Web sites

I have been asked to turn parts of this blog into an easily navigable web site.

I think that this is a good idea, but I have not made a web site before and want this one to be very high quality.

If anyone has suggestions on how to do it well, let me know.

Emotions, preconceptions, finances, and job hunting

Most people come to financial planning and job hunting with a world view about the process - "How things should be" - and emotions about the process - "I feel stressed when doing these tasks."

These world views and emotions were often set in place early in a person's life - "Money is the root of all evil".

Sometimes the world view and the emotions are helpful to a person in handling their money better or in finding a good job. Often they are hurtful.

We talk directly about how the unstated world view and emotions may be hindering a person getting what they claim they want.

Job hunting - details

We treat job hunting in the same detail that most scientists treat experimental design, entrepreneurs treat a new company, or military leaders treat a battle.

We try constantly to decrease the risks of failure.

Details of financial planning

In the individualized financial plans that we create, specific rates of inflation, Monte Carlo type events, and many other variables are enumerated and included in the calculations.

On average, a financial summary is based on 30 variables, a few thousand calculations, and quantitative evaluation of risk.

Talking about finances

In my family (and many others), we never talked about finances. Topics as necessary as "How do you make your assets work well for you and your family?" were never mentioned much less discussed rationally. I knew much more about how to hit a topspin forehand than I did about how to invest carefully.

This approach to finance was stupid.

With a bit of work, each of us can do much better and become investors not speculators.

This blog and my counseling of others is my small attempt to empower a few more people to take charge of their own finances in a way that is low stress and is effective.

Cheers,

Beyond LANL

For readers from outside Northern New Mexico, Bart and I have talked about helping people in other places, especially Livermore.

We are willing to travel to other places.

Post doc tips - cover letters

An effective cover letter is very difficult to write, more difficult than a good resume.

The effective cover letter must hook the reader without appearing to be trying to do so.

To me, an effective cover letter is like a poem or like very good dialog in a movie. It reads well, is completely intentional, and has much more going on than it appears to.

People in their 40's and beyond - financial plan

Current changes at LANL are unnerving for people who have dedicated their lives to national security and working at a national lab.

The rules of success are changing rapidly.

We have found that creating a well thought out financial plan for the next ten to twenty years reduces anxieties dramatically for such people.

Uniformly, they are better off than they think they are. They just have to learn more sophisticated financial skills and then view their situation through the lens created from these new skills.

Time for success

Based on our experience in counseling so far, for a person to compete effectively for a job and to put together a credible financial plan will take about 1100 hours of their time.
Much of this time is consumed in reading and understanding the relevant information.

If such a person uses our help, this time, on average drops to less than 90 hours.

Readers not from LANL

Bart and I counseled a lot of people on how to make good decisions during the transition to a new contractor. Changing contractors is likely at a number of national labs, especially Livermore.

We have a lot of guidance and practical support for people whose lab is likely to change contractors.

I can help people individually and can post some of our tips here if there is a need.

The tips would include detailed explanations of the various choices for pensions and benefits and the risks involved in each choice.

Post doc tips - interviews

If you got an interview, do you have a reasonable chance to get the job.

Often, no.

Many times, the organization has a favorite for the position. They may have had this favorite before the ad was even posted. You can beat the favorite sometimes, but you should realize that there may already be a favorite and plan your approach accordingly.

Blog rules

1. If you have a new topic, let me know. I will often make it a post.
2. All comments and suggestions are welcomed.
3. Spam or whining will be deleted from the comments.
4. In a number of blogs, once posts are made they are never changed or improved. Here, I consider a post to be a topic. When it needs to be improved, it will be. I will change the time stamp to reflect the date of the improvement.

Enjoy

Pay offs

We have found that people who do the work suggested below

1. Make many thousands of dollars on assetes that they already could control.
2. Get the job that they want
3. Spend less time stressing about things that could be changed

Cheers

The tip of the iceberg

This blog is the visible part of what we are doing.

The less visible part is individual or family counseling on the details of financial planning or job hunting. We have helped more than one hundred families or individuals create their personalized financial or job hunting plans since January.

A finished plan, for instance a financial plan, is about 10 pages long and is a synopsis of many years of experience and thousands of calculations.

Available jobs

I have about 5000 contacts around the country.
These contacts are the people who might hire you if you want a new job.

In addition, I have routine calls from headhunters looking for talented people with specific skill sets.

Long time worker tips - resume

Even if you have done entirely classified work, there is a viable way to put together an effective resume.

Repeat of Post Doc Powerpoint Presentation

There will be a repeat of the Power Point Presentation either next week or the week after depending on the availability of the room.

Post docs tips - finances

Making a decision about taking an offered job without first making a detailed plan of how the finances will work out for you and your family is like going hiking in the mountains without getting a weather report or doing a set of experiments without creating an experimental design that includes backup experiments and expectations of results.

Security breaches

It would be easier to predict a good future for the Lab if we could stop having security breaches.

Tonight's reports on KRQE and on CBS news about discovering classified materials stolen from the lab were not a plus. The materials were discovered during a meth bust in Los Alamos.

The big question

If you are currently working at LANL, should you stay?
If you decide to stay, how long should you stay?
If you are not yet working at LANL but are thinking about coming, should you come?


The answers to these questions, at the moment, are long, complicated, and individualized.

Post docs tips - Resumes

An effective resume must be easy and clear from the point of view of the reader, not the writer.

Headings

To make this blog a little more easy to navigate, I will try various headings.

People in their 50's and beyond

The problems here are multiple.

The people may not have saved enough in order to live out their retirement well.
The people's pensions may be at more risk than they thought it was.
A person may not have strong control over their assets and expenses so that they can retire well.
The person may fear that their LANL job will disappear before they are ready to leave.
The person may have been doing classified research for many year and, thus, feel that they do not have any projects that can be put on their resumes in order to find a new job.

We can, and have, helped about 70 people through these difficulties.

Contractors

The problem for contractors who are being laid off seems to be that they have to manage their finances well and quickly so that they have enough time to find a good job. Then they have to compete well against others in order to land this good job.

We can teach both sets of skills.

Foreign Nationals 2

The problem for foreign nationals at LANL seems to be that the timing and opportunities are going against them.

It appears that the opportunities are smaller than they are for U.S. citizens and that their is not enough time between now and when their visa expires for them to get a good U.S. job.

We can fix these problems.

Postdocs

Many LANL postdocs are very smart and come from good universities.
The problem in finding a job after LANL, for postdocs, seems to be that, while they know how to compete well in doing science, they do not have adequate training in competing well in getting jobs in science, and, most importantly, they have not establshed an internal metric for judging themselves on how good they are at getting jobs.

So, they are beaten out by people who may be worse at doing science but who are better at getting jobs.

We can train them quickly to compete well in getting jobs either at LANL or elsewhere.

Future posts

Over the next week, I will post more details relevant to each of the classes at risk.
If you want more information in the mean time, call me at 662-3115.

I will also make the blog fancier and with useful links.

If you have comments that will help others who are reading this, please put the comments after the appropriate post.

Cheers

A financial example

Many people, especially technical people, are used to getting a pay check, spending a bit less than they make, and hoping that a pension will cover them when they retire.

This paradigm is being abandoned by companies across the U.S. It is being abandoned by govermental organizations.

So, technical people need to take more control of their own financial health.

Over the course of a career, this control will generate more than a million dollars for the person that the person is not getting now. This control will also help the person guard themselves and their families against job uncertainties such as the ones that are going on now.

A job example

I have read and critiqued thousands of resumes. I have written about 100 for myself and others.

The resumes that I have seen recently from LANL folk are detailed, well organized, and not effective.

They are not effective for a number of reasons for a number of reasons. The overall reason is that they do not catch the interest of the person who has 150 resumes to read, time to read only 10, and the need to understand only 5.

The LANL resumes that I have seen recently would make the middle of the pack in a job search but not the top ten.

The people are often top ten but the resumes are not.

Bart and I are now teaching people to fix their resumes so that the people are more competitive in job hunting.

Individual counseling

Bart and I have chosen to provide our services through individual or couple counseling. This preserves confidentiality and privacy. It also recognizes that, more than 90% of the time, the optimal solution for one person or family is not the optimal solution for the next person or family.

Powerpoint presentation for Postdocs

Two weeks ago, I gave a 42 minute Power Point presentation to post docs. This presentation can be repeated to groups of 15 or more as the need arises.

In outline the presentation covered.

Financial plans
LANL indepent
LANL specific

Job Hunting
Effective Resumes
Effective Cover letters
Getting a job offer from an interview
Researching the prospective employer

Practical details

We focus on practical, individual effective plans. We stay away from generic solutions that do not really fit a particular person.

For instance, we teach what to say and what not to say during each statement in a job interview and why these are the right things to do.

Specific solutions

Bart Jacobs and I are doing our best to help members of the vulnerable communities.

I understand the Lab and its science deeply and broadly. I also know where good jobs are and how to get them. I am a former LANL staff member, a former university professor, and currently, a small business owner.

Bart understands finance and personal financial planning deeply and broadly. He helps people understand their own financial position and how to make it better. He has started, run, grown and sold four small companies. He has been a successful investor for many years.

We have been helping people for 20 years and have been specifically helping LANL personnel since last Thanksgiving.

We are focused on two areas:

1. Creating a plan for a person's or family's life especially a financial plan.
2. Getting a new job.

Vulnerable communities

There are a number of classes of workers whose futures are at risk in the next couple of years. The risks are imposed by budgetary constraints and by NNSA's complex 2030 plan.

Some of these classes are:

1. People nearing retirement and not needed for the 2030 vision.

- Many of these people have never competed for a job and appear to only have classified work, about which they cannot talk, on their resume.

2. Young staff members

- With the future of the Lab and its funding uncertain, for a number of young staff members, the certainty of long term employment has disappeared.

3. Post docs

- It is easy to save costs in the short term but cutting funds to post docs. This appears to be happening. So a number of post docs are actively looking for new jobs.

4. Foreign nationals

- If you are a foreign national, for instance in the U.S. on an H1B visa, these changes are especially upsetting. The fear is that a foreign national could be sent back to their home country and not get another chance to work in the U.S. for years.

5. Those who can be outsourced

- There are a number of parts of the Lab that could be productively outsourced to a company somewhere else. Parts of Human Resources and record keeping have been outsourced by many companies. If a person's job is outsourced to Ohio, this presents a problem to the person.

6. Contractors

- There is a short term budget savings by laying off contractors. This is already happening.

7. Double dippers

There is a short term budget savings by canceling the contracts of people who have retired from the lab but who still work at the lab part time.

More layoffs

It is clear that the 350 contract workers let go is the beginning of a big change.

I gave a Powerpoint presentation to LANL postdocs. To my surprise, there was standing room only.

Post docs appear to have a much less certain future at LANL than the future they were promised when they came. In certain divisions, this likely future is a little bit worse. In other divisions, this future is bleak.

There are also strong rumors about people being laid off or outsourced in a number of groups across the lab.