ResearchGoddess

This post is especially geared toward students, but I think it’s important for people of all ages. Mentors are a vital part of life. You absolutely cannot make it through life successfully without input from other human beings, in my opinion. That’s why I think people, especially young people, need to put much more thought into mentor selection than a lot of them do.

Tell me if any of these scenarios happened to you:

• Scenario 1: Your sophomore or junior year in high school, you went to your school counselor to ask about what colleges to apply to. Your counselor referred to you by the wrong name, or mispronounced your name, and hardly looked up from his or her desk while reeling off the names of some local or in-state universities.
• Scenario 2: You ask your parents what you should study in college. Your mother or father suggests that you do either the same thing or something similar to what they’ve pursued professionally, even though you’ve never expressed interest in it.
• Scenario 3: You’ve gotten yourself a job after completing school. While sitting in your cube, one of your older co-workers starts chatting with you about the fact that it’s a buyer’s market right now and it would be a good investment for you to buy a house right now.

Guaranteed that at least one of these has happened to all of you, if not all of them. While people can have good intentions with the guidance they give you, remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When considering your life, you need to be very selective about who you go to for guidance. And students especially listen up here: it doesn’t always have to be your parents.

Before anyone gets offended by this statement, I want you to take some things into consideration:

1. With the area of life in which you are seeking guidance, does the person you currently go to have ‘fruit on the tree’?
2. Do you go to different people for mentorship for different areas of your life?

If you answered no to either one of these questions, I would suggest you rethink your mentorship situation. Let me share some of my own situations with you:

• My parents are divorced. I would not go to them for marriage advice. Instead, I look to several couples in my life who have great marriages – including my brother and his wife, and a couple of family friends who’ve been blissfully married for almost 15 years. When I get married someday, I have great examples to model.
• Though I wouldn’t go to my mom for marriage advice, I most certainly will ask her for parenting advice when I decide to have kids. She was an awesome mom.
• I take fitness and health advice from my personal trainer. He knows what my body is capable of currently, and he knows what goals I have for myself and thus what needs to be done in order for me to accomplish them.
• Over the last several years, I have taken financial advice from my friend Jeff, who is a successful independent sales consultant, public speaker, and business owner. Because of his thoughtful advice, I own my vehicle outright and was able to pay off 4 credit cards that had amassed over $15k (obviously I made some bad choices early in life!). I also know, through counsel with Jeff, that it’s not the right time in my life to purchase a house, even though many others around me did. I see many of those people struggling to make home payments today.
• I have three or four people I go to for career advice. Some work in my industry, and some do not. But each has a niche area of expertise from which I want to learn. Some are excellent public speakers, some are fantastic managers, and some are brilliant industry leaders.
• For spiritual mentorship, I lean on my church and a couple of friends who truly walk the walk and aren’t simply Sunday morning pew-warmers.

Please don’t misunderstand – I have advice given to me by lots of people, just like everyone does. But there is a big difference between getting advice from a friend or family member, and seeking out a mentor relationship. One is typically offered without being requested, and the other is a relationship you deliberately seek out. Also, advice can often be given by someone who doesn’t know the whole story. When you are in a mentoring relationship, your mentor typically knows about external factors that may come into play with regards to the things they suggest for you. Make sure your mentor has all the information necessary to guide you on a path toward achieving your goals.

So make sure you check for fruit on the tree before entering into a mentoring relationship with anyone, Make sure that person has your best interest at heart and has actually found success in the area in which you seek guidance, because, as the saying goes, if you take financial advice from your neighbor, chances are they’ll be your neighbor for a long time.

Last Monday, I read a post on Career Rocketeer that talked about some appropriate ways in which to network with others. The following phrase jumped off the page at me:

“When approaching a new networking partner, DON’T ask for a job. This is about the worst thing you can do. Networking partners want to be helpful but if you ask for a job the likelihood is that they will not have one for you that matches your skills and qualifications. Thus, the networking partner will not engage you because they don’t want to disappoint you.”

I’d have to say that as a recruiting professional, I completely agree with this. While yes, it is my job to find people for our open positions at AT&T, I am neither a mind-reader nor a magician. Even though I want to help, I can’t magically pull opportunities out of you-know-where just because you need a job, nor can I know what your skills are via ESP.

If you’re reading this thinking, “But I really need a job! What’s wrong with doing that?” take a look at a couple of follow-up responses I received when I tweeted the first part of that paragraph:

@danieljohnsonjr: It’s almost like asking to go to a hotel room on the first date.
@brandeecrum: it’s like going on a 1st date and the guy saying, “I thought we’d skip dinner & the movie and just go get married.”

Consider this scenario: we both attend a networking event. We are introduced, and you learn that I work with AT&T in a staffing capacity. Since you’ve recently found yourself back on the job market, you’re excited by this and immediately let me know that you need a job. You ask me if we’re hiring….

STOP. Take into consideration the information with which you’ve just provided me. You are 1) looking for a job, and 2)….. well, that’s pretty much all I know about you at this point. I don’t know how many years of experience you have, I don’t know what you did in your last position, I probably don’t even know who your last employer was. So it’s pretty near impossible that I’ll be able to give you a response that will be to your liking until I know a little more about you. I of course can, and probably will, ask you what you want to do, but the conversation has already become quite awkward…

Put this into a situation where you’re on a date…

You meet your date at the door. You introduce yourselves, and immediately your date starts telling you how she is ready to get married, buy a house, and have kids. She hasn’t even checked with you to see if you think she is pretty, if you want a serious relationship or if you want to take things slowly, heck – you haven’t even made it through date #1 to see if there will be a date #2.

So many people have made this analogy, that job hunting is like dating. When you go out on a first date, you don’t offer up a hotel room key when you first meet. (and if you do, well then… wow…) You don’t make a marriage proposal at the end of the evening, either. You don’t want to appear desperate – you want to leave something to be desired. Most recruiters enjoy the thrill of the hunt – so let us pursue you

REWIND: Let’s try this again. We both attend a networking event. We are introduced and you learn that I work with AT&T in a staffing capacity. You share with me that in your most recent position you were an online marketing manager. When I ask you where you are currently, you indicate that you are in transition, and that you are here to meet like-minded individuals and that you’re glad we met. You say you’ve heard good things about AT&T’s digital marketing. I smile and thank you for the compliment. We exchange cards and move on to meet more people. In the back of my mind, I remember you because you were not desperate and you paid my employer a compliment. As a good recruiting professional, I will follow up with you and ask if you’d be interested in applying with us.

Please, use the same networking etiquette with recruiters as you to with others. We’re not always going to have a job for you, and we feel bad when we don’t. Be tactful about your approach, and leave something to be desired. Make yourself memorable in a good way!

**ADD-ON: Recruiters, the desperation door swings both ways. Don’t be that desperate recruiter preying on everyone at a networking event. This scenario applies to you too

OK, typically I like to stay away from the hype that surrounds drama in Hollywood. But the things that are going on with Conan O’Brien and the Tonight Show caught my eye when a Time article came out about a $4.8 million show expense that was done to ‘stick it’ to NBC. Granted, no one can blame Conan for being salty about what’s going on; any of us would feel shafted by this treatment. But there’s more to this than hurt feelings…

I was pointed to this article on Brand For Talent, and in the article it discusses the HR nightmare being created by this situation. Was also shown this article by Jason Seiden. And in light of the recent actions by Conan, I think this is setting an incredibly terrible example for the average person in properly severing ties with a former employer. To all my HR and recruiting friends out there, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interest to burn bridges like this, or in this case, attach a powder keg to the supports and blow it up.

Please keep this in perspective: Conan is a celebrity. He gets paid to be funny, and on top of that, he is getting millions of dollars out of this debacle. How many of us would ever dream to get the kind of severance that he is? So obviously this is a special situation. Unfortunately, lots of people skip over the ‘special situation’ part, and they just look at what he’s doing and say, “Yeah, Conan – you tell NBC. Stick it to the man!”

Unfortunately, there will be a LOT of people who think that this is acceptable behavior when leaving a company, whether by your choice or by theirs. That’s just simply not the case. If we were to translate this kind of behavior into the average person’s experience, that would be like taking a box truck, backing it up to the front door of your office, and loading it up with all of the office supplies and computers within before giving your former boss the finger and telling him to shove it while you walk out the door. I’m sure many of us have wanted to act like this, but we know better. Because we know that almost inevitably, there will be a situation in which we will run into our former employer, or former co-workers who witnessed such an event, in a professional setting. Awkward! Actions like that will always come back to haunt you – choose your reactions wisely.

So while this is all wildly entertaining, I just ask you to use discretion and common sense when thinking about making a similar grand gesture on your last day of work. What works for one doesn’t always work for another

Lots of competition for jobs these days, with the economy on the repair. Have you found yourself in a situation like this recently?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOaPpbqRrcM]

It’s tough out there today! Instead of resorting to sabotage of your fellow job-seekers and risking bringing bad karma on yourself, try making yourself memorable instead. As a recruiting professional and also the occasional job seeker myself, here are some things that I think will help you out:

• Dress conservatively for your interview, but wear just a hint of flair – ladies, a bright colored collared shirt under your skirt- or pants-suit, and guys, a colorful or interesting tie. Caution: make sure it’s interesting without being tacky/inappropriate.
• Find out a little about the people with whom you’ll be interviewing before you meet them, and write down some interesting facts about them that you can use in your interview. I’d caution against making direct connections with them until after your interview though (i.e. LinkedIn)
• Bring a notepad to your interview pre-loaded with questions about the company. Take notes during your interview and ask questions related to the things you discuss with your interviewer.
• Following your interview, send a hand-written thank-you note to the people with whom you interviewed, in addition to a quick thank-you email. Hand-written notes are not common any more, and people remember them.
• Tip: always be pleasant to the receptionist. That’s your opportunity to make a great first impression, and a lot of interviewers ask them how they are treated by those who come in to interview.

If you have other interviewing tips, please leave them in a comment below. Wishing you the best of luck on your interviews!

I was pointed to a new blog post today by Laurent Brouat entitled “Don’t put ‘Looking for a job’ on your linkedin status“. In the post, Brouat advises those who are in the market for new employment not to place these words in their LinkedIn status because “you position yourself as someone asking for something, asking for a job, waiting for things to happen…”

Say wha-a-a-a-t!?!?! I completely and quite loudly disagree with this!

1. If you don’t ask, you cannot receive. There’s a Book that talks about this quite extensively, actually
2. ANY recruiter, and sourcer especially, worth their salary, knows how to conduct in-depth LinkedIn searches and would be quite pleased to discover someone who’s left word that they’d be open to listening to new opportunities right on their LinkedIn page. Don’t believe me? Just type the phrase “looking for a job” into the LinkedIn search field and check out the resulting 8,000+ individuals seeking new employment AND LETTING YOU KNOW THEY ARE.
3. Guess what? I have automated search agents set up through LOTS of social media sites with key phrases like “looking for work”, “I need a job”, “need a new job”… and I’ll bet a million bucks I’m not the only one!

Granted, Mr. Brouat is from London so the way things are done across the pond could be quite different from here in the States, but I believe a better piece of advice might be to tell job seekers not to simply STOP at putting this phrase in their profile.

Job seeking is essentially self-marketing, and the one thing that you should know about good marketing is that you should NEVER rely on one method to get the job done. The reason for this is that you’ll have different target audiences that will be reached via different methods. So I say in addition to putting a phrase such as “looking for a job” (or perhaps you prefer “entertaining new opportunities”, “seeking a new venture”, or “in transition”?) it’s good to combine other active outreach such as IN-PERSON networking, looking to see who is hiring and then proactively reaching out, etc. In my personal opinion, it certainly can’t hurt to leave a note on a page that I guarantee is going to be visited by actively querying recruiters and sourcers.

It’s perfectly acceptable to ask for something you want – just make sure you do it tactfully!