oDesk

Guru

Elance

Unexpected, she says.  I wholeheartedly disagree.  She got her full time position through a friend.  Not online.  Not through a headhunter.  Not through a recruiter.  A friend.

Make a mental (or physical) list of your friends.  Who are they?  Where do they work?  Do you keep in contact?

Send out some greetings to them.  If you are looking for work, mention it to the ones with whom you are more familiar.  For those contacts that need more time investment, ask them about their jobs and places of work.  You can say that you are contemplating a career change and are curious about their field.

Always be tending your networking garden.  Feed the productive relationships and pick the fruit (fruit = job offer, hopefully) at its ripest.

Some highlights:

• Don’t dress like you’re auditioning for a porn film
• Related, don’t be overly familiar
• Don’t ask certain questions too soon (salary, benefits, work from home options, etc.)
• Don’t use cliches.  (I love this one.  Nothing reveals your lack of original thought like a nice, trite cliche.)

The article also mentions that fewer managers are checking your social media profiles.  Please note, I am NOT saying you should now feel free to put up that picture of your kegstand from Halloween weekend.

The article also touches on dealing with nervousness and blabbermouthism (look it up) using acting techniques.  I had never heard of bringing yourself back to the moment by concentrating on something physical, such as your feet on the floor or hands on the table.  If anyone has done this, let me know.

One part that I loved is the physical confidence that participating in athletics provides.  I certainly do not regularly compete at anything but I gain an awesome sense of confidence and self-worth from a great workout.  I have accessed that confidence in other situations when I needed to.

All of this said, don’t forget to be (some version of) yourself.  Don’t act so much that you get into a job that a great fit for the person you pretended to be but a horrible fit for the person you actually are.

Consider the case I found in a (you guessed it) Wall Street Journal article.  After fruitlessly searching the internet for job leads, leads which never amounted to anything, this particular job seeker started exploiting his network.  He did an informational interview set up by someone he had not been in contact with for two years.  He kept informed about the field enough to know the firm where he did the informational interview had secured a large client.  He sent a note of congratulations to the person who interviewed him and inquired about new openings related to the new client.  BOOM…job.

Networking works!  It works better than internet job searches and newspaper job searches.  Those are too passive in a tight job market.  You need to be of a mindset that someone else is out there looking for the same type of job you are.  What are you going to do to gain an advantage?

The strength of your network will always be an advantage that is unique to you and you alone.  No one else knows the exact same combination of people that you do.  Learn to use them as the fellow above did.

The final point of the article is vital as well.  Your application materials must be beyond reproach.  No errors of grammar or spelling.  Perfect formatting.  Every bullet lined up.  The tight job market and the glut of applicants allow the hiring folks to be extremely picky.

The first is from an interview with Malcolm Gladwell.  For you I-Thinkers in the Sage community, you know who he is.  For those who don’t know, I consider his books, Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, to be must reads for everybody.  He has thoughts about what he would do differently were he getting into journalism now.

“Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master’s in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that’s the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.”

One man’s opinion. The interview can be found here.

The next article is about Skype interviewing.  Imagine being able to interview from the safe haven of your dorm room or home.  Sounds simple and comfy, right?  What about the barking dog?  What about the poster of inappropriately-posed-pop-star in the background?  What about all the little details that must be accounted for so your interview is not derailed by (for example) you sitting too close to the camera so the interviewer can see up your nose?  Follow this link for a nifty article about all of the above.

The first deals with a topic I’ve touched on before. Companies are advertising jobs on Twitter. If you are interested in working or interning for a company, see if they have a Twitter account.  Check it regularly, check its history, squeeze it dry until you know if it posts job leads.

How about an internship from the comfort of your own home?  It can and does happen.  Check out Urban Interns for virtual internships, that is internships that can be done remotely.  This article talks about the experience from both the student and employer perspective.

For perspective, I ran the same race in 2000 and 2001.  My best time of those two years was 1:02:59, averaging 10:08 per mile.

I had no expectation to do so much better.  I had no expectation to feel as good as I did during the race and (especially) after the race.  I ran it because I lived in Oneonta (the race’s location) for six years and it was a neat excuse to go back and visit.  I visited family, toured SUNY Oneonta where I used to work (looks about the same, by the way) and ate homemade ice cream from Pie in the Sky.

But I still can’t get over how much better I did in the race.

Why did I do better?

1.  I’m lighter now than I used to be.  By about ten to fifteen pounds.  Walking across the room, it doesn’t make a difference.  Running ten kilometers, it (apparently) makes a huge difference.

2.  I’m leaner.  Back then I did more traditional weight lifting designed to make me into ‘Big-Muscley-Mike’.  I also ate a lot more then than I do now.  The upshot?  Smaller muscles but much less fat.

3.  My training is functional.  My workouts are all about moving weights in a functional way.  Biceps curls are cool…but in what real world situation will that movement ever be useful?  I’ve been doing workouts where I need to jump, pull or push my body weight and move quickly from one exercise to the next.  My body has adapted to many different functions because of this.

As usual, I’m going to make a (tenuous) connection to career planning.  Well, you tell me if it’s tenuous.

1.  ”I’m lighter than I used to be.”  This can have many meanings.  It could be that I have shed the weight of other’s expectations and am happily on my own path.  Perhaps I’ve cut out false paths and dead end experiences and am concentrating on my path to career success.  Or maybe I have (alas, kicking and screaming) eliminated some of the less mature activities in which I used to engage.

Result?  I’m focused on what I believe to be my path to success.  Certainly it is very difficult to be completely streamlined and there are always going to be distractions, both welcome and unwelcome.  But for the most part, shedding weight makes the journey a lot less tiring

2.  ”I’m leaner.”  I am more efficient in how I work.  I am more efficient in the choice of tools I use and in how I use them.  I am economical in my life, seeking to elicit maximum bang from minimum buck.

This will come as you become more intelligent about the ways you set about accomplishing tasks.  The first time you use a new skill, you are raw, awkward.  With practice, you become more intelligent and focused with that skill and you eliminate unnecessary movement in reaching your goal.

3.  ”My training is functional.”  I am prepared to do many different tasks.  And I am adaptable to those tasks.  To go back to the fitness metaphor, I am certainly not as strong as I was in 2000 and 2001.  But I was concentrating on one kind of training; big muscle.  At the expense of being adaptable.  If you needed me to move a large weight one foot, I was your man.  But I wasn’t fast, I had no endurance, my flexibility was suffering.  Back to careers.  Seek out new ways to do your job/task or achieve your goal.  Be flexible in the way you approach a problem.

Learn to be strong in other ways.  Do not begin thinking that one kind of strength will be the only strength you’ll ever need.  If you are an outstanding artist, don’t rely on that to communicate for you in an interview.

All of you should have goals.  Assess your plan toward those goals and see if you can make some changes that will shave some seconds off your finish time.

I know I’ve yapped about networking, networking, networking…you’re probably tired of hearing it.  Well I’m happy to say that my internship sleuthing is almost entirely about networking.  When I tell you to join a group or attend a meeting, I am doing, not just saying.

Last week I went to a networking event put on by the Capital Region Career Consortium.  I know that a gathering of career counselors must sound as exciting as a grass-growing contest but it was nice for me to be in touch with my colleagues.  These are folks who are dealing with the same issues I deal with and have thought of other solutions that perhaps I’ve not thought of.  We get together, we share ideas and we’re all smarter and more connected for it.  What more could I want?

How about a group of local recruiters coming in for the second half of the event?  I made some really good contacts with employers who are looking for bright, dynamic students.  To a person, they were all very classy people who were genuinely and enthusiastically representing their company.

A sample of the employers represented:  Price Chopper, The United Way, Time Warner Cable, and the Office of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.  All of them, solid local presences that need interns and employees.

Next week, I’m off to Click ‘09, an event put on by the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce.  I went last year and met business leaders from all walks.  I’ll report back to you then.

I leave you with this:  I’m doing it.  I’m networking on my own behalf to become better at my job.  And I’m going out there to find better opportunities for you, the Sage students.

It is not nearly as hard or scary as you think it is and it never will be.  Trust me.  Now go make some new connections.