As a job seeker, I used to rely heavily on accuracy and professionalism of my resume. I made sure grammar and spelling were in order, all timelines cohered, and “power words” were generously sprinkled across the fancy sheet of paper.

What I didn’t know is that I could have put “Graduated from college“, “T-SQL“, “.NET“, “VBA“, and “Team player” on a regular sheet of paper, and still would have gotten the job (I’m exaggerating … trying to make a point here).

I am now in a position to actually interview my prospective team members. I find myself asking them all kinds of questions ranging from very general to very specific. I put surprisingly little emphasis on the resume — instead I tend to focus on the attitude and skills of the candidates, all while realizing what I previously thought was important did not necessarily matter at an interview.

For example, I thought that reasonably lengthy explanations are better than one-liners because they provide valuable insight into skills and experience. Not true — long explanation bore people to death. “Automated all payroll processes and eliminated 1,000 hours of manual entry annually” is so much better than “Was responsible for creating complex automation processes using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 platform, which resulted in drastic reduction in manual key-entry for payroll procedures (estimated 1,000 hours per year)“.

I’m in the I/T industry, so I’m sure things would vary a bit in some other fields. Here are some of the actual questions we ask.

- How do you deal with ambiguity? Among the good answers are “keeping the big picture in mind“, “communicating clearly“, “asking the right questions“, “designing and following a process“. You’re dealing with ambiguity all day long – people just don’t know what the hell they want … ever.

- Describe some projects you worked on as part of a team. Teamwork is huge not because it’s a cheesy managerial “power word”, but because ability to work well with others is crucial to a project’s success. Too often people’s egos get in the way of productive collaboration. I’ve heard people straight up say stuff like “I can’t share this workload because then I won’t have anything else to do“, effectively saying “I’m a gigantic douche clinging to my job for dear life“.

- What are your core skills? This one is asked because it’s annoying to read through the resume full of TLA’s — VBA, php, .NET, SQL, ASP … etc.

When we’re feeling funny, we’re asking “What are your weaknesses?” just to hear people twist their supposed “strengths” into a “weakness” that sounds like a “strength”. Cracks me up every time I hear “I care too much“, “I am too dedicated“, “I do whatever it takes“. No, no you do not. Work tech support help desk on Christmas then, tough guy.

Indeed so. My wife and I were looking for some patio furniture … As far as I am concerned, I can get by with some basic plastic chairs, but here we were, looking for some anyway. I suppose there comes a point in time when “slumming” makes you look like an asshole, especially when co-workers show up and want to go outside to have a beer only to find out you own two plastic chairs found at some yard sale.

So I started doing my research only to get instantly terrified by prices of decent, sturdy cast iron chairs. Needless to say, those plastic chairs started to look pretty good.

Then I decided to hit Craigslist for estate and garage sales. After uploading the addresses to our trusty GPS unit, we jumped in the car and went weekend-yardsaleing. Though first three sales were pretty cool (I bought lots of used computer-related gadgets from an I/T guy who was moving abroad), we hit the motherload on the forth attempt: a storage unit blowout.

Turns out, an owner of a warehouse storage unit was trying to reach one of his tenants for weeks, while following a strict legal procedure of notification. After so many attempts to reach the tenant, everything inside the storage unit now belonged to the owner, who just wanted to get rid of it all NOW as he was losing income (since his tenant disappeared and stop making payments). It’s weird, but he said stuff like that happens all the time — people rent storage units, fill them up with their small business inventories, then move, go broke, or … die. As a result, the owners of those units just want the crap out of their storage units.

So we hit one of those sales. The inventory consisted of very Texified furniture — huge wooden tables, chairs, beds, mirrors, leather lampshades, country-style and wrought iron furniture, all really well made. After a quick bargaining session with the owner, we ended up with 4 beautiful (and very heavy) wrought iron chairs for $15 apiece.

Here’s all four:

The real crazy thing is the original and sale prices:

Original:

… and sale price:

Even if we found them at a hundred bucks apiece, which is a great price for those, we’d be out $400, may be $350. Instead, we drove out of there with good 120 lbs of wrought iron furniture for a mere $60.

Needless to say, perusing Craigslist is now my favorite weekend pastime.

That’s right — we bought a house!

It’s a good-sized 2,000+ sq. ft. two story home in Austin, Texas. We closed a few days ago, and the bank transferred the funds the same day — the transferring of the money is what finalized it in my mind. You can sign all kinds of papers, but until the money changes hands, it ain’t real.

Wow … talk about a huge, life-changing event. And to say that just 14 months ago we were in Michigan renting a 2-bedroom dugout, barely making ends meet …

I can talk forever about all exciting challenges we’ve encountered when shopping for our house. However, I have a few key takeaway points:

• Do research. Do it non-stop for weeks, in a dedicated, methodical fashion. I’m hearing it used to be that you would put all kinds of faith in your realtor and have him/her find you a home because of the tools only they had access to as realtors. Not any more — between MLS searches, GPS, Google Earth, and digital imaging, you can be your own data analyst AND a realtor. We methodically combed through the REMAX site, punches our “likes” and “maybes” into our GPS unit, sorted listings by the MLS area, then drove around, took pictures, geotargeted them with Picasa, and discussed.
• Found your perfect house? Buy it! We got lucky — we did not find a house we loved only to have somebody else write an offer on it, but a bunch of people we know had that happen to them. A house is not a car — no two houses are identical. Even if two identical houses are sitting next to each other, one could be closer to the main (and noisy) road, and therefore, be valued less. Or the other one could have had cleaner owners — the point is, you need to shop around, but the moment you find something that makes you feel like “this is it”, write an offer.
• Don’t neglect the details. Sure, during the walkthrough it may seems like having the laundry room in the kitchen is no big deal, but you need to visualize yourself dodging salsa-chopping family members while running around with baskets full of towels, and realize that you need to rethink your opinion.
• Take care of paperwork as soon as humanly possible. Large bureaucracies (like banks and big real estate firms) are still largely inefficient. They use fax machines A LOT, and tend to not respond to voice mails. Therefore, DO follow up, DO be annoying, DO keep paper and electronic copies of everything you send out, DO create a tracking sheet of everything you send out. Trust me, being polite, persistent, and yes, annoying, pays off due to the whole “squeaky wheel” phenomenon.

That’s really it … time to paint, remodel, refloor, recarpet, tile, clean, etc, etc …

The saga continues — we’re in Austin, Texas area, and we’re looking for a home. Based on the steady appreciation of home values, it’s a no-brainer to see all reasons to buy a home in this area. People are still moving in, the economy is strong, and the entire area is practically unfazed by either the national real estate decline or the subprime market crash.

As we’re looking for a home, we’re starting to realize that there are a few pointers we wish somebody shared with us BEFORE we started looking for a home. Here’s they are, folks, little pieces of advice based on our firsthand experiences:

• You can either look for a house on your own, or solicit help of a real estate agent. If you’re going to quarterback this thing, use the hell out of the Internet — should be a no-brainer at this point. If you want those listings served up for you through an Internet “gateway”, find a realtor you like and see if he/she can be your “buyer’s agent”.
• You can totally find a perfect house on your own. You don’t necessarily need a “buyer’s agent”. All they do is perform the same exact Internet searches that you can be doing. When you find a home you want to write an offer on, having a buyer’s agent can actually be a bad thing — because the buyer’s agent get paid out of the sellers’ agent’s commission, the seller’s agent can (probably will be) reluctant to negotiate on the sale price — hello, the seller’s agent wants to get paid, and here waltzes in the buyer’s agent and undercuts the commission!
• Don’t use friends or relatives. Buying a home is a huge deal. You’re committing hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of your life to this thing. Your life will be altered in a way you never thought was possible. While it may seem great to involve your weekend-warrior realtor aunt Jan into this, it’s a shitty idea, trust me. When things go right, everybody wins. But if your aunt Jan is not as professional or talented as you thought and you decide to walk away and work with another realtor, she might not forgive you the loss of the commission — we’re not talking peanuts, we’re talking 5-10 grand. Besides, relatives and money don’t mix.
• When you are about to do house or pest inspections, don’t use the realtor-recommended people/companies. Every realtor out there knows at least a couple house inspectors and pest inspectors. They will always recommend the people they know, citing how great/thorough they are. However, this does not help create “independence in appearance” — it’s the same reason auditors cannot accept even the smallest gifts from clients while on engagement because they need to not only BE, but also APPEAR TO BE totally independent. How hard do you think it is for a realtor to ask an inspector buddy to “go easy” on the inspection to help guarantee a smooth and fast closing?
• Take lots of pictures. Start each batch of pictures with a close-up of the flyer for reference. Use Google Picasa + Google Earth to geotarget the pictures — you’ll be glad you did. In literally two days your head will swell with confusing images of dozens of homes you saw, and this is an awesome way to organize them all. Now you can not only zoom in on the house, but also see all the pics you took at the same time.
• Pick 2-3 things that are important to you, and once you find a house with those things, BUY IT. If you need a big kitchen to entertain, a good location to go out, and little or no remodeling, why pass up a house that has all of those features, but a small yard? If you want location, yard, and price, why do you care about school districts? Of course, if you prioritize 12 things you want, good freaking luck, buddy.
• Financing people are always sleazy. I made a mistake of applying for a mortgage through LendingTree, and got inundated with phone calls for weeks. They lure you in with the best features of the deal, and forget to tell you shit like “the column that says ‘EXPENSES PAID BY SELLER’ actually means ‘YOU PAY FOR IT IF SELLER DOES NOT WANT TO PAY FOR THEM’. Of course he’s not going to want to pay for it, you have to SPECIFICALLY ask for those to be paid by the seller in the offer — then why call it “seller paid expenses“? Whatever, assholes. I went with a local bank instead because I got tired of playing the “games of omission” with a person in St. Louis I’ve never met, representing a bank that has no physical presence in this world.
• Plan remodels upfront. It’s not so hard — with 3D modeling software readily available from Google and IKEA, you can knock out a model of a fung shui homestead in a coupla hours, complete with prices and quotes. Roll those remodels and updates with the house price for an immediate effect, then spread them out over a couple of months.
• Weather-proof your home. Those electric bills you’re getting in your apartment are chump change in comparison with the A/C-driven electric bills you’re gonna get when you move in. So take your little $200 a month for water, garbage, and electricity, and quintuple it. That’s right, it’ll cost you a grand a month. Plan accordingly by spending $100 on weather strips, adhesive weather tape, and string caulk; then methodically plug every hole in the house. Oh, and you have God’s permission to pimp-slap your family members if they dare to turn the thermostat above 78.
• Location is everything. I don’t know about other states, but here in Texas there’s plenty of room to grow. This means that every year, batches of brand new homes are dumped onto the market, each newer and bigger than the previous. All of these new homes are built .. duh .. in Suburbia, because the prime real estate within the city limits has been over-developed in the 80′s. Therefore, if you want to treat your house as an investment that it is, buy closer to town. It will resell better because “they don’t make any more land” in town, but they make all kinds of land in the burbs.

More coming soon!

You think the logistics of buying a house would be a nightmare — getting THE loan, moving out of the apartment, lining up the paperwork … After several months of looking for that perfect home, I’m here to tell you that doing all that is the easy part. The hardest part – finding a house you (and your significant other) actually like.

Here in Austin, Texas, the housing market is really volatile, and choices abound. Want a smaller, older 1,200 sq. ft. abode in town? Wanna take the same amount of money and build a 2,800 sq. ft. chateau beyond the north city limit? How about a shack on a creek? A brand new condo?

There’s so many choices, it makes my head spin. However, after looking around for a while, I realized that our seemingly reasonable laundry list of criterias for our new home is not so reasonable, after all.

Here’s what we want:

• Location – north side, but in town, to take advantage of great suburban school districts;
• Backyard – not huge, but moderate size, moderately private, so that we can have friends over without neighbors flipping out;
• Layout – no crazy-assed 50′s kitchens, 60′s bathrooms, 70′s lofts, please. Open areas. Ceilings taller than 8 ft. would be nice;
• Quality (reasonable) – seen “Money Pit” with Tom Hanks? No thanks.
• Price – this is an awesome indicator of what kind of house you can get, but we would never buy an outhouse in town for the same amount as a castle 5 miles the other way;

You would think those simple factors would converge into one perfect home we both would like. Wrong. If you agree with the criterias, here’s what you would most likely find for approx. the same price:

• A gigantic, brand new house in a brand new subdivision … outside of town. Granite countertops, closets the size of rooms, Notre Dame-style ceilings, prewired security, awesome amenities, manicured lawns. Sounds nice, sure. That is if you like a sterile backyard the size of a sandbox, 1,200 identical neighbors, a hefty dependency on the world’s No. 2 computer maker, and the probable return on investment of 0% in 5 years. In Austin, you can build from here to El Paso – so why settle for a smaller, older home when you can have the newest, the biggest, and the most A/C-hungry? Hell, you can buy a bigger, newer home every time you lease your next silver Nissan Altima.
• A small, musky-smelling 3 bedroom 1.5 bath with a horrible layout in an established community in town. I guess back in the 50′s people didn’t care too much about cooking and taking dumps comfortably. Therefore, as a legacy they left us small, long, separated and subdivided kitchens and bathrooms, where not only 2 people can’t get ready for work at the same time, they can’t even both be in there — one person in the bathroom, the other one hanging in the doorway just to talk. And by “us” I mean “whatever house-flipper watched entirely too much HGTV” and “updated” everything with brushed nickel, IKEA laminate, and spunky accent walls while forgetting entirely about, oh, I don’t know, necessities like creating a better place to take a shit in peace. Knock out a wall, geniuses, it’s not load-bearing, and we’ll pay you extra 20 grand for the trouble of putting in a tub.
• A seemingly nice, well-priced, reasonably new house. It sure looks good until you pivot city crime stats for the last 5 years and realize that based on the number of aggravated assaults, larcenies, thefts, and armed robberies, the house you are about to make an offer on is actually a safehouse sitting in the epicenter of the aforementioned activity. Sure, the neighbors are nice, but a) they are old and are moving out b) their security systems are hardwired to the police switchboards, granting them instant police response for a hefty fee.
• Another seemingly nice, well-priced, reasonably new house. It sure looks good until you run some checks on it. What? It was under contract twice, but both fell through? Ah, I see, undisclosed flood and termite damage … That’ll do it. What else? Replaced the roof? How the hell do you replace “the roof” … shingles AND the plywood? Oh, I see, NOT the plywood, just the shingles, leaving rotten plywood on the house. NEXT!

You can always build. That’s if your job allows you to take frequent 1-hour long breaks to check on your crews and ensure that the walls in your new home will be perpendicular to the sea level, and the opposite sides of the doorways line up.

We’ll keep looking …