Career Advice: Tap into Other People's Wisdom

Todd DeFren's PR Squared blog post of September 29th begins this way:

The older I get, the more I care about the young folks’ career development. This may stem from having teenage children; I worry about their preparation for Life, Careers, Happiness. Thus I happily offer college students and new graduates some hard-won (and so-called) wisdom, whenever they ask.

Here’s what a lot of today’s college graduates don’t understand: I am not alone. I am not the only company executive/business owner who’s eager to lend a hand, an ear, or an opinion. Yet, it’s pretty rare for a college graduate considering a PR career to reach out to me for some counsel, or just to grab a coffee.

Read the rest of this blog post at http://snipurl.com/prblogpost. There's valuable advice regardless of what career path interests you.

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Standardized Tests: Probably Not Anyone’s Idea of a Good Time

I was speaking to a mother in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, today whose daughter took the standardized college admission test the ACT rather than the SAT. The mother spoke about the strategy for whether to guess on questions.

This is not my expertise, but it did remind me that it’s important to know the parameters of any standardized test you take for college admission or graduate school admission. In some tests, points are subtracted for wrong answers; in others, there are no points subtracted for wrong answers. You need to know which method is used in the test you will take so that you can better consider your options on questions for which you don’t know the answers.

If you are unable to take any preparation classes for standardized admission tests, try to at least read a current study guide for that test to help you know which strategies to use. Your local library as well as local bookstore should have books on standardized tests. Just be sure to check that you get the latest edition in order to have the most accurate information.

Of course, you may be able to find study help online. Just be sure it is legitimate help and, again, current information.

Perhaps the best additional advice – get a good night’s sleep before the test and eat a healthy breakfast. Make sure your brain has the energy to do what needs to be done.

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Business Schools Are Stepping Up to the Plate for Wall Street Alum

The September 23rd Wall Street Journal article “Business Schools Gird for Wall Street Woes” by Alina Dizik described various actions being taken by business schools to help alum hit by the Wall Street crisis as well as current students planning a career on Wall Street.

If you have been affected by the Wall Street crisis, check with the careers services office at your alma mater to see if special services have been added to help people in your situation.

In addition, according to the article:

Career office staff members are also trying to steer undergrads to alternative careers. Patricia Rose, director of career services at the University of Pennsylvania, deals with undergraduate business school students along with students in other majors. Typically, Wharton sends about 50% of its undergraduates into investment banking. Ms. Rose says she’s recommending Wharton students look into technology or public service jobs, which are more plentiful than coveted finance jobs.

In accordance with the FLIPPING BURGERS philosophy of following your passion – and being willing to find a new passion if the first passion doesn’t work out, I think the accompanying article in the September 23rd Journal is more helpful: “Weighing a New Industry for a New Job Outlook” by Chandlee Bryan.

The article recommends thoroughly researching a possible new field. Here’s some good advice on research:

The recent turmoil at financial firms underscores the need to go beyond research on compensation and industry trends. Educate yourself on how a company or industry runs and pending legislation that may affect the employment outlook in a field. Review analyst reports, scour RSS feeds, and set up Google News Alerts by keyword once you’ve narrowed a field of interest.

This is excellent advice, and it should be coupled with using your network of friends and family to get the inside story. A few years ago I was hired at a web design firm just as it moved to swanky new quarters in downtown LA. Because I was in charge of the content of two major projects, I soon realized that there wasn’t enough work to keep everyone busy. Sure enough, in about two months several people, including myself, were let go.

Even if we had had the same level of internet news access then that we have now, this news wouldn’t have been public. It was only because I had my “boots on the ground” – to use a military expression – that I could see what was happening.

Whether you’re in high school, college or grad school now, talk to people in different careers to learn all you can about the vulnerabilities as well as the opportunities in that field. Keep the information you learned in an organized fashion in order to make reasonable comparisons. And make sure you date the info so you know how “fresh” it is when you later make comparisons.

And remember that you can make your own opportunities if you identify a need that isn’t being fulfilled at a company or in an industry. The responsibility is on you to learn as much as you can and then use that knowledge for your own advantage.

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Chicago Tribune Checks in Locally About High School Students and Facebook

The Chicago Tribune published its own version of the story of college admissions officers looking at student profiles on Facebook by checking in with local colleges and local high school students. (See http://snipurl.com/chicagotribunefb.)

While there were the usual warnings about college admissions officers seeing things you probably don't want them to see, I found the following paragraph very interesting (and perhaps more so because my niece and two nephews graduated from New Trier):

Ethan Goldsmith, a senior, said he, too, already was exercising caution because New Trier Township High School has suspended students from sports teams for brandishing a beer in photos online.

Now here's a new online warning that I haven't blogged about yet. Your own high school could take action based on an inappropriate online photo of you.

It would be a good idea to pay attention to all these warnings. And make it clear to your friends that you do NOT want them to post inappropriate photos of you online or put in their Facebook status, for example, "John is watching his friend Martin throw up after chugging 10 beers."

Protect your own reputation.

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High School Students Feeling Overwhelmed: Not an Unusual Feeling

Today I met a woman whose daughter is in 9th grade in a very academic private high school. Only a few weeks into the school year the daughter is feeling overwhelmed. This is not an unusual feeling for high-achieving students because the pressure today to do well and “beat the competition” is intense.

Yet, as I have written about before, the FLIPPING BURGERS philosophy is somewhat different than the “get the highest grades and highest test scores” philosophy for getting into top colleges.

The FLIPPING BURGERS philosophy says that you should follow your passion in high school. This means trying to arrange a challenging but not overwhelming school schedule so that you have time to follow your passion outside of school.

And the advantage of following your passion outside school is that you will have to pursue activities that are not handed to you on a silver platter (the school’s own activities). Why, for example, join the high school drama club when you can join a local theater group near your home? In this way you will demonstrate initiative to the colleges to which you apply and your experience may be richer for having to learn how to “work” (act) around adults of various ages.

If you are overwhelmed already and this is still September, consider whether you may be able to re-adjust your school schedule so that you have more time to pursue your passion and still take academically challenging (but not overwhelming) courses.

For example, this re-adjustment may mean saving physics until summer school where you can really focus on this subject and, in place of this course during the school year, take a less-strenuous one that will give you more free time after school.

For advice on planning the rest of your high school schedule, you can check out the report THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU SHOULD DO AND KNOW TO GET AHEAD OF THE GAME OF COLLEGE APPLICATIONS at www.millermosaic.com/page1.php

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College Tutoring Help: Not a Stigma to Take Advantage of This Free Service

A friend of mine gave good advice to her daughter starting graduate school in a difficult subject area:

“Your school has free tutoring on any subject. Don’t wait until you fall behind. After you’re done on the first day of classes, go over to the tutoring center and review the material with a tutor. THIS IS NOT A STIGMA!”

I’m not sure why most people believe that getting help implies weakness rather than indicating strength. It is actually a much better plan for life to recognize when free services can strengthen your position and to take advantage of this available opportunity.

Each person learns in a different way, yet repetition of new material can probably help everyone. And, if you’re going over new material with a tutor, you might discover that you misunderstood something that, if not corrected, could set you off in a major wrong direction. Thus, by reviewing new material with a tutor, you can quickly discover where you’re about to go off track.

If your school offers such services and these services could be of help to you, do not refuse to go because you’re afraid this would make you look dumb. Instead, getting help makes you look smart – smart to take advantage of any help you can in order to make sure you’re on the right track.

And this advice is equally good for high school students at high schools with tutoring centers and for students at colleges and graduate schools with tutoring centers. If there’s help to be had, grab it and make the most of it.

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Beware of Facebook: The Wall Street Journal Agrees With Me

I know some of my regular readers of this blog are groaning because I’m about to talk about Facebook AGAIN. Go ahead and groan now – then read on, because there’s a dangerous sand trap that had never occurred to me.

The September 18th Wall Street Journal article “College Applicants, Beware: Your Facebook Page Is Showing” by John Hechinger reporteded:

A new survey of 500 top colleges found that 10% of admissions officers acknowledged looking at social-networking sites to evaluate applicants. Of those colleges making use of the online information, 38% said that what they say “negatively affected” their views of the applicant. Only a quarter of the schools checking the sites said their views were improved, according to the survey by education company Kaplan, a unit of Washington Post Co.” (Boldface mine.)

What I found particularly upsetting in the Journal article is that college admission officers sometimes receive anonymous tips to check out someone’s Facebook page. Apparently these tips may be from rival applicants.

After reading about this particular sand trap, I visualized a scenario where two top students from the same high school are applying to the same prestigious college. One student calls in a tip about the other student’s inappropriate Facebook page in order to get that student eliminated from consideration.

All I can say is that you can’t stop some people from being underhanded, so the only way you can assure that there’s no dirt for someone to find on you is to make sure there’s no dirt PERIOD.

If you have any questions as to what is appropriate on your Facebook page, check out past posts of mine under the category Facebook. And if you’d like a free copy of the “7 Mistakes to Avoid to Protect Your Image on Facebook,” go to www.millermosaic.com.

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