You've been looking into the world of Rich Internet Applications for a while now but how do you make the jump? Whether you're a developer working in Java or C++ looking to get on the web or a designer working in an art department wanting to do more interactive, the RIA world is a fast-growing and exciting field many people are looking to transition to. Unless you're lucky enough to have some personal connections into an RIA firm, the decision to move requires hitting the pavement and convincing an RIA company that you're worth hiring.

This article comes from my experiences as both a former interviewee and current interviewer at a mid-sized RIA company. I've seen both the good and the bad; the ups and the downs; the ins and the outs. After roughly every interview we conduct I think of a few things I wish I could share about how the candidate could have improved their chances of getting hired - this article is the collection of all of those ideas. While I'll repeat a lot of things said in other "how to get hired" articles out there, I'm going to say them anyway, because I want this to be comprehensive and I think those lessons bear repeating.

This article might alternately be titled, "How to hire for your RIA company", as I think many of the lessons shared are useful (in reverse, of course) for RIA hiring managers or anyone involved in the glorious process that is growing your company.

Without farther ado, let's jump into the process. We'll go chronologically, from the beginning of the process to the end.

Step 1: Research

Your interview process at any company should begin long before you draft a resume, send out an email, or make a phone call with a hefty amount of research up front.

You should start with a broad search into the many different types of companies in the industry. Pick a few of the different RIA companies you've encountered, and dig in to everything you can find about them. Things to look for include:

• The company's business model: services or products?


• The company's target market: enterprise? Small business? Consumer? Media? Others?


• The way the company works: how much of the work is staff augmentation? How much of their work requires traveling to client sites?


• The type of work the company produces: is it the type of thing you do? Is it your sort of design, your sort of development, your sort of project management, etc? Is the quality something you aspire to, or something you can already top?


• The location: where is the company located? Is this somewhere you want to move? If not, is this the type of place that has remote employees?


• The people: does the company employ any big names in the industry? Anyone you've met at a conference, someone you can follow on twitter, someone you can look up on LinkedIn, someone who's blog you can spend some time on?

The goal during this phase isn't necessarily to answer all of these questions, but rather to get an accurate understanding of the different possibilities out there, and even more importantly, to help you get a sense of the type of company you want to work for. Are you comfortable with travel and staff augmentation work? Do you feel okay working for clients, or would you rather work on products? Having a sense of what's out there and what you prefer is absolutely essential before moving farther in the process if you want to find a place you'll be happy and successful.

Step 2: Introductions

Once you've identified what you want in a company, it's time to investigate the opportunities. Find anyone you can contact at the company, even (or sometimes especially) if it's not the hiring manager, and reach out to them.

You've heard this a million times, I'm sure, but it bears repeating: make a good first impression. Your first step is writing a cover letter. There are a few things that go into this, which I'll outline separately below.

Write Well
Keep in mind that good written communication is absolutely essential in this industry. Even if you're not emailing with clients or customers or blogging on behalf of the company, you'll need to communicate well internally. A person who can't craft a good email, especially with it's their uber-important first impression email, is a person who can't function on par with their peers.

This is even more important if your target organization uses remote employees. During the course of any given day, I have about 20 conversations in real life, using spoken words coming out of my mouth and into my ears. I have about 100 conversations online through email, twitter, IM, or on blogs, and one of the most valuable skills our employees have is the ability to communicate well virtually.

Say Something
Along with a good articulation should be real, actual content. Send something more than just a resume - something that states your interest in the company clearly, and why think you're a good fit for the job. You don't have to follow the standard cover letter format, but you should should have something that accomplishes the goal. What goal? The goal of selling yourself - conveying your personality, explaining why your resume is better than the rest in my stack. Resumes and credentials are important, but the first battle is just getting your foot in the door. Consider your cover letter the first part of the interview. Not including one, or something that accomplishes the same goal, is like not saying hello when the actual interview starts.

Stand Out
In your introduction, do something, anything, to stand out from your competition. Be creative. Whether it's making a web-page that shows good markup to host your resume or sending your resume with a portfolio that shows your design style, do something to stand out above the other applicants. Here's a little secret: the other applicants aren't doing a whole lot. Putting a few hours into crafting something that demonstrates your skills in a unique and impressive way specifically tailored for the company you're applying to will vastly raise your chances of getting hired.

There are two ultimate goals for your introduction. The first is to actually get an interview, and not have your resume wind up in a file on some obscure hard-drive or a stack on someone's desk. The second is to go into that interview with the deck stacked in your favor. Introducing yourself with a little confident creativity in your application will help to ensure that your interviewer likes you before they meet you, which goes a long way into deciding how they're going to interpret your answers. If you inspire and impress them ahead of time, chances are good that the things you say are going to be looked at in a more favorable light, regardless of what the question is. It's absolutely essential that you have the creative and / or technical chops for the position, but introducing yourself well will remove the awkwardness from your pauses, excuse the fact that you were late due to traffic, and cover up your nervous habits (not that these aren't things to try and limit, but sometimes they can't be avoided.) Here's another way of looking at it for the technically minded - interviews are just one datapoint in the collection of facts your interviewer has about you. By selling your personality and abilities before you walk in the room, you give your interviewer more information, and hopefully, more reasons to like you.

If you do this well, hopefully you'll be asked in for an interview. Look at all of your communication from this point forward as further opportunities to sell yourself and gain valuable information about the company, but don't be pushy.

Step 3: The Interview itself

By the time you set foot in the office you should have already 50% of your work or more behind you. The interview itself is important, but not so important you should get unnecessarily hung up on it. You've done your research, made a good first impression, and been invited in. Now go be yourself.

The Little Things
Observing the little things is just as important as correctly answering any specific question you're going to be asked, if not more. The goal is to prove that you're smart, conscientious, and capable. Remember: any monkey can learn trivia. Your interviewer wants to see you stand above the rest. The little things include:

• Showing up a little early, if possible, or exactly on time. Don't come late.


• Dressing well. A good rule is to be one degree more formal than the company itself.


• Don't rush. Give yourself time to think, and admit when you don't know something.


• Show you've done your homework. Be sure to work in the things you've found in your research. Show the interviewer you're thorough and conscientious.

Beyond the little things, there are some big things to remember in your interview as well.

Don't Lie
We said it earlier, but it bears repeating: above all else, don't try to BS your way through a question you can't answer. A good interviewer will purposefully give at least one question that is intended to be unanswerable. The goal is to see how you react. Do you think quickly on your feet? Can you discuss the process of finding the answer - weigh the pros and cons of different strategies well? Above all else, are you able to address a difficult problem under stress without falling apart? These types of situations will come up all the time in your future job. Besides trying to get to know you, your interviewer is purposefully trying to put you into situations you're likely to encounter if hired and watching your reactions. Don't get flustered - stay calm and ask the same questions you would if there was nothing riding on the outcome.

Ask Questions
The interview is absolutely and always a two-way street and it's critical that you ask questions about the company. This is important for two reasons. The obvious first reason is that hopefully you've spent enough time in research that you have real questions you want to have answered before accepting the position. The second is because the problem of whether or not you want the job is actually part of the interview. Let me rephrase that to make sure it sinks in - the interviewer wants to know that you care about this position and are weighing the decision enough to think carefully and critically about it. It says something about your view of the company, but it also says a lot about the way you approach a problem.

Step 4: Follow-up emails

After leaving, be sure to send a follow-up email thanking the company for the time spent with you. If you think of other questions you forgot to ask previously, feel free to ask them. If there was a question you struggled on, absolutely consider researching the answer and emailing the interviewer a short message discussing the problem and how you'd solve it now that you've had more time to think and work on it. Often times this is actually better than answer the question right the first time, as it's closer to the type of work you'd do in a real job. Almost no one knows the answer to every question all the time - showing you're capable of doing some research and explaining a solution is a far more valuable skill than having every answer memorized.

Be sure to keep in touch with your interviewer or HR representative if you don't hear back quickly. One unsolicited email per week checking in to see how things are going is perfectly appropriate; more than this could cross the line from diligent to annoying. Be patient while consistently reminding them that you're still interested.

Step 5: Getting or not getting the job

If you've done everything correctly in steps 1-4, you should be well on your way to getting an offer. Barring budget cuts or other situations far out of your control, your interviewer will likely be fighting to get you the job and encouraging the company to make you an offer you can't refuse.

Assuming you get the offer, the big decision is up to you. Do you stay or do you go?

If you've learned things about the company that make it less exciting than you'd originally thought, your current job might not seem so bad after all. When considering using the situation to help get a promotion or raise at your current employer, be careful. It's fine to let them know you've been looking, but take care not to give the impression that you were so frustrated or unhappy that you're likely to leave regardless of what they do. Companies are often faced with the difficult decision of protecting their most important assets (their employees) while making firm decisions to remove the ones who aren't thriving. Think things through before hand, and make sure the conversation ends with your employer feeling you're a growing and loyal member of their team.

However, before having this conversation, think long and hard about whether you're really more excited about your current opportunity or just scared of change. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't, but it's easy to imagine devils in unfamiliar places. Consider your appetite for change. If you're a little scared of the unknown but otherwise still excited about the new opportunity and truly were frustrated in your current position, I'd advise you to close your eyes and jump. A little change every now and then is a healthy thing, and the variety the new position will bring to your skill set will help you get another new position if you find you don't like this potential employer.

Read more from RJ Owen.