Phil's Career Blog

As I’m sure the whole world knows by this time, Steve Jobs lost his battle with cancer this week. In reading through retrospectives and reflections, I saw this quote of his from his much discussed Stanford commencement address in 2005. I wanted to share it because I completely agree and think too few people follow it.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be  truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do  great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.  Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.  And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years  roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

Too true. Be at peace.

This is post 4 of 4 on student job searches. You can see the earlier posts here:

Student Job Searches / Amy Achiever’s Traditional Search / Steve Striver’s Traditional Search

Holy (obnoxiously) long post Phil! This has been a tortured delivery for me. Off-road searches are so much more divergent than traditional ones. That’s also why they can be more exciting if that’s where your interests lay. Let’s walk Bridget Blazer (BB) through the process of identifying an exciting opportunity somewhere well off the beaten path.

A brief reminder of my definition of “off-road”; I use the term to describe less conventional searches. Here there is less of (or no) “blazed trail”. The path is usually much less clear, there aren’t easy comparisons and few alumni mentors or career center references to call on. Think of a Traditional search as really mining everything “inside the box” of your program and an Off-road search as figuring out what’s “outside the box” that might be appealing. You have to engage in some significantly different activities than traditional position searchers. Remember the definition is relative to your situation. So liberal arts major getting a “traditional” business job could be off-road.

So off-road we go… Let’s walk Bridget Blazer through a representative search. Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing the series on student searches. This week we’ll talk about Steve Striver, a non-template candidate seeking a traditional position. See my prior search posts for more details: Student Search series: Student Job Searches / Amy Achiever’s Traditional Search / Steve Striver’s Traditional Search / Bridget Blazer’s Off-road Search

Profile: Steve is a “non-template” candidate with a mix of characteristics that make him “imperfect” on paper. It could an “ok” (but not stellar) GPA, a perceived “fluffy” major, unconventional work experience, being a different age than target etc. The more accumulated discontinuities and/or the worse the job market, the tougher the road. We’re not talking about an unemployable candidate. Simply someone with enough question marks in recruiters’ minds that they’d prefer a template candidate.

For sake of this case, let’s call Steve 34 with a liberal arts degree and a non-profit professional background who became enamored with either Finance or a Finance-oriented consulting tracks. His UG GPA was 3.4 as an English major, OK but not great in a field considered “soft” by recruiters in his chosen field. In his favor,  he had outstanding leadership experiences with challenging student organizations and scored a very high 750 GMAT (standardized graduate b-school admissions test) result entering school. Read the rest of this entry »

Holy unplanned hiatus! Summer and family took its enjoyable toll, but I’m back and writing for Fall.

As promised, I’ve built a few composite examples of student job searchers to share some good (and bad) practices for several of the scenarios laid out in my last post. I’m assuming an “average” job market and use an MBA/b-school context. For an undergrad in each profile, simply take out years of work experience and substitute comparable internships.

I’ll start with “traditional search” template candidate Amy Achiever  this time and cover Steve Striver and “off-road” candidate profiles in future posts.

Traditional Search / Template Candidate: Amy Achiever

Profile: Amy is 28. Her 3.95 GPA at an elite university, coupled with 4 years in Finance at a well respected firm makes her a sought after candidate. She’s great with numbers and has great “presence” (a combination of personality and communication skills). She’s also financially flexible as she pursues offers because of her scholarship. Read the rest of this entry »

I talk with students almost every day about their career goals and job searches. One of the main points I make is to be honest with yourself about what you really want and what you can really get. I see too many people squander opportunities because they either aren’t looking hard enough and/or they keep barking up the wrong tree for far too long.

So, build a plan and work it hard!

This will be another “get real” post. (Which is different from “don’t dream” or “don’t reach”). We’ll walk through some high level considerations, lay out a framework for thinking through a game plan in this post and then walk through a few case studies in a my next post.

The Specific Challenges for Students

Everyone looking for work and seeking a career faces similar issues, but the context in school is challenging in several specific ways (particularly in b-school). Read the rest of this entry »

We all need a little help and now I’m asking for yours. My goal for a while has been to complete a book on holistic career management. I feel strongly about the subject and do a lot of coaching. This blog is in part an effort to get more disciplined about getting ideas out of my head and into print.

Well, I’ve been blogging for awhile now and that’s been great. But it’s also given me an excuse to put off working on the actual book. I can always tell my self, “well you may not have an outline yet, or have started pulling anything together, but heck – you’ve written >70,000 words on the blog”. (I have by the way).

Now is the summer to get serious and I’m going to be asking for some help along the way as I need some crowd-sourced inspiration and wisdom. The goal is to get to a “working first draft” by September 6th (when school starts).

I’ll be posting occasional updates on my progress – probably with some material for feedback. I’ll need both support and friendly abuse based on my progress (or lack of).

Thanks for your support and encouragement!

Request 1 – Tell me what you are looking for in a book about career. What haven’t you gotten from existing materials and sources?

It frustrates me how much opportunity is lost in failing to really understand what’s being said.  Failing to listen actively and/or clearly message about yourself can leave opportunities on the table. It’s largely because people focus on labels and don’t always listen carefully or probe to understand the meaning of what’s being said.

Look at the bottles to the right. Are you sure you know what’s in them? Probably wine (but maybe not). But even if it’s wine, what kind? From where? You get the idea.

This phenomenon works in two directions, both you misreading and others misunderstanding you. I’m focusing on a job/career search context to make the point, but it happens all over. Read the rest of this entry »

I really liked this essay from Minneapolis author Eric Hanson that appeared in today’s StarTribune.  He talks about the importance and significance of thinking big when you’re young.

At 21 we possess intelligence and ignorance in equal portions. Our brains are freshly crammed with knowledge, but knowledge of what?

When we are 21 we have everything and have earned nothing. We know everything except what we should do. We have committed our small crimes and are still forgiven for our mistakes. It is all up in the air.

As we approach graduation time, I’m surrounded by people coming to the end of their “formal” education who aren’t always so sure of what comes next. I always encourage them to hang onto dreams and hopes and not just “settle” for what they can get. If you want something badly enough and work at it, you can make it work over time.

So as Hanson says in his title, “Don’t just sit there. Do something!”

Summer manager to you: “IT went OK and we like you personally, but…”

You don’t want to hear a “but” when you’re spending more than $100K all-in on your degree. You came back to pursue your dream and got the perfect internship for summer. Now it’s not working out according to plan.

A surprising number of candidates lose focus during the 10-12 weeks of their final internship. There are social events, networking interviews to set up and all sorts of things to explore.  

Get the offer!

The reality for b-school students is that there is really only one over-arching goal for your summer internship. Get the full time offer!

I was a liberal arts major. I want to be dreamy and philosophical about the importance of learning for learning’s sake. (And I do think it’s important.)

But here’s the reality; the first question recruiters will ask you next fall is “do you have an offer from your summer?” If you answer “yes”, you immediately move on to more meaningful discussion with the positive halo effect of them knowing you’re in play and on the board with an offer. Read the rest of this entry »