networking

career advice… Real People Think This is OK When Job Hunting, but It’s Not by Janet Krenn

New Professionals PR Blog Leave a comment

I’ve been completely astounded by the way that people act in networking and job-hunting situations; and I start to wonder, how could any rational person think that this is OK?

The only way I can explain it? These crazy interactions must be the unhappy result of someone misapplying generic advice. Here are real stories of bad networking behavior that I have witnessed along with the four bits of generic networking and job hunting advice that I want to bring to your attention. By all means, apply these pieces of advice, but please do so with a healthy amount of restraint!

Generic Advice #1: Don’t be afraid to take a risk.
How much “risk” should you as a job hunter take? Risk can indicate that you are a leader or that you are confident. But if the risk turns out to be a disaster, you may come off as arrogant or reckless.

Bad Application: Taking a risk without considering whether the risk will give you the desired outcome.
Once I was at a trade show with our CEO. A newly minted graduate and now intern planted himself in our exhibit space. While the CEO was off talking with someone else, the recent grad indicated to me that he thought our company was interesting and inquired whether we were hiring. We weren’t right now, I told him, but if he’d like to drop off a resume, we’d hold onto it. He walked away, but when he came back, he didn’t have a resume–He had redesigned the company logo and started pitching his unsolicited redesign to the CEO.

Generic Advice #2: Don’t be afraid of networking! Get your name out there. Show your face.
When I lament to my boyfriend that my bike needs some work, but I didn’t know where to take it. He says in reply, “Oh, if only there was some international network of information that you could use to find this out!”  There is no excuse for walking into any prospective partner, employer, or client’s office as if you were conducting a “cold call”.

Bad Application: Contacting an individual about whom you know nothing.
The other day, a job hunter walks into my office and asks, “Do you know who the expert is in XYZ?” and then “What can you tell me about him?” This gent wanted to establish a partnership with someone at my company, and assumed that just because I had a desk on campus that I was going to have answers for him. When I told him I didn’t know who he should talk to, he asked that I look into it and email him. Which brings me to #3…

Generic Advice #3: Ask for help.
Finding a job is work. You can probably look to your close friends and colleagues to help you drum up business or interviews. Be careful whom you ask for help.

Bad Application: Asking others to carry you.
When you ask for assistance from someone who doesn’t know you better, you run the risk of looking unambitious or lazy, and once you’ve made that impression, you have a slim chance that that connected individual will want to recommend you for an interview.


Generic Advice #4: Contact the hiring manager before you submit your resume. Ask questions during your interview.
The questions you ask a hiring manager could make you appear thoughtful and intelligent. The caveat is: In order to appear thoughtful and intelligent, your questions need to be thoughtful and intelligent. Walking into a networking situation or a job interview, you should already know why you want to be there.

Bad Application: Asking a company to tell you how you could benefit from this position.
Don’t contact a hiring manager and ask her to justify why you should want the job. This seems obvious, right? I’m only bringing it up, because I’ve seen it happen more than once. If you don’t know why you should want the job, don’t waste anyone’s time. Don’t apply, and don’t bother the hiring manager. You never know when that hiring manager will be posting a job you are interested in, and you don’t want to have that first negative interaction hanging over your head.

—
JANET KRENN has never been a hiring manager, and even so, she’s seen some job hunters doing some wacky things. She is also the 2010 Chair of the New Professionals of PRSA. You can contact her at janetqs(a)gmail.com or @janetkrenn.

networking… “What do you do?” and Why Your Answer is Wrong by Janet Krenn

New Professionals PR Blog Leave a comment

Networking. It’s how you can get a job. It’s how you can self-promote. It’s important in every profession. For many of us, networking is a mystery. I mean, how do you go from “hello” to getting a job? How do you go from “nice to meet you” to let’s collaborate?

My local PRSA chapter held a speed networking event last month, and it opened my eyes! The speaker presented on “Make Your Contacts Count: Networking know-how for business and career success” by Anne Barber and Lynne Waymon, and I foudn that I have been giving the wrong answer to the very first question asked in any networking conversation–“What do you do?”

By giving one of the two popular incorrect answers, I’ve been missing opportunities to describe my value, achievements, and goals. Instead, I provided meaningless, but easy, responses. In short, I’ve been failing at personal branding.

Wrong Answer #1: I work for a company.

I used to say, “I work for McDougal Littell” and those in the textbook publishing industry were usually impressed. Maybe you work for GE, and you know that dropping the company name will sound impressive. But the company name doesn’t promote you and your strengths. In the first minutes of conversation, I neglected to give my conversation partner any interesting information. What if they’ve never heard of your company before? Will you have to spend valuable networking time explaining the company rather than your own value?

Wrong Answer #2: I am a job title.

No matter how much you like your job, you are not your job title. How many other people are in PR? Thousands! By saying you are a job title, all of your achievements and goals, the reasons why someone should want to work with you, are hidden. Will an answer like, “I’m an account manager” get you recommended for job openings? Probably not.

Right Answers are Descriptive

I can much more easily point out the wrong answers than to give you a blanket “right” one. Basically, you want to give a quick, descriptive answer that is achievement driven (what have you accomplished? how have you accomplished it?), goal oriented (what are your goals when you enter the office? what are your long term goals?), value-added (what value do you have as an employee? what are your strengths?), and inspire questions (will your descriptive answer lead the conversation to those probing questions that will help you reveal your value, achievements, and goals?).

Myself as an Example

As I said, I used to answer “What do you do?” with lack-luster answers, such as, “I work for Virginia Sea Grant” or “I am a communicator.”

After more thought, I’ve started to elaborate to say, “I translate science to non-scientists.” But even this slightly more descriptive answer doesn’t explain the value of my skills well. So I kept adding, pruning, and rethinking my answer to the “What do you do” question, until I got to the answer at the end of this post.

What do you do?

Well, how might you answer this networking question to best show off your achievements, goals, and value? To celebrate our newly unlocked comments section of this blog (no log-in necessary to participate), write your own new-and-improved response to the What do you do? question.

—
JANET KRENN helps coastal industry, and communities make ecologically and economically sound decisions by translating science to non-scientists. (She is also your 2010 New Pros of PRSA Chair, and the past, 2009, Communication Chair. Follow her on Twitter @JanetKrenn or contact her janetqs(a)gmail.com)

professional development…Why do we blog by Courtney Vaught

New Professionals PR Blog Leave a comment

A good friend of mine sent me an article. Although my friend had no intention of giving me ideas for this blog post or motivation to start my own, she did. The article was called How to Network in a New City by Matt Cheuvront who writes the blog Life Without Pants. In the article, Matt wrote on the topic of blogging:

“Seriously, just do it. Don’t worry about defining yourself, don’t worry about establishing a niche from the get-go. Just write…and you’ll undoubtedly meet some amazing people (and might even make a few friends) along the way.”

According to The Future Buzz blog, 133 million blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002 and 77 percent of all one billion active Internet users read those blogs (Internet World Stats). Whether the just do it motto or the impressive stats motivate you, it’s safe to say that blogging is here to stay and it is certainly worth getting in the game if you’re not already in it.

I found a few considerations for blogging that are useful to blogger veterans and virgins alike. One consideration is the marketability a blog can create for you. While I am proud to say that there are many qualified fellow new PR professionals out there, it also means there is an extreme amount of competition for a very small job market. Blogs can help you stand out and differentiate yourself from the masses by greatly improving your ‘online resume’ as Matt Cheuvront puts it. Community building, networking expertise and product knowledge are just a few great talking points a successful blog can give you for an interview.

Another consideration in utilizing a blog is to post about your industry. Dan Schwabel, leading personal branding expert for Gen Y, says posting about your industry can show potential employers that you have the knowledge and understanding of your industry and will make them come to you.

While it is important to consider all of these aspects in your blog, make sure you remember that while a blog should reflect on your professionalism, readers really want personality and honesty, so don’t lose sight of that.

So, what considerations have you made with your blog? Please share your thoughts and blog links!

—

COURTNEY VAUGHT is a member-at-large of PRSA New Professionals Section. You can reach her at vaughtc20@gmail.com or @CourtV. If you have more in-depth career questions for her dad, Jeff Vaught, you can reach him at jejucoal78@msn.com.

professional development event… social media and networking in Atlanta (Sept. 24)

New Professionals PR Blog Leave a comment

Ben Garrett will be presenting at the New Pros networking event in Atlanta.

Next week, Thursday September 24, the New Professionals of PRSA will host an in-person networking event–Honing your Social Media Skills. The event will be held at the Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant in Midtown Atlanta Georgia. Our featured speaker, Ben Garrett , is the Executive Producer for On the Scene Productions, a digital media company specializing in video, but before he went digital Ben spent time in broadcast journalism and PR.

Ben has been good enough to give us a sneak peak into next week’s event. Check out this Q&A, and meet Ben and your peers at Honing your social media skills while networking with New Pros in Atlanta. (Keep in mind, you must register within the next few days if you’d like to attend!)

1. Can you describe your experience in broadcast journalism and public relations?

I worked in local and network TV for 14 years before turning to electronic public relations (where I’ve now spent 16 years). Ironically, I started off in print. I was editor of my high school paper and also in college, but an internship at a newspaper convinced me to switch to broadcast journalist–more money, with the added bonus that you don’t have to know how to spell. I was a TV news anchor and reporter at a number of local TV stations, and on the network level as a producer, I worked at Lifetime and CNBC networks in their infancy, as well as a brief stint as a medical producer for NBC’s TODAY Show.

2. You moved from PR and broadcast to being executive producer at a digital media company. How did you become so interested in digital media?

The Chicago TV production company I was working for was purchased by a dot-com. So suddenly we were a digital media company. But the reality was the reason they purchased us was because we were innovating doing TV on the web. We built the first health network for the fledgling Microsoft Network, and were one of the first to do video webcasts. At this point in history, everyone had dial-up, there was no broadband and very few people had e-mail, forget social media, it didn’t exist. But basically the web is just another medium to deliver video, and we’re just as focused on mobile phones now as a delivery device.

3. How has your background in PR and journalism helped you in your role at the digital media company?

My background in TV news has prepared me to be a video storyteller. Once you learn to tell a story in pictures, it can be applied to any visual medium, whether it’s an out-of-home network, digital signage, the web, or your mobile phone. The medium isn’t as important as the storytelling. The only consideration for any visual medium is that if you’re doing something in High Definition for a big screen, you will likely have to make some adaptations to tell that story on a small screen, i.e., your iPhone. Some of the same elements that make a story newsworthy can be applied to making a video “viral”–but viral videos are really more about entertainment value, not journalism.

4. What do you think are the greatest challenges facing the public relations world with respect to social media?

Initially, the greatest challenge for PR was transparency. It’s very important to be honest and transparent about who you are and who you represent. I think we’re addressing that as a profession. Now, the biggest challenge I hear about is ROI–return on investment, and also a new term “ROE”–return on engagement, since social media is about engagement more so than just generating impressions. How do we measure what we’re doing and if its even worthwhile? No one has really been able to put a true value on that yet. At the same time, measurement or no measurement, social media isn’t going away and it can’t be ignored as a tactic. And because social media is about two way communications, that’s a new development, because so much of PR is about communicating one way to a mass audience. Now it’s about one-on-one conversations. It’s a different game now that we’re getting real time feedback from consumers. Communities in social media expect a real time response, and from real people, not an automated response. It’s forcing everyone to re-think their mission, their staffing and their response time 24/7.

5. You’ll be presenting at the PRSA New Pros Atlanta networking event. What information are you most excited to share with new professionals?

New professionals have entered our profession during a major downturn in the economy and at a time when the profession is re-inventing itself. Bad times actually present the best opportunities for advancement. I want to tell them they’ve picked a great career but I also want to give them the benefit of my experience. While it’s almost impossible to learn from someone else’s mistakes, I hope I have made enough for all of them! A lot of people are calling the rise of social media Web 2.0. I was around for Web 1.0, and hopefully some of those lessons still apply. A lot of the things we talked about for Web 1.0 are now only possible with Web 2.0. What’s Web 3.0 going to be? They may be the ones to build it!

–
BEN GARRETT will present at “Honing your social media skills while networking with New Professionals in Atlanta”, a New Professionals of PRSA networking event. The event will be from 6 to8PM on Thursday, September 24. Registration is required by Monday, September 21. For more information and to register, go to the event site.

your pr career… 10 Steps to Starting a Local New Pros PR Group by Crystal Olig

New Professionals PR Blog 1 Comment

Our first years in public relations can vary from enlightening and fun to intimidating and tough. Our peers in PR quickly become our best resources, providing a relationship-based connection to the industry.

By starting a New Pros group for your local PRSA Chapter, you’ll be able to share your passion for PR, be a leader in the chapter, and grow your personal network of connected, smart, and helpful peers—who won’t mind if you occasionally geek out about AP style, social media, or the coolest new blogger in the city.

Starting a local New Pros group takes some work, but it is not as hard as it sounds. This 10-step roadmap spells out exactly how you can get there.

Find New Professionals in Your Area

1. Build a base of new PR professionals.

Associate members, recent graduates, and current internship programs are rife with new PR pros eager to build professional skills and connections. Get email addresses, Twitter handles, phone numbers, and LinkedIn or Facebook info and connect with new pros in multiple ways.

2. Expand your base of new PR professionals through referrals.

Build an active referral program. At every live event, ask new pros for connections to their peers. Challenge each attendee to bring a friend or industry peer. Engage new pros on Twitter; then use your network to create a “re-tweet” trail for event postings and resource links. Use Facebook to actively invite others to events, engaging them pre- and post-event. Use word-of-mouth to help bring in new people.

Reach Out

3. Create a consistent outreach plan.

Choose a primary New Pros communication tool, such as a list-serv or Facebook page. Train new pros where to go first for group information, and stay in front of busy professionals by using secondary resources like an online chapter calendar, weekly e-blasts, and oral announcements before other PRSA events. Reminders are key. Follow this schedule and contact members one month, then one week, and then one day out.

4.  Don’t assume—Ask what new professionals in your area need.

You can discover what your members are interested in using a short and sweet questionnaire. A quick Survey Monkey quiz can do the trick also. For example, you can ask new pros to rank interests, such as these:
•    Career building advice
•    Connection to a mentor figure
•    Gen Y workplace issues/generational differences
•    Hard skill development, i.e. pitching practice, social media strategy
•    Informal socializing
•    Meeting the media
•    Networking with more seasoned pros
•    Sharing experiences in comfortable peer-to-peer environment
•    Soft skill development, i.e. time or information management

Plan and Engage

5. Plan hybrid new professionals events.

Many young pros want to socialize, but need an academic incentive to compete against a crowded social calendar. In Phoenix, we created the “Happy Hour+” program, hosting informal education opportunities for the first 15-20 minutes of the event, followed by networking. Examples include a “Top 10” tips presentation on focused topics, roundtables on hot button issues, or quick Q&A sessions with PRSA board members or notable leaders.

6. Initiate a matching program.

Many times both seasoned and new professionals are unwilling or unable to commit to a formal mentoring program, though it’s a frequently-mentioned need. A matching mechanism during the RSVP process for chapter-wide events allows new and seasoned professionals to be paired up for a one-time-only mentorship opportunity. If individuals make a great personal connection, it can develop into a more consistent mentorship relationship.

7. Deliver variety in programming.

Deliver events and topics that are varied. Don’t be afraid to crowd-source the next topic. Shifting physical locations for events, from local agencies to downtown pubs to suburban restaurants, helps spread the burden of drive time obstacles.

Keep this Advice in Mind

8. New professionals leaders must be visible and accessible.

Send at least two New Pros members to the regular PRSA events and host a New Pros table. Invite new professionals to join the table. This way the new pros will will have someone to sit with, ask questions of, and network with. As an added bonus, New Pros committee chairs get valuable visibility within the larger PRSA chapter.

9. Be time- and cost-conscious.

New pros encounter common barriers to developing a consistent tie with professional associations: Time and money. As an entry-level or junior employee, it’s hard for a new pro to request time off to attend daytime PRSA events. Plan events outside of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Events such as weekend brunches, happy hours, or coffee meet-ups might work better than lunch meetings. Many organizations are unable to assist with membership fees for junior pros, and entry level salaries don’t cover many extras. Be open to non-member attendance, and try to keep events free or under $5 (unless the fee covers the cost of food or drink).

10. Create a super committee.

To launch a New Pros group, you need a solid, diverse, and enthusiastic committee to share the workload. Start with four to five new pros from different areas of PR, including corporate, non-profit, and agency. The New Pros committee leader should have a strong tie to chapter leadership, whether through a designated board member contact, within a professional development cluster, or via the membership committee. Meet monthly in person or via conference call. Maintain a strong committee by respecting each person’s time, requiring accountability and responsiveness and consistently incorporating committee members’ input or ideas.

—
CRYSTAL OLIG is the former Phoenix PRSA New Pros Committee Chair and is a current Central Ohio PRSA University Liaison committee member. She can be reached at crystal.a.olig[at]gmail.com or through @sparklegem on Twitter, linkedin.com/in/crystalaolig, or the whY genY blog.