All in Mentoring
Penelope Trunk is supposed to be some kind of expert on generations and the workplace, but I don't think she could get the following more wrong:
"Do you know who is using social media? Gen X. The average Twitter user is in their 30s. The median age of LinkedIn is 40. The majority of people who are joining Facebook right now are over 35. This is because Gen X wants to meet new people online and reconnect with all the friends they lost along the way. Gen X is using social media to network. "
Actually, the average age of internet users--and the US population in general, is around the mid 30's. To say that Gen X is doing more networking, and disproportionately so, is just misleading--it's just flat out wrong. Social networkers pretty much reflect the makeup of the US internet user audience. Gen X isn't any more networking savvy than any other group.
"Gen Y doesn’t need to. They never lost their connections because they’ve been online since they were ten. They do not need to meet more people online to expand their network because they are native networkers – they have had the tools and the predisposition to use them since before Gen X even knew what Facebook was."
This is just utterly ridiculous. Gen Y doesn't need to meet more people online to expand their network because they've been online since they were 10? I don't know about you, but nobody I know basically made all the career connections they ever needed to make between the ages of 10 and 21. If anything, Gen Y needs the most networking help because they grew up with "Stranger Danger." They got taught that people they don't know are likely to try to hurt them, so they tend to connect online to people they already know. Facebook reflects that and it's the reason why Gen Y is so much less likely to use LinkedIn. On Facebook you connect to your friends, and on LinkedIn you build your professional network, often reaching out to new people. Getting Gen Y to use LinkedIn is like pulling teeth. Perhaps Penelope should teach a class of college students over a full semester like I do to get a better sense of how Gen Y really networks online.
"So while Gen X is busy using Twitter to let people know what they are up to and promote the hell out of whatever they are doing, Gen Y is using Twitter for tweetups – meetups set up via Twitter. Which is a way of making genuine friends offline."
So Gen Y does tweetups more than Gen X? Most tweetups are tied around some kind of professional group--not likely to be attended by a majority of Gen Yers. Disagree? Flip through who is actually Tweeting Up right this minute. On top of that, most people on Twitter aren't really promoting anything. Sure, the "gurus" and social media mavens are, but by number, most people on Twitter just follow a handful of people they know and just Tweet about their life.
Sherry Mason from Bowdoin College wrote "College kids I work with need coaching on tone & style" and she's absolutely right. Just because a Gen Yer may have 1000 Facebook friends doesn't make them an expert at networking any more than following 10,000+ people on Twitter does so they follow you back. (I always thought networking involved listening... I'm sorry, but you can't listen to 10,000+ people at once, even if you're using Tweetdeck.)
Networking involves the following basics, none of which I've found Gen Y to be particularly good at:
- Self awareness: How are people perceiving you? Gen Yers, because of their lack of experience, don't have a great sense of professionalism and professional appearence.
- Storytelling: How can you package up your experiences, interests, goals into something memorable that others take with them and remember.
- Listening: I don't think any generation is good at this, Gen Y included.
- Outreach: Reaching out to the right people to build relationships--this is where Gen Y majorly falls down because those kids aren't any good at going outside the comfort zone of their own network--unless their mom schedules a playdate for them.
Gen Y sucks at networking. Don't let their Facebook friend list fool you.
Someone sent a note to the nextNY list about how he was unemployed and looking to work for a startup--how it was really hard to find something. He sent a link to a piece he wrote on a site about being unemployed.
This was my response:
"So the one link you send us is on a site about being unemployed?
Why on earth would you market yourself as an unemployed guy? In your first instance of participation in this group, you cast yourself as laid off and desperate. Who wants to hire an unemployed person?
No one.
If I showed up to a date and the girl introduces herself by saying, "I've just been going on nothing but first dates and they never work out... I'm so desperate to find someone" I'd be looking for the door in a heartbeat.
We all want to hire someone who kicks ass at something. If you do not kick ass at anything, you should at least be in the process of learning how to kick ass at something. Startups, or frankly any company for that matter, cannot afford to hire a non-asskicking generalist.
Think of it this way... If you know the media, perhaps you could have spent the last five months doing free PR and marketing for a handful of startups. You weren't working anyway. The goal would be to be so good at it that one of those companies can't help but hire you--or some other company would hire you because they noticed how good you were at it--or worst case you'd suck at it but you'd really learn something.
Forget pursuing. Spend 110% of your time honing some kind of value proposition that you'd be a no-brainer hire for.
Forget the "I'm unemployed" shtick and work on the being awesome without advertising the fact that you are awesome to everyone. If you do not know what awesomeness is, try and figure out who the top 30 most awesome people in the NY tech scene are and interview them. Publish the interviews on your blog. Make a list and publish it. Here are my suggestions: David Karp, Anthony Volodkin, Chris Hughes...
And God help you if I see your blog and it's yourname.blogspot.com. To be awesome, you must splurge for the $13 domain name."
I went to a very selective high school--Regis High School in New York City--and from very early on I was intimidated by my peers. Our class was made up of the top 130 or so students out of nearly 1000 boys who took the test to get in. I felt like I was #130, particularly at the speech and debate tryouts, where the guys waiting next to me were debating some political topic I wasn't even aware of. For four years, I basically tried to hangout somewhere in the middle--and the top of the class both in terms of leadership and academics seemed unattainable to me.
Fast forward four years and after an amazing internship, I felt ready to take on the world. My time at Fordham was all about leadership. I started a newspaper, ran clubs, interned, etc. At the end of my time there, I was selected to be one of the top seven student leaders in my year.
So what changed?
It was a few things for me. First, I didn't think I was capable of leadership--so why try if you're pretty sure you're going to fail, right? Second, I never really saw a path to leadership. I didn't really know where there were opportunities for leadership. It was only when I got to college that I realized the third point--that you can create your own opportunities for leadership. I had an idea for a newspaper about business in college and so I just went after it. I did the research, figured out what I needed to do, and it was easier than I thought.
I'm curious about other people, though.
If I said that the top people in your field, at your experience level, are active participants professional societies, write popular blogs about your industry, get asked to write articles for magazines and regularly speak on conference panels, that's probably a reasonable estimation of what it means to be on top, right?
One would assume that such a person in a visible leadership position would basically be able to call their own shots in terms of the direction of their career, right? If nothing else, they'd certainly be less likely to be laid off.
So, my question is why wouldn't everyone be setting that as a goal? Of course 99% of people don't take a
look at their own industry and say "I'm want to be the most highly sought after person in this field... be recognized as an expert, and call my own shots."
But why don't they--specifically?
Is it because...
a) It seems like a big risk, because if you try and put yourself out there, you could fall on your face.
b) It seems like an awful lot of work and you don't have a ton of extra time.
c) You feel ok about your career and you don't really see the value in being one of those top people.
d) That seems like a good path, but you really don't know how or where you'd really start on a path like that.
e) Some other reason.
I'm curious... Ask your friends that you think highly of, but who don't strive for leadership. Ask yourself. I really want to identify the causes. I suspicion is that it's more of an information problem (what to do, where to do it, perception vs reality of taking career risks).
Are you stuck in a rut?
Don't like what you're doing, but can't figure out how to get ahead, or get out?
Ask for career advice on Path101.com on May 1st -- May Day -- as part of Path 101's "Career Mayday" Advicefest.
Path 101 has built up a community of career experts and experienced professionals to help get answers to your most pressing career questions.
What's even better is that when you ask or answer a question, you can connect your Path 101 account to Twitter or Facebook to help get answers from your network. Check out some of these great questions and answers from our site:
Are unpaid internships worth it?
Staying in touch after an interview when there isn't an opening right now
Tomorrow, when you ask a question and connect your Twitter account, the Tweet will look something like this:
Mayday! Mayday! My career needs help! Please help me get an answer to my Path 101 career question. http://bit.yl/32vwesd #mayday Plz RT
When you answer, it will look like this:
Just rescued someone through Path 101's Career Mayday. Save a drowning career, give advice: http://bit.yl/32vwesd #mayday Plz RT
Just make sure you connect your Path 101 to Twitter... After you ask or answer, at the bottom of that question, you can click a link to make a connection. If you ask anonymously, we can't publish the tweet either (but that shouldn't stop you from just asking a question, of course).
"I sent a cover letter. It should be getting me that job now."
"No, Lieutenant, your job search is already dead."
Alison Doyle defended cover letters today and was rather dismissive about the idea of finding your job by connecting to someone using social media. I won't take up the social media debate now, but I will put to bed the idea that you should spend any time whatsoever on a cover letter.
What gets read first, a resume or a cover letter? Ask anyone who has ever hired anybody in the last twenty years. The answer is a resume.
Here's the short version of the proof, then:
Is your resume awesome?
If no, then I'm throwing it right in the trash, along with the cover letter, which I didn't read, because your resume isn't awesome.
If yes, and it does not come with a cover letter, will I contact you? Of course! Half the resumes I got were from resume databases or LinkedIn, so much of the time, a resume or profile is all I have anyway.
Once you get contacted, then it's up to you and who you are... and that's what you were trying to do with the cover letter in the first place--get a response. No hiring manager has ever contacted someone with a mediocre resume who wrote a really nice cover letter. They never get to the cover letter of a mediocre resume--they don't have time! If they say they did, they're lying to make it seem like they do extra work like read all the cover letters than come in. I'm sure they don't rip the tags off their pillows either.
More important than a cover letter, if a resume contains a link to a site, I am going to visit it. If this site is a blog, and you write about your passion for the industry you're looking to get into or your insights, I'm going to be pretty damn impressed. I certainly won't ask for a cover letter after that. Think of this like rock, paper, scissor. Resume beats cover letter. Awesome blog beats resume and obviously also beats cover letter.
No, you can't submit the link to your blog on the front end of a company website, but would Alison suggest that if I was hiring someone to run the career guidence office at a school, that being the About.com job search guide since 1998 wouldn't be enough? Why would you even ask for a resume at that point? When I left Oddcast a year and a half ago, no one asked for my resume, but I got 25 job leads from people who had been reading my blog for years. Cover letters? What's a cover letter?
Well, Alison defines a cover letter as "...a document sent with your resume to provide additional information on your skills and experience."
She suggests the following format:
1. First Paragraph - Why you are writing
2. Middle Paragraphs - What you have to offer
3. Concluding Paragraph - How you will follow-up
You know, because that's the "basic format of a typical business letter."
A typical business letter?
Has anyone actually received a "business letter" in the last five years? (Besides ones from daughters of Nigerian generals looking to deposit money in your bank account or official looking solicitations for credit cards.)
Today, professionals are sending one line e-mails from their Blackberries that affect millions of dollars. Have you ever seen what three paragraphes looks like on a Blackberry? It might as well be Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. People want just the facts, as quickly as possible. Three paragraphes of prose and I'm either on to the next e-mail or I'm asleep.
It's funny, because, today, she expanded her definition of a cover letter to include "via email or a LinkedIn message". Can you even type three paragraphs into a LinkedIn message? I'm pretty sure there's a character limit, and if there wasn't, I'd think the person was just trying too hard or didn't really understand normal behavior on that site.
Twenty years ago, cover letters served a purpose. They introduced who you were and how you found the position--because before widespread use of the internet, how you found anything was actually interesting. Now, asking how you even know someone is becoming a joke, because we're hyperconnected. As for who you are, we all know that your cover letter is your marketing pitch--no hiring manager takes that seriously. They'll do their homework to figure out who you are. They'll ask Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn who you are, who you're connected to, etc... and if they can't find you there, for a growing percent of the few available jobs, you might as well be persona non grata.
In today's world, if you're contacting someone you don't already know to get a job, you've essentially already failed. It's too easy to find people and use your network to reach them that coming in without a recommendation reflects pretty poorly on the candidate. If I was going to hire you to do sales for me, I certainly wouldn't expect you to just cold call all your leads. I'd hope you'd at least figure out how to be innovative and networking savvy enough to find your say to a warm intro.
And yes, I know, not everyone uses the internet, and not everone can afford a computer, and three quarters of the world lives under the poverty line--I get it. It's a terrible situation, but we're talking about job advice written on blogs. There's a clear target audience here of people who have some amount of advanced education, socioeconomic mobility, etc. For *those* people--if you're thinking a cover letter is going to get you anywhere, you're wasting your time.
There are also some jobs out there where your digital presence just doesn't matter at all because you're basically talking mass hiring of a certain particular skill. Take nursing jobs. Hospital systems need to hire 1000's of registered nurses a year. So long as they have the right certifications and whatever references are needed check out, you're basically in, or at least in line. Many civil services positions are like that as well. However, not only does a digital presence not matter to be a police officer or a firefighter (Good thing for my dad, a 20 year FDNY vet), you also don't need a cover letter.
So let's focus on jobs that supposedly need a cover letter--jobs that are sought after enough where the candidate is looking to stand out from the crowd. So we're assuming a crowd here. Now put yourself in the position of the hiring manager. Not only do you get 100's of not 1000's of resumes for each position that you have an opening for, but you're searching resume databases to find candidates, too. It's physically impossible for anyone to read more than a handful of cover letters.
Even resume expert Louise Fletcher says that "back when I worked as an HR manager, I never read cover letters". Louise worked as an HR manager back in 1995. She did say that her boss liked to read them, but assuming her boss was probably at least 5-10 years older than her, if not more, you're talking about a guy who started his career in the early 80's--almost 30 years ago. Are we really giving advice to people on how to get hired by dinosaurs are should be dispensing advice on how to be the most innovative candidates out there and to try to get hired by the most innovative companies.
But Alison says "Innovation works for a lot of people/industries. Not others."
Everyone who wants to get hired into an industry that doesn't value innovation, raise your hand.
Ok, everyone with your hands raised, finish up working on those cover letters!