Picking Giblets off the Floor, Aligning with Stakeholders and Using AI in Recruitment

I was delighted recently to be featured in "LinkedIn Lunatics" in Reddit as one of those intolerable hustle posters. In my defence, I was trying to satirise the very people I was being compared to. But, I guess that if the satire is indistinguishable from the real thing then you haven't done your job!

Here's the original Twitter thread anyway (as well as the LinkedIn version). The advice in there is actually OK, albeit standard stuff.

Picking giblets off the floor : Horrible onboarding stories

This was an interesting thread with some great (and terrifying) stories of hard landings in new jobs. Check it out:

Jason Knight @onejasonknight

No company (and no job) is as good as they present during the interview process. You'll be picking giblets off the floor in no time, wherever you go. Having said that, what's the WORST landing you've had in a job?

It's obviously really hard to get a full sense of the company you're joining, or even the role you'll be actually doing until you get in. Much of the time it's not even malicious. Fast-moving startups move fast! On the other hand, every bad job story is a reminder to do the best due diligence you can upfront. Remember that you're interviewing the company as much as they're interviewing you!

Using AI (and maybe the Metaverse!) in Recruitment

I recently had the pleasure of a chat with Shaun Smith-Taylor on the podcast. Shaun is the co-founder of MyProductPath, a product management recruiting platform that aims to make recruiting better through a combination of services & tech. It was a great chat and you can check it out wherever you get your podcasts, or right here.

Getting Alignment as a PM

I've started doing some mentoring again, and I got a question the other day that prompted a thread. Check it out:

Jason Knight @onejasonknight

Was chatting the other day with a new product managers asking how to influence stakeholders. Hoo boy, this is a tricky one, but let's spitball a little bit 👇

Key takeaways:

• Make sure your leadership team are sharing as much context as possible that might explain otherwise inexplicable decisions or what might cause you to be overridden.

• Make sure you're taking people on the journey with you, explaining at every turn and keeping constantly aligned with people. It's hard to "disagree and commit" if you weren't there to disagree.

• Be very clear about what you are doing, but also very explicit about what you're not doing. Assumptions will expand to fill all available space.

• If you have a truly intransigent stakeholder, get them to explain why their thing is more important that this other thing. Get them to say it.

Obviously, it's a constant juggling act to try to keep everyone happy (or equally unhappy!) but, hopefully, there's some inspiration in there for that next tricky conversation.

That's it

Thanks for reading! Hopefully, there's something interesting in there. I'd love it if you provided feedback on this issue, and shared it with your friends. Also, if you fancy buying me a coffee then that would be much appreciated!