Working Offline

On Friday night, I met my one of my oldest friends in the world and her mother for dinner and a basketball game. Kate and I hopped out of our cars in the pouring rain and into her mom’s Honda so we could carpool to the game. When Ms. Bets turned the key in the ignition, the car wouldn’t start.

My first thought? We had three cars, so we could just jump into another, but that would mean when we came back later, we would still have a dead car. We needed a hot shot. Neither Kate nor I had ever done one of those and Ms. Bets claimed not to have done it in years.

I pulled out my Blackberry to Google the procedure, Kate grabbed her iPhone, and Ms. Bets, the instruction manual. I thought to myself as I was reading the directions aloud, “What a perfect example of the differences between Generation Y and the older generations.”

I’ve been thinking about this all weekend. If you asked a person outside Gen Y about finding a job, they would probably pull out the Rolodex and start making phone calls. By contrast, I do not own a Rolodex and my first instinct is to turn to my online social network for connections. I am not saying this is a bad idea. In fact, using your online connections is a fabulous idea. Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are wonderful resources in your job search.

But, as foreign as it might seem to my fellow Millenials to pick up the phone or to sit down and write a handwritten note, I challenge you to sit down and be a little old fashioned for the afternoon. Instead of immediately typing your draft out, write out your thoughts on a piece of paper. I find that when I write things down, I can see more patterns and connections between things, I make a lot of maps before I write a cover letter or revamp my resume. More than that, when I sit down with a piece of paper, I do not get distracted by things like Twitter or my Pandora station.

The next time you feel inclined to e-mail to someone, I challenge you to pick up the phone. I have a lot of difficulty with this one, but when I do pick up the phone, I get my questions answered sooner. I find people are less inclined to say no to my request for an informational interview or any of my other requests when I have them on the line.

Lately I have been feeling like I hide behind the technology that I use on an everyday basis. There are a lot of great resources on the Web and in many ways, these make my own life that much easier. But when I pause and pick up the phone or sit down and write something out long-hand, I feel like I focus better and the quality of what I am doing is that much better.

One-Stop Shopping? No, Thank You

These days, online job boards may seem like a great way to find a job. Hey, they’re one-stop shopping for every available job, right?

Job boards like Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com might seem appealing because you can search for jobs, submit your resume and complete your application all in an hour while you are still updating your Facebook status, Twitter status and checking the scores of your favorite sports team, while sitting in your sweatpants.

The problem? In all likelihood, you won’t be doing your job while simultaneously managing your social network. You shouldn’t approach your job search like something you vaguely pay attention to while doing other things. This is not that lecture class you would drag yourself to, but spent the period surfing online and doing the Sudoku in the paper.

I will admit, I fell victim to this way of searching during my own job hunt. And though I tried not to, I often did the Sudoku during Dr. King’s psychology class. The point? Your job search cannot be a one-stop shop. Sure, Monster.com can aggregate a lot of job openings into one place, but this is most certainly not every job available. In fact, the postings on Monster make up only a very small fraction of all the available jobs. According to a recent article in The Economist, a job posting on Monster.com averages about 1,000 applicants. That’s just the average. No recruiter wants or has time to read even a fraction of those.

Job boards may be a good place to start your search, you can read company profiles, learn a little bit about the company make up, but they are certainly not the only place to look. More than that, you probably will not be satisfied with a job that you merely found out of convenience in between doing other things.

Remember, Come Recommended is NOT a job board. Come Recommended users need to have at least three recommendations to have access to its content. When an employer looks at your candidate profile on Come Recommended, he can see your complete profile, your achievements, your work history, and the recommendations from your previous employers. Used correctly, your Come Recommended profile is a complete digital resume. It goes beyond that polished, tailored piece of paper that you are sending out and helps employers see a more robust you.

The other Come Recommended interns will agree with me that the best way to conduct your job search is to make use of all of your resources. Make sure you count your Come Recommended profile as one of them.

Keep Your Social Activities Up Outside the Classroom

You’ve read the blog posts, the advice, and you know the drill — you need to engage in meaningful activities while you are still in school and network with people in your field of choice.

When you are no longer in school, these activities may be a little more difficult. Since I have been home, going to a job fair means I have to factor in driving and parking, as opposed to walking across campus. Because I went away to school, socializing and networking requires a little extra effort.

Most cities have sports activities or volunteer groups for young professionals. I highly recommend joining. I just sent in my deposits for both the Baltimore Sports and Social Club and the Baltimore Kickball League. This was a big step. I had to join by myself and I am not athletic, so flag football could potentially be embarrassing.

But participating in a sports team is useful, even in a job hunt. For one, it gives you an excuse to do physical activity outside of the gym. For another, joining a team gives you a new network of friends and young professionals across the city. Not only are you making new friends, but you are going to be in direct contact with people who can provide you with new leads and even information about possible career paths.

If you are like me, taking part in these activities is a little troublesome. I went to school six hours from home, and I grew to enjoy the comfort of my new “school family.” These friends are no longer in the area, so being a social butterfly requires me to do some extra work. It is not impossible, but it does mean I have to swallow my fear and put myself out on the line.

Don’t forget, being engaged in your community and with people your own age doesn’t stop when you leave the comfort of campus.

Are You Trying to Hook a Sport Fish or a Big Fish?

Take a second to think about your job hunt. Are you sending the right message? Are you determined to settle for the first job that will pay you or are you going after the job you want?

I spent the weekend with some friends, and we spent some time chatting about a book we all just finished. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey should be the next book on your reading list. You are probably staring at your screen and thinking, “Sarah, I’m looking for a job, not a man.” If you are in either of these markets, you will probably find that both processes can be troublesome and frustrating at times.

The book presents a lot of overlapping ideas. Steve points out that finding a partner should be strategic. I do not mean that you go out in the world looking for the guy with the biggest paycheck and a hairline that does not look like it is going to recede in the near future. Steve likes to fish, and he uses a lot of fishing analogies. He points out that when you are in the dating market, your behavior should signal to men that you are big fish, not a sport fish.

Sport fish are the girls in the bar who will talk to anyone who will pay them even a bit of attention — the girls in the bar or at the party who are inevitably making the other girls in the room jealous and angry. Sport fish are “easy,” they do not require any sort of chase, there is no mystery. Steve points out that sport fish are attractive to men because they do not require a lot of effort, and they are not, in general, the girls that guys want to bring home to mom. Big fish, by contrast, require a little bit of work, they command respect by virtue of the fact that you have to dig a little deeper and work a little harder.

This theory applies to your job hunt. In the job market, you should not, as J.T. O’Donnell of Careerealism would say “spray and pray,” or send your resume and cover letter to every single job opening that you think might vaguely match your qualifications. This idea may seem appealing; the odds that you will get a job if you send out 700 resumes certainly seem higher than the odds of you getting a job if you send only one application.

But your efforts in this case may be wasted. If you are sending out this many resumes, you are probably missing the point of job ads. You will probably send a resume that is not targeted to the position or does not paint you in the best light. More than that, if you submit this many applications, when you do get a call back (and you inevitably will), you might find that you are not prepared to answer questions for a phone interview or you are unprepared for an actual interview.

The objective of the job hunting game should not be to cast the widest net and take as many offers as you can, but rather to cast your net in a targeted area. You should be working to land the big fish, the job you want, by making every effort to make connections to people in the field, by taking internships or entry-level positions, or attending seminars and webinars that will make you a more knowledgeable candidate.

When you are job hunting, take a second and think, are you trying to hook a big fish or a sport fish?  Are you going to be happy with the outcome?

Job Hunt Lessons from Coach Williams

As a graduate of UNC, it is impossible not to be a basketball fan. The Blue Heaven is a breeding ground for the sport and the enthusiasm is infectious. It is hard not to get swept up in the game when you are hugging a complete stranger on Franklin Street after the National Championship game.

And yet, this season, we are fighting tooth and nail to stay out of the bottom of the ACC rankings. My boys have been riddled with injury and are fighting to prove their worth after losing such amazing players as Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green to graduation and the NBA. This year, when game time rolls around, I prepare myself for some more heartbreak and then cheer on those small victories, like a good lay-up or a rebound.

The recent snow storm gave me an opportunity to finish up that giant stack of books that had been lying on my floor for the last few months, including Hard Work by Roy Williams. Now, you don’t have to be a Tar Heel basketball fan to read the book. In fact, if you are not, I daresay you might find you have a little soft spot in your heart for ol’ Roy. If you are in the midst of a job hunt, Hard Work has a few good take-aways you may find useful.

1. Roy makes it a point not to look at the scoreboard during the first half of the game. This gives him plenty of time to pay attention to his team, and to the other team, to see what they are doing. This means at halftime, Roy can talk to his team about how to improve their game (I guess this is why Carolina is generally a second-half team). This also applies to your job search. Instead of getting bogged down in the rejections, focus on what you are doing right and work on the things you are doing wrong and how to improve them.
2. Roy Williams played on the junior varsity basketball team and then attended varsity games while he was a student at UNC. He watched Coach Dean Smith coach and took statistics, for his own amusement. His constant presence did not go unnoticed. When Coach Smith was looking for an assistant coach, Roy left his job as a high school basketball coach and moved his young family across the state, for a pay cut, to work with a coach he loved, for a team he loved. This is similar to taking an internship, either unpaid or for less money than you might think you deserve, or that entry-level job that you think might be below your skill set, but at a company you love. You will have to pay your dues, you will work hard and sometimes it will be thankless, but someday, somehow, it all works out.
3. The boys in blue often yell “Hard Work!” as they leave a huddle because in the end, hard work is what pays off. When you are job hunting, this is especially true. You’ve got to keep plugging away, making connections, changing up your resume to make sure it meets the needs of the position you’re applying for, and writing compelling cover letters.

If you have some time on your hands, I highly recommend you read Hard Work. If you don’t have the time, think about looking in unlikely places for some help in your hunt. I myself read a lot, from biographies to career books to the back stories of independent retailers in America. You can read blogs and web pages for start-up lessons and stories and you can ask the people that you are networking with to talk about the things that got them where they are today. I picked up this book because I wanted to know a little bit more about Coach Williams and Carolina basketball, and I ended up being able to apply some of the things I learned to my own job hunt.

Twitter: It’s All About Connecting

I have been singing the praises of Twitter to my friends and family for months. If you are looking for a job or internship and you are not on Twitter, you really should be. A few friends have listened; I can be pretty persuasive when I need to. My dad seems to think that all people do on Twitter is share what they ate for breakfast, and as such, he sees no reason to join. He is of course wrong, and when used to your advantage, Twitter can be a powerful tool to help you in the job hunting process.

I attended a webinar the other night hosted by Penelope Trunk and Ryan Paugh of Brazen Careerist. I don’t know if Twitter will actually save my life, but I like where they were going. A lot of Millennials are hesitant to make use of Twitter because they do not understand it. Sure, you can follow Britney Spears if you want to know what she ate for breakfast, but you can do a lot more.

If used properly, Twitter is a great place to ENGAGE with other people, particularly with people you would like to do business (or who could help you find your next job). I found this internship on Twitter. I contributed to one of my favorite author’s new books on Twitter. A few weeks ago, I got trapped in a snowdrift on an unplowed street and sent a frustrated tweet about how AAA cannot help you out of the snow. They sent me a tweet and a direct message, looked up my account and have been bending over backwards to make up for their inability to serve me the customer.

Twitter has a lot to offer.  Follow people you are interested in, whether they are your favorite author, CEO of a company you would like to work for or your best friend from school. If you read something you like, retweet or reply. Penelope and Ryan pointed out that, in most cases, even extremely busy people respond, because they are using Twitter to connect to people, not just to tell you what they bought at the grocery store.

More than engaging with people, Twitter can point you in the direction of interesting articles and Web sites that you might not even be familiar with. It is like a constant feed of recommendations from people you trust enough to follow. If you have a blog, you can publicize new blog posts right to your Twitter feed, so that your network can immediately see your updates.

Twitter can be a great resource if, like me, you are trying to hunt down contact information for a corporate sponsor or if you want to get in touch with someone for an informational interview about your chosen field or career path.

If you are not on Twitter, I urge you, sign up and start making meaningful contributions, whether it is a link to your blog or the article that you found interesting on your school’s newspaper. Share things you think are interesting, and use Twitter to make connections to people in your field. Who knows, you might start a conversation with your next boss, or the person who makes a recommendation for your next job.

Baby Stepping

Every summer at the beach, our friends and family gather around the television after dinner on the first night and watch “What About Bob?” — a comedy starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss. We laugh and laugh and then spend the rest of the week quoting lines from the movie and asking if our corn was “hand shucked.”

If you haven’t seen “What About Bob?”, Bob Wiley (Bill Murray) is a man who is convinced he suffers from numerous psychological ailments — he thinks he has Tourrette’s Syndrome, he is a hypochondriac and a recluse. He slowly drives his psychiatrist crazy and is referred to Dr. Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfuss). Dr. Marvin listens to Bob tell him he is afraid his heart will stop beating or his bladder will explode, prescribes Bob to read his latest book “Baby Steps” and come back in a month when Dr. Marvin returns from vacationing with his family. Bob follows, and hilarity ensues.

Giving you the plot of one of my favorite movies is not the point here. The point is baby steps. Dr. Marvin encourages his patients to break down the big picture into small, manageable steps. If your end goal is to find an internship or your first job, you don’t set out to become president. It is, of course, important to have an end goal in mind, but you have to pace yourself. You break it down into steps, make a list of all your accomplishments, write out your webs and charts, and write your resume, and so on and so on.

This may seem intuitive; perhaps you are better than me at breaking down your tasks into more manageable steps. I use a little trick I picked up from some book or another when I try to meet my deadlines. I put the end date at the top, with the final task. So, for example, my task this week was to fill in a database with information. Then, I break that down further — by Monday, I will finish through the letter D, by Wednesday, by R and by Friday, I’ll be done. You can assign these arbitrarily, or perhaps if you are feeling ambitious, you might finish those Wednesday and Friday tasks early, but then you have some cushion time. For the most part, when I break things down, I get done a little early. I am hardly perfect though, and sometimes I forget a deadline or two (usually when I misplace the list), but I am finding that breaking down all of my to-dos, from organizing my closet to finding sponsors for Come Recommended are a lot easier to manage when I baby step my way through them.

The next time you are faced with a daunting task, whether it is running a marathon, writing a paper or a new project at work, just think baby steps and break it all down. Perhaps, like me, you will find that baby stepping makes it just a little bit easier.

A “No” is Not a Dead End

As the corporate relations intern, it is my responsibility to work to secure sponsors for upcoming Come Recommended events. I am not sure how many of you are familiar with this task, but I have learned in the last few weeks the value of being able to charm and sweet talk a secretary, an assistant or an operator. I have also learned that sometimes (actually, rather often), you hear “no.”

I have had this same experience in the job hunting process for the last seven months since I graduated. I will admit, the process — both securing sponsors and finding a job — can be a bit discouraging. The no’s become draining, even when you are trying to keep your chin up.

I do not advocate getting angry or down over every “no.” In fact, if I did, I should probably wallowing in a puddle of self-loathing right now. Dwelling on these particular failures certainly is not a necessary step, but I would argue that using what you have learned from every “no” is just as valuable as the “yes” you receive.

In the case of my job hunt, I use my pile of rejections as a learning experience. Is the company not hiring right now? Send a thank you note for their time and if it is something you want, follow up and keep in touch until something does come up. If you are “qualified, but not what they are looking for,” think about ways you can better convey your skills in your resume or cover letter or your next interview.

In the case of corporate sponsorships, after the first “no,” I re-wrote my pitch, went back to the drawing board and tried again. I will inevitably get a few more no’s, but I am absolutely certain that it will not be for lack of trying.

In my own experience, the process of being rejected is absolutely maddening, but there is a lot to be learned from it. So, chin up, and use every no as a learning experience, not a dead end.

Working with Fewer Distractions

I am certain I am not the only member of my generation who has a little trouble turning off the distractions. As we speak, I am simultaneously watching the Jets/Chargers game, watching the Golden Globe pre-show (adding my own commentary, naturally) and watching the updates on Twitter. All signs point to a less productive Sarah. My New Year’s resolution (or rather, the only one I will actually be trying to keep) is to be a little more focused.

For me, this means checking my e-mail twice a day, instead of the second it comes up on my screen, leaving my cell phone in my locker when I go to the gym and turning the television off during the day. I have also declared a “quiet hour” at the end of the day where I try to do something for myself (read a book, paint, reorganize my desk) without using any sort of technology.

I am absolutely amazed by the sheer amount of tasks that I tick off my to-do list when I turn off the distractions and work them methodically one at a time. I know my generation is wired to believe that multitasking is beneficial, and being able to juggle multiple projects at once is in fact, useful. I have recently discovered, though, that checking Twitter while I check my e-mail and write my latest blog post is actually not multitasking, it is just distracting. It turns out that the tweets and e-mails will still be there when I finish the task at hand. And more than that, when I turn off the excess noise, I finish tasks in half the time. With fewer errors.

I encourage my fellow Millennials to think about these things while they are working their way through their test papers, their work at the office, their internship. You certainly do not have to turn it all off all the time, but remember, those messages will still be there when your finish your tasks at hand.

Learning from My Mistakes

I’ve been wracking my brain thinking of the best way to make my debut on the Come Recommended intern blog. I’ll start with an introduction: My name is Sarah Morgan, and I am the new corporate relations intern at Come Recommended.

I’m honored to be given the opportunity to be here; to say I’ve been off to a rocky start would be an understatement. I joined Twitter a few months ago after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about companies posting more jobs on Twitter. I figured I ought to jump on the bandwagon and see what expanding my social media presence was all about.  After reading a tweet by Heather, I looked into Come Recommended and submitted an application to join the intern team. And then I heard nothing.

Or so I thought. It turns out that though I have received my school e-mails on my Gmail account for the last two years, UNC recently changed its policy. Starting in the middle of October, unbeknownst to me (likely because I failed to read all of the policy changes), those e-mails stopped being forwarded. So I still received my e-mails to my @unc.edu account, but I did not check them, since I thought they were being delivered to account that I checked. When I discovered the error, three weeks later, I discovered that I had missed out on an interview request from Heather, and TWO requests for interviews at other companies.

Being an avid reader of my Emily Post handbook and a stickler for proper etiquette, I immediately e-mailed profuse apologies to the people whose requests went unanswered due to my own error. Lucky for me, Heather gave me a second chance. She did point out that if I was not applying to be an intern, my apology probably would have gone ignored. I can understand her position, and I understand that in the world of digital communications, I need to shape up or ship out. Saying that “I did not see the e-mail” is just not a valid excuse, particularly if I am applying for jobs and learning how to behave in a professional world. I am working on that. I know how difficult it is for other people to swallow the excuse that “the dog ate my e-mails.”

In any case, the whole experience taught me something that I should have figured out long ago. When I proofread my resume and cover letter for typos and grammar errors, I need to also check that the links to my blog and Web site and my contact information are correct. It is unbelievably unprofessional to ask someone to contact me and then not respond because I failed to check an address or because the sender’s e-mail got lost in my spam trap.

The situation also brought to light the beauty of working for a small, entrepreneurial venture like Come Recommended. Working with Heather, who has dedicated her career to assisting entry-level job candidates, has put me in direct contact with someone who has worked with people who are wading into the professional world. She is sympathetic to the early mistakes that people beginning their careers will make, and for that, I will be eternally grateful.

Those other e-mails that got lost? Those were from a large firm, wanting me to set up an interview. I have not heard from them, despite following up by phone and e-mail.

All in all, it was an expensive lesson to learn, but one I am glad to have learned now — and not ten years down the road. The moral of the story is check your e-mail if you list it, answer your phone when you say you’re going to. It may seem like common sense advice, but I assure you, you will make a mistake in the job-hunting process because quite frankly, no one is perfect.  But hedge your bets, and take control of everything that you have power over. I am excited to begin an internship with Come Recommended, with Heather and the rest of the new intern team. I can only hope that the mistakes that I have made in the last few months can be of some benefit to other job seekers.