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After I got my first speeding ticket ever in my life because I was unaware of being behind a speeding car (the cop stopped both cars), I found myself in the perfect mood to write something I am angry about. Apparently a person has more guts when his head is hot.
After thinking about what is grossly upsetting in society and has a large impact on peoples’ lives, I was reminded about the incompetencies of many university Career Centers that my friends and I have experienced.
<h3> University Career Centers hate it when others want learn about their performances </h3>
To start my story, I’ll begin with the study my company Future Delivery, which helps Gen-Ys find great careers, tried to do on Career Centers earlier 2008. In hopes that Career Centers would work with us and use our free tools to help students more efficiently, we contacted over 50 top university career centers, asking them if we could do a study on how well they help their students and potentially creating a ranking for them. Most of them ignored us, half a dozen of them politely rejected, one school responded with enthusiasm (will praise later), and some responded in a hostile manner.
While we were still contacting the career centers, we actually got a very upsetting call from the UCLA Career Center(sadly my Alma Mater). Yes, I’m calling you out UCLA, because I want you to be better. Instead of just demanding me to take this off, please improve your ways first. UCLA told us that they heard about what we are trying to do, and they are very angry. They said they were at a Pac-10 Career Center Conference (didn’t know those existed) and Future Delivery was brought up. All the schools were very upset about our “study” and said they would not let us do this.
So we told the UCLA Career Center that we just wanted to see how they are helping their students, and also will also talk to university students to see if they feel helped by the career center. We thought the career center might as well talk to us too and so they can promote all the positive things they do.
UCLA not only refused, they prohibited us from talking to the student body about it, claiming that “I don’t think what the students say about the Career Center is an accurate measurement of how we help the students.” I thought that was pretty ridiculous. What else is a good measurement? How much funding they get a year?
<!–more–><h3> Universities are like subsidized businesses </h3>
The thing about public schools, is that its like a subsidized business: it can afford to be inefficient. If companies are not doing things efficiently, they die. Public agencies usually have a budget no matter how well they do, and the employees don’t get rewarded based on their performance. Most schools (including private ones) have extremely inefficient administration services that send you from one window to another.
So what’s the best-run division in UCLA? Parking Enforcement. The revenue department is obviously more important than the customer service department. 30 seconds at the wrong spot and there’s your one way ticket to misery. If the UCLA Parking Enforcement team worked for Future Delivery, I’m sure the world would already know about <a href = “http://viralogy.com”_blank” > Viralogy </a> even before we launch.
<h3> Career Centers try to hinder school organizations that help the student body with career development </h3>
So that experience also brought back some memories while I co-founded Bruin Consulting at UCLA. During that time, top consulting firms like Mckinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Booz Allen Hamilton did not really recruit UCLA students because the students were so unprepared in the field of consulting. Our goal was to get these companies back to UCLA, and prepare the students so well that whenever they do come, they are thoroughly impressed by the student body. We were very successful and Bruin Consulting remains one of the premiere business organizations on campus.
However, while we were helping UCLA students get prepared for Case Interviews and learn about various companies, the UCLA Center approached us and said that we needed to stop doing what we were doing because we were growing too fast. They pretty much said that if companies could do everything so much more efficiently through Bruin Consulting, they would stop sponsoring the Career Center.
Wait….what? I thought the Career Center was there to make sure students get good jobs, and would be happy that we helped them cover a part of the 40,000 student body. OK, fine, if you wanted to monopolize this VERY important service, lets see how you do. Among the 40,000 student body, if I remember correctly, the career center gives out mock interviews to 30 students a quarter. Hmmm, my college education has taught me that this is not a very high ratio.
What about the resume help? All my peers said they just said your resume is fine even though it was horrible. They let go of 4-page resumes, even though recruiters have specifically said, “you can put anything you want on your resume, as long as it is one-page long.”
Yes, their Bruinview service is actually pretty good, but that’s because companies respect the UCLA name and constantly list their jobs there themselves.
So yea, I understand you don’t have the budget or resources to cover such a large student body. But instead of endorsing student organizations that do your job for you for free, why spend that energy to threaten them? That’s pretty disgusting to me.
<h3> Companies dislike working with Career Centers and claim they are non-responsive, while school budget-makers hear great things about the Career Centers.</h3>
I have a friend who works as a recruiter at a reputable engineering firm, and he told me that he is proposing to cut budgets for various university career centers because they were “uncooperative, hard to work with and non-responsive.” I hate to admit, but he said that the USC Career Center was friendly and worked hard to make the connection between the company and motivated students easier and better.
What’s interesting is that I have a friend who works for the University of California Regents (like the Board of Directors of all the UC schools), and when I pointed this out to him, he said, “Hmmm, that’s interesting, because the UCLA Career Center has won many awards and is known for its programs.” There clearly lies a misalignment between the high-level decision/budget makers and the end-users who use the service. That’s why one of the Good to Great CEOs, when newly appointed the job, spent 50% of his time with the end-user, observing how they use the products and the problems they face.
<h3> Extremely impressed with the Notre Dame Career Center</h3>
One of the university career centers that I was highly impressed with was Notre Dame. When we contacted them about our study on career centers, they responded with feverish enthusiasm. They told us that we could interview every one of their career counselors, as they are all completely passionate about helping their students. We could examine how they use new tools and technology to make the connections between students and companies easier. Finally, they said they were frustrated how their hard work never affected the university rankings, and would welcome a ranking system for the career centers. Even though we were never able to do the real study because there were so few schools that cooperated, I ended up with the utmost respect for the Notre Dame Career Center. They made me want to be a Notre Dame student.
<h3> Career Centers should be the first to tackle one of the largest problems in society </h3>
In FD, we believe that too many young people don’t know what they want to do, and too many older people hate their jobs. We believe its because people don’t have enough information and opportunities when they were in college and started off in a career they do not care about. The Career Center is the first to have this great opportunity to solve this enormous problem. Take advantage of it! Even though I mostly wrote about the UCLA Career Center, every person I talked to also revealed similar experiences with their own career centers, so its a universal problem that all career centers need to think about.
What does everyone else think about your career centers while you were in school? Are they helpful? Do they care about their students? I would love to know if you guys have the same experience, or actually have great career centers that helped you get to where you are today. That way I can recommend them to high-school kids!
A resume is essential in getting a great job, but has been neglected by many. Your resume is the piece of document that creates a chance for recruiters to consider you as an employee. It doesn’t matter how amazing you are at interviewing or how brilliant you are for the job, without a good resume, you have nothing. I have
reviewed and edited over a thousand resumes, and most resumes are nowhere near their full capacities.
In fact, most resumes that I have seen are only about 10-15% of their actual capacity. People fail to
recognize that resume building is a craft. A resume is a one?page representation that lets the company
know that, given your GPA and experiences, can you:
1. Create unique value for the company 2. Fit within the company culture
Take your resume seriously
A resume is like a brochure for yourself. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and months
of expert work to finalize on a brochure that can represent the company. The average student only
spends a couple hours piecing vague descriptions together without considering what effects it will have
on their recruiting process. Your one page resume is extremely valuable real estate, and everything you
put on it must have a purpose. If a sentence does not create value in the recruiter’s mind, you should
take it out; if a word does not create value, you should take it out. With a well?optimized resume, you
would be able to get interviews even with a less?than?competitive GPA.
Few seconds to establish a connection
One thing to note is that most recruiters only spend around 10-25 seconds on each resume. Therefore,
your resume must not only have good information, it must ”feel” impressive. Within those few seconds,
you need to already have made a connection with the recruiter. Having a high GPA is obviously the
fastest way to do that, but I have seen resumes with extremely high GPAs get rejected simply because it
was not put together in a way that makes the applicant seem valuable.
Build a holistic image of yourself
Recruiters are trying to figure out if you are a good person to be on their team. As a result, your resume
must reflect you as a person, not just a brain. You must show that you are a well rounded, qualified
individual as an employee, coworker, potential leader, and someone to hang out with. A very important
concept to pay attention to is Diminishing Marginal Image, which means that if seven lines on your
resume say you are good finance person, the eighth line that says you are a good finance person would
mean little in the mind of the recruiter. Instead, say that you are a team player, an organized person, or
did something creative, even though your next experience might still be dealing with finance.
The Ins and Outs from an experience
When you are building your resume, keep in mind that your goal is not to say that, ”I am impressive
because I had so-and-so experiences.” Your goal is to say that, ”I am impressive because WHILE I had
these experiences, I did so-and-so things that others would not have done.” In essence, ten other people could have the same position in the same company, but your resume stands out because you went
above and beyond your daily duties and actually accomplished great things. This brings us to the topic of
Ins and Outs. Ins are what you absorbed through an experience, such as the financial skills and the
software used. Outs are what you did that created value in that organization. Companies are more
interested in Outs because it clearly reflects you as an individual, instead of simply the job title of that
experience. Ins are often reflected within your position already, such as ”treasurer,” ”web development
analyst,” but it is your Outs that ultimately define you as a person.
Four Phases of optimizing your resume
Optimizing your resume could be a year-long process. Some people have spent hours every week for six
months, and still only reach around 55% of its capacity. This is mostly because they do not have a
systematic approach in improving the resume, and as a result work on the wrong things. If a student
does not build her resume correctly from the beginning, she could spend months on it, and still need to
start from scratch to obtain all the interviews she deserves. In order to truly optimize one’s resume, it
needs to go through four phases.
Phase I: Formatting
Remember, a recruiter only takes 10-25 seconds on each resume. In those precious seconds, your
formatting is extremely important in giving them the right ”feel” of your resume. Bullet points are the
most efficient way to present what you have done in each experience. You should allow enough space
for each bullet point line in order to put in as much information as you can. Make sure that you do not
waste any space, and everything is consistently formatted. Inconsistencies in your resume could
instantly ruin your chances with your dream job. You can easily find sample resumes and templates
online, so make sure that these key points differentiate you from others.
Phase II: Strategy
Strategy is one of the most ignored parts in resume building, which is costly for students. Most people
just think about what they did in each experience, list them out, and move on. To optimize your resume,
you must first come up with a list of the skills and traits the company is looking for. Then you must list all
the Ins and Outs from your experiences that show that you have these characteristics. Finally, you
should strategically plan out which experiences will convey which characteristics. This is where you
should apply Diminishing Marginal Image. You must decide which experiences are the best at conveying
which qualities, and make sure they are in the order that builds value in the recruiter’s mind.
Phase III: Wording
Wording in a resume is the most technical part of a resume, and is what most resume building sites
cover. However, they usually do not cover enough. They will tell you to use action verbs and focus on
results, as well as use quantitative examples. I want to add that for each bullet point, there are four
things you can include: what it is, method, result and impact. Most people rush to write about what they
did at their job, but in actuality, that is the least important thing to list on your resume. This is the order
of importance:
1. Result
2. Method
3. Impact
4. What it is
If you said you ”doubled company revenues by spearheading an innovative marketing campaign and changing the distribution channel,” (result, and then impact) the
interviewer will ask you what position you had in the company and then you can tell them what your
responsibilities were. Also, try to word each bullet-point in a way that they all end at the end of that line. That way you will form organized ”rectangles” in each experience.
Phase IV: Optimization
This is where you refine your resume so everything becomes a holistic image of who you are. At this
point, you will notice you don’t need to change many things, but tweaking a word here and there,
rewording some of the sentences, and rearranging some of the bullet-points. These tweaks are also
often company-specific, as every firm looks for different things from each applicant. If you get to Phase
IV, you should already have a resume that is over 80% capacity, and the rest fine tuning specifically to
meet the company’s needs.
Creating a resume is a journey. You will learn more about yourself, what you have done, the values you
have created, and will also help you do better in an interview due to stronger stories. You already spend
so much money and time in college just to get a good career. Why get lazy when it comes to actually
applying for one?
I just read a blog post by Mark entitled How Much of Yourself Should You Really Be? Mark seems like a great guy, but I must completely disagree with all the points and statements that he makes on his blog post.
I have so many friends right now that are stuck in a job that they hate. Do you know what the number one culprit of this is? The reason they are stuck in this position is because they were not true to themselves. Before you go off and immerse yourself in the interview hunt, take a long moment to reflect upon yourself and find out what it is that you truly love to do. It is very cliche to say (Yu-kai know I hate the word), but find out what you are passionate about.
The interview is not only a place to show off your best qualities, but it is also the place to find out if you really want to work for this company. Mark goes a little extreme and says to talk about yourself positively “even [at] the cost of slight dishonesty.” Now, I don’t have to be a complete saint to tell you that there is something fundamentally wrong about lying during an interview setting about your skills and qualities. I can understand if you advise someone to exaggerate your stories and interview answers, but to be dishonest is just plain wrong.
For those of you who will soon be interviewing next Fall for a full-time offer or if you’re interviewing for job positions right now, do what the cliche tells you to do and just be yourself. I have been interviewing students night and day for my marketing team position, and the people who stand out the most are the students who drop their guard, are honest with me when they don’t know something, and show eagerness and a passion for the job position.
A few questions will arise from this, and I will do my best to answer them:
What if all I did at my previous job experience is grunt work? Shouldn’t I exaggerate a lot and say how I led the project, met with clients, and raised revenues for the company?
If your previous work experience was all grunt work, then it shows that you are able to pay your dues and do whatever it takes to get the job done. If all you did was file papers, then demonstrate how you were the greatest paper filer in all of the world. If your organized filings helped secure a multi-million dollar client, then you can definitely explain how your efforts greatly contributed to the business development. However, never completely lie about your skillsets or make up things about your position.
I just really want a job. Shouldn’t I do whatever it takes to secure myself some kind of revenue?
It is difficult to help students get a job when they have no experience, no leadership positions, and a low GPA. I will provide you with as much advise and guidance as possible, but in the end, you just don’t deserve to get a prestige job if you haven’t worked hard for it. If you have no experience, then you need to find a company that will give you low pay but A LOT of hands on experience. Do not just add things to your resume and lie during your interview. If you haven’t worked hard for it and cannot be honest with yourself and the interviewer, then you do not deserve the job position. Also, you will not last in the company because if you’re not qualified for it, they will eventually figure it out sooner or later
I could go on and on about things people could bring up to argue against being yourself; however, I would love to hear back from you.
In the end, being honest with yourself and others is always the best policy. This applies to everything including jobs, relationships, school, friends, and life.
After editing over a hundred resumes, I realized that most people’s resume is only at around 10-15% capacity. I have seen people who have been working on their resumes for hours every week for 6 months, and it barely reaches 50% capacity. As a result, FD created a system and philosophy of Resume Optimization. The resume is very important because it is your ticket to be even considered by a company. It doesn’t matter how strong your skills are, if you cannot sell yourself through your “brochure,” you won’t get inquiries, and you will never get the job.
Building your Resume is a Craft
The Resume is a craft in which, given your GPA and experiences, how do you best express to recruiters that you can create unique value for the company and that you are a very likable person, all within one page. Everything you put in must create unique value. If a sentence does not create unique value, take it out. If a word does not create unique value, take it out.
Basic Principals
2 Things Recruiters Look For:
a) Can you create unique value for the company?
Your resume must show that you can create unique value for the company. Why should they hire you, as opposed to the numerous other applicants? What value do you bring to the company that no one else can?
b) Are you likable?
Even if you were the most brilliant person in the world and the most qualified person for the job, if whenever people see your face they get angry, you won’t get a job offer. Some individuals can create a lot of value for a company him/herself, but lowers the ability to create value for everyone else, and companies don’t want these people. Especially at entry levels, companies hire for culture and attitude more than brilliance.
ALWAYS REMEMBER THESE 2 THINGS DURING INFO SESSIONS, INTERVIEWS, AND EVERYTHING ELSE DURING RECRUITING.
Valuable Real Estate: You are one page
Resumes must be succinct and effective, and should be limited to one page. Besides good networking(which you should do), you are just a name to the recruiters, and you have one page to communicate to them that you have what they want. Every section, sentence, and even every word must create unique value. If it does not, you should remove it.
20 Seconds to Establish a Connection
Depending on company and industry, a recruiter will only spend about 15-25 seconds to view your resume, if not less. It is important to make it “feel” good and impressive. As a result, you want to put your most impressive achievements first instead of trying to explain the mundane tasks you did for each experience.
Building an Image Through the Resume
Here’s what many recruiters look for in the resume:
The applicant
(1) can lead
(2) can work in a team
(3) can think analytically
(4) can come up with innovation solutions
(5) is organized
(6) can communicate with clients
(7) is good at some technical skill
(8) assists others
(9) possesses strong academic abilities
(10) tries to create the most value
(11) knows how to do research.
Apply Diminishing Marginal Image and try to communicate as many of these through bullet points.
Diminishing Marginal Image
If all your experiences in your resume are about being a great leader, the point that says you are a great leader will mean very little. It will not create new value in the recruiter’s mind compared to the first. Rather, you should put that you did other things, like managed finances, even though you were the leader in that experience too.
The Ins and Outs within an Experience
When you have an experience, companies look for your “Ins” and “Outs.” Ins are the lessons and functions you have learned from the job, whereas Outs are the unique differences you made for that company. Ins are usually summed up by your position title, so in your bullet-points it is more essential to put down your Outs. You are not trying to say, “I am impressive because I had these positions,” but rather “I am impressive because WHILE I had these positions, I did this this and that, which no one else who has the same position would have done.”
At least one undergraduate student pulls me aside at each of our events and asks me this question. Each one has a sad but eager look on their face, hoping to hear me say that they are not defeated and that they have a fighting chance.
If you are a 1st or 2nd year, RAISE YOUR GPA! You have plenty of time to take quarters full of units where you’ll be able to raise it in time for recruitment.
If you are a 3rd or 4th year in the heart of recruitment, GPA isn’t everything. You will need to tailor your resume to show how you excel in other areas of your life. Each bullet point on your resume should show either how you can bring value to the company or how you can fit perfectly with their culture.
I know, I know…the above advice is very general: 1) Raise your GPA or do extra-curricular activities; 2) Join clubs, get on board, and get yourself into leadership positions. So what do you do when you have a low GPA and you have no leadership experience?
1. Type a skills set resume
Write up a resume that shows you are valuable through special skills that you possess. You do not have experience so you cannot write an experience resume. For example, if you’re amazing at programming, you can add “programming and coding” as a skill-set. Your bullet points would include: your ability to quickly and efficiently learn new languages, your self-motivation to teach yourself languages that are not taught in your school, your creativity and self-starter mentality to create programs that solve everyday problems.
2. Include life experiences
Include any life experiences on your resume that make you unique. For example, you can include that you have “traveled to 15 different countries” in your resume. Your bullet points would include: your multi-cultural background that has given you the ability to open up and accept everyone for who they are and relate to any person, you ability to think outside of the box because you have experienced and learned from so many different types of cultures, your ability to learn languages easily and efficiently which you can carry over to the company by learning anything they throw your way quickly.
3. Network like crazy!
You cannot get into your company based on your qualifications and experience; however, you CAN get an offer based on your personality and your likeability. Go to every info session, every career fair, and meet every single associate, vice president, and even receptionist of the company you want to work for. Invite them to coffee, lunch, or to a phone meeting in order to show them how you fit perfectly into their company culture. If you get them to like you, they will fight for you come decision time. You can leverage the power of your network to achieve your dream job.
Don’t let a horrible GPA get you down. Life is an attitude, and if you believe that you deserve the job, you will get the job. You just need to work THAT much harder than everyone else.
I’m sure you all know by now about the Financial Crisis that’s been going on lately. But why did it happen? What does it mean to us as a country? Before anything, lets have a quick summary of what’s going on (I keep it updated as the days go by):
In a very short amount of time JP Morgan took over Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac were nationalized, Lehman Brothers filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch, and both AIG and WaMu are in serious trouble. The Government is now putting in $85 Billion to own 79.9% of AIG, in hopes to make an eventual liquidation event less dramatic. JP Morgan is looking to buy out WaMu too. Out of the big 5 investment broker-dealers, only Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are relatively out of the mess, but still have reported huge losses this year.
Lehman’s bankruptcy would be the largest failure of an investment bank since Drexel Burnham Lambert collapsed amid fraud allegations 18 years earlier. AIG has $1.1 trillion in assets and 74 million clients in 130 countries. If it falls apart, the world will definitely fall into some financial chaos (come Fight Club?).
So why is this happening? It’s primarily because of the nature of our economy. The United States economy is run on two things: Credit and Confidence. People lend money, live above their means, and look to pay it all back with their next 30 years of steady income. That’s why credit card companies are making big bucks here in the US, but less so in other nations. Also, the value of certain entities is not based on how much value it can PRODUCE, but more on how much value it is TO OTHERS. That instantly creates a “virtual economy” : something that works because everyone imagines it to work. In essence, money is a virtual good too. It is only worth something because everyone agrees that it does. A farm is a real good, and it produces real value that keeps people alive. However, people start to agree that a virtual good is worth many times that farm, and as long as you can convince the next person that this virtual good is EVEN more times that farm, you are fine. That’s why when people lose confidence in their currency, hyperinflation like what happened to Germany takes over, and the virtual goods on peoples’ hands become 1/10 of what they were worth yesterday, and everyone comes back to recognize the value of the farm. Unfortunately, it is not the farm owners who become millionaires, but the virtual goods people who go broke.
So how does this Credit - Confidence model lead to what is happening today? Early on, during the real estate inflation, Confidence was high, and a lot of bad loans (Credit) were thrown out there. Later on, people couldn’t pay up with their mortgage loans, and the Subprime Mortgage happened. This is the part where Credit goes bad. The economy tanked, and mortgage companies like Countrywide lost a lot of money. Confidence at this point is not looking stellar.
During this time of Credit gone bad, the 30x leverage that Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers had (for every $1 of asset, they had $30 of debt) wasn’t helping either. Bear Stearns fell apart when Confidence broke and all the entities were trying to withdraw money from it, causing it to be bought by JP Morgan. Lehman continued to suffer from heavy losses based on the bad Credit with the “Subprimates.” It was only holding on by Confidence too. Late August (and this is of course 2008), state-controlled Korea Development Bank engaged in talks about buying 25% of Lehman for $6B. However, it was reported that the Korean bank was “facing difficulties pleasing regulators and attracting partners for the deal,” and they withdrew from it. At this point, Lehman lost its last currency of Confidence, and while debtors wanted to pull money out, Lehman became insolvent and had to finally declare bankruptcy.
Now the Confidence factor is very tricky. It is like the prisoners dilemma in game theory. If everyone felt confident about the situation and kept their money where it is, then things will go fine. However, whoever withdraws their money will be safe themselves and screw over the rest of the people. In order not to get screwed over, everyone becomes the first to withdraw their money, and the system falls apart. This then becomes a situation where fear of a disaster is also the cause of that disaster, quite a self-fulfilling tragedy.
Does a nation have to live by the Credit-Confidence Model and go through this? Not necessarily. However, basing your economy on credit and confidence does make it grow a lot faster during boom (high confidence) times, just like wealth can grow faster if you borrow money to buy a house, and the guy down the street thinks its worth more than what you bought it for. The other side of the flip coin is that it also falls a lot harder when everyone is chasing after the same virtual good with relatively little end value. It is more of a choice based on cultural values. In Asian countries, most people live on the cash they have at hand, save a lot, and mostly start businesses that can be run by retained earnings or profits from previous businesses. In the US, more people rely their standard of living on credit cards and mortgages. The US lives on a huge international deficit, claiming that all is fine as long as it is somewhat relative to the GDP of THAT time. The US is set in a model that is bound to rotate between explosion and depression.
What does this mean for us? In a plane economics model, we should cut down on credit and increase inconfidence? If we all felt safe and do business as usual, things might work out. However, that’s not going to happen. We are all doomed into the “citizens dilemma” of trying to protect our own rights before thinking about the common good, particularly when you are sure that the other guy would do the same thing. When everyone stands up in the stadium in hopes to have a better view of the game, no one can see again. It will only take awhile before the brave optimists start to regain that confidence, somewhat of an “early adapter,” and have that confidence spread across the nation again. That’s when you see the explosion in economy and a new hand of billionaires again.
As for now, you should definitely think about saving (maybe not in US dollars), consume less, and go on sites that get you a job.
If you’re a graduating senior and you haven’t secured a job yet, you better get off your butt and go get one! Once you graduate, you are considered an experienced hire. This means that your resume gets put in the same pile as MBAs or professionals with 5+ years of experience. I’ve spoken to many recruiters and they all same the same thing:
“When you’re an undergraduate, all the doors are open. Companies like you because you’re a clean slate and they can mold you to fit their company image. Once you graduate, all the doors are closed. Being an experienced hire with no experience at all puts you at a huge disadvantage and it’ll be extremely hard for you to get a job with a prestigious firm.”
I have many friends who just relax their senior year and take the summer to go traveling abroad. When they come back, they are astonished that they can’t even get an interview with big name companies. They attend the undergraduate career fairs and info sessions but aren’t even able to submit their resume because most big companies only accept resumes via online now. And in order to submit your resume online, you must be a student.
So what’s a graduating senior to do? You need to go to every single career fair and info session available to you at your campus! Start emailing company recruiters introducing yourself and asking if they have any openings at all for their company. Reach out to the business organizations on campus and ask them if they have any company events that they are hosting that hopefully you can get involved with. Do not graduate without a job secured.
If all else fails, then you need to stay an additional quarter so that you can recruit for full-time positions during the fall. This leaves you an entire summer to go find yourself an internship that you can leverage during an interview.
Throughout my career, I have been leading people who are older than me. In some occasions, these people can be more than a decade older. It wasn’t always like that. When I was a younger, I was the kid who everyone makes fun of while I worked my butt off to try to become accepted by people. The process had to start all over again whenever I move, as South Africa, Taiwan, Kansas, and California all had very different cultures. The turning point was when I started a chess club in high school, and during my sophomore year, was elected President. With a new sense of responsibility, I realized that the whole organizations success was dependent on my shoulders. I spent 4 hours a day making sure the young team is growing, and a culture of participation is maintained. And eventually the team became State Champions in my Junior Year (the team maintained the title for at least 4 years afterward and finished strong nationally). From that point on, I have been leading groups of great people, and accomplishing exciting things that make a difference in this world. After all, it’s all about making life more meaningful.
Leadership is, almost by definition, not something everyone has. It is like good writing: most people know how to write, but only few people can do it professionally. Most people know a little bit about leadership, but only a few know how to do it professionally. Some of the most intelligent people in the world are not good leaders, but merely fit to be advisors of the leader. Robert Kiyosaki says that, to be an entrepreneur, leadership is the only skill you MUST have. Being very young like I am, I cannot say that I am anywhere close to being the best leader I could be. However, I have put in a lot of thought into the issue, and have boiled down good leadership into 3 Pillars.
Before I dive into the 3 Pillars, I want to clarify that these are not the first 3 steps in being a leader. I believe the first step in being a leader is to feel comfortable about it. If you can’t even convince yourself that you are worthy to lead the group, how can you convince others? The second step in being a leader is being comfortable with others leading you, even when you are the leader. That means you need to trust peoples’ core competencies, be able to delegate, and believe in your team when you are the only person who supports a plan. In my opinion, a cohesive team with the second best plan will always beat a broken team with the best plan. Alright, now that your eyes are already tired, lets go into the Three Pillars.
1. A Leader must have vision, and an unwavering conviciton towards that vision. A leader must know what direction the team is headed towards, and what is the absolute goal people want to achieve. It is essential to have a strong sense of certainty because as long as you are doing something difficult or complex, team members will become lost in an ocean of tasks, distractions, variables, and uncertainty. This is when they look to the leader to bring them back to the big picture and understand where the group is headed towards. This also means that the leader must be very logical and be able to see the big picture. Members will challenge you with whatever they are uncomfortable about when they feel lost, and if you do not have the logical skills to justify everything the group is doing and connect it to the ultimate goal, you will fall apart too, let along convince the team. Finally, if the leader is not the most adamant and passionate person in the project, no one else will be. If the leader has a conviction of 10 towards the vision, his team members will have 8-9, and people working under them will have 6-7. If the leader has a conviction of 7, then the whole group falls apart. Know where you are going, and be sure of it.
2. A leader must have empathy towards the team and be able to connect with all the members. As a leader, you must emotionally and psychologically connect with all your teammates: what motivates them, why are they doing this, what do they care about, what are they insecurities etc.. You wouldn’t dare market and sell a product if you didn’t understand the demographics and psychographics about your target market, how could you lead a team if you don’t have the same information? When you sell, you understand the customer so you can effectively persuade them do something - buy your products. When you lead, you need to effectively persuade your team members to do thousands of tasks HAPPILY (bitter teammates are bad teammates), so there’s even more reason to know every little detail about them. With that knowledge, you can create the right culture and environment where everyone does things the best with the highest morale. The leader’s job is to make everyone else better. The best leader’s job is to make everyone make everyone else better. The environment is so essential to a productive team. I have seen extremely competent people become unmotivated and perform poorly because of the environment, and I have seen otherwise weak performers become highly competent in the right environment. Some people just need a “good job!” after some hard work, some people are interested in non-monetary incentives, and some people just want to tackle the hardest problem they can find. If you know how everyone feels and thinks, you can have everyone do what they want to do in the way they want, resulting in better productivity. At the end of the day, when your teammates know that you care about how they feel and what they think, they will give you their work, trust and loyalty. The smartest math genius in the world might be able to solve the most complex equations, but still have no clue how to please one person without pissing off another. You as a leader must.
3. A leader must know exactly what needs to be done to get the team towards the end goal and make absolute sure of progress. Now that the leader understands the far vision and knows everything about the team members, the final pillar is to get the team moving towards the goal. The leader needs to be the person who is accountable with execution, driving the group forward. In Good to Great by Jim Collins, Collin states that the best leaders (Level 5 Leaders) are usually not the charismatic ones, but often are very humble and non-exciting people. That’s because the charismatic leader always wants to do new projects and get everyone motivated and excited, but the Level 5 Leader keeps saying the same things over and over until it gets done. At the end of the day, if you don’t have stuff done, it doesn’t matter how great the plan is or who is participating, everything becomes meaningless. A lot of people have a tough time building a bridge between goal and the status quo. Many Y-Gens I know care about their career greatly, but never seem to understand what does it take to get them to their career goals. As undergrads, many people neglect getting good grades, internships, and self-development due to games, parties and the fun distractions you can find everywhere. As professionals, many people do the least they can do with a bad attitude, and become bitter when their “over-achiever” co-workers are getting all the promotions. Bridging reality to goal is not something everyone knows how to do, but that’s something a leader must master in order to become effective. Getting things done and focusing on action items is one of the concepts that don’t have libraries of how-to literature on, primarily because it is so simple and straight forward. Make sure everyone is accountable with their tasks and start executing! It’s that simple.
A lot of leaders out there possess 1 or 2 of the three pillars here, but VERY few of them have all. Some leaders are extremely passionate about the vision, connect well with all the members, but drive progress very slowly. Some leaders understand the direction very well, and are very good at driving progress but sometimes at the expense of pissing off team members. Fortunately, this is the type of leader that still produces results, but may not be the most effective in the long run (as people are not motivated both in work and commitment). Finally, you have the leader who connects with each member well and can drive progress, but has no longterm vision of where the group is going. These are often elected leaders who are simply picking up the past leader’s inertia.
Again, I am no where close to mastering any of these three Pillars of Leadership. However, I understand them enough now that I can continuously look at my own life and focus on improving these skillsets. Collins emphasizes on recognizing the Brutal Facts, and a leader must understand himself well in order to constantly improve himself and the group. Lets include “understanding him/herself” in Pillar 2.
Future Delivery is about productive gaming. The more hours you play a game, the more successful your real life would be. There is a whole industry called “Serious Gaming” (obviously coined by non-gamers, because real hardcore gamers would never let that pass) that is about using gaming in real world functions, such as educational games for kids. I personally believe there are some games, although a big inefficient use of addicted time, can develop an array of real world skill sets (like Starcraft and Utopia). However, many other games are just a brain mush, like addictinggames.com (don’t even click on the link!)
A recent article on Harvard Business Review, “Leaderships Online Labs” by Byron Reeves, Thomas W. Malone, and Tony O’Driscoll, talks about how virtual world games like World of Warcraft can develop real world leadership skills. They gathered hardcore virtual world players with over 50,000 hours of accumulated experience and observed their patterns. The article claims that virtual world leaders have similar functions to business world leaders, including “recruiting, assessing, motivating, rewarding, and retaining talented and culturally diverse team members; identifying and capitalizing on the organization’s competitive advantage; analyzing multiple streams of constantly changing and often incomplete data in order to make quick decisions that have wide-randing and sometimes long-lasting effects.” One key observation they had was that, the leader often switches between people swiftly, and that a good leader is not always determined from their abilities, but the work environment. This shows that, often times, instead of finding the greatest “leaders,” it is just as important to create an environment where they can lead effectively. I have seen superstars do sluggish work when the environment is not motivating. I have also seen very average people become superstars because of an environment that promotes great work. That is why company culture is so important.
While I advice folks to limit their game play time, when you do play games, keep 2 things in mind:
1. Make sure it is a game that can develop some useful skill sets in the real world, such as strategizing, coordinating people, and creative problem-solving, instead of constantly clicking B as fast as you can. Eye-hand coordination is not as useful here in real life.
2. Whenever you play a multi-player game, try to lead as often as possible. Constantly figure out new ways to become a more effective leader. Understand how the gaming culture is similar to the working culture, and try to adapt the gaming culture into your real life leadership style.
In FD, people do serious work, just like hardcore gamers who destroy their monitors when they get killed in a game of Counterstrike, but our language towards each other is very casual and game like. People joke around all the time and things go crazy, but at the end, it’s about beating the competitors and achieving your objectives.
