Obama became president at noon (EDT) today:

The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin. (US Constitution, Amendment 20, paragraph 1)

However, he could not begin "executing" his office until taking the oath/affirmation, which happened a few moments after noon by my clock:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." (US Constitution, Article 2, Section 1)

Chief Justice Roberts and president-elect Obama clearly did not practice the oath; for those keeping score at home, you can call that an E-1, batter safe at first. (update: In baseball score notation, E is error. The defensive positions are numbered one through nine, from pitcher to right fielder (pitcher, catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, left field, center field, right field. There are nine Supreme Court justices, and Roberts as chief justice is #1).

I've mentioned this before: one reason I love baseball is that it makes a great sandbox for statistical thinking. It features both a rich set of data and a steady supply of ignorance. And the lessons apply directly to the rest of the world. Here's an example. In the baseball world, sportswriter Chaz Scoggins explains his Hall of Fame ballot choices. He's gracious to talk to Baseball Prospectus, a primary source of the new wave of scientific analysis, and a forum in which his reasoning is not respected.

DL: Tim Raines received only 122 votes, one of which came from you. What impressed you about Raines?

CS: I look at Raines in a lot of the ways I look at Rickey Henderson. ... so he put the whole package together. But I did have to think about him; he didn't come as an obvious pick. When I got the ballot, I had to think about it for a couple of days, but I ultimately decided that Raines fit my criteria for a Hall of Famer.

DL: You didn't vote for Bert Blyleven. Why not?

CS: I just feel that Bert Blyleven was a little better than a .500 pitcher. I just never felt that he had the fortitude that it takes to win big games. People say that he had the misfortune of playing on a lot of mediocre and even bad teams, but to me, if you're a Hall of Fame pitcher you're able to lift your team up ...

DL: You also didn't vote for Alan Trammell. Did you give him serious consideration?

CS: I really gave him no thought. To me, Alan Trammell was just a very nice player. ...

It's fairly clear, especially if you read the entire interview and also read the stathead analysis in Baseball Prospectus, that Scoggins' selections are entirely subjective. His gut feeling tells him who is worthy, and then he cherry-picks statistics as needed to rationalize his choices. Now observe the same thinking in another context:

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online ... concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

[...]

Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, who has forcefully pursued the issue and helped to create the task force, said he disagreed with the report. Mr. Blumenthal said it "downplayed the predator threat," relied on outdated research and failed to provide a specific plan for improving the safety of social networking.

"Children are solicited every day online," Mr. Blumenthal said. "Some fall prey, and the results are tragic. That harsh reality defies the statistical academic research underlying the report."

Notice the dichotomy. Statistics are not reality. Blumenthal knows the facts, and "statistical academic research" is not the facts. The actual reality, of course, is that "statistical academic research" is one of the most powerful tools available to understanding reality. It can be wrong in many ways, from bias to systemic error to total conceptual failure, but "it contradicts what I know in my heart and my vested interests to be true" is not a very good counter-argument.

What flag is it?

I'm attending my first PMI event in Silicon Valley. (see previous entries about PMI). My PMP certificate expires at the end of the year in March 2010, and I need 60 Professional Development Units to renew. I have 28 units. Tonight's event, "The 10 most common mistakes PMs make when looking for work", is worth 1.5. There are 150 people registered and seven walk-ins. We passed a microphone around to introduce ourselves by name and company. Aside from the typical Silicon Valley (Sun, Apple, Applied Materials, etc), 3 are unemployed, 22 are looking, and 6 didn't give a company. This is probably the most diverse PMI crowd I've ever seen, in terms of ethnicity and gender (although still mostly male and majority white), but perhaps the least diverse in profession, spanning IT hardware to IT software with maybe 1% other.

The speaker follows, in my paraphrase unless otherwise noted:

I'm going to talk about the mistakes I see people making over and over and over. My background ... Air force ... staffing company. We put on a conference called LavaCon, in Hawaii, but in 2009 it'll be in New Orleans. And I have a Mardi Gras necklace here ... Tonight is about group participation. [He has a big bag of chocolate and is throwing chocolate to anyone who asks a question.]

Recruiters get many resumes every day. Your first job is to make the recruiter's job easier.

1. Most important: Summarize how your skills meet the requirements. E.g., make a table directly linking your experience to requirements.
2. follow the submission directions. "We'll say, 'please send me your resume and a summary of the IT projects you've done.' And I'll get a submission, 'here's my resume'."
3. If it's been 2 weeks and you haven't heard anything and the ad says "Don't Call", what do you do? Find somebody other than HR, and call with something reasonable, like, "I wanted to be sure my resume was received".
4. Should you send salary history if requested? Maybe. You could respond with: "Salary requirements commensurate with requirements of position". Or with a range. Joel's note: Extended discussion proceeds on how to deal with salary-requirements gates. I think this mostly misses the point since this implies going in the through the main screening door, which is mostly a lost cause. The presenter seems to feel the same way ("Uploading your resume to Monster and waiting for people to call you is not looking for work.") but takes a bit too long to curtail discussion, so I remind myself that I get PDUs here even if I don't get much immediate job help.
5. Try to get your resume to the right person directly.
6. Distinguish yourself from other PMs. Network at C++ meetings, Java meetings, instead of PM meetings. Look for the "High Tech professional council", "Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce" is good at listing high-tech companies in the area. "Web Guild." Write an article for the PMI newsletter, and interview people for that article. Send them thank-yous with "by the way, you mentioned you were hiring in June. Would it be okay if I contacted you then?"
7. Volunteer with PMI and other groups. Q: How do you decide which networking events to go to? Joel's note: figure out what you want to be doing, and who's doing it now, and what groups they would belong to.
8. You can't wait for your ship to come in if you haven't sent out a ship. You have to send out a lot of ships. Every time you go to a network event, that's a ship. Every time you hand a card to somebody you met at a Safeway, that's a ship. And it could take two years for a ship to come in.
9. Use the job sites to figure out who's hiring, and then follow up directly or via networking.
10. When getting to a decision maker via network, get your proxy to sing your praises, especially if you're not an exact match.
11. The order of qualifications in the list is significant. Do stretch a little, but stay in the ballpark.
12. Put your cover letter in your resume document so they can't be separated.
13. For full-time positions, apply with a chronological resume. For contract, a functionally organized resume.

End of presenter's material... We're already ten minutes over so I skipped out on the drawings for various prizes. I did ask one question during the meeting: How do you find companies that value your PMP certification. No good answer: companies that value PMP will post on the PMI website. Search for PMP on Dice or Monster.

PMI-SV in creating a new job search group, Friday mornings 7:30 am to 9 am, in Cupertino.

During the networking break, I talked to my seatmates, and got a nice reminder of the three elements of the PM's job: "People, process, tools".

Summary: good refresher on the basics. A few little things particular to PMs, mostly in figuring out who might need PMs based on other observed activity, but 98% generic. I'm already doing most of the good stuff and avoiding most of the dumb stuff. I picked up one interesting idea, which is to make the cover letter a direct mapping from job requirements to matching experience, the point being to save the HR person or recruiter from digging through my resume. I already do this in text, and I already stick with a pretty lean cover letter, but I like this idea of spelling it out. So, on the content it's a win, the guy was entertaining, I may steal his idea of dispensing from a bag of candy throughout the event (with an option for diabetics), and now I have 30 PDUs.