Want to Impress Employers? Track Your Stories.

To get a job, you have to impress. Stories impress. They set expectations about you. Recalling great stories about your background on the fly during an interview can be tough. What’s the difference between getting a job and being sent away empty handed? Relevant stories. Specific accomplishments and how you’ve dealt with various challenges make great stories. Interviewers want to hear about:

• Situations you were in
• Actions you took
• Results you got

A brief two minutes a week to track just one story is a powerful way to see your successes and have plenty to choose from when you need them.

The top 7 reasons to jot down 1 story a week:

1. You’ll forget too many otherwise.
2. You’ll see your own patterns of success.
3. You’ll notice when your in a story slump, and can fix it by getting more.
4. Employers believe stories – it’s the best proof of your value.
5. If you don’t, your competition will outsell you and snatch the job right from your hands – Ouch!
6. You’ll undersell yourself without them. Stories put your best foot forward.
7. It’s a very smart investment – tiny compared to the size of the payoff.

Start today. Be consistent. Enjoy the results.

25 Companies Hiring Recent College Grads

Thanks to Resumebear for sharing this great list:

http://blog.resumebear.com/college-graduates/25-companies-who-are-hiring-new-graduates-this-year/

Some people will read this list and be excited about the opportunities. Some will read it and be frustrated because the “candidate qualities” section will look daunting.

Do you think the candidates who will win these jobs will be ones who got lucky that they just somehow happened to have those specific qualities in their backgrounds, or did they purposefully take advantage of opportunities to get those qualities as they went through school?

Did the top candidates know ahead of time that this was the picture of themselves that they would need to paint someday by finding out what employers would want to see from them early enough to do something about it?

Do you think the top candidates will show up with good stories to tell with specific examples that leave no doubt in the employer’s mind that the candidate has what they’re looking for?

Share this list of 25 companies and what they’re looking for with every freshman, sophomore and junior you know so they can see what they’re going to be up against in a few years so they have time to do something about it and be a top candidate themselves.

It takes awareness, focus, tracking stories, and effective communication to get this job done right. These employers aren’t playing around, and they don’t have time for candidates who don’t go to the trouble to demonstrate what they need to see. Excuses won’t win jobs, and you can’t cash them at the bank either.

Lucky Networking?

I ran into a friend of mine yesterday. He’s a former co-worker who I’ve continued to work with on and off for the past for the past 10 years. We usually meet for lunch at least once a year to see how things are going. This wasn’t a planned meeting, we just happened to be at the same restaurant at the same time. This guy is very good at what he does and has been rewarded for this very well over the years. He was excited. He told me that he’s working on a project, a very lucrative project. In the middle of lots of news about job losses, economic slowdown, looming bankruptcies, lack of consumer confidence, frozen credit markets, etc. he’s continued to do well. He’s making a lot of money and really enjoying himself. How did it happen? Networking. Specifically, he was on http://www.linkedin.com/ and saw that one of his connections posted a note that they were coming to town. He decided to see if they wanted to grab dinner while they were here. It turns out that they did, and it turned out that they needed his help with something very minor on a project that they were working on. Just 2 days worth of assistance. Well, he did that work, made a good impression, and it turned into very high paying multi month opportunity that looks like it might lead into something even bigger than this. Lucky guy? Maybe – but he helped to create his luck by taking the initiative to invite someone to dinner. It was a $100 investment that turned into something worth much more. Did my friend really want to go to dinner with the person he invited? Would he have rather hung out with his neighbor, or college buddies, or family? Maybe he would have, but he made a strategic decision that the person who was coming into town was someone who he should re-connect with professionally and spend some face time with, so he did. Was this dinner arranged as an interview? No, not formally. Neither of them probably knew what the other was up to. However, you’re always interviewing. If my friend had showed and not made a good impression, what are the chances that he would have been given the opportunity to do the small project? Not very good. If he had been short sighted and turned down the small project because it was not “worth his time” he’d have never been offered the additional work where he’s raking it in today. What’s the point? Go out of your way to network, always. Not just when you need something, but whenever you can. Don’t just network with people who are your best friends, or who make you laugh, or who know you better than anyone else, but network professionally. Networking is beyond twitter, facebook, e-mail, & linkedin. Those are great ways to keep your network going, but they are not a replacement for face to face meetings. Pick one person today who you know you should meet with and schedule a time to get together – face to face. You don’t have to buy them a $100 dinner. You don’t have to buy them anything. Meet for coffee and just spend a few minutes listening to what is going on in their lives and you might be very surprised at what kind of possibilities open up, even if you’re not looking for any right now!

What are your grades worth?

Commentary: Grades in U.S. colleges rife with fraud percent, college, grades : OC Register Print Edition What do you think your grades tell a potential employer about you? Be careful, because the obvious answer isn’t right. If you have good grades, does it mean that you worked hard, and that you’ll work hard for them if they’ll just hire you? Unfortunately not. What do grades tell potential employers? That you are intelligent? Maybe That you can follow directions? Maybe That you know what it takes to do the job they need you to do? Not very likely That you had to work hard to earn your grades? Not necessarily This article in the Orange County Resister highlights a concern that’s not new. The easier it is to earn a grade, the less valuable the course, and your degree become. Not only does it hurt you from the perception that employers have, but it also causes you to show up unprepared. Let’s say you play baseball, and to help you get your batting average up, the league you play in has a rule that everyone has to pitch only fastballs, right down the middle – the easiest pitch to hit. Everyone gets on base a lot, and the scores are really high. Lots of high fives and celebrations and pictures in the local paper. Now you show up to play in the major leagues and they’re throwing all kinds of pitches, and you can’t hit any of them because they’re much more difficult, and you haven’t practiced them before. What are the chances you’ll make the big leagues? Zero. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the business world, or the medical world, or any other world is much different. If you didn’t have to work hard or you don’t grow while earning your degree it will very likely show when you show up to work. Will a degree that was easy to earn open doors anyway? Sure, it will still open some. But never forget, all doors aren’t equal, and in the real world the range of opportunities and earnings is broader than anything you’ve seen before. Make sure you know what employers expect of you – not a few weeks or months before you show up to interview, but years ahead, while you’re trying to become the person they’re excited to add to their team. The responsibility to find out, and to do the right things is yours – not your parent’s or your school’s – regardless of how much tuition you’re paying and time your spending. At the end of the day employers need to know that you can help them produce the results that they need to stay competitive. Knowing what those results are, and how you can cleary demonstrate that you are someone they can depend upon are the keys that will help you open the best doors as you enter the workforce and throughout the rest of your career.

You are Always Interiewing

(click the title to read the article) Mark Gentry – after sending out over 100 inquiries about jobs and coming up empty handed ultimately found a job from a connection from 12 years previously – from his summer camp counselor. I tell my clients / students: You are ALWAYS interviewing - if Mark was a jerk in summer camp 12 years ago when he was “just a kid” would he have a shot at this job? Your Network is EVERYONE you know - who would have thought that someone Mark spent time with for just a few weeks so long ago would have any relevance to his current job search? Fair or Not – Their Perception is Your Reality - if you make a bad impression today, you never know how it could impact you. The same thing goes for a great impression. The more good impressions you make, the more value you’re building. The trick is to not take any of this for granted. There is no one who is “just another student, just another professor, or just a part time boss” – you never know how they’ll come into play someday – and the way to prepare is to keep the 3 points above in mind always. It’s not hard to do – just don’t assume that whatever you do today is somehow disconnected from your future opportunities, even though you may not have any idea what those will be.

48 Interviews Later – This Recent Grad is Working on Wall Street

Mohamed went for it, and got it. Optimism, persistence, going the extra mile – what a great story on cnn.com today. http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/05/20/wall.street.graduates/index.html?iref=t2test_livingwed You’ll find some statistics in this article as well. What you do when you read those stats is going to determine where you’ll wind up. Read them and conclude that it’s pretty much hopeless out there today, then the chances of you getting “lucky” go way down. Read them and look at this as a challenge, and go for it anyway, and things might happen. How you interpret things determines how you’ll react to them. If you realize that the way you’re interpreting things isn’t working out so well – interpret them differently. This is your choice – and you get to live with whichever choice you decide to run with……. Create a story where you wind up happy in the end, not as a perpetual victim of the economy, or anything else that you can’t control. Your career will be filled with challenges, and they’ll all be different. Once you get the formula down for dealing with these challenges you’ll be better equipped to deal with all of them, and you might even enjoy the process.

Choose a Major – Get a Job

Choosing a major is no easy task. It can feel like you’re committing to a life of doing work that you’ve only been exposed to superficially. Maybe you’ve had: A few classes on the subject A few friends or relatives who got their degrees in this major A part time job that you liked or maybe it just sounds interesting How much time did you spend choosing your major? How thoroughly did you investigate this major? What resources did you use to help you choose? Do you know how many jobs there are that are available in this major? Do you know what a career in this major is like? How many people who work in this field have you spoken with? Outside of school? Do you know your natural strengths? Do your natural strengths match up with those who are already successful in this field? People might cut you some slack and say, “They’re so young, how can they expect to know what they want to do yet?” – and that’s nice of them to be sympathetic, but the reality is – you have to live with this choice for a long time, whether you made the right choice or not, and regardless of how old you were when you made it. You’re investing a lot of money and time in college. Make sure that the time and money that your spending (or borrowing) is a good investment that lets you find a job that you’ll love, instead of just a job to pay off a loan for studying something you didn’t like, or that didn’t help you get the job you expected in the first place! An article by Fay Hansen in Workforce Recruiting http://www.workforce.com/section/06/feature/26/26/91/index.html discusses a mismatch between the majors that students are choosing and the skills that employers are hiring for. To take it even further, Fay explains that not only are their mismatches between majors and what employers want, but there are actually more college graduates than the workforce needs. “At the aggregate level, U.S. schools continue to produce more college graduates than the country can absorb. Consequently, many graduates end up unemployed or in jobs that do not require a degree. As of February, the labor force included 45 million workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher—29 percent of the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS estimates, however, that only 24 percent of jobs require a degree. ” What does this mean to you personally? Make sure that your major is one that you will enjoy. Not just because you like the classes, and not just because you can “just get your degree so you can say you have it”, but because you have a reasonable idea what to expect and it’s something that excites you. More importantly, make sure that you are doing what it takes to set yourself apart. It’s crystal clear that there is a lot of competition for jobs. It would be tough enough for you if the competition was only with other college graduates, but you have even more competition from people who have been in the workforce for a long time who already have experience that employers need. Are you aware of the specific shortcomings that employers see in candidates all the time? Do you know what you can do to stand out as an incredible candidate? It’s not just having a 4.0 GPA and parents who have friends in the business. Regardless of who you are, you can set yourself apart if you become aware of these needs and start collecting the stories employers want to hear today. There is no better edge for you than to give employers what they’re looking for. Fortunately for you, a lot of people really don’t know what that is, or how to give it, so you get a huge personal advantage when you do.

Interns and Recent Grads – Accountability and Accuracy

On a flight from Orlando to Atlanta last week and I sat next to a principal from a consulting firm. She explained to me that her firm has a highly sought after internship program for college students, and that they also hire recent graduates from the top 10 schools (in their field) in the United States. I asked her how that was working out, and she surprised me by telling me that many times the students don’t understand the implications behind the work that they’re doing, and they submit work to their managers that is wrong. Not just a little wrong, but work that wasn’t even spot checked for reasonableness. This wasn’t a one time occurrence, but something that they’ve come to expect from these students – that they can’t be relied upon as the last stop before work goes out the door. What that means is that someone else has to review the sensitive material to ensure the clients don’t become misled by their firm. This isn’t a lack of technical knowledge that can easily be taught to someone with proven capacity to learn (like someone who was smart enough to earn a degree from a prestigious school), but rather critical attributes that these recent hires are lacking – accuracy and accountability. You can argue, aren’t their managers getting paid to check their work? How can you expect so much from someone who is new? Guess what? They expect it. This firm’s #1 goal is to provide quality work to their clients, not to train new hires. They don’t have to hire recent graduates, they can instead hire seasoned people if they aren’t finding what they need from colleges. They don’t have to work with anyone who is going to jeopardize the firm’s repuation or harm their clients by doing substandard work, or who doesn’t show legitimate concern for perfection when it comes to delivering work to their clients. Accuracy and accountability are what this firm needs from their interns and new hires. Students and graduates who can demonstrate that they have a pattern of accuracy and that they understand the “big picture” will stand out above the crowd. This employer will be very impressed that you understood how important it was to get the work right (which might mean putting in extra hours to double and triple check it) because the stakes are really high. They’re going to be impressed that you get the big picture, and that you understand that delivering anything less than perfection has grave implications. These implications can be losing the trust of the client, losing the client to a competitor, or causing the client who relied upon your work as accurate to be fined by government regulators. Knowing that this is important to an employer, and making it clear that you can can uniquely fulfill this need can be the difference between, “thanks for coming in, we’ll be back in touch” to “when can you start, we’re excited to get you on board.” Don’t have a story to tell that demonstates this yet? Get one – there are plenty of opportunities now that you know this is important. Don’t know how? Ask someone you know in this field, or a professor who worked in this field how to get a story. There are plenty of people who will be glad to help you figure out a way to get this done. Use their experience to your advange. No one expects you to do it alone.

Article Comparing MBA students to Entrepreneurs

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/taylor/2009/05/mbas_vs_entrepreneurs_who_has.html Causal reasoning vs effectual reasoning. What a great quote: “How do you control the future? By inventing it yourself — marshaling scarce resources, understanding that surprises are to be expected rather than avoided, reacting to them fast.” (referring to effectual reasoning). What a great mindset for graduates to enter the workforce with. Not entering the workforce with expectations of what should happen, or what employers will do for you, but rather how you’ll deal with whatever happens is the best way to go. Everyone is shifting their expectations, not necessarily all negatively, but definitely differently, so it’s important to demonstrate to employers that you can be flexible and that you expect challenges vs expecting a stable, safe place to be taken care of. No one gets that anymore, so if you walk in looking at challenges as opportunities to learn, you’ll become a better team player and can help become part of the solution. Want to impress a potential employer? Tell them about a time that you had to deal with a change that was beyond your control, and what the result was. Don’t have a story like that yet? Then find the opportunity to get one. You’re surrounded by opportunities to get great stories in college (extracurricular activities, part time jobs, internships, volunteer opportunities). Those who recognize this and get the best stories get the best opportunities and ultimately the best rewards. Employers are looking for solutions, not more problems. Remove any doubts as to which you’ll be by giving them at least one solid example of how you’ve solved a problem and dealt with a surprise in the past.