search firm Korn/Ferry International, said the firm has assessed almost 700,000 applicants over about 10 years. Rather than taking negative assessment results at face value, Korn/Ferry uses results to dig deeper, she said.

“We don’t want to ignore the results, but we also take them in context,” Landis said. “We often try to circle back to the candidate to ask follow-up questions.”

And that’s the correct way, because a test can’t be devised to accurately predict success at the highly customized jobs that executives do.

But like them or not, personality tests are here to stay.  Have you taken personality tests, or had candidates take tests?  In your experience, are they worth the effort?

For further reading:

• Job Hunting Secret:  The Recruiter is Not on Your Side
• How to Ask Why You Didn’t Get the Job
• What Should I Wear to a Job Interview?

10 things you may be asked during a developer interview (and how to handle them)

Takeaway: These tips will help you clear some of the most common interview hurdles when you’re trying to land a developer job.

Many software developers I have talked to absolutely dread job interviews. And I have seen job candidates absolutely flub a number of questions. Some are standard interview questions, but a developer will still need to answer them in a way that relates them to the job. Other questions are specific to the software development industry. Here are 10 job interview questions that come up in development interviews, with tips on how to address them.

1: Tell us about your current position

Employers want to know about what you are currently doing a lot more than they want to know about prior positions. The reason for this is simple: The world of software development moves so fast that what you did two or more years ago is interesting for background but probably has little bearing on their current work. When asking this question, the interviewer is trying to relate what you currently do to the position the company is offering, and you will want to answer with that in mind. For example, if the position you are applying for involves a lot of database programming, emphasize where in your current job you have worked with databases.

2: Programming challenges

Many employers will present you with some sort of programming challenge. These range from being asked to sketch out a piece of pseudo code that implements some business logic or being handed a piece of code and told to find the bugs to being put down in front of a computer and asked to code away. What they are usually looking for is not just a certain level of competency — they also want to see how you go about solving the problem. You can offer to narrate your thought process as you solve the problem. If they take you up on it, that will help them to learn what they are looking for. Or perhaps when you are done, you could walk the interviewer through how you solved it.

3: Do you have any examples of your work?

Employers love to be able to look at real-world examples of your work. Unfortunately, this is rarely possible. The truth is, in most circumstances, your work is the property of your employer and you can’t be taking it outside of the building without permission. And it would be unusual to have a boss say, “Sure, go grab a couple of your best apps from source control to take on the job interview!” Instead of being unable to provide any samples, contribute to an open source project or work on an application at home that is sophisticated enough to let your skills shine. Then you will have something that you can show the interviewer and also be able to demonstrate an ability to work on your own and manage your own time, too. These side projects can often serve as a great talking point in the interview.

4: Brainteasers

Apart from asking you to demonstrate some programming abilities in the interview, some employers may give you a variety of brainteasers. Some people are really good programmers and stink at these, but the idea is to test your overall problem-solving skills. Luckily, you can prepare for these a little bit by picking up a few brainteaser books (usually only a dollar or two) at a book store or supermarket and doing a few every day. Most of these brainteasers follow a similar format, so by practicing, you will understand how to approach the most common types. There are also a few standard ones that come up on a regular basis, such as the one where you need to get a group of people across a river with a boat of limited capacity.

5: Do you have a security clearance?

Depending upon the job, a security clearance may be required. Employers prefer hiring people with one already because it simplifies things. It would be a big hassle to hire someone and then discover that they can’t get the needed clearance to do the job. If you have a clearance, make sure that it is up to date. It’s also a good item to list on a resume.

If you do not have a security clearance, ask before you come in for the interview about any security requirements for the job and research whether you are eligible for any security clearances needed. This way, when asked, you can answer with something like, “No, I do not have that clearance, but I have looked into it and I can obtain one if needed.”

6: Background check and criminal history information

Information about criminal history and other background check items typically will not come up in an interview with a hiring manager, but they will often come up in an interview with HR or a recruiter (especially the recruiters). They do not want details, for the most part, but they want to know whether it will be a waste of time interviewing you. Obviously, it is great to have a squeaky clean record, but there are plenty of good job candidates who don’t. You will need to be honest here, because things show up on the background check anyway. If what you say does not match the check, they will feel that you lied to them. At the same time, limit your sharing to the minimum. You can start with something like, “I have a misdemeanor conviction from three years ago” and take it from there.

7: What is your experience level with XYZ?

When interviewers ask about your experience level with a technology, they really want to get a feel for what you have been doing with it, not how long you have been doing it. For example, if they are asking about SQL, is it important to them that you have been writing statements no more complex than, “SELECT id, name, city FROM people WHERE state = ‘NY’” for 10 years? Not really. Performing complex data transformations, correlated subqueries, etc., for six months will be much more impressive. When talking about your experience level, emphasize the kinds of challenges you solved with those technologies and the unique aspects of the technologies you used to solve the problems.

8: What’s the hardest challenge you have had to overcome — and how did you approach it?

This is a stock interview question, but it has some special pitfalls for the programmer. One of the failures I’ve seen in interviews is that candidates do not properly set the context of their answer. I have faced some challenges that at that point in my career were difficult but that later on were trivial. If I brought them up in an interview without explaining my experience level when they arose, it would put me in a bad light. The interviewer would be thinking, “Why would someone with his experience struggle with this?” So when you answer, give a short (one sentence) scene setup. Also, put your focus on the problem-solving steps you took, not the technical details. No one really cares if the problem turned out to be that the variable was one character shorter than the data going into it; they want to know how you did the research to discover it.

9: Describe your programming habits

There are a number of variations on this question, some of which just ask about things such as:

• Source control
• Testing
• Variable/file/class/whatever naming
• Application architecture decisions

Some things we do by habit are not flattering when we answer these questions, but it is because of circumstances outside of your control. For example, if your current employer does not have a source control system, do not say, “I do not use source control” because it makes you look awful! Instead, an answer such as, “My current employer does not have a source control system, but I have used TFS at a previous employer, and I use Mercurial at home for personal projects” will be much better.

Other times, we simply have bad habits; in those cases, it is better to recognize them and show that you are trying to change them. You could say something like, “I tend to not write as many unit tests as I should, but I have been working hard to ensure greater code coverage.” Of course, don’t lie about this. But employers like to find people with enough self-awareness to see and correct their flaws, and the honesty to be able to discuss them.

10: Tell us a little bit about yourself

Often, job candidates go way off the deep end on this question, talking about things they do not need to be discussing in a job interview, personal stories and relationships, and so on. Or worse, they bring up things that present them in an unflattering light. What the interviewer is really looking to learn is how your personality relates to the job of software development. For example, if you enjoy restoring antique furniture, you could point out that it requires a lot of patience, eye for detail, research, and so on. Of course, you will want to talk about your personality traits as well. Unusual experiences or education can be brought up here, too. What you definitely do not want to do is talk too long. Try to make it a back-and-forth conversation, but if it isn’t, limit your time to a few minutes and don’t trip all over yourself trying to cram in every last detail.

Three ways to turbo-charge your tech career

akeaway: While you can’t affect all circumstances of your career, you can either plot a new course or be battered by the winds with no real direction. The former is far more interesting.

I occasionally skim the comments here on TechRepublic, and unfortunately it’s a rather depressing exercise since a recurring theme is a feeling of helplessness and endless ineffectual struggle that’s standard operating procedure for a career in IT. Combine this with the popular caricatures of IT workers in movies like Office Space and your daily dose of Dilbert, and one wonders if there is any other profession that seems so enamored with self-flagellation, or so mired in self-pity.

While we all know that the internet and popular media bring out extremes, and the actual state of affairs is likely far less dire, it should be a concern of all of us that a field that held so much promise seems to engender such feelings of helplessness. To that effect, I humbly suggest the following:

Turn entropy into forward energy

Patrick Gray, an IT consultant who usually writes for our IT Leadership blog, wanted to share his thoughts on the IT career.

While my high school physics teacher might protest, I’d define entropy as useless energy; efforts expended with no real aim, that accomplish absolutely nothing. Complaining about one’s lot in life has a minor and immediate cathartic effect, but falls squarely in the entropy category. Even if your boss is truly a jerk, the CEO is conspiring to outsource your job to Outer Mongolia, and politicians of all stripes are contemplating legislation specifically designed to make your life miserable, say a single “woe is me” then put pencil to paper and figure out a plan to improve your lot in life. Forward action feels like a healing salve on an open wound, and lets you take command of a situation rather than stumbling through your career, wondering where the years have gone. While you can’t affect circumstances, you can either plot a new course or be battered by the winds with no real direction. The former is far more interesting.

Train thyself

I’m amazed when I meet people that refuse to learn a new skill until they’ve received officially sanctioned training, the worst offenders glibly saying “I haven’t been trained in that” and refusing to even crack a manual, or actually try the new program or process. Sadly, training is one of the first line items to be wacked when budgets are trimmed, and if you rely on corporate-style training to enhance your skills, you’ll likely never get anywhere.

There’s nothing wrong with “shoulder surfing” with a colleague who has a skill you want to acquire, or spending some time on the web, which has become the ultimate technical training manual. I joke with colleagues that I’ve “outsourced my brain to Google” but kidding aside, with everything from ERP systems to debugging a hardware problem, a quick Google search usually has step-by-step instructions, which can eventually lead to concrete skills.

When opportunities for formal training do appear, jump on them, and seek skills that are long-lasting and transferrable. While learning the newest version of a programming language might be interesting, project or general management training has a longer “shelf-life” and might dovetail a bit more closely with your long-term career plans.

You, Inc.

Another item for the entropy category is laments about employer/employee loyalty, and the long-lost concept of employment for life. I know precisely one person that had the same employer for his entire career (my dear old dad) and for better or worse, he’s the exception to the rule. This is a double-edged sword, however. Just as your employer may see you as a number in a database to be expended when convenient, you too should see your employer as not only a source of a paycheck, but a source of knowledge and transferrable skills that you can apply to your next endeavor when you see fit.

There’s no shame in fighting for an assignment that will help you remake your career, even if it’s not in the ultimate best interest of the company. Similarly, if a new and compelling opportunity presents itself, there’s no shame in thanking your current employer, remaining gracious so as not to burn any bridges, and scurrying out the door.

In the worst case, consider a complete career makeover. While it seems daunting, a return to school for an advanced degree is one potential (albeit costly) way to remake yourself, or seek roles that combine business knowledge and technology experience. Big business software projects like ERP or CRM are full of these roles, and you can also suggest a “tour of duty” within your company, but outside of IT.

While work is rarely anyone’s idea of unending enjoyment, being stuck in a job or career that generates nothing but angst is not a good way to go through life, and one that most of us have more power to change than we realize.

8 Top Resume Mistakes to Avoid

By Kimberly Weisul

Job-seekers are often told that getting a job is all about networking, but at some point in the job search, almost everyone hears something like, “Well, send me your resume, and I’ll make sure it gets in front of the right person.”

Will you be prepared?

A recent CareerBuilder survey found that 45 percent of hiring managers say they spend less than a minute on each application--and that includes both the cover letter and the resume. So it's crucial that your resume grab their attention, keep it, and reward it.  Unfortunately, surveys of hiring managers, career coaches, and resume experts show that there are eight resume mistakes that can doom you before you even get started. Stay away from them, and you’ll be one step closer to landing your dream job.

Click here for the mistake that's both the worst blow to your resume and the easiest mistake to avoid

Image courtesy flickr user J Wynia

1. Failing to Sweat the Little Things

Typos and grammatical errors are probably the single simplest way to knock yourself out of contention for a job. It’s easy to hear the thoughts running through the hiring manager’s head: “If this person doesn’t care enough to proofread their own resume, how much will they possibly care about our customers? How conscientious can they possibly be?”

The solution is simple. Proofread. Proofread again. Use the spell checker on your word processing program. Then—and this is the step most people skip—send it to a few friends who will give it a really close read (and who can spell). They’ll be looking at your resume with fresh eyes, which is almost impossible for you to do. Hopefully they’ll find any typos you’ve missed—before you hit ‘send.’

Click here to learn about an old rule of resume writing that no longer applies

Making Recruiters Bleary-Eyed

Years ago, the orthodoxy was that resumes had to be one page, and no more. So it was understandable that candidates would try to cram as much as possible on that one precious page. Luckily, that’s changed, and two pages, or even longer for those with lengthier careers—is just fine.

So take advantage of the fact that you’ve got a little more space to play with, and make sure your resume doesn't look like an unbroken wall of tiny grey type.

• Use bullets and formatting to create some white space and give relief to a tired manager’s eyes.
• Use nuggets or short sentences instead of paragraphs.
• Limit your font choices to help impose some order.

3. Forgetting that Machines Get Bleary-Eyed, Too

At many companies, your resume has to be read by a computer before it’ll ever be read by a human.

And computers aren’t particularly good at making out fancy graphics treatments, banners, wingbats, or other attempts at illustrations. Some resume scanners will even reject your resume outright if it’s too elaborate. So stick to 10 to 12 point type in easy-to-read, straightforward fonts. 

Similarly, many companies use software to scan resumes for certain keywords, so make sure you include them. You'll find those keywords in the job description itself, so make sure your resume echoes at least some of the language in the job description. Competitors' job descriptions can also also be a good source of keywords.

Click here to learn what happens when you put your personality front and center

4. Screaming "Look at Me! Look at Me!"

It’s only human for you to want your resume to rise to the top of the heap. But force of personality, unfortunately, isn’t going to help it get there. It’s got to happen based on your accomplishments. So including tidbits like these, as hiring managers reported in a recent CareerBuilder survey, is strictly forbidden:

• One candidate listed “moonwalking” under special skills
• One candidate shipped a lemon with his resume, along with a note stating that “I am not a lemon.”
• A husband-and-wife team looking to job-share submitted a co-written poem
• A candidate noted on her resume that she had survived a bite from a deadly aquatic animal

Click here to learn why even volunteer activities can knock you out of contention

5. TMI--Too Much (Personal) Information

The last part of your resume—the one that might say ‘special skills,’ ‘interests,’ or ‘other’--is a minefield. You volunteer for Greenpeace? That could be a problem if your prospective boss' family owns a fish cannery.

It is okay to list hobbies, as long as they are completely non-controversial and guaranteed not to provoke eye-rolling. If in doubt, skip it altogether.

Likewise, no links to your facebook page or cute videos of your two-year-old on YouTube.  If you include a link to an online professional portfolio, it’s got to be as well thought-out as your resume or any other piece of marketing material. And if your email address contains the phrase ‘shakinmybootie,’ please get a new one.

Click here to find out how a common resume-writing technique wastes recruiters' time

6. The One-Size-Fits-All Resume

The most successful resume is the one that's precisely tailored to the job you're trying to get, says Rosemary Haefner, CareerBuilder's vice president of Human Resources. In fact, a CareerBuilder survey found that 79 pecent of hiring managers will spend more time with your resume if it's specific to the job you're applying for.

Is writing a separate resume tailored to each job opening  a pain-in-the-neck? Yes, but an unfocused resume is a pain in the neck for the hiring manager. You don’t want that person reading through your resume thinking, “Okay, but what job are they trying to get? What are they good at?”

Remember, hiring managers are looking for a specific person to fill a specific job at a specific time—not a generally qualified professional who could be useful to them someday.

Does your resume look too much like your predecessor's? Here's why that's a problem

7. Style without Substance

Overuse of words like "responsible for" and "managed" can be death to a resume. You don't want to say that you're a sales rep responsible for the Northeastern United States. Anyone can do that, and they can be stellar at it or lousy at it. You want to say you increased sales in your territory by 20 percent and improved customer retention by 26 percent.

No matter what type of job you have, your resume should focus on your achievement, not your responsibilities. That generally means you need numbers. That can be sales generated, accounts opened, employees hired, projects that were on-time and under-budget, or any number of other things. As long as you can—and do—measure them.

Click here to learn which resume mistake even high-level people still make

8. Pants on Fire

Don't stretch the truth, even a little. You were one credit short of graduating? Then you can't say you got that degree.

If you’re lucky enough to become a serious candidate, almost all hiring managers will try to verify the facts on your resume. If you manage to get an offer, many employers will hire an outside company to do a background check. At that point, there is no way even the most enthusiastic hiring manager will be able to defend you if something suspicious comes to light. The best and easiest way to avoid these headaches: Tell the truth in the first place.