I've just completed several weeks of conferences and in-house training, and I'm finally back home for a while. It's amazing to me how many sources of inexpensive learning there are.

1. Conferences. Conferences are amazingly cheap for learning about a wide variety of topics and techniques, especially because you have an opportunity to network with and speak with not just speakers but all the other people at the conference. If you use your time well, you can meet people in a similar position as you are, and learn from what they do. The speakers generally take excerpts from their workshops to use in tutorials, so you have a chance to audition the speakers. Think about it: it may cost you a max of $3000 to participate in a week-long conference, assuming you did not take advantage of early-bird discounts for registration and travel. If you learn something at a conference that saves you a week of work over the course of a year and you tell one other person about that tip and it saves them a week, you have more than made back the cost of the conference. Many of you are probably thinking I've gone off the deep end (since when is $3000 cheap??), but think about the potential return.
   
2. Books. Books that are well-written and explain how to do things first, second, third, are worth way more than their cover price. And, given the electronic readers and pdf books out there, I'm astonished more people don't buy books as a matter of course, when they want to learn something. It's hard to get cheaper than a book, but some local meetings are free.
   
3. User group and other affinity group meetings. If you would like to learn about a small area in a field, check out some user group or other group meetings, such as agile, or testing, or project management. Generally, the cost to attend a meeting is about the cost of a book, maybe a little more depending on how nice the dinner is. You will not get the breadth of a conference or a depth of a book, but you will learn something. BTW, if you are looking for a job, these groups are also great for networking.
   

You can also learn from searching the web, and it's harder to know if what you are reading is correct :-) So before you think there is no money to learn new things, rethink. See what ways are good for you and fit your budget.

And for those of you with conference money, I'm a host of the AYE conference, and the conference chair for Agile 2009.  

I was speaking with a colleague of long-standing (an old friend). He's newly unemployed. He's been a tester for years, and for the last few years has been a developer. He'd like to keep doing development kinds of work, possibly creating automated tests or for a product. But he's resigned himself to being a tester.

I asked him what he wanted to do. "Oh, development. But no one will hire me for that." I asked why. "Because I was a tester for so long".

Your attitude around a potential job will shine through in an interview. If you would not hire yourself for a particular job, no one else will. Part of your job search is to manage your reactions to a potential job as you search. Some ideas about what you can do:

1. Know what you want to do. If you see a job you could do, but it's not what you want, reassess whether you want to investigate this job. If they hired you, would you work there? Sometimes the answer is "yes, because I'm broke." But more often, the answer is "Hmm, that's not really the right job for me."
2. If you're relatively new to a particular role, and you have a ton of experience in another role, make a list of all the reasons why your more junior role is the role for you. Go back to your resume and take a look at your accomplishments.
3. Use those accomplishments to explain your value to other people. Take the time to articulate your story of why you are valuable in your preferred job. My colleague has a bunch of stories to support how his testing expertise makes him an amazing developer, especially in a test-driven environment.

Your attitude about a potential job has a huge effect on an interviewer. What does your attitude say?

You might not be aware of the pattern, "Broken Windows." Well, I think it's a pattern. It's at least a parable. The idea is that if you allow a broken window, pretty soon the neighborhood deteriorates, because other people think it's ok to leave broken windows, litter, graffiti, and more. Soon enough, you have a neighborhood no one wants to live in.

We see the Broken Window pattern at work all the time: builds that stay broken or take too long, defects that remain open, coffee machines where the coffee has boiled away, recycling containers where no one has taken out the recycling.

Broken Windows matter even more on a resume. If you can't somehow help the hiring manager see that you don't tolerate small problems on your resume, the hiring manager thinks you can tolerate them at work.

Make sure someone else reviews your resume. Look for Broken Windows in all of your work. Talk about it in an interview--you'll make points :-)

Don't leave a mess for other people to clean up. They won't.

I was speaking and teaching last week at the PMI Regina's PDC (Professional Development Conference). I taught an estimation workshop and we had some illuminating discussions about what to do when people on your project can't estimate. We all agreed people tend to be either optimistic estimators, where they think the work will take less time, or they will be pessimistic, where they think the work will take longer. Rarely does someone change. Our discussion about what to do when someone consistently miss-estimates was the part where I saw servant leadership.

One project manager said, "I don't want to crush someone's hopes or ignore their hard work, but how do I explain that each and every assignment he's been late on and I just don't believe his estimate?" Good question.

People need feedback on their estimation, and a project manager might be able to help the person see where this estimation suffers from the same problem as the previous estimations.

That's where the servant leadership comes in. A PM who's not a servant leader will think, "Hmm, your last 5 estimates have been off by 50%. I'll add 50 %," and be done with it. But a PM who is a servant leader gives feedback and asks for a re-evaluation, "Joe, you might not know this, but your most recent 5 estimates have been under-estimated by 50%. I don't want to blindly pad your estimate. I'd like to help you learn to estimate better. Is that ok?"

If that's ok with Joe, now you have a way to help the other person learn to estimate better. I like breaking tasks into inch-pebbles (one- to two-day tasks that are either done or not done), starting with user stories, or using Delphi estimation as a way to help people learn to estimate smaller tasks and see when that work is actually complete. One guy I worked with said, "I always thought it just took a few minutes to set up a new branch. But when I tracked what I did, I realised it took me closer to an hour, by the time I was actually done and ready to start writing code and tests. Who knew?" Until he created inch-pebbles he had no idea how complex his work actually was.

Great project managers serve the project and the people on the project. They don't take estimates at face value, without understanding how the estimate came to be. But they don't autocratically change the estimate without providing feedback.

If you're a leader in the organisation, whether you're a team lead, a project manager, or a manager, think about how you can serve the project, the organisation, and the people. You'll get better results if you remember the people.

I was speaking with a colleague who is thinking of transferring to a team in the same company. Something didn't feel quite right, so he tried to tell me what felt wrong.

"Everyone is all over the building. If I want to talk to someone else, I have to go over and around to find them. That team shares its servers with another team in another time zone. They're all working on more than one project at a time. I like the manager, but he's also doing technical work, and sometimes the management work doesn't get done. But the work looks really fun. What do you think?"

I think he's describing a group, not a team. And, maybe, not a very organized group at that.

If you're thinking of a new job or a new role, look at the makeup of the team you'll be joining. Here are things to look for:

1. A team is small and has interdependent commitments. That means you need to work with the rest of team, not spend all your time trying to find them.
2. A team should have equipment that's committed to them, so they can manage the equipment. (Same with space.) If they have to share equipment with another group or team, they are not masters of their own fate, and can't let tests run as long as they might need to.
   
3. Team members who multitask cannot meet their commitments. That means they can't make progress when they said they will.
   
4. Managers who do technical work are not managing.

Now, if the work is sufficiently fun and engaging, and if this team really is a group, maybe all those other reasons don't matter. Maybe my colleague can carve out some good work and can develop some great relationships. But, he's either talking about a group, or a team that's not working well together. Danger!!

I realize that many people are hunkered down, working hard at their jobs. And, a bunch of people are unemployed, looking for work. But what about all those people who are still employed but are unhappy and want to look for a job? How open can they be?

I'm from the school of "be honest with your boss" while you are looking. Somehow, I always managed to send my resume to people who were friendly with my bosses! And, once you've found a job, give two weeks notice. But if you're too scared to be honest with your boss, try these ideas:

• As you update your social networking sites, say that you're open for any and all contacts: reconnecting, networking to help other people, and interesting options.
• As you tell people that you are looking for a job, also explain you do not want to put your current job in jeopardy.
• Make sure you use reputable recruiters. The disreputable ones will send your resume to everyone they know. The reputable ones focus your search.
• Only send your resume to a company that's honest about who they are. Never send a resume to a cloaked ad.
  

If your boss discovers you are looking, come clean--at least, about your job search, if not the reason behind it.

It's not easy to find a job, but they are out there.

As you can tell, I have portfolios on my mind these days :-) But there's a reason for that. A portfolio is a collection of work that you can assess over time. One way to prepare for an interview is to build your accomplishment portfolio.

It's easy to describe how to build this portfolio: In reverse chronological order (most recent job first), list each accomplishment and the meaning behind that accomplishment. A key piece of recognizing an accomplishment is to ask yourself "so what?" If you can answer that question in a way that has meaning for a hiring manager, you've got a great accomplishment.

Here's an example. If one of my accomplishments is to coach a project manager, I can say "Coach PM, with result that he saw more risks and took more proactive actions. Project came in on time, allowing company to recognize revenue in Q2." It's even better if I can put a specific dollar amount on that accomplishment, so I answer the implicit "so what" question.

So, that sounds pretty easy, right? Well, the difficult part is deciding which accomplishments you want to discuss from each job you've had. For example, if you've been working for 20 years, do you include the accomplishments from 15 years ago? Probably not, unless one of them led to a pattern of similar accomplishments in which your responsibility has grown over time. For the past 10 years? Probably.

The key is to use accomplishments which highlight your ever-increasing areas of responsibility, challenge, and knowledge. Make sure you think about accomplishments which point to work you want to take on more of, not work you don't want to do anymore.

If you've been working for a while and you haven't written down your accomplishments, start with your current or most recent job first, and write those down. Then, start moving backwards in your career. If you can, use the accomplishments as bullet points on your resume. If you think you really have some career-spanning accomplishments, consider a resume cover page (not a cover letter) that highlights your accomplishments over your career.

Whatever you do, remember to update your resume and accomplishments at least once a quarter, if not once a month. Doing this periodically helps you see where your career is going, and if you're headed on the right track for you. If you have a quarter where you haven't accomplished anything, consider whether this job is helping or hurting you, or if you could reorganize or remake part of your job.

Your portfolio is an indication of the kind of person you are and the kind of worker you tend to be. Use that information to help you manage your career.

If you are like most people I know, you have too much to do. Maybe you're only on one project at work (I hope so!), but you have house stuff to do, garden stuff to do, kid stuff to do, dog or cat stuff, book stuff, parent stuff--you name it, you have a todo list a mile long. And, some of you have many more than one project to do at work. Is there a way to get through that all those todos?

Maybe. First, you need to know what you need to do now, and what you can do later. Here's my approach to managing my todos over time:

1. Make a big list of everything. Empty my brain onto the paper. Don't worry about organizing it, just write it down. (Yes, this is from David Allen's Getting Things Done.)

2. Now, make a grid on a piece of paper. Across the top, you have Week1, Week2, Week3, Week4. Down the side, you have "Tasks" and "Unstaffed Work."

Maybe you've been laid off. Maybe you just want another job. Yes, there are people hiring--but how do you find them?

Just as hiring managers need a strategy for hiring people, candidates need a strategy for looking for a job. Let's assume you're looking in an area in which you have experience. In that case, think about how you use these approaches:

Make sure you use social networks. You cannot afford to avoid LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Maybe you have another social network that you prefer. Fine, as long as your potential hiring managers and/or recruiters use that network. Your network might be a specific tool's user group, as long as you don't mind getting a job using that tool.

Expect to customize your resume for each job you apply for. This sounds like a lot of work. "Can't I just customize my cover letter?" Yes, you can, and that may not be enough. You aren't applying for a generic job; why send in a generic resume?

Consider using a couple of recruiters. Yes, the recruiters are having trouble, but they still have positions which require experience, especially a lot of experience.

Make sure you have thought about all of the ways to reach potential hiring managers.

Now, what do you do if you want to change jobs to something you don't have experience in?

Try getting some experience. You can be an unpaid intern (ok, a paid internship is even better, but don't bet on it), work on an open source project, or some other way that allows you to work with people (so you have references), and build your experience.

Expand your network as much as possible. If you want to change jobs in this economy you have to meet more and more and more people. You need to build a reputation as someone who can get things done. Now, do all the things I mentioned above.

It's not impossible to find a new job; it's just difficult. Start now.

When you look for a job, what do you look for? Some people look for stability or a large/small company or an entrepreneurial approach, or something else. I look for something fun and a lot to learn.

The key is that I'm willing to look for any number of fun things: the product, the language, the OS, whatever. But I have two distinct criteria: I need to have fun. And, I need to be able to learn from other people on the job.

What do I mean by "have fun"? For me, having fun means to stretch my brain and avoid drudgery. I don't mind a repetitive job if I have the opportunity to automate it. But, I don't want to do the same thing day in and day out. I need to learn enough so I don't have the same year of experience over and over again. (See What Was Your Last Year of Experience? What Will This Year's of Experience Be?)

Who can I learn from? I expect to learn about management things from my manager, and I expect to learn about technical things from my colleagues, all over the organization. I once took a job where the previous management had deliberately hired the lowest-cost folk, expecting them to be the least capable. A majority were not very capable. I found it frustrating.

When you have fun and learn from people across the organization, you have an opportunity to get a great job, because you can collect a wide variety of data from others telling your potential employers how good you are. See I have a document like this and so should you.

Do you have criteria for your next job? You don't have to have mine, but I suggest you think about what would make your next job your best.