Be Brave Not Safe

During my daily check-in to Yahoo! Finance I came across an article “School spending by affluent is widening wealth gap.”

In this article we learn (as the title would suggest) that the wealthier among us are spending (investing) in education at increasing rates, which serves to further widen the wealth gap.

We have 2 choices here:

1. Complain about the widening wealth gap.
2. Increase our own wealth and/or improve our children’s future prospects by investing in education!

There are a couple of telling quotes in this article including:

Education is the most powerful equalizing force ~ Thomas Piketty, the French economist whose exploration of tax data helped expose the wealth gap.

It becomes a feedback loop, where the children of the rich do the best in school, and those who do best in school become rich.

I know, some will say: “Yes, but the rich can afford to pay for high-priced private schools, tutors and Ivy League colleges.”

Reality: We do NOT need an “Ivy League” education to become affluent. As outlined in prior posts, we can:

• Take advantage of the solid education opportunities that are available from much lower-cost options including:
  • Public schools (by staying in school and getting that diploma)
  • Community College to obtain an Associates Degree and (if so desired) transfer those credits to a
  • 4-year College or University to obtain a Bachelor’s Degree
• Work our tails off at the job we land from the education received (to-date), taking on every possible responsibility and opportunity to learn and grow
• Self-educate (outside of a “formalized” system) – That is, education is NEVER-ENDING and we can do something about it EVERY SINGLE DAY. My own self-education is (partially) described in a prior post on “A Boot Camp Experience.”

Bottom-line: Education opens up doors of opportunity.

In closing, it is suggested that we don’t focus on the “negative spin” that the media would put on the wealthy. That is just wasting time and energy. Realize that “most” of the wealthy weren’t endowed from on high with a pile of cash: “most” EARNED IT from HARD WORK! And, education simply propelled them along the path.

As such, if we (truly) desire to improve our own situation (and/or our children’s future) we can do something about it: invest in education!

Building on the prior article (“preparing” to land that first professional job) the purpose of this post is to share strategies that a newly degreed job-seeker can use “during the hunt” to stand above the crowd.

Before we do that, I thought it important to ask a couple of questions:

1. Does it all seem over-whelming?
2. Does any of the material covered seem familiar (with other content published on this blog or what was “hopefully” learned in school)?

Well, rest-assured that if you’ve done the work to achieve a Bachelor’s Degree, the strategies being shared here are child’s play. It just needs to get done!

And, for those really paying attention – ALL this stuff ties together like pieces of a puzzle. Or, building blocks stacked one upon another. It may also be observed that the prior post on this topic and what is about to be covered here is oh so similar to what is outlined in the series on “Launching a Consulting Business.” We’re just starting small (targeting the landing of one’s first professional job). If we can do this well here, and gain some scars of experience over time, we can then step out on faith and do our own thing. But, I digress 🙂

It’s time to go on the hunt!

First, realize – there IS A JOB “OPPORTUNITY” out there specifically designed for YOU. But, YOU must find it. It will NOT find you. And, the secret is relentlessly applying the strategies shared here – until! That is, we can’t say “oh, I have a resume out here, or a job interview there, so I’ll pause the hunt.” No, no, no!

The theme here is: We don’t have our professional job until we have our professional job. So, create and keep the momentum – until the job is 100% officially landed!

Let’s Begin the Hunt

The net offers unlimited information and resources to help land that first (or subsequent) professional job. One site, in particular, that is most prominent is: www.monster.com. I’m not going to share how to use this service, as the job-seeker can simply go to the site and follow their prompts (wizard, so to speak) to get setup and perform the hunt. And, if we’ve done everything shared in the prior post on this topic, we should have ALL of the baseline information necessary to do so – at our fingertips.

Note: while there are other sites available to perform job searches, Monster.com is a fantastic place to get started. Focus here first…

Do Something Above and Beyond

Between the efforts being applied to leverage Monster.com, the job-seeker can do other things to “shamelessly promote” themselves. These things include:

• Start blogging on an area of passion and/or expertise that is aligned with the degree recently achieved.
• Offer to do volunteer work, leveraging the recently acquired skills, at church, an industry association, the local Chamber of Commerce, etc.
• Offer prospective employers a “try before you buy” short-term consulting gig.

The first 2 items above are (I hope) fairly self-explanatory. Let me share a little bit on the third item (offering a “try before you buy”). Realize, employers “can be” very reluctant to make a long-term hiring decision. And, in a hyper-competitive environment this means they will take time (to explore many candidates) before they “pull the trigger.”

So, let’s think outside the box. One thing that we can do is offer the prospective employer the opportunity to “try us out” for a predetermined (short-term) period of time, on a consulting basis. This offers the prospective employer an opportunity to:

• Check us out, without making a long term commitment
• Get some stuff done, while they are waiting to make the final / long-term decision

And, this provides the job-seeker a “foot in the door.” Assuming we do (exceptionally) well, after we’ve been inside the firm for 30 +/- days we’ve gained invaluable subject-matter-expertise that the prospective employer would be hard-pressed to let go.

To be prepared for this, it will be important to create a relationship with a temporary staffing agency. The reason: corporations do NOT typically contract with individuals. They will, however, contract with temp agencies. If we are speaking to a prospective employer and indicate that we already have a relationship with a temp agency we’ve made it easy for them to engage us via this method.

Bottom-line: Get creative and don’t simply “wait” for prospective employers to respond to (or find) us. We must make some noise to flush them out, during the hunt!

All the best!

Click here for the next article in this series.

My wife and I are so proud of our oldest son (Ian / 25) who just received his Bachelor’s Degree in Web Design and Interactive Media.

He has just returned home after attending the New England Institute of Art, in Boston. While in college he also worked at a retail store for pocket money and began paying down his school loans vs. letting the interest pile-up prior to that first “required” payment six months after graduation.

Now, it’s time to land his first “professional” job. This requires defining and executing his very first marketing plan.

So, here we go.

While details and approaches to landing a job may vary depending on the nature of the profession, there are a number of common components the job-seeker would include in their marketing plan.

• Resume
• Cover letter template (to be later tuned for each prospective employer)
• LinkedIn profile
• A plan to scour the net for opportunities and submit resumes

All of the above is good. And, this is (at least) what everyone else is doing. Consider this the foundation. That said, if this is all we do, we will NOT stand-out above the crowd, making it a longer road to landing the desired job.

Let’s now talk about the above items and “begin” to share strategies to make us stand-out, on a solid foundation.

Resume

It must be complete and concise, not overly burdened with text and highly polished (perfect grammar and spelling, consistency in formatting, use of abbreviations (or not), etc.) with the goal of projecting a professional image.

A new college graduate should “easily” be able to contain the resume on a single page (others of us would be wise to do so as well).

And, it is helpful to make it stand-out with some personality (without going overboard)

If you’d like to view what I would consider an outstanding example, my son’s resume is available on his website (by clicking here).

Cover Letter

The cover letter is a tailored introduction to the person we wish to engage in conversation with, about potential opportunities at their firm. In today’s world this would be a well-crafted email message which would contain our resume as an attachment. That said, we must make sure we effectively manage our email (the topic of a prior post) or we WILL quickly lose out on opportunities.

The content of the cover letter should include:

• The introduction – Who we are and why we are contacting this person.
• The main body – Why we feel we are an outstanding candidate for their consideration. This should include any special distinctions that would be valued by a potential employer. My son’s includes: a high GPA, resulting in him being on the President’s List of the college!
• The close – An indication that we are aware that s/he may be considering many candidates and reinforcing the fact that we would intend for any conversation they’d be willing to have with us as a mutually beneficial investment of time. That is, we might have some interesting perspective to share with them based on our recent training and experiences, and we look forward to learning more about them and their industry.
• Our contact information – The most important being our email and cell phone number.

LinkedIn Profile

A LinkedIn Profile has many facets.

The first step is making sure that it precisely matches our resume.

From there, it is important to be well-connected: with our professors, prior or existing employers and other colleagues we’ve shared experiences with.

In addition, we can showcase our work.

There is no need for me to go into the “how” here, as LinkedIn provides easy-to-follow prompts (a wizard, of sorts) to guide us through the process of doing ALL of the above – and more!. It is just a matter of doing it…

Finally, we must be aware that this tool is for “professional” use NOT “personal” (like Facebook). They are 2 entirely different things and must be managed accordingly and separately! If you haven’t read the prior post on this topic (of managing your online presence) you are encouraged to do so now (simply click here). This particular post could literally make or break your career!

Question: Is it now time to scour the net for opportunities and submit resumes?

Not quite. Before making any noise (sending out our cover letter and resume to prospective employers) it is important to make sure that a professional image is portrayed at each potential contact point. And, that we “test” things with our inner-circle. This includes:

Our email signature:

• Containing our full name, title or area of expertise, URL and phone number. Note: If we don’t (yet) have a website or it doesn’t apply, we can provide the URL to our LinkedIn profile.
• Setup to automatically drop into EVERY email we send (which is a basic feature available within email clients).

Our voice mail greeting:

• Politely, professionally and positively greeting the caller with our name
• Asking them to leave a detailed message, their name, phone number and the best time to return their call

Our “live” greeting:

From now on, we must consider EVERY call that comes into our cell phone as a potential employer. Want to “up” the chances that they will AGGRESSIVELY pursue us? Then, we must portray a professional image on answering their call – EVERY TIME!

Similar to the beginning of our voice mail greeting, all we have to do is politely, professionally and positively greet the caller with our full name. That’s it.

Time to Share – With Our Inner-Circle

Once ALL of the above is done we can feel comfortable that our “foundational” package is ready to share.

We begin by letting our “inner-circle” (family, friends, mentors, etc.) know that we are a newly degreed candidate for the specific area(s) of expertise. This can be done by:

• Sharing an update about ourselves in LinkedIn and Facebook
• Sending a well-crafted email (a generic version of the cover letter) with resume attached letting people know of our availability and asking if they, or someone they know, could contact us if they have a need for our skills.

This supports 2 objectives:

1. Someone in our inner-circle may actually need, or know someone who needs, our services.
2. Our inner-circle will provide feedback in the form of comments, questions or ideas which can help to hone our “package.” In fact, it is helpful to request such feedback when sharing our package with our inner-circle.

Once we’ve done the above we can feel confident that we are prepared to begin sharing our package with others we may not yet know, as we have taken steps to dramatically improve the first impression we will make on them.

In a subsequent post I’ll share additional strategies a newly degreed job-seeker can take to stand above the crowd and hopefully shorten the timeframe to landing that first “professional” job.

All the best!

Click here for the next article in this series.