Got this note from my high school's listserv of alumni in business...

"I am seeking information about entry into financial analysts programs and other areas of the finance market.  I am a recent college graduate and would appreciate any insight on how to get my resume to the right people.  Thank you for your time."

Here's my response:

     I think the best way to get the information and help you are looking for is to start with what you know and what you've done.  "information about entry into financial analysts programs and other areas of the finance market." is a book's worth (or several books worth) of information.  I think most professionals are more willing to help those who show ambition in some way... who give as much as they ask for.

     So, perhaps something along the lines of, "I graduated from X and took part in x activity in college, where I developed in interest in X part of the finance market.  I was reading X the other day and it said that there were going to be more opportunities in X part of the market versus X.  I would like to know if this is a generally accepted view of the market and would be very excited to speak with a professional about this who works in that area."

   So what does this approach accomplish?

1)  It shows you've been doing your homework and have a track record of taking an active interest in the subject.  Otherwise, you will give people the impression (which I'm sure is incorrect) that you haven't done anything in finance before and you're just realizing that you're graduating college in a month and need a job.  Obviously your interest in finance stems from somewhere... tell people about that in a way that reflects your own unique perspective and ambition.
2)  It doesn't mention anything about jobs.  Not every contact will be good for a job and not everyone wants to be made to feel like their time is only worthwhile if they can get you a job.  You should be focused on building relationships with people who know you and are impressed with you.  Jobs will flow from that whether or not you ever ask one one explicitly.
3) It leaves open the possibility that someone might respond to this even if they can't offer you a job, but they might be able to give you some useful insight.
4) It encourages more people to participate with less.  Instead of asking for one person to write a novel, the more you ask specific questions about certain areas, the more people you'll get to respond with "Yeah, that makes sense b/c X... check out this other resource for more information."

I've been thinking lately about how to get the students I mentor to really dive head first into their interests.  Schools don't really teach students the degree to which they need to fully research and follow a topic enough to form opinions, discover opportunities, etc.  In other words...  how to throw gas on the fire in their bellies.   Here's a 12 step list that I think can be helpful to fill out and follow:

We'll use digital media as an example.

1. Define.  We're talking television, radio, music, movies, etc. and all of the screens and speakers it can wind up on.
2. Follow the money.  Creative people are paid to produce by publishers who pay distributors to send the content to consumers, who either pay directly for it or are subsidized by advertisers.  (Oversimplified and changing of course, but its a start...)
3. Stakeholders.  Who's involved?  Creatives, consumers, publishers, advertisers, distributors (channels, stations), big media, new media, investors, analysts, researchers, academics, the government.
4. Mainstream media.  Read the newspaper.  Watch the news.  Read books on this topic.  What's your digitial media reading list look like for MSM?
5. User generated content.  Read blogs: Paid Content, Rebuilding Media, etc.  Message boards, listservs.  Make a list of the places you can get insider and alternative info.
6. Participate.  Comment.  E-mail.  Share your thoughts with smart people and listen to them.  Go to conferences and speaking engagements.
7. Record. Keep a blog about following digital media, what you're learning and what you think about it.
8. Network.  Join LinkedIn.  Write a bio.  Invite people you know and search it.  Do some informational interviews and stay in touch with the people willing to share time with you.  Keep these people in a PDA, Outlook, wherever you keep contacts and a calendar to remind yourself how often you want to talk to people.
9. Visit.  Don't just sit at your computer.  Try to visit some companies in the space or other repositories of knowledge on the topic in person.
10. Associate.  Join a professional society or social networking group related to digital media.  (Like nextNY of course!)
11. Know the issues.  Look into DRM, privacy, the disaggregation and reaggregation of content.  New business models and Exploding TV.
12. Experience.  Seek out a job or project in this space.  Use Indeed!

And now, a brief commercial break.  I just want to take some time to promote my career Q&A site for college students, Find My Path (www.findmypath.com).  Over the holidays, I'm really going to ramp up promotion now that I've got a little buildup of content to hit the ground running with.  I'll be mass mailing to lots of career counseling professionals and talking about it wherever I can. 

I would appreciate it if you could help spread the word.  College students have lots of career questions, and those that don't would benefit from hearing the questions being asked by their peers.  This is a great forum to get questions answered and I'm very proud of it.  Please pass this site on to teachers, students, anyone you can think of. 

Thanks,

Charlie

Site up for good. :) Post away.

Site back down. Dammit!!

Ok, so here's the issue. I had screwed up on the aliases (what makes www.findmypath.com point to findmypath.typepad.com) by typing in two of the same aliases, which just apparently confuses register.com. Ok, so my bad, BUT... Why do you set it up so that you let me do that? If I type in the same forwarding setup twice, shouldn't their system say, "Hey bud, by the way, if you do that, you'll be fucked." That would be a neat feature.

So, please check back in about 6 hours, or just go to findmypath.typepad.com.

Turns out the e-mail subscription thing didn't work either. It would have been nice of the owner of that service to tell me that as well.

This running an internet site is sketchy business.

Site back up. Just make sure you type in the WWW's. :) www.findmypath.com. I just added a feature that lets you subscribe to updates by e-mail, too. I'm not sure if it works yet, though. :)

For some reason, the Find My Path site is down... it has something to do with the forwarding from the URL I bought to the place where it actually sits. I hate register.com and at the moment, I have zero time to fix it. Stay tuned.. its going back up.

In the meantime, you can find it at http://findmypath.typepad.com . I'm so pissed off, because I got 500 hits in the first couple of days, which I was really happy about.