Needle, Meet Haystack

FOR THOSE JUST TUNING IN: I’m spending the next few days discussing my successes and failures and stereotypical misadventures as a member of Generation Y.  Catch up by reading part one, part two and part three first.  And make sure to catch tomorrow’s post for some exciting news!

As I boarded the plane, I kept thinking of that phrase, “If you can make it in New York City, you can make it anywhere.”  So now it was time to face facts: I couldn’t make it anywhere.

Things hadn’t exactly panned out for me in New York.  After sending out applications to 150 different advertising, public relations and marketing agencies, I found that I couldn’t get even one interview.  Sure, it was nice to walk around Manhattan sometimes and desperately cling to the hope that work would turn up, but nothing materialized.  So after the self-imposed deadline of two months had passed, I packed up again and flew off to Phoenix.

“We’re happy to see you,” my dad said in the car ride home from the airport.  ”Well, we’re not happy that you’re here.  But we’re happy to see you.  You understand what I mean.”

My mom echoed his statements.  ”I’m sorry that you couldn’t get work over there, but it’ll be nice to have you home for longer than a couple of weeks to visit.”

So I set up in my old bedroom and began the process of rebuilding my professional life.  But I didn’t have to look far.

About a week in to my newfound “Boomerang” status, I met up with an old friend from high school.  It turned out that he had started an internet marketing company, but needed help expanding it.  Specifically, he needed someone to write emails, develop site content and take care of customer issues.  And with that, I was once again employed.

Which leads us to now.  Unlike the last time I worked on a business with a friend, this time, I knew what I was getting myself into.  We had discussed (and corrected) many of the problems that had plagued our business lives in the past, and have been able to move forward much more successfully.

This might not have been the life I planned on, but it’s taught me a lot more about myself and my professional abilities than I could have imagined.

FOR THOSE JUST TUNING IN: I’m spending the next few days discussing my successes and failures and stereotypical misadventures as a member of Generation Y.  Catch up by reading part one and part two first.

We were two young, barely experienced, unemployed guys living in a $2400 a month apartment.  And we had a dream.

My roommate (let’s call him Stan) had spent the better part of the past three years building his reputation as a club DJ and producer, though his true hobby was business.  He had been running successful businesses since he was 14 – when we first met, he showed me his new Porsche 911 that he had bought with the spoils of his financial victories.  Stan was a motivated self-starter with the goal to create an entertainment company for our future ventures (publishing for me, music for him) that would set us up for financial security within one year and possible retirement within ten.

With Georgetown out of Stan’s way and the body language job out of mine, we began to build our empire.  Over the course of the next two months, we corralled over a dozen artists, signed distribution deals, recorded radio shows that were heard all over the world and managed to secure almost 70 hours of play time for our DJs at the biggest dance music convention in the country.  The label’s name was on a lot of people’s lips, and it seemed like we were destined for greatness.

Except for one tiny problem: we weren’t making any money.

Because the sales of the music we were selling (singles) were all done digitally, we had to wait for the distributors to compile total sales, which is only done quarterly.  It then takes another month or two for the accounting to be finalized and for checks to be sent out.  Additionally, several promoters had not followed through on payment agreements, so there was less money coming in from club performances than there should have been.

And lastly, Stan decided to keep all of his reserve funds locked up in investments rather than having some set aside in a checking account.  The combined market tumble and the new policy of the online brokerage to take three months to process cash-outs led to the total of our expenses (rent, utilities and food) being hoisted on my shoulders.

So I went broke.

Luckily, our lease was coming due, saving my credit score from taking a permanent nosedive that would kill any hopes of building a stable financial future.  But I knew that I couldn’t afford to stay in DC.

I called my parents to discuss the possibility of moving back to Phoenix to recover, rebuild my finances and find work again.  They agreed that staying in DC would be financial and career suicide, but suggested that I spend a little time with some family near New York City before returning home.

After all, Manhattan is the central hub of the advertising, marketing and PR world.  Maybe I would be able to score a job at one of the hundreds of firms there and get to use my marketing degree for the purpose it was intended.  I had hit rock bottom, but it looked like I had come across a way out.

FOR THOSE JUST TUNING IN: I’m spending the next few days discussing my successes and failures and stereotypical misadventures as a member of Generation Y.  Read part one here.

So there I was: a 21-year-old fresh out of college with no solid job prospects and just over $2,000 in the bank.  The dark cloud of student loans was still building up off in the distance, and without a second thought, I hopped on a plane and made my way to Washington, DC to seek my fortune.

My once and future roommate and soon-to-be business partner and I had scouted out apartments online, and we had decided on a charming $2,400 a month (minus utilities) two-bedroom place in the northwestern (read: safe) part of DC.  He was going to go to Georgetown and pursue an MBA in  finance by day while I would find work in advertising or marketing.  And at night, we would build our music empire.  Or at least that was the plan.

By the time I had lived in the District for two months, my bank account was exhausted and my credit card was nearly maxed out.  I’d sent out hundreds of applications, attended networking events, talked with industry professionals, begged and pleaded with employed friends and even considered working for the post office – but nothing was working.  My personal deadline for finding employment was about to expire, when, miraculously, I got an interview.  And even more astonishingly, I got the job!

So for the next few months, I helped secure media placement for advertisements for political candidates and causes all over the country.  The hours were long, but the amazing staff, challenging work and excellent pay definitely made up for it.  Unfortunately, there were two problems with the job.  The more pressing problem was that it was only a contract position that ended once the election had passed.  But personally, telling people what I did involved conversations about politics.  And as the party affiliation of most of the candidates was called into question, I often got looks from people that are usually reserved for those who steal candy from babies or punt kittens across a city block.

So as the election passed by and the new year approached, I once again found myself unemployed.  And yet within six weeks, gainful employment was again mine.  This was especially fortunate, as my roommate had decided to put his MBA plans on hold and start focusing more seriously on music.

I was hired to find bookings for a self-help and body language guru, but wound up writing newsletters and articles, helping her coach classes (most notably a dating class for busy professionals) and developing content for her book.  This job was not as enjoyable as the last one, and my pay was much lower – I had the misfortune to be one of the few people in DC who had to commute to Virginia for work, so public transportation ate up most of the paycheck.  Since I was scrambling to make rent with my meager earnings, I decided to seek opportunities elsewhere.

It was about this time that my roommate and I realized that we had yet to fulfill our original goal of starting the record label.  But once my schedule had opened up from leaving the body language job, that all changed.

I was talking with my cousin yesterday, and he mentioned how my generation is going to have a very different view of work and employment.  And while I’m not the strongest advocate of generation gaps, he does have a point.  After all, my experiences in the working world are a good example of that.  So now, I present to you the first of several installments detailing my successes and failures and stereotypical misadventures as a member of Generation Y.  Or as a Millennial.  Or whatever we’re supposed to be called this week.

I hadn’t bothered to apply for any jobs until about three weeks before I graduated from college.  The HR representatives and hiring managers at the career fairs I’d been attending for the better part of the past five months had instilled me with the belief that doing so any earlier would yield negative results.  After all, advertising is a capricious field in which hiring practices are based on obtaining and retaining clients.

So as I was putting the finishing touches on my financial aid closeout forms and pulling all-nighters for my remaining classes, I desperately clung to the belief that one of these magical applications would get me a job that I would start the week after graduation.

That didn’t happen.

So as I finished up school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I packed up my belongings and moved back home to Phoenix to stay with my parents as I planned out my next move.

For two weeks, I sent out applications to advertising agencies on both coasts and everywhere in between, hoping that one of them would fall in love with my portfolio and resume and scoop me right up.  At best, I would receive a generic response that my application was received and I would be contacted if there was any interest.  My prospects were looking dim.

But then, an old college friend called me up with a proposal: move to Washington, DC and start a record label.  And as an unemployed new graduate with no job prospects, the offer seemed quite appealing…

Not too long ago, I was looking for a way to make a digital resume that would stand out more than a standard Word document or pdf.  After all, the digital format offers more opportunities to be creative and to innovate the old format.  BriteTab is a free service that allows you to create great-looking digital resumes for free, with videos, links and images.  So if you want to create a resume that better represents who you are, check it out!

BriteTab

If you’ve been following NMH on Twitter (which you should, given how the tweets let you know when I update every day on this sporadic schedule I’m keeping), you might have noticed that the followers count is doing something it hasn’t done in a long time: growing at a more stable rate.  It used to bounce around wildly – one minute, there would be 10 new followers, then 7 would leave, then 4 more would join, then 3 would leave, then 8 would join, 10 would leave…there was no consistency, and I was worried about how to get the numbers on track.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t fully get Twitter.  But I’m starting to.  So I took a page from my own book and have started sending short thank you messages to new followers.  And whaddya know – they’ve stuck around!

I’d love to say it’s because the content in my tweets and on this blog has increased in quality, but the truth is that it’s probably because I’m making a more concentrated effort to connect with readers.

But I digress – this is a blog about job searching, and I’m just talking about something you shouldn’t do at work (but should do for the job search).

When you send in an application for a job online, if you’re lucky, you’ll get an automated response message.  The message will usually thank you for your submission, and will say something about contacting you if the company is interested, but otherwise you won’t hear anything.  So you can spend days, weeks, or even months waiting for a response that may never come.

Even though you’ve crafted a meticulous application specifically for that position and company, you might still get silence.  And even if you follow-up with the employer, you might get silence (although now it’s more unlikely).  So what can you do?

If you have a job search site that tracks your submission, that might help.  But the easiest way to deal with the silence and uneasiness that accompanies it is to ignore it.  Keep sending out applications, looking for other jobs and be productive.

Regardless of the medium in which you contact the employer about your candidacy for an open position, the social obligation of the company to contact you is no longer there.  So keep on looking for work – if you dwell on the silence, the “no” can be even more deafening.

We’ve all got our own routines designed to help us maximize our time and become more efficient.  And there are many methods to chose from.  Unfortunately, there are lots of counterproductive things that many people do without realizing it, creating problems for their careers, job searches and personal lives.  Here are five of them.

1. Using job boards.  Recently, Dan Schawbel wrote a post in which he discusses why using job boards is not practical.  And while it’s true that the amount of people hired from online applications has gone up considerably (I recall a figure from six years ago citing the average as 6%, Dan cites 12%), a lack of responses from employers, potential subscriptions and all of the problems that they entail, the odds of your application even being seen and dozens of other problems make job boards a time-waster.  Instead, try some of Dan’s suggestions, which include the most successful method that leads to employment: networking.
2. Using social networks poorly.  There are many articles and websites dedicated to the abuse of social networking sites.  Whether it’s a lack of self-censorship, not using privacy settings or general stupidity, a lack of concern for one’s personal brand through social media can lead to a host of problems.  But if used properly, the sites can be a great boon to individuals and businesses.
3. Forgetting social barriers.  Web 2.0 has made people more informal with each other, but the degree to which casual relationships are used is becoming absurd.  Sure, it might be fine to friend someone you sat near at lunch in 7th grade but never talked to, but playing on your social networks without an established interpersonal relationship is never a good idea.  What’s even worse is treating one’s superiors and co-workers in a non-professional way.  Not only does it lower the respect others have for you, but it can do damage to your reputation and personal brand both within the company and outside of it.  As unappealing as it might seem, show respect and restraint for others at the office, and if it helps, pretend that there’s a generation gap to blame for this.
4. Forgetting how to plan.  Communication in the modern world is instantaneous.  Internet and cell phones have made almost anyone available for contact at almost any time.  But a lack of foresight when it comes to scheduling can cost you dearly.  Try going low-tech and prepare your agenda days or even weeks in advance.
5. Ignoring history.  If you turn on the news and listen to the discussions about the economy, you’ll find a lot of comparisons to earlier economic downturns.  So shouldn’t this foresight have helped prevent the current slump?  And if you’re having trouble finding work or with a project that’s similar to a situation that you (or others) have been in before, shouldn’t you be using that experience to make your current problems more manageable?  As much as we’d like to think that things are always new and exciting, there’s usually enough patterns and repetition that exists to help us come up with a solution without reinventing the wheel.  So if you’re stuck in the present, don’t forget to take a look in the past before you stretch yourself too far into the future.

Sure, there are lots of mistakes that thousands of people unwittingly make every day.  But with a little self-awareness and planning, you won’t be one of them.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been looking into getting a second job.  I’ve found that by using some of the strategies I’ve mentioned (yes, I drink my own Kool Aid), I’ve had more time to devote to other pursuits.  But unfortunately, my applications weren’t getting me where I wanted to be.

I noticed that several positions I was interested in were only posted on one website (let’s-call-it-JobAgents) that offered a Premium Membership plan.  For the Low, Low Price of $10 Per Month (introductory price – $8 for the first month), I would get a personalized page with a Myers-Briggs-type personality metric, a program that matches competencies from my old positions to help me find the ones best suited for me and an extensive diagram that showed what I could do in snazzy graph form.  Additionally, any submissions I made would include a recommendation from JobAgents to employers that they should really look into hiring me.  And there would be updates on new jobs I was compatible with, status updates on applications I’d sent in, and a tracker that shows me who’s been looking at my page.

I cancelled my membership after about three weeks.

JobAgents sounded great, but there were too many holes in the site’s code to accurately do all that it said it would – most of my matches were not in the field I had specified, the personality test had no bearing on my search results, status updates on applications consisted of being told that the application had been sent (I couldn’t send a personalized cover letter or resume or anything either, by the way), and the page was visited only twice, through searches on Yandex, the Russian Google (according to the site’s literature, anyway).

One of the chief problems with JobAgents, besides the fact that I couldn’t search for a job beyond the positions they suggested I applied for (unless I found the posting through a secondary site and copied the link over) was that the matching software wasn’t very good.  I was very limited in responses (“click a maximum of three choices” was the instruction, when I could have clicked all twelve listed), and certain logic chains in the program would not let me down the path to select skills that would have matched me with other jobs that I’m actually qualified for.

Of course, the blame could be shifted to the user – maybe I should have chosen my options more carefully and made sure that my answers all reflected the work I was looking for.  But since this was done through an explanation of what I’d already done, it seemed silly to go about doing it that way.  For example:

One of the jobs that I’ve been looking into is as an advertising copywriter.  I have copywriting experience, and have written other things (press releases, promotional materials, speeches, articles, newsletters, etc.), all of which I had told the JobAgents program.  I specified my field of interest as Marketing/Advertising/PR.  I also mentioned that I have experience with training and seminars.  So obviously, the program decided to not show me any copywriting positions (I had to find them through external links) and instead recommended I try out for real estate and financial training.

One of the other problems I had was a lack of follow-through when I did send in an application.  JobAgents never told me if the application was read, who received it, if the position was filled, or anything.  All it said was that I had submitted it and a secondary notice came out when the position was no longer available.  So what was the message that JobAgents sent to the employers?  How do I know that there was any accountability?

In fact, the only proof that I had upgraded my membership (besides the user page and the charge on my credit card) was that emails regarding their $400 resume review service mentioned that I had upgraded my account.

I’m not saying that recruiters, placement services and job site memberships are all bad – many of them can lead to work, or at least professional connections that one might not have made otherwise.  But if I’m paying for your service, regardless of if it’s $8 per month or $800 per week, make sure that you deliver on your promises and prove that you’re doing your work.

After all, isn’t that your job?

Given all the posts about the fracturing culture, setting oneself up as an individual, finding a competitive advantage in the workplace, the differences in body language between people and other things of that nature, the title of this post might seem surprising.  But really, it shouldn’t.

By now, it’s pretty well-known that the Pareto Principle is being unintentionally used by employers – if 100 applications that fit a job perfectly are sent in, only 80 are identified by resume systems as being viable candidates and only 20% of those individuals end up being contacted for an interview.  So when it comes down to the mechanics of a job application from the employer’s side, it’s an issue of time versus the sheer quantity of applicants.

You might be one of those 100 perfect applicants, but you wind up having a 16% chance of getting the interview.  And since an average of 10 seconds is spent looking at your cover letter and resume, your application had better stick out (in a good way).

Putting aside the squeaky wheel philosophy, your application needs to be tailored to the position you’re applying for.  Use their buzzwords.  If you can, match writing style and word choice.  Watch your formatting.  And for gosh sakes, read over it.

Your job application is a persuasive argument for why the company should waste its time to give you an interview, waste more time training you, and waste money paying you.  If you can’t make a specific, well-thought-out case for your necessity, then they will pass you over.  It has nothing to do with how nice you are, the words you use, or in some cases, your education and experience.  Make a unique application for each unique job.

Who cares if you’re the same as everyone else?  If your application does its job correctly, you’ll find employment, and you can differentiate yourself then.

Sometimes, even the all-powerful job seeking tool of networking can lead to dead ends.

While I was still in my Senior year of college, I had attended a number of networking events for advertising professionals, and made numerous connections in different cities.  When I moved to one of those cities, I called up to one of the connections who I had stayed in contact with, asking for her help in securing an interview with her company.  ”Good luck,” she said.  And then she hung up.

I was confused – why would someone who was representing their company at a networking event, who was there for the very purpose of finding people to work for them, not want to help me get an interview?  We had kept in contact and been friendly with each other, so it wasn’t a case of personal dislike.  So why would someone not want to help?

One of the things that we fail to take into account when asking someone to help us get a job at their company is the feelings that they may have regarding the consequences of this action.  Although they may want to help you, it might seem that the opportunity cost of doing so does not outweigh the threat to their own job.  After all, there are two possible outcomes for the recommendation:

1. You don’t get the job
2. You get the job

In the case of #1, there is a fear that your not getting the job can reflect badly on the person who recommended you.  Their employer might question their judgment and the people they associate with.  The last thing you would want to hear from your boss is, “Why did you waste my time with that person?”

But if you get the job (#2), it could be much worse.  Besides the fear that your success could overshadow your contact’s, there is also the danger of your performance reflecting back on them at any time.  If you turn out to be a poor worker, are caught stealing from the company, become lax in fulfilling your corporate obligations or provide any cause to be fired, the blame could always shift to them, since they referred you to the company in the first place, and how dare they not inform the company that you would turn out like this!

Altruism and support for others can waver, especially when one is questioning their own job security.

However, this fear is often unjustified; if anything, companies reward their employees for helping them to find good candidates quickly, saving both time and the cost of posting an open position on many websites, sorting through applications and so on.  If such a situation arises where a connection is unable to follow through on helping you get a job at their company, ask if it’s all right if you name-drop them during a communication to the organization, which mitigates their involvement but still give you a leg up over the competition.

When it comes to networking, your contacts might not always deliver.  But don’t look at it as a reflection on you – there’s always a way to work around it.