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Career

Building Your Network During College

March 13, 2009

If you think you don’t know how to network, just take out your cellphone and go to your contacts. You are already networking. Believe it or not, but some students have no idea what networking is or why it is important. In a business sense, networking is like your yellow pages or directory. Whether you need someone who can design you a website or help you get that foot in the door at a job opening, networking is a powerful tool.

I remember reading that power can be judged by the influence of one’s network. If that is the case, then it is imperative that individuals begin working on building up their network as early as possible. One of the first places that you can start building solid relationships is during college. Everyday you meet new people and have plenty of opportunities to find groups and meetings that you can network at. For myself, I made it a point to try and meet new people from different majors who I could keep in touch with after college. The advantage of this is that if I ever needed some assistance with something out of my scope, I could always just dial up a friend and ask them. Even better, I could refer my own clients to others that I trust and have built a good relationship with.

While networking can be thought of as a business tool, it can also be a social tool as well. For example, if you see a girl you are interested in, it is always easier to have your friend who knows her, introduce you to her. As a college student, networking is mainly a social aspect. If you want to look at it in a business sense, college students network with each other so that they can exchange homework or to study for tests. Networking can be broken down into two parts: the social part and the business part. The two main questions that you can categorize your contacts are “how do you know them” and “what do they do.” The first, “how do you know them,” can be thought of as the social aspect of networking. Are they friends from school or a club? Where did you meet them? The social aspect of networking is all about getting to know them. The business part or what I call the “what do they do” aspect is all about knowing how you can help each other out. Several of my friends work in the financial market and I frequently ask them about how the market is doing and what they forecast. In return I help them with some social marketing ideas and also have advised them on how they can use the social media platforms like a blog to brand themselves.

If you are still in college or just about to graduate here are some tips and ways you can start building your network:
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Career

Being A Leader As An Entrepreneur

March 9, 2009

Look in the mirror and what do you see? Do you see a leader or do you see a follower? This is the question that I have been asking college students across the country from some of the best schools in the nation for our internship program. With polished resumes and sometimes rehearsed responses, many interviewees were actually taken a back when I asked them this question. While some may expect the normal response to be a simple ‘Follower’ or ‘Leader,’ I want to know why.

Part of what we are looking for in candidates for our Campus Entrepreneur Internship Program are individuals who have not only an entrepreneurial edge to them, but also have a leadership quality to them. From the candidates point of view, they may want to ask me why it is important to be leader when it is only an internship. The easiest for way for me to explain it is because part of being an entrepreneur and starting your own business is being able to lead others.

So what separates the leader from the follower? From my own experiences, I have noticed that all great leaders have great confidence in themselves and also their team. An example I often use to explain the difference between a leader and a follower is to look at sports. Who are the superstars, and who are the role-players. It is easy to replace a role-player, but it is difficult to replace a superstar. Superstars excel above the rest, and lead by example. As an entrepreneur, you take on many different roles. From accounting to marketing, entrepreneurs must be confident in their capabilities and be able to pick up any task and be ready to lead others who are unsure how to approach a situation. As a entrepreneur, you must not wait for people to teach you how to do something but rather you must want to learn it yourself.

Speaking with one of the interviewees about whether they were a follower or a leader, they responded that they see themselves as a more of a follower because they like to sit back and learn from people who have more experience. While there is nothing wrong with the response, I feel that to be a great entrepreuneur, you must want to be more than just someone who takes orders from others. You must have the desire and passion to one day be able to make important decisions and to have people come to you when they need advice. Part of what this internship program is about, is taking someone who see’s themselves as being the leader ‘type’ and giving them the tools to be one.
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Career, College

Why You Should Do An Internship

March 2, 2009

Recently, a friend of mine who is a senior in college told me of the situation they are in. With just a couple months remaining before they graduate, they are scrambling to find a job. After spending months sending out resumes and going to career fairs, they have gotten very few interviews and no job offers. My friend, like so many others who are soon to graduate are worried that after 4 years of sleepless nights studying and hours thinking if they were in the right major, that it may all have been for nothing. While it is an exaggeration to say that it has been for nothing, to some that is what it feels like. The best way to describe this could be through an analogy. Imagine you are training to be a pilot. After four years of training and hard work, imagine now that airplanes have become obsolete. Would it not feel like you had spent all that time for nothing? This is the same kind of feeling that some of my friends have expressed.

For those of you that are in the situation where you are graduating soon and are unable to find a job, the question that you must think about now is “What will I do next?” My advice is to find an internship. Speaking to a friend of mine who works at a career center, they told me that one of the common reasons that students don’t apply for internships is that they assume that internship’s are a waste of time and that it is just ‘grunt’ work with no pay. While this may be true in some situations, it is not entirely correct.

The main difference between internship positions and full-time/part-time job positions is that internship programs generally don’t pay their participants. Instead, interns are usually offered school credit. In some situations, interns actually get paid for their work. Now that I said that, I must recommend that to anyone who is looking for a job just to pay the bills and to strictly make money, not to take an internship.

Internship programs are offered as a learning experience for individuals who are interested in learning more about a career path they are interested in. This is one of the best parts of an internship. Unlike jobs where you are expected to have a somewhat firm understanding of the work, internship programs teach you the in’s and outs of the job. If you are a college student, internships are a great opportunity because of the flexibility that many companies offer. Companies know that most interns are balancing work and school, so they always want to make sure that school comes first. When you have a job, they worry only about your performance in the work place, not how you did on your chemistry test.

For college students, one of the biggest issues when applying for a job is the lack of experience that they have. There are two ways to address this. The first is to identify this early on while you are in college. As a freshman all the way through your junior year of college you should be attacking every internship opportunity that comes your way so that you develop the skills and experience for when you are going for that full time job offer. If you are already a senior in college and realize that you don’t have the experience then the best strategy that you can do is to jump into an internship right now. With the economy not helping the job hunt, college graduates with no experience are facing an uphill battle. With companies looking to save money, many are more than willing to give students a chance to earn some experience in exchange for course credit. In some situations, some companies don’t even require students to get course credit for their internship.

The biggest advantage I think that students can get from doing an internship is getting their foot in the door with an organization they are interested in getting a full time job offer with. For interns that are dedicated and work hard, they are sometimes rewarded with a full time job offer at the end of the program. I myself was able to get a full time offer from Future Delivery upon completion of their internship program and am currently working with them to promote and build fun and creative tools for students and young professionals.

For any student or young professional that is looking to get into an internship program here are some tips and advice that I learned during my internship program:

  • Email Etiquette


    • One of the key things that students forget when writing to recruiters and employers is that they are not your friend. Using instant messaging lingo like “lol” and “thx” are not acceptable. Remember that everything from how you address others to how you structure your emails reflects what kind of applicant you are.


  • Cater Your Resume


    • A common mistake that most students make when applying to an internship is that they send the same resume that they would send to a full-time job position. While this is okay, it is helpful to cater a resume to the learning aspect of an internship and also to list relevant experience or coursework that relates to the internship.


  • Time Management


    • As mentioned earlier, internship programs are very flexible and understand that you are still in school. Still, this doesn’t mean that you don’t have to go to meetings because you would rather go to a party. Internship programs want to choose candidates that want to learn and be there, not students that want just want to get credit for it. Remember that just like a full-time job, companies will cut you from their internship program at anytime.


  • How To Find An Internship Position


    • Many schools have their own job listing database that employers will list their internship programs on. I highly suggest that you start your job search here. This is the main hub that companies will list their programs on because students are their main target for internship programs. Another tip I would suggest is that even though a company doesn’t have an internship position posted online, it never hurts to call their human resources and ask them if they have an opportunities for students. It is hard to turn down a students desire to learn.

Using an analogy one more time, an internship program can be thought of as training wheels for your career. Given the option of jumping on a bicycle with no prior training or the option of jumping on a bicycle with training wheels, which would you choose? I’d take training wheels any day.

Career, Marketing, Social Media

Understanding Your Personal Brand

February 21, 2009

One of the most common questions asked in interviews is: “Tell me about yourself.” While many may believe that this question is meant to tell your interviewer general information about yourself, the interviewee’s response can be a make or break in the interviewers mind.

In evaluating a candidates response, among the criteria that interviewers evaluate are a candidates composure, their readiness, and above all their understanding of themselves. To someone who has never met you, when they ask you to tell them about yourself they are not asking you what classes you are studying or what your favorite color is, but rather they want to walk away knowing what kind of person you are. If you tell your interviewer that you are studying history, they want to know why you are studying it. Is it because you are passionate about it or because you didn’t know what else to study? Remember that it is not only your initial response to a question, but it is also how you follow up your response.

As mentioned, it is important to an interviewer how well you understand yourself and if you can express it to others. While it may seem like an easy question to answer then why do so many people have trouble answering it? Everyone can say general information about themselves but it takes more. This is where your personal brand comes into play.

When people think of Pepsi, they think of the red, white and blue logo and the drinks they produce . When people think of the Yankees, people think about their commitment to winning as evident by their expensive spending sprees. Just like with the examples of Pepsi and the Yankees, candidates need to build their personal brand to the point that when people think of them in a career sense, candidates can be associated with certain qualities or as a brand.

One of the best ways to start building your personal brand is to start with a blog. While some may think that a blog is supposed to be private and to be shared with only your very close friends, being comfortable with expressing your thoughts and views is what can make your blog a powerful tool in branding yourself. With a blog you will be able to network with others and let others know who you are and what you do. By finding your ‘niche’ through your blog you can use it as reference to employers and interviewers as proof of your knowledge of whatever career path it may be.

So when is the best time to start?

As soon as possible. Personal branding is not a one day project. It takes time to build the foundation of your personal brand. After successfully building up your personal brand or foundation, you can move on to networking with other professionals and peers through the various social networks available. For the college student getting ready to start recruiting for a job, you may have already started building your personal brand without even knowing it. Websites like Twitter and Facebook are great ways to network with others and build solid relationships. By networking with others you are not only giving yourself the chance to get your name out there but also you are able to get great advice and insight from other professionals.

After building up one’s personal brand, an individual should no longer be unsure of how to answer the question “tell me about yourself.” So what are you waiting for? Get out there and make a name for yourself!