Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

5 Tips for Turning Your Internship Around

Are you doing an internship this summer and worried you haven't accomplished anything yet?  Here are five tips for making the most of that last month.  Good luck!

1.   Create and accomplish goals:  Set specific and attainable goals with your supervisor at the beginning of the internship.  Make sure you achieve what you set out to do, and when possible, go above and beyond what’s expected of you.

2.   Remember you’re there to learn:  Look around and listen.  Pay attention to more experienced colleagues and ask for feedback on your performance.  Even if your work is mostly administrative, volunteer for assignments where you can observe projects in action.

3.   Be social: Network with as many colleagues as you can.  Go out for drinks with the group or attend the summer party.  Ask around about the possibility of a permanent position when you finish school.

4.   Show your appreciation:  Always show that you’re grateful for the internship opportunity, even if you feel overworked and taken advantage of at times.  When it’s time to go, thank everyone who helped you during your internship.  A card or present for your supervisor is a nice touch, as is an e-mail to your group detailing what you learned and achieved. 

5.  Follow up:  Want to turn your internship into a full time job?  Once you’re out the door, keep in touch with your contacts regularly to ensure that you’re still fresh in their minds as they make their hiring decisions. 

 

Live Career Advice from Stephen Covey and Others!

Here are a few announcements about some learning opportunities I am participating in with very esteemed partners this week:

 

Stephen Covey Professional Development Series:  I'm thrilled to be hosting the legendary Stephen Covey's new seminar series.  The live webinars, which will take place on August 4, 11, and 25, will apply Dr. Covey's trademark insightful principles from his bestsellers such as "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" to help listeners take charge of their lives, advance in their careers, and become highly-valued employees.  Sign up here and mention the code "webinar3" for a 10% discount on registration! 

 

30/20 Vision Radio Show:  Are you a young professional who wishes s/he had a couple or older sisters who have been there and done that?  I'm hosting this month's 30/20 Vision with my friends and fellow authors Christine Hassler (20 Something Manifesto) and Lindsey Pollak (Getting From College to Career).  Our next show will air live at 5PM ET this evening (Monday, July 27) and will focus on the impact health issues have on our lives and careers.  We hope you'll listen in or check out the recorded podcast.

5 Things I Learned at BlogHer 09 - and Great Live Interviews!

This weekend, I attended the BlogHer09 Conference in downtown Chicago and came away very inspired.  For those who couldn't join us, here are my top takeaways and live interviews with some of the interesting people I had the opportunity to meet:

1)It's up to bloggers to start taking a stand.  We need to stop working for established organizations for free.  Blogging is hard work, and if we're doing it for someone else, we should be paid for it.  Contact the most senior exec in the organization you want to work for, and never take the first fee they offer.

2) Even in the midst of the recession, large, prestigious companies like Pepsi and Unilever came out to support female bloggers.  You don't have to work for yourself to have a fulfilling career - blogging or otherwise. 

3) Blogging continues to be an evolving science.  Two years ago, Typepad was the platform du jour - now it's Wordpress.  SEO is all about your titles and links and Top Ten Lists, not meta-tags. 

4) There is an ongoing debate as to what constitutes under and overpromoting your work online.  Experts disagreed on everything from whether to Stumble your own posts to how many times to re-tweet your news.

5) Bloggers with babies in tow represent the twenty-first century woman who wants to do what she loves while remaining intimately connected to a like-minded community. 

And now...feel like you were there by watching these live interviews!

Jill Beraud, Chief Marketing Officer, Pepsi

Christine Cea, Director of Public Relations, Unilever

Lisa Stone and Jory Des Jardins, Co-Founders of BlogHer

Laurie Ruettimann, Blogger at PunkRockHR and Laura Gilbert, Blogger at AOL/Lemondrop

Rachel Feddersen, Director, Parenting.com

Adam Keats, Vice President, WeberShandwick

Jason Seiden, President of Seiden Leadership, and Willy Franzen, Founder of One Day, One Job

Lisa Buksbaum, CEO and Blogger at SoaringWords.org

5 Ways to Fix a Tarnished Online Reputation

United Airlines recently released a statement in response to the YouTube video sensation by a disgruntled flyer who had his guitars broken on a recent flight.  However, it was too little, too late, as more than 3 million people had already watched the video.  If you’re the owner of a small business or if part of your job is to look after your organization’s reputation, you need to know what to do to avoid being in a pickle like United.  Here are five ideas from Larry Weber, the founder of communications firms Weber Shandwick/W2 Group and the author of Sticks and Stones:

• Listen and respond to online conversations before an issue reaches critical mass and damages your reputation.  The best protection against negative comments and gripes is to build a positive reputation ahead of time. 
• In the event of a crisis, you or your leader must take responsibility in order to recover corporate reputation.
• Explain your solution to the crisis/issue and then carry the solution into action. 
• Set up specific online destinations to solicit negative comments and deal with them separately.  Bank of America set up a Twitter rep to deal with customer complaints.
• To change how you appear on the Internet, push down the relevance of negative results and give the search engines positive new content.

9 Ways to Be a Powerful Woman

Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist, speaker, and the founder of SelfBrand LLC, a NYC-based personal branding firm. According to Catherine, now that women exert overwhelming influence in the business world they can make even more progress if they learn how to leverage their distinctly female aptitudes.  Here are nine ways women can use their innately female traits to boost business success:

1. Tune in emotionally: Women are especially intuitive and empathetic, thanks in part to higher levels of hormones such as estrogen and oxytocin. Catherine’s advice: Use these emotionally driven strengths to be open and responsive to others' feelings and build strong and healthy work relationships.

2. Create an attractive package: Attractive people not only make more money, but are viewed as being smarter and more competent than others. Women possess an advantage here, too, having more "visual aids" to work with than men do. Catherine’s advice: Accentuate your best features, and develop a distinct look with a signature color, accessories, shoes, and so on. If you don't have the body of a fashion model, then do something wonderful with your hair and clothing. Work on your posture and gait. Think about what your visual image conveys, and find visual "props" that add originality and make a powerful statement. 

3.  Reach out: The larger your network, the more career capital you'll acquire--great news for women, who are natural-born networkers and team builders. Catherine's advice: Make and keep friends. Ask others for help, ideas, and feedback. And continually grow your network of colleagues, advisers, and mentors. 

4. Communicate well: Women routinely outscore men on oral and written tests because they use both hemispheres of the brain--left and right--to process verbal, visual, and emotional stimuli.  (Men tend to use only the left, "logical" side of the brain when verbalizing.) Catherine’s advice: Ask great questions, listen, and hone your business conversation and presentation skills. Become known for being a master communicator in both speaking and writing.

5. Be inclusive: Choosing inclusion over exclusivity is an inherent female strength and a powerful advantage in today's diverse, globalized workplace. Catherine’s advice: Commit to inviting as many perspectives as possible and extending goodwill to everyone--friends and foes. Cultivate strong alliances, and be loyal.

6. Read between the lines: MRI studies show that women are much better at picking up subtle emotional messages than men are. This makes them especially attuned to body language and able to detect unspoken signals of distress, confusion, or other emotions, such as frustration. Catherine’s advice: Pay attention to what's going on behind the scenes. In meetings, for example, if something feels incomplete or not talked about, act on your hunch and initiate a follow-up phone conversation.

7.  Empower others: Gender studies show that girls tend to work together, forming a kind of committee, in order to accomplish tasks. This inclusiveness helps everyone in the group succeed. Catherine’s advice: The highly collaborative style of females is increasingly valuable in today's interconnected global business environment. Lead in a way that doesn't seek to have power over people, but empowers others instead. Create teams and a "personal board of directors" who can advise you--and be sure to include men too. Give public credit to people when they contribute.

8. Be a big picture thinker: Studies show that women tend to take in multiple perspectives and consider a wide range of tangential elements when solving a problem or coming to a decision, while men's style of problem solving is different--more linear and more narrowly focused. Catherine’s advice: Leverage your enhanced ability to be a big picture thinker so you can bring more creativity and innovation to your work.

9. Be likable: Women's gift for compassion, empathy, and intuition also makes them more likable. Catherine’s advice: Likability is a key asset the workplace. Smile and be positive--as opposed to being serious and stern--and you will win everyone over and be more influential in your job.

They Don't Teach Corporate in College - Your Questions Answered!

As many of you know, I published a new edition of my first book, They Don't Teach Corporate in College - A Twenty-Something's Guide to the Business World in April.  Since then, you guys have asked a lot of terrific questions, which I've answered in this video.  In this edition, I cover:

1) How can I negotiate an offer for my first job in a difficult market?
2) Does it matter what I major in in college, and what do you think about going to grad school?
3) How can I have a strong corporate persona without being fake, and how should I act around my work friends compared to personal friends?

What’s a Master’s Degree Worth?

Liz Pulliam Weston provided these words of wisdom regarding the value of graduate degrees on the New York Times' Room for Debate blog last week.  Recession or no recession, it looks like Liz agrees with me that you should consider the return on investment before impulsively deciding to go back to school.

“Graduate school has traditionally been a great place to wait out recessions while honing your skills for a better job. But sometimes, the payoff doesn’t justify the cost.

In some fields, such as business or engineering, a graduate degree typically boosted income by more than enough to justify the cost. In others — the liberal arts and social sciences, in particular — master’s degrees didn’t appear to produce much if any earnings advantage.

Advanced education has many other, non-economic benefits, of course. But if you’re borrowing to pay for your schooling — as 60 percent of graduate students do, accumulating an average $37,000 in student loan debt, according to the 2003-2004 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study — you want to make sure you can pay those student loan bills when they come due.

Otherwise, you could quite literally spend the rest of your life scraping to pay off your debt. Student loans typically can’t be erased in bankruptcy court, and student lenders have extraordinary powers to pursue borrowers, up to and including taking a portion of their Social Security retirement checks.

Those in the worst shape are often the ones who took on private student loans, which have fewer consumer protections than federal student loans and which come with higher, variable rates. The prevalence of so many strapped borrowers is why I recommend students borrow no more for their educations, in total, than they expect to make the first year out of school.

This rule of thumb won’t work for everyone — heaven knows, you may be the rare literature M.A. who writes a best-selling novel and pays off her debt with one check — but it’s a good starting point for anyone considering strapping herself to more education bills.”

I’m so glad that Liz has done the research to back up this point of view.  Too many of us feel that a master’s degree is essential, when really it’s a nice-to-have that shouldn’t necessarily be your priority at this point in time. 

How to Get What You're Asking For

The best things come to those who ask.  But exactly how you ask a contact for help affects your likelihood of success.  And in fact, I’ve had people ask me things so inappropriately that I don’t respond even if I can in fact help them.  Here are some best practices from the smart folks over at Stepcase Lifehack that I generally agree with:

Don’t overwhelm: There’s no cut-and-dry solution to this, unfortunately, but the rule of thumb is this.  Initiate contact once, and then wait a week.  If you don’t hear back, ping them again. If you don’t hear back after that one, it’s over. This keeps future options open because you haven’t harassed them until they can’t stand you anymore, but makes sure they didn’t just miss you the first time.

Show mutual benefit: Often, we tend to focus constantly on what we bring the table: our skills, background, education, etc. What many people ignore, however, is that many people just flat out like helping people. We all love being the one who “gave them a chance when no one would,” especially when it turns into a success story. Don’t be afraid to talk about how what you’re asking for would benefit you, too.

Be direct: Odds are, the person you’re contacting doesn’t have tons of time to spare. So don’t waste it – get to the point. There are right ways and wrong ways to do this, obviously, but don’t dance around an issue. A 13-paragraph email isn’t going to get read nearly as often as a two-paragraph email that says essentially the same thing. They’ll appreciate your effort and consideration of their time.

Be you: In talking to various employers, they’ve all said the same thing: the unique people get noticed. Most people, frankly, do exactly the same thing, in the same format, without any personality or interest.  So be you, and let your personality affect what you say and do.

Ask not what they can do for you: When you contact someone, don’t ask anything from them. Don’t say “please get in touch,” or “call me back,” or anything like that. Instead, ask them what you can do – who can you get in touch with? What can you do to get the ball rolling? Put the onus for action on yourself – the less the other person has to do, the more likely they are to do it. And odds are, they’ll do something to help you out anyway.

Some other great tips I’ve heard lately? 

Send your contact a card congratulating her on a recent accomplishment, connect her to someone else who can be useful to her, and provide a resource that will further her business.  The thing to remember is that you have to build a relationship in which you are perceived as credible and trustworthy before you start asking for favors. 

 

Be a Smart Messenger

My friend Elizabeth Marshall gets to work with some of the best minds in the business publishing world.  She’s arranged virtual book tours with luminaries such as Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Keith Ferrazzi, and as such, has played an instrumental role in crafting relevant messages for millions of readers. 

Elizabeth recently held a teleconference during which she shared some of her key strategies for creating and delivering an impactful message.  Because I feel that these are important whether you’re marketing yourself or a vacuum cleaner, I’ll share some of them here:

Tell your version of the story:  If you think about it, nothing is really new or novel.  What makes you uniquely qualified to delivery this message as opposed to another one?  Don’t be afraid to be boldly self-expressive.

Achieve your audience’s burning desire:  The entry point of your message should appeal to your audience’s most pressing need.  It has to compel people to open the door and listen to the rest of what you have to say.

Give it FEPS: A compelling message will offer the target Financial, Emotional, Physical, or Spiritual return on investment (ROI).

Provide real value:  After you bring them in, you have to demonstrate that you deserve their trust and attention by putting forth a high quality, high substance product. 

Be consistent:  Flash in the pan marketing has run its course.  The most effective promotional strategies are often used day in and day out (for example, writing a blog or doing speaking engagements) and always support the same central message.

Keep in mind that an effective message is the why, not the what.  I’ve failed to make this distinction in the past, for example telling potential readers that my work explores twenty-something workplace issues rather than the fact that my work keeps young professionals happily and gainfully employed during their twenty-something years.

Elizabeth is offering another free "spreading your message" call today at 5PM ET, so feel free to join and hear her wisdom for yourself!

Stand Out in Interviews with the 30/60/90 Day Plan

People ask me all the time: "how can I stand out among 50 candidates who are interviewing for the same job?"

I can always count on my friend Bill Vick to offer a solution no one else has thought of.  I know, I know, the 30/60/90 day plan sounds like something you'd be introduced to during a performance review, perhaps it's even a veiled threat that you'd better shape up or ship out.  But no.  According to Bill, the 30/60/90 day plan is an easy, innovative way to show potential employers how you can add value on Day One.  Here are the details from Bill:

"A 30/60/90 day plan is a written document outlining what you will do as an employee within the first 3 months of your employment. It’s broken up into sections: the first 30 days usually includes training, as well as getting to know the company and customers; the next 30 days are more focused on getting out on your own and into the swing of things; and the last 30 days are often more about branching out and bringing in new business.  Why does it work?

1. It shows initiative. You are already doing something that’s not required, but that would be helpful. It gives hiring managers a clear idea of what they can look forward to if they hire you-an outstanding, take-charge, thoughtful, focused employee.

2. It shows preparation.  A 30/60/90 day plan can’t be done at the last minute. Creating one shows you are thinking and planning ahead, and know how to work. If you’ll do that for the interview, it’s a good bet for them that you’ll do that in the job.

3. It shows your writing skills. That’s important. It shows your communication skills, your Word Document skills, and your ability to put something together. It shows that you know how to impress.

4. It shows that you’ve done your homework. You took the time to get to know the company. When you can name specific things relating to the company in your document (types of clients, types or even names of competitors, top products, customer-relationship management systems, what their initiatives are or what their credo is) it presents you as a very desirable candidate who is interested in THIS job, not A job.

5. It shows that you know a lot about the position. You’re already writing down what you will do in the first 3 months. You know what’s going on, and what you’re getting into.

6. When you present such a plan correctly during the interview, it shows that you can control a client-customer interaction or a presentation, that you can effectively communicate the points you want to make, and that you can gather information because hopefully you’re asking questions as you present it.