I’m really freaked out. I have one of the biggest interviews of my life coming up and I’m way under qualified to host it.

It’s on Thursday and it’s about Scalability and Performance of Web Services.

Look at who will be on. Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress (and behind this blog). Paul Bucheit, one of the founders of FriendFeed and the creator of Gmail (he’s also the guy who gave Google the “don’t be evil” admonishion). Nat Brown, CTO of iLike, which got six million users on Facebook in about 10 days.

All three have faced huge scalability problems head on. All three are developers and architects who actually have built systems that have built great reputations online.

I’m totally out of my league and as I do more and more research on the topic I realize just how out of my league I am.

But, one good thing about doing stuff online is that:

1. I can admit I’m over my head and get help from you.
2. I just need to know enough to be dangerous to get a conversation going between these three guys.
3. I’m not the only interviewer here. You will take over and fill in the pothole in my own knowledge (we’ll get you involved via Skype).

It’s free. It’s open to you.

So, since I’m clueless about the topic, what would you ask these guys about how to build scalable and performant Web services, especially given that tomorrow’s services are probably going to be glued together from a variety of services?

Oh, and thanks to Rackspace for sponsoring this webinar (we’re filming it at the excellent Revision 3 studios in San Francisco).

Since the economy is slowing down, I’m hearing of lots of you who are getting laid off and looking for jobs. Here’s my experience on the other side of that — being someone who is trying to hire someone.

Fast Company TV is hiring an administrative assistant. We advertised the job Friday morning on Craig’s List (which is where I got my job at NEC in the depth of the last tech bust back in 2002). So far I’ve received more than 90 resumes for a job that’ll pay $12 to $15 (not much, I know, but for a starter job not too bad — my first job back in 1993 paid $10 an hour and this one should be a good launch to a fun career in journalism or PR or any number of jobs).

It’s very possible that in the next two years YOU will need a job too and will be facing that kind of competition (when I got my job at NEC, it was even worse, they said I beat 500 people for the job that I got). How do you get past the first stage?

First, based on the resumes I’m seeing, realize that 80% are crap and will be rejected out of hand. How do you get put into the crap pile? Here’s some ways.

1. Include only an attachment and don’t write anything in the body of the email.
2. Include a misspelling.
3. Apply for a job which you are clearly unqualified for (it stands out like a sore thumb).
4. Include a Word document that can’t be opened (one person sent one in Microsoft Word 2007 format).
5. Include only a resume and don’t explain why you think you are qualified for the job (believe it or not, a well written letter puts you to the top 20% pretty quickly).
6. Send it from an email address with a goofy name. You should see some of them that I’ve gotten.
7. Apply for a job for which you are clearly overqualified for (I got one resume from a software engineer).
8. Have your friend send in a resume for you (I got one of these, actually).
9. Don’t test your email on a variety of clients (a bunch that I received were poorly formatted, had characters that didn’t display properly, etc).
10. Send it from free version of Hotmail, which puts an advertisement at the end of your email. Looks very professional when all I see is the ad and nothing else.

OK, I assume most people reading this will be in the 20% of those who didn’t screw up in some way and get rejected outright.

So, now how do you get into the final two or three pile which is what will earn you an interview? You need to stand out from the crowd somehow. Here’s some ways to do that.

1. Blog. Only one out of 98 included his/her blog address on the email. Make sure your blog’s content matches the job you are applying for, though. If someone had a blog showing how to be a better administrative assistant you can bet that I’d read every word. Same for a Twitter or Facebook or FriendFeed profile. But don’t send those along if they aren’t professionally-oriented. Do assume that I’ll Google you and search around for what you’ve done online anyway.
2. Include a customized video that demonstrates your skills and personality. No one did that yet.
3. Demonstrate you did some research on us. One person said “hello Scobleizer.” That was one of the few that was customized and demonstrated that there would be a human being on the other side who’d read all these.
4. Make sure you write for a human, but include tags and things for electronic scanners too. Do some searches on Google for “how to write a resume” and you’ll find tons of tips on how to do this. But always assume there’s a human reading these things first.
5. Don’t just apply for the job, apply for the career. I’m looking for people who don’t want to be stuck in a $15-an-hour job forever. I want someone who I can get out of that job as quickly as possible and into something more fun and higher paying. Even if that doesn’t work out, I’m looking for people who have a career in mind, not just a “job.”
6. Demonstrate that you’d be fun to have around. In this case you’re applying for a job at Fast Company with someone who does videos with innovative people around the world and who loves talking tech. No one put in there anything about their skills in using travel services like Tripit. No one put anything in there about their love of technology to be more productive. An administrative assistant who mentioned that they used David Allen’s programs, for instance, would get noticed.
7. Make sure your email is perfect in every way. Have tons of friends look it over for mistakes. I’d even pay a professional editor to do that because of how bad most of these resumes were. Even little mistakes get noticed instantly and usually get you rejected outright (there’s no excuse for sloppiness here).

Anyway, these are just some ideas. I remember at NEC that it was my cover letter that got me noticed (they had highlighted what caught their eyes) and my blog (they had printed out lots of my blogs and wanted to talk to me about why I wrote what I did).

Hope this helps one of you get a job quickly. Do you have any other ideas for how to help job seekers?