Are College Students Prepared for Life?
September 30, 2014 Leave a comment
In progress! Check soon….
Seniors – Welcome Back to Campus!
August 31, 2014 5 Comments
Seniors: Are you ready?
Once again, as predictable as the earth’s rotation, the annual fall migration of students heading to/back to campus is now in full-swing! Like all seasonal happenings, it comes with tell-tale indications – Winter’s arrival told by that foreboding metallic taste in the air. Spring comes with relief from the long winter, blooms popping and the fragrant scents of ‘new-ness.’ Summer’s ‘official’ beginning being marked by the shrill buzz of the cicadas and the obligatory queue of beach traffic. Finally, fall announcing itself with cool winds, bursting colors, the evening clatter of katydids and… moving trucks! For the nation’s campuses, fall also means newly erected directional signs, a litany of ads and postings for rooms/apartments to rent, lost parents asking for directions, and back-to-school sales on every channel, station, newspaper, with ads assaulting all one’s senses.
As this annual happening unfolds, for all college students, but seniors in particular, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. And with graduation now simply months away, I thought I’d compile a list of a few things that, as a senior, you might want to be thinking about as you’re beginning your final year of college!
You’ve most likely just come off the last summer where, going into it, you knew exactly what was to happen next; another year of school. But now, as a senior, uncertainty can be the rule as the summer of 2015 is waiting with a new and great ambiguity for the first time.
Addressing the unknown by being prepared, proactive and by embracing the 10 suggestions below might be of something to think about! If you do so, the clouds of uncertainty will have a good chance of clearing on the horizon for graduation day!
1) Career services – Your college/university has it! Use it! No worries as, contrary to what you may think, they are NOT there to ‘place’ you in a job or career you’re not wanting to be in! Their job, their role, what they do is get to know who you are and try to feed you as much career-oriented learning, understanding and opportunity as possible. Your Career office is a place to meet, greet and introduce yourself and they’ll run with you from there. You have to take the first step though! Good engagement takes time and being proactive. Your career office is there to help get from campus to the next step in your career!
2) Network – And then network, network and network some more! Usually when the term is used, beads of sweat start to emerge from the foreheads of those being told they need to do so. Let me first start off by saying that networking is an organic process of engagement that takes time, energy and proactivity to make work well. If you’re doing so simply to ‘collect’ names on LinkedIn or ‘likes’ on Facebook, that is not networking, that is accounting and not a lot of fun. Networking means simply talking to people. Speaking with people of like interests. Letting people know, that are in influential positions, where you’re at and what you’re looking for. It really is nothing more than building a circle of people that are wanting and willing to help and this is essentially how the world moves. You do it every day when moving about campus and chatting with friends! Remember, also, that networking is a two-way street and if people get the sense that you’re doing such simply as a means-to-an-end, then it’s lost its effectiveness.
3) linkedIn – See ‘Networking’ above! As part of one’s integration with the world, LinkedIn is becoming an important tool to brand and market yourself! It is a great avenue of ‘meeting’ people and what LinkedIn perhaps does best is allow you to do so by bridging the various ‘degrees of separation.’ Want to meet someone in the solar industry? You will! As you build your LinkedIn network, you’ll start to see, through your contacts, their contacts and so on as many concentric circles out start to develop. As your network grows you’ll have access to people that can be influential in all industries.
4) Resume & Cover letter – Time to get them ‘ready.’ When I say ready, I don’t mean necessarily ready to send out as that implies having an actual place/person to send them to! What I mean here is that it is time, before they are needed, to be thinking about how you want to portray yourself and your experiences. In regards to your resume, how to tailor it to various, respective industries. How to use its structure to best highlight your experience and accomplishments and like any good writing, how to best edit what will be on such, and just as important, what will remain off! If you think of the resume as a ‘cast of characters,’ to use a Hollywood metaphor, the cover letter should be the ‘screen play,’ meaning it has a story and that it is well connected to the audience you’re intending. They need to work together and the cover letter needs to be specific, directed, and very much personalized while giving the reader something that engages them with you, the prospective applicant. There’s an old marketing term, “you’ve got to sell the sizzle not the steak!” Think about what you’re wanting to say but make it such so that the employer ‘wants’ to read such.
5) Meet with all prospective employers – This is an interesting area of conversation. When I say meet all prospective employers, I mean this in a sort of literal sense. For example, as the semester rolls on, your Career office will have numbers of employers coming in to meet with you, the student. Don’t define them by their industry or job being offered! Look at them as contacts in the field. You’re not interested in (as an example) banking!? Fine, but go meet with that recruiter as 1) they may say something you’ve not thought of and actually be of interest(?) for you and, 2) perhaps more importantly, they KNOW people and may have a key contact in an industry or field you’re wanting to enter.
6) Intern, volunteer, shadow – Guess what!? In may of 2015 you’re to get the diploma you’ve worked hard for! You should be both proud and feeling accomplished for that! But, and here’s the catch, yours comes with about 4.5 million others! I’ve been saying this to graduating students for years now; essentially, everyone’s got a college degree. The new “high school diploma” if you will. What can make you different in the process of the job search? Experience. Real, tangible, “I’ve done more than simply study/research the field” sorts of experience. Think of how this can not only help with your clarity in your search but also being able to speak the employer’s language when approaching them!
7) Informational Interviews – Are you ready to be put on the spot? Informational interviews are simply that, information. Essentially, asking someone in an industry/job that you’re interested in if they’d be willing to carve out a little time to talk with you about their work-life? Great opportunity to learn what it’s like on the inside AND you’re building a network (see above) in the process. These can be really great in terms of your personal stewardship and defining what you want to do and where you want to go with your first job or career.
8) Sidle on up to your professors – And ones that aren’t! They know people and like any other form of networking, getting to know people, letting them know where you’re at and what you’re looking for is building a great network of allies.
9) Be aware of your friends’ contacts – Same thing here. Know someone on-campus who’s father, mother, uncle, whatever, works in a field of interest? Speak with them! Get introduced and start to plant seeds of interest!
10) Clean up your on-line image – While related to ‘LinkedIn’ above, I’ve left this one for last as while as important as any of the previous 9 entries, this one can easily be left to a passive status and if not treated and managed properly, it can be a death-knell in your job search. If you look at the collective output of your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (and I could go on here) accounts, they are a biographical mosaic of you in an on-line forum. If you think employers will not be looking at these, think again, as they will and judgments, fair or not, will be made! That 1am rant on twitter about something you saw in the news? The Facebook post with the pic of you at the party? Whatever the case may be, these will be seen and conclusions will be made. Clean up your on-line persona and ask yourself when looking at any piece or component, “is this positive or at least neutral?” If neither, it needs to go!
What happens if I do not re-pay my student loan?
July 31, 2014 9 Comments
Student Loans for college can be one of the most significant debts one may ever incur, both in a good way, and potentially bad. They are necessary for many to attain their educational goals and aspirations, but on the back end, once done with school, they are waiting and, if not managed properly, can haunt people for life.
By some estimates, nearly one in three student loan borrowers in the US that are in repayment are actually behind on their payments. Six months after graduation student loans come due and the first payment request will come to the door. Many students I’ve worked with in the past were not even aware that, if graduating in a traditional form, in May, November meant loan payments were to be waiting and the lender expecting a nice response!
While some take it on as a responsibility and manage their debt accordingly, others tend to put a blind-eye to the subject and that is a dangerous approach especially when dealing with the federally funded loans. Let me explain. Any loan is an agreement, a contract, that gives one money now, in the present, with agreed terms that you repay it back over time with interest. The interest (and penalties) being where the loan providers make their monies so when repayment doesn’t happen according to the terms signed on for, the lenders tend to take it seriously.
Ignoring your debt only makes it worse in a general sense. While some loans can be ‘negotiated’ away or walked away from with minimal (relatively) negative effect, when it comes to student loans in particular, there is truth in the adage that if ignored it will only get worse. Student loans don’t just go away, and the consequences of making no attempt to pay or resolve them can be severe.
Sometimes one even ‘ignores’ their loan by accident. For example, many students I’ve worked with have been under the misconception that by deferring loans, say attending grad school for example, that the loans just sit there doing nothing. While partially true, ‘doing nothing’ in that there is no immediate expected re-payment, when they come due after the deferral time frame, what’s now waiting in addition to the loan, is all the new accrued interest that HAS been racking up on the meter while the deferral time has ticked away. The loan doesn’t just sit there inert, interest is adding up and added on to the original tally, so while your payments may have been deferred for a year or two, the interest has grown and is tacked on and your debt has ballooned more.
So, what DOES happen if student loans are ignored and/or mismanaged?
1) the debt will simply grow. Predictably, account-ably, the maths increase and one gets deeper in debt. Interest will continue to accrue and be added on as payment balances, that seem so daunting now, will only get even larger. Additionally, loans that go into collection will incur additional penalties that can increase costs up to a significant percentage (State law, depending on where, may limit collection costs).
2) Credit scores will suffer and especially bad at a time when trying to build this number. Late payments will appear on your credit reports and your credit scores will go down. Negative information may be reported for up to seven years, and for many graduates their credit scores are more important than their college GPA’s when it comes to real life. Need an apartment? Many landlords are checking credit scores to measure potential tenants. Need a car? Credit scores are used to determine your risk and loan interest rate. Want a job? Many employers, more as time goes on, are checking credit scores as a way to determine how well one manages responsibility.
3) You will eventually go into default. Federal loans generally can be considered to be in default when a payment has not been made for a period of 270 days. Once in default, the government has “extraordinary powers” to collect (see below).
4) Private student loans are a bit different, though. The definition of “default” depends on the contract, and may include simply missing one payment or the death of a co-borrower. Private loan lenders don’t have the same collection powers as the federal government but they can sue the borrower, and if they are successful, then use whatever means available under state law to collect the judgment.
5) Expecting a tax refund? If you’re lucky enough to have a job, you may have to kiss your tax refund goodbye. If a federal student loan and in default, the federal government can intercept part or all of you tax refund. Married filing jointly? Yep, good guess! A spouse’s portion of the refund may be at risk too, and they may have to file an injured spouse claim to recover it after the fact (although private student loan lenders cannot claim tax refunds).
6) Wages may, and most likely will, be garnished. Normally, a creditor must successfully sue you in court in order to garnish your wages, and even if they are successful, there may be state limits on whether and how much income can be taken. But if you are in default with a federal student loan, the government may garnish up to 15% of one’s paycheck. While you may be able to challenge the garnishment under certain circumstances, but in the meantime, do you really want your employer to know you are in serious trouble with your loans and financial management?
7) Any co-borrowers/signers are in trouble too. Anyone who co-signed a student loan is on the hook for 100% for the balance. It doesn’t matter if it is a relative, friend, stranger; anyone that puts their name on the loan contract is then liable for whatever is left/accrued on the loan. Simple.
8) One can be sued. Lawsuits are less common with federal loans than with private ones. (After all, why would the government sue when it has so many other ways to collect?) But a lawsuit is always a possibility especially if you ignore your student loans. If/when sued, it is advised to seek the help of an attorney experienced in student loan law to raise a defense against the lawsuit and come to some agreed resolution.
Essentially, one in default will be haunted by this debt for life. It may sound blunt, but it’s the reality and better the devil you know. There is no statute of limitations on federal loans, which means there is no limit on how long you can be sued and it simply does not go away. State statute of limitations do apply to private student loans, however, limiting the amount of time they have to sue to collect. But it doesn’t stop them from trying to collect — and if one doesn’t know their rights it may go on indefinitely.
But What if You Can’t Afford to Pay?
For starters, get your free annual credit reports to see where things stand. Personally, I like and use CreditKarma.com. It’s free, secure and easy and will give constant monitoring and one will have a clear understanding of how debt is affecting credit. There’s also the National Student Loan Database to track down your loans.
For federal loans, you can get back on track with a reasonable and affordable payment plan. Programs available for federal loans such as Income-based Repayment (IBR) that allow some borrowers to qualify for a lower monthly payment based on income, and then discharge the remaining balance after a certain number of years of repayment may be an option.
For private loans, talk with an attorney who understands how to discharge certain private student loans in bankruptcy. It can be tough to qualify and it’s getting more difficult, but not impossible. If that’s not an option, you may be able to try to negotiate a settlement?
While it’s never a good idea to ignore loans, there are times when a borrower simply cannot afford his or her loan payments. Fact of life but if ever in said situation, remember to prioritize. Federal loans are more important than private ones. Ignoring any debt/loans can be painful and have negative consequences to your lively-hood, but doing so at the federal level is life-long.
Power of the “Thank You!”
June 19, 2014 Leave a comment
“Thank You” can make a world of difference!
“Thank you!” Two words. Two syllables. Quite simple, really. Right? Well, what’s happened to such as of late? Is it of such simplicity that the value of its social currency has been diminished? Now lost and forgotten no longer deemed as being a necessary part of our communication & interactions?
I write this post while it is relatively fresh, a live blip on my radar. Two blips actually and I say this with no condemnation, no judgement, just an observation that as people navigate the world, they may be shorting themselves of quite a lot of opportunity. Doing so, merely because they did not demonstrate one of the ever present soft-skills bandied about so much in the job search punditry. Saying ‘thank you’ used to be so common place, an exchange heard throughout the day, but now seemingly relegated to a blind omission that could be scuppering chances of making connections, getting assistance and/or generally receiving people’s support.
The first ‘blip’ that I am referring to being from a recent interaction I had with a relatively new graduate, class of 2013, when speaking at Alumni Weekend at the University of Massachusetts. I was invited to be one of the presenters/speakers for a day of career packaging for the alumni/ae visiting for the weekend. I was involved in two sessions; Job Search Strategies for New Graduates followed by a ‘speed dating’ type of event for quick career advice and questions. Both were fun and I think of some really good utility for the participants.
At the end of the former, the Job Search Strategies workshop, I was approached and asked if I’d be willing to look at someone’s LinkedIn profile and give some feedback? I said that I’d be happy to do so and when I had a chance, later that evening or the day next, I would look at it and write up some thoughts. As requested, this person connected to me via LinkedIn both as a reminder and so that I could see the profile in full.
Later that evening, as I said I would do, I went through this person’s profile and gave it a good read, looked at all the categories and listings and came up with a few suggestions that, while already good, might simply make it a little stronger. I did this while in the comfort of my home, in front of the television actually, so certainly not suffering by any means. But, the fact of the matter is that I DID put an hour or so into fulfilling this request; examining the profile, thinking about what could make it stronger and better for ‘brand building’ and then wrote a long-ish email explaining my thoughts and recommendations.
Now granted, I’m not expecting accolades, applause or anything of the sort. Also, it wasn’t any sort of paying thing, so remuneration was out of the question too. I did, however, think that a simple, after-the-fact, ‘thank you’ for putting in the time to do so might come my way? Just a note acknowledging my time and effort. Nothing. Crickets. Not a peep even saying that the email was received, much less any sort of ‘thank you’ or acknowledgement to its receipt much less benefit.
The second ‘blip’ is one where it DID make a difference, and an example of a big one at that. A friend of mine is a dance professor, and a very good one, at a very prestigious liberal arts college. She has many students that go through her ranks year to year and in this process good rapport is developed with many along the way. In her role, and alongside the longevity of such, she has many contacts outside of the college and this makes her an invaluable resource for those students in the creative arts. Not just dance, but her contacts are widespread in theatre, museums, publishing, television, etc. The list is long and deep.
Often, she will recommend a student to her outside connections as one that might be a good fit for an internship or off-campus experience, essentially putting her own reputation on the line. This not being uncommon, offering up a student to an organization for a potential match. But also, not uncommon is that after the fact, she’ll then tend to never hear from the student(s) again.
However, one student that was recommended by her for an internship separated himself from the pack. He ended up accepting an internship position upon her recommendation and it was a very good summer’s endeavor in the end. What WAS different in this particular situation was that, after completing such, he made a point of sending her a nice hand-written note thanking her for making the connection, bridging the opportunity, and telling her what he did and learned. Wow!
Fast forward a year and she gets a call from one of her contacts who happens to work in the movie industry. He is ‘needing someone to do the labor – set set-up, grabbing the coffee, schlepping materials, grunt work, nothing glamorous, no promises, just hard work.’ She thinks back to this one student who sent her the note and told her contact, “I think I may have just the guy you’re looking for…” She makes the connection and he, now graduated, flies off to Australia to be the gopher. He did such and did it well apparently as she received a call thanking her for the connection and was told ‘the guy worked out perfectly.’ Long story short, this guy went on to work on some major Hollywood productions and blockbusters, now having established himself in his unexpected, serendipitous new career! A career that started with a simple, hand-written, “thank you.”
A ‘thank you’ is such a simple way to say to someone, especially someone that’s gone out of their way to provide assistance, that you appreciate what they’ve done and want to acknowledge that fact. So simple. So effective. So many opportunities perhaps missed but never known….
Job Search Strategies for New Graduates
June 4, 2014 Leave a comment
Success! Congratulations as you’ve worked hard and toiled in the classroom for 4+ years and now it’s time to see it all come to fruition as you enter working adulthood! The job market is a huge entity and for those walking in, it can be a cold splash in the face for even the most seasoned job-seekers, much less new grads just getting their feet wet! Below are 10 common mistakes of job hunters (new ones in particular) and following that are 10 tips to get your search going so that you can stand out!
Tips for a Successful Job Search
Ten Common Mistakes of the (New) Job Hunter
1) Not Being Proactive
2) Using the Internet AS your job search
3) Not Networking Effectively
4) Not Tailoring Resumes and/or Cover Letters
5) Misusing/under-utilizing the Internet
6) Failing to Follow Up
7) Setting Expectations Too High
8) Not Appearing Professional
9) Not Taking the Job Interview Seriously
10) Not Utilizing Your College’s and/or professional Career Services
Now, Ten Tips to get you Really Moving in your Job Search!
1. Research, research and then research some more!
As with any job search plan, one of the most important steps is to do the up-front research. If you have a degree in a chosen field, it’s best to research opportunities and get a general feel as to what the requirements are to be and how organizations differ from one another. Sure, Google and Microsoft (Bing) specialize in search, but are they the same? No. Ford and Chevrolet both manufacture and sell automobiles, but are the two companies the same? No. It is your ‘job’ to be able to distinguish an organization before approaching. Today, especially, there’s an inordinate amount of information available for job-seekers, and to an employer, there’s no excuse you didn’t use it in identifying what makes them unique.
2. Get your resumes (yes, plural!) ready.
Make them specific and tailored for each position and industry. Use your headings, categories and descriptions to give your resume flow and ‘a story’ that speaks to each employer. A generic resume smells of desperation and/or indifference and when an employer has hundreds, if not thousands, it can go by unrecognized. If it doesn’t ‘speak’ to the role and the nuance of each organization it gets put in the ‘circular file,’ damned for eternity.
3. Just as important, get your cover letters to speak.
Make them so they are not the generic – “as a new grad, I am really interested in a position at your organization… etc., etc….” This doesn’t SAY anything. Use the cover letter to speak to them. Connect your experience, skills and, most importantly, interest to what they do. Remember, the organization is NOT thinking about you. They are only interested if they can be thinking about HOW you can help them. Your letter needs to sell them on that fact!
4. For grads, be sure to visit your college’s career services office and/or seek professional assistance.
Utilize these resources for career counseling, job and internship listings, access to recruiting programs, and career networking. The staff is typically seasoned in helping you get your materials in order and preparing you for your search. Remember, the ‘job’ of the career office is to help PREPARE you for your job search, not to conduct it for you so you need to be proactive and willing to do the leg-work. If already out of school and graduated, hiring on a career services professional can be a great way to get objective, resourceful guidance and assistance that can be a huge investment.
5. Being connected and online is your friend.
Allows for real-time information and connection. Obviously, there are a number of online job boards for job seekers, and using your time to keep abreast of these; job listings, postings, job search tips and career advice, is important as a puzzle piece to your job search. As a side benefit, but just as important, keeping your social networks active and in the loop at the same time.
6. Promote and clean-up your on-line presence and profiles.
Use sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to your advantage in self-branding. Many companies now use these social networks to advertise, meet and recruit. Connecting with prospective employers via social networks could be a way to get in the door. Many organizations now gauge the aptitude of a prospective employee not only by their professional and educational experience, but their online biographical presence. What you say and how you present yourself online can, and will, translate into real-world perception. Whether positive or negative is up to you!
7. Take advantage of recruiting and career fairs.
These are a great way to strike up mini informational interviews with organizational representatives that are trying to sell you their organization. These are great venues to ask questions, pick up valuable advice and then use that in your marketing of self! Bring copies of your resume to distribute as this is a terrific way to connect and position yourself with potential hiring managers, not to mention any information gleaned can then be used in a follow-up cover letter and interview.
8. Package yourself to promote!
Learn the basic etiquette of job-hunting which includes dressing appropriately, learning the importance of a good handshake, eye contact and thank you notes and emails. Take advantage of the plethora of career articles online which outline all the basic requirements of the job search process.
9. Network extensively and politely, professionally, but shamelessly, USE them!
You cannot have too many people in your corner when you are looking to secure a job, and networking plays a critical role in the process. Networking can be both formal and informal. Friends, family, neighbors, alumni, even people you meet on the bus or at a store are potential conduits in generating job openings.
10. Volunteering or taking an internship is good and good for you.
A great way to ‘test’ an area of interest and bolster your skills. These programs, some of which can be paid, are a valuable way to gather on-the-job training which can work to make your resume stronger and give you tangible experience. In some cases, if all goes well, many organizations will consider offering you a position on a permanent basis based on what they’ve seen. As a volunteer or intern, it can help put your finger on the pulse of an organization and you can position (see research above!) yourself immediately for interviews should job openings occur.
The Flaws of the Interviewing Process
May 6, 2014 Leave a comment
Effective interviewing is more ‘art’ than ‘science’
I think it’s not of great secret that the hiring process is a flawed system in general. When I say ‘flawed,’ it is mainly to the interview process that I refer. Many times, interviews are conducted by individuals or people that are in a position of needing to fill a gap for their organization. Often, that means people are looking to expedite the hire and get that cog in the machine as soon as possible. At the same time, it also can be exacerbated by the fact that the person/people doing the hiring really don’t know what best to look for or what the needs really are to be; they have a gap to fill.
Contributing to this break-down in the machine is, historically, if you look at colleges and universities (and businesses themselves), there has been an incredible emphasis on training people to be ready for the interview, but the other side of the fence, training effective interviewers, is sorely lacking! Even at some of the nation’s best business schools and programs, preparing FOR the interview is of paramount importance, but preparing and training people to CONDUCT interviews is almost absent from the equation. What this has contributed to is a system that perpetuates and repeats inherent flaws in the way it is designed to be vetting potential candidates for hire.
Think of it this way – an organization posts a position. People react by constructing their resumes, highlighting their history, skills and fill it with what they hope will be key words and buzz topics to get noticed. It gets read (if one is lucky) and selected as a ‘call-back!’ You’re in! Well, now begins the flaw, or series of flaws I am referring to.
Flaw #1 – The resume ends up becoming the interview guide
Let’s begin with the call-back as a start. They’ve invited you in because of your resume and because of this, once the interview begins the resume can end up as a template for the interview. What this does is put the emphasis on what candidates have done or are able to check-off in terms of the list of requirements in meeting the role’s requirements. This looking back has a tendency to focus on job experience instead of potential, and many times this allows the interviewer, in search for all the right check-boxes, to get away from finding out about who the candididate really is instead of do they have the ‘right’ requirements. Sadly, furthering down the wrong road, many interviewers are either not that inventive in extracting ‘who the candidate is,’ or in an attempt to keep a level-playing field (which it isn’t), they will have scripted interviews where each candidate answers the same set of questions. This mutes any real conversation or the ability for personality and fit to shine through.
In a perfect world both need to be assessed; experience and potential, but without potential, what value does experience really have? For example, suppose a candidate with a ‘great history’ is applying and it turns out they’re doing so just to go through the motions, needing a job and the fact is that they hated everything they did to get that experience that is now shining on the resume? They’re not the best in terms of potential to fill that gap for the employer. Experience and skill-set may indicate if a candidate can do a job, but it’s not necessarily a correlation of do they WANT to do the job?
Flaw #2 – Basic human nature
It’s a fact that people tend to gravitate towards others of common interest and/or history. No secret there but it does set up the potential that a mutual interest or association listed on a resume may make a candidate seem more desirable, even if it doesn’t hold much weight when it comes to the job itself. While one certainly cares in terms of what a candidate’s resume has on it, the ‘right boxes ticked/words used,’ you’ve already been called in for the interview, so now’s the time to find about the candidate as a person, a part of the mission, not as a list of credentials, facts & figures. Years past, I used to have a corporate recruiter that came to campus annually. In his resume reviews, anyone that had either, or both, military history & acapella were almost a shoe-in for an interview. Why? Because he liked them. Simple as that! Interviewers need to remain objective and have a good understanding of both the position to be filled but also the bigger picture, the health of the organizational culture.
Flaw #3 – It’s a popularity contest
Many times a candidate’s likability is a leading measure of employment. While one’s likability is certainly important, getting on with the interviewer is not always reflective of your potential interaction with the team or culture of the organization. The interview process really needs to examine how one’s fit into the whole will ultimately be measured. Unless you’re the only other employee, or will be working with this person exclusively, it’s about more than an individual connection. It’s about how the candidate fits within the culture of the entire company. Sadly, sometimes the desire to get an employee that’s got all the right things said, or the experience that’s needed, can over-ride a potential new hire’s ability to navigate the new employer culture, and if so, all that experience and skill set can go to waste.
Flaw #4 – No checks and balances
An interviewer can often have the first and final say in whether or not a candidate is best ‘qualified’ for a position. With that, a lack of objectivity can cloud the lens on the hiring process and bring in people that might be bad for the organization and, at the same time, send good talent walking for the door. What’s missing is an efficient check and balance measurement to ensure an objective decision is made. A smart hiring process will look beyond facts & figures and get an intuitive sense of a candidate’s offering. Soft-skills need to be measured and may include having the candidate meet with multiple people, either as separate interviews or in a group interview format, to counteract the bias of any one person.
Some people are great in interviews, but bad on the job. Interviews are often skewed by the impression that people make, which isn’t always reflective of their ability to do the job. I’ve seen good candidates be shown the door ’cause their interviewing skills were not up to snuff, and horrible candidates that are hired, but becuase they were so good at the ‘selling of themselves’ in the interview, people were fooled and by then it’s too late – damage done.
Flaw #5 – No inventiveness or creativity
HR in general will never be referred to as the ‘creative’ group in an organization. Some of this perception is fair and some is not. The fact remains that they are in place to take care of, as the title says, human resources, and some are just better at this than others. Many times, in the process of getting new hires, as alluded to above, the interviewing that takes place can be a bit dry, scripted and/or mechanized. As an interviewee, what you’re looking for is an organization that prides itself on getting to know the real you, see if you’re the best fit, and if so, get you on board. One thing that comes to mind is the S.T.A.R. (Situation, Task, Action, Result) technique. If you see or hear of this process being in place to vet you as a candidate, run! While it may make sense to actually be prepared for such, it reeks of assembly-line processing of staffing and means you’ll end up dissecting your resume with the interviewer and they will really not know the first thing about who you are as a candidate. It does, however, tell you MUCH about them and what it might be like to be part of that organization!
To summarize, the flawed interview/vetting process has the potential to drain a company’s pool of talent and greatly hinder its bottom line with the high cost of turnover and poor hiring decisions. If we don’t start taking a more critical look at the way we evaluate talent, we’re sure to weaken this most valuable resource — and any respective organization — as a result. While experience and education might indicate to you whether people have the capability to do a job, but with exploratory interviewing, questions in the context of the moment and candidate, trying to see the personality and soft-skills, will provide a better indication of how well they will do it!
What’s Missing in the College Experience? Part 4 of 4
April 16, 2014 Leave a comment
Choosing a major can be stressful!
Part 4 of “What’s Missing in the College Experience” – Where is your major leading you?
“Many people end up doing work completely unrelated to their major in college, but it still helps to know for what careers that major might matter when selecting a major or concentration. Students who really know the possible career paths with an undergraduate degree are few and far between at the time of major selection. Many students choose their majors in their sophomore year before they have much work experience at all. There would be many benefits to students if there was a consultant at the school keeping track of where their major may lead, career-wise, and what those careers meant in terms of average activities. Not only would students be making a more informed decision, but it would jump start the process of searching oneself to figure out what they really want to do before the big crunch at the end of senior year.” (Eli Lisseck ’13)
While I was at Mount Holyoke College as the Director of Recruiting and Employer Relations, I had the opportunity or working with many great partner recruiting organizations and some really wonderful students looking to make their mark in the world. One woman, in particular, that really ‘got it’ was a student that was interviewed and hired by, I believe, Paine Webber.
She was a history or psychology major, I can’t remember for sure, but the point being she was hired on by a pre-eminent financial institution after graduation in the liberal arts. Upon being installed on a team, one of her also recently graduated co-workers, had come out of a more formal business program as opposed to her degree in the liberal arts. Upon hearing of her ‘history’ or ‘psych’ major, he turned to her in a meeting and brazenly said, “what are you doing here?” Without missing a beat, she responded by saying, “to do the things you cannot!” A brilliant retort and was coming from someone that could articulate her liberal arts experience and how it would be a good translation to that financial working environment.
But for many, that transition and translation is not so easy. College is a major expense in one’s lifetime but students who don’t follow their hearts by delving into subjects they’re most passionate about will ultimately hurt their chances of a successful—and satisfying—career in the long term, many college officials say.
For college students, declaring a major can be a stressful moment in one’s academic career. What do I major in? What should I choose? Now I have to live with this? These are some of the questions that plague thousands of newly minted college students each year, looking ahead, producing beads of sweat and who have nightmares of doing the ‘diploma walk’ only to head off the stage after graduation directly into an unemployment line.
For many, they view it as though they essentially are to say, ‘this is now what I am to do for life…’ While true to some degree, no pun intended, a major is really nothing more than saying I am specializing in an area of interest and taking the classes to support such. For someone who already has a career destination in mind; say they want to build bridges as an engineer or be a surgeon, they are lucky in that they are on a defined path and their declaration of major is more of a natural means to an end. The more difficult task is when one doesn’t necessarily have a set outcome in mind; no set path or destination, and choosing or declaring a major can be a pretty stressful addition as one feels they are essentially locking in by having to ‘choose their future.’
The good news is that, as stated above, a major is a focus and what, for many, is missing in their college experience, is a real, comprehensive understanding as to how that major is, or can be, translated to the working world and charting off on a career in the future. This is especially true when majoring in the liberal arts or humanities where the outcome can be a much more abstract path as is not necessarily a linear translation to a job or career.
Much of what happens in the classroom, and its success, is in how one, upon graduation, understands the subtlety, nuance and range of skills that are now to be articulated in a way that explains its relevance to a potential employer.
Most majors are elastic in that employers rarely ‘need’ a specific degree majored in, but instead a set of skills (both hard & soft), experiences and the ability to put them into motion. It is rare that a new hire is showing up at the door with a stand-alone skill. Employers look for a mosaic of such and future college graduates have such, but many do not know they have such and it is in this applied learning, this translation that can be the ‘make or break The college experience is too often limited in making that translation for students and many times the only discussion of such is schlepped over to the off-in-the-corner, stand-alone career services to make those connections evident.
This is a huge missed opportunity in that while these dedicated offices of careers and career transition do what they can, without the full ‘eco-system’ buy-in of the campus at large, the talk of transition from academics to career is usually too limited or late in coming and is missing a great opportunity to be as effective as it could be.
Much of what should or could be done during the college experience is a synthesizing of one’s academic studies at every corner of the respective campus, in a way that fully cross-pollinates, so that students have four years of not only academic intake, but four-years of transitional understanding of their academic history, both looking back and looking ahead? The college experience should, and can, be an artful balance of synthesizing interests, skills, personality strengths and acquired knowledge while at the same time acquiring tangible experience outside of the classroom.
In a perfect world, in the first four semesters, when wrapping up the sophomore year, if possible, this synergistic learning would make for a much better understanding of one’s choosing a major and how it ultimately can be a better blueprint for the transition to career and life after college.
What’s Missing in the College Experience? Part 3 of 4
April 10, 2014 Leave a comment
A stands for ‘average!’
Part 3 of “What’s Missing in the College Experience” – Everyone’s Getting A’s
“There has been an over-saturation of high grades in the academic world lately. I am not nearly the first to write about the subject; the phenomena has caught the attention of many school administrations as well. The truth is that, statistically, most people are average. Most people fall near the middle of a bell curve, but many college professors have been awarding a disproportionate number of A’s to students. The prevalent culture dictates that if you don’t have A’s across the board, you aren’t a good student. This plays heavily into an unrealistic expectation for students of how the world will react to them, and overall it hurts their levels of success in the working world.” (Eli Lisseck ’13)
I don’t think that it’s been any secret in terms how ‘academic creep’ has seeped into our educational institutions. It has certainly been not an isolated manifestation as democratization has worked its way into the fabric of many parts of society; trophies awarded for showing up, everyone on the field getting a ball, surveys (see below) really becoming a simple pass/fail response instead of recognizing shades of grey, etc.
In terms of academia, it has been an increasing trend creeping through the college campuses and taking over the academic culture in a slow, and steadily upward way. Even reaching the Ivy Leagues with the most recent, and perhaps the most publicized showcasing in the news being Harvard and how grade inflation, or the expectation thereof, has become the new rule. In Harvard’s case in particular, the ‘average’ grade is reported as being an ‘A’ with the median grade being an ‘A minus.’ Turns out one of the nation’s most ‘rigorous’ academic programs is also one of the nation’s most lenient graders.
Now how is this even possible you ask? In fact, it is, and should be, statistically impossible for if you were to look at a bell curve, there should be an appropriate distribution of each grade, A through F with the average award being somewhere in the middle near the C range. So, whatever the rumors were about C being average, apparently that’s not the case anymore.
Currently, as an A has become the new C on students’ transcripts, it brings the question to mind, what does earning an ‘A’ even mean anymore if they’re being given out like confetti? I wrote in a previous post about an increase in employer skepticism as they have the luxury in today’s economy to really put the lens of scrutiny on potential candidates in the hiring process. It has changed the hiring process in that there’s nothing really to differentiate a candidate today if you simply look at one’s transcript and academic history; everyone is stellar, spectacular and an A-level scholar. So when an A used to mean that a student was putting in the sweat-equity to earn that mark, now it is looked upon as merely an automatic, an expectation on the employer’s part, so, again, if everyone has one, what is its real value? And if it doesn’t reflect exceptionality, what does?
Further, according to a December Washington Post article, nearly 41 percent of undergraduates obtain a grade of A- or higher, while only 5 percent of undergraduates are receiving grades of C or less, nationally. Again, this is a statistical impossibility of the true bell curve’s measurement of students as a group and, what the grade inflation obviates is, that colleges are losing their grasp on how to gauge students’ work and the ramifications attached to that.
There is a two-fold factor that has contributed to grade inflation making its creep in our nation’s colleges and universities. One is mainly because employers want the ‘best’ students and so it stands to reason that they want to see A’s. If a student receives an A then they must be good. Secondly, in combination with this, generally professors want to help their students and in addition they simply want to be liked, which is perfectly understandable but in an overarching way, in helping, they are hurting.
For an employer who’s hiring on-campus, and A means exceptional, and that’s all they’ll see in the moment. They’ll just see that A, of that student, in that moment which, hypothetically, was awarded to that individual student for his/her perfect competence in Corporate Finance or something of that ilk. They are, or I should say were, unaware that the grade they coveting, could essentially be offered by any student they are to meet.
It reminds me of a recent (analogous) interaction I had when bringing a Volvo in for service. I had the work done, paid the bill and left. Afterwards, I was asked to complete a survey on my ‘experience’ as everything is now an experience. I agreed and the survey was a typical 1-10 sort, meaning 1’s get everyone fired and 10 is exceptional!
Or so I had assumed. In thinking about my ‘experience’ and also thinking it good; I’ll give 7’s & 8’s as I thought it fair and representative of their work. For reference, to me a 1 is either losing the car I came in with or breaking something, making it worse AND charging me for it, while a 10, on the other hand, would be when the work is done for free along with a paid trip to Tahiti!
In any case, shortly after seeing the 7’s & 8’s I recorded on the survey I received a call from the dealer’s “Crisis Team” to mitigate this catastrophe….
They asked me “what was wrong and why was I dissatisfied?”
I said “I wasn’t at all.”
They said “well if that’s the case, then we really aspire to receive 10’s on the survey.”
So, I asked, “if that’s the case, why did you not qualify that to begin with and if so, then what does the 1-9 on your survey really even mean?”
They told me that “anything below a 10 was a failure and they would seek to rectify such.”
That didn’t really answer my question so I again said, “essentially what’s the point of 1-9 then? Shouldn’t it just be pass/fail instead if you’re not allowing for an gradation in the evaluative process? I stated that I was happy with the work, it wasn’t a binary situation of either a 10 (happy) or everything else (sad). I wasn’t willing to just simply give 10’s and if you’re wanting to view this as a ‘failure’ then that is your option to do so.”
Getting back to the issue at hand, academics, the real solution, and the more difficult one, like the service issue I just reflected on, is to deflate the grade nationally across the spectrum. Allow for the shades in between a simple pass or fail structure. Faculty, managers, supervisors, whatever the case may be, must grade throughout the spectrum and be willing to give D’s and C’s for average work, and students must once again feel the need and work hard for the almighty A. If this is the case then the A can once again achieve something in it’s real meaning; being exceptional!
What’s Missing in the College Experience? Part 2 of 4
April 9, 2014 Leave a comment
Writing well is a process learned and re-learned.
Part 2 of “What’s Missing in the College Experience” – Writing competently and of quality is not scrutinized
“Outside of academia, you aren’t guaranteed an audience. Writing is a crucial communication skill whether you are drafting a book or simply sending emails to anyone in a professional setting. College writing has a tendency to trick students into complacency when writing, because it is someone’s job to read their writing. A salaried college professor is tasked with reading your essay on common pool resources, but would your writing attract any attention without the financial incentive? I have found that writing for college and writing for work are two very different ideas because your writing is not guaranteed an audience in the real world, and piquing the interest of others with your passion for a subject is a skill that requires extensive practice.” (Eli Lisseck ’13)
In my experience, this is an area where many of the institutions of higher-ed are falling short, but in saying so, many – if not all, will disagree. Much of this disagreement is based on the philosophy or expectation that when students arrive out of high school, their writing skills and basic understanding of grammar are to be in place and of a second nature AND at this stage, it is no longer the job of the curriculum to be teaching the basics. With that being the case, when entering college, the foundation is, or should be, in place and the expectations that the students can engage and embrace the more advanced, esoteric and abstract requirements of the college-level academics.
While it sounds good in theory, in practice, this is not the reality. Many students coming into college are relatively unprepared for the expectations and demands of what college level output requires of them, or at least used to. Sadly, the solution seems to be, instead of monitoring, policing and fulfilling the expectations of higher-ed, is to simply lower them. Writing, especially in the abstract, tends to be of less than quality and with that, basic rules of grammar, spelling and structure, all get lost in the process as there is no system in place that reinforces or critiques in a consistent and/or permeating way.
Having worked with many, many students over the years, I have seen the writing skills in decline and there are many factors to this I imagine. But there are two that stand out to me in significance over the years as I have been witness to this decline. The first being the most obvious; technology and its contribution to linguistic regression, as we now speak in fractured spits and spurts as opposed to complete sentences attached to complete thoughts behind such. The second, which has crept in at a slower pace but over a longer period of time is that the schools seem to not want to hold people accountable for the lack of quality or proper writing. I have heard many college faculty and administrators lament the writing skills of their very students, yet said students seem to fly through the ranks ultimately receiving their diploma for their ‘exemplary academic four-year toil…’
I’ve called out people on many occasions for the lack of quality in their writing. The usual response(s) seem to be something akin to, “well it doesn’t really matter,” or “no one really looks for that.” I’ve even spoken with and questioned faculty about such, and while many have agreed that the writing is less than stellar, they will then go on to say, “I am grading for the message and content, not their grammar.” More than one has said, “It’s not my job to correct their grammar at this stage.” I get what they’re saying but I disagree with it. The common theme is that anyone who IS the audience for such output should be critiquing, as if it is not done so, is ultimately a disservice to the student and will only end up being magnified later in time.
Case in point being a student that I had the pleasure of working with during her undergraduate years and she was, in her mind, a competent and aspiring writer/communicator. Everything she had produced in college had been given praise and her writing was celebrated in her grades by faculty. However, upon graduation, her cover letters, the writings I saw, the very documents that were supposed to ‘brand’ her in the job market, that were supposed to tell her story and convey a positive impression on prospective employers, were woefully inadequate, both in foundation and style. Her writing, while ‘fine’ for the classroom, failed to make an impression on the audience she was hoping for outside of college. Actually, let me restate that; her writing DID make an impression on that audience. It happened to be a poor one in that her ‘new’ readers were indeed scrutinizing her materials and critiquing for grammatical mistakes and structure. They were looking at content and context with the evaluative eye of the red-pen and her materials were being lambasted for their poor quality, such that could never represent an organization she were to be interested in working for.
Our office of Career Services would get frequent calls from alumnae stating, “What is going on? The applicant’s writing is horrible? What can we do about it?” Frankly, at that point, the horse is already out of the barn, as it were. Being more an issue of image management and needing a reaction, we implemented a plan that every resume and cover letter forth that came through our office for recruiting opportunities was to be pre-screened and then ‘approved’ by our staff before being submitted to prospective employers. While this was done mainly as a service to appease the employer’s want of not being ‘embarrassed’ by the applicants of their own Alma Mater. With the intent of heading off poorly written or ill-conceived letters and resumes, this became a pretty effective, for the most part, method in elevating applicant’s presentations. The fact that for many students, this, to use an over-used term, ‘teachable moment,’ the heightened lens of scrutiny, even labeled “harsh” by many students, was really met in our office for the first time on-campus, is part & parcel to one of the issues void in the academic mission – a willing, permeating, consistent and strong scrutiny for the students at every stage of their academic career.
What’s Missing in the College Experience? Part 1 of 4
April 8, 2014 Leave a comment
“Help! Interest? Vested? Taxes? Huh…?”
Recently, while meeting with our intern, Eli Lisseck ’13, we were discussing his transition from four undergraduate years at Oberlin to the present, where he is now actively engaged in his job search. I asked him, now that there is some time in the rear-view mirror, to look back and reflect on his four-years of quality education and its application to his reality today. In this 4-part article, examining, what he thought, shortcomings to the college experience and my personal observations having worked in such for 20 years, we discuss these areas and talk about what educational institutions could do better in preparing students for transition to independence and adulthood.
When asked, he said; “one thing pertaining to the job search that I have observed changing recently is that it never ends. With communications technology rapidly advancing, even people currently at a great position always have the antennae tuned in for new opportunities, just in case. The relatively new culture of rapid job switching and constant job searching puts even more weight on crucial job search skills, and relevant life skills related, than has existed in the past. There are a few crucial actions to consider, and steps to take, that I wish I had learned a couple of years earlier than I did. None of these things are particularly difficult to begin doing, but practice certainly helps tremendously. I hope that thinking ahead will give students about to graduate a head start compared to recent graduates such as myself who have had to pick these skills up as they became relevant, rather than being prepared. What follows is a list of four ideas, in no particular order, that I feel would benefit students if they were incorporated into undergraduate learning processes.”
Part 1 of ‘What’s Missing in the College Experience’ – General Financial Acumen
“After paying incredibly high tuition for four years, a student should at least have an idea of how to succeed outside of school. Students are first and foremost trained to continue inside the academic world, but many students will not be academics forever. Colleges want successful alumni, and students want to live on their own, so it seems like some required class about finances is pertinent. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just the ins and outs of filing a tax return and how to budget oneself when planning around employment. An astounding number of recent graduates will forget to budget for healthcare, utilities, tax withholding, and the like when considering their potential income, and struggle later because of it.” (Eli Lisseck ’13)
As supporting anecdotal ‘evidence,’ in an endearing sort of way, one student I had, who accepted a job offer and moved to NYC, related her experience to me that was both funny and inexplicable at the same time. She was a graduating senior, and a savvy one at that, from Mount Holyoke College and was majored in Economics.
She got her apartment and had that secured at least. On moving day, she was handed the key by the land-lord and started to move in all her belongings. Walking in she flipped the switch in the entry hall and the light did not come on. So she flipped it several times. Nothing. After setting her stuff down and out of the way, figuring it to be a dead bulb she went and got a light bulb from another spot in the apartment and switched it out and flipped the switch again. Nothing. Enterprisingly, she then went out and bought a box of light bulbs and came back and started to swap them with the ‘dead’ bulb thinking this should be an easy fix. Nothing, as expected to an outsider at least.
The reality was that she, in her life-time, every time upon flipping a switch, something was to happen! She had no concept that one had to start an account with the utility company and it had never occurred to her to inquire as it had been a constant presence, like the very air that she breathed, in her life. Again, for her entire existence on this planet, something happened when she flipped a switch so who knew?
Much of her story highlights the fact that graduates, or soon-to-be, ‘don’t know what they don’t know’ until it’s either presented or experienced first-hand, with the latter sometimes being too late. This is very apropos to the plight of many college graduates today as they seemingly have no concept of the issues of personal finance and related terms and topics such as; taxes, gross and net pay and what the differences are? No understanding of the litany of potential benefits that employers may offer in a job and how each of these can play out? Investments and the power of compounding. The majority have no idea what ‘compounding’ even means? The fact that a landlord might want first, last month AND a security deposit before they can even set foot in an apartment? What the term ‘vesting’ means? And this is many times Economics’ majors, yet. How about the fact that credit cards are not ‘free money’ and need to be paid back, with interest yet? What’s interest and why are they allowed to collect that? Remember all those student loans? Well in November of the graduating year, the note holders show up at the door wanting it to be repaid. Oops, forgot to budget for that! That renter’s insurance is a necessity when they move out on their own, thinking that the building ‘must be insured, so my belongings must be too…?’
There is an incredible lack of financial understanding and it can have large ripple effects on their navigation of life post-college. For many years I’ve taught workshops and presentations on personal finance, budgeting and understanding benefits offered by employers, etc… These workshops have always been, historically, well attended and feedback almost universally of appreciation and thanks. For many, these presentations are kind of deer-in-the-headlights sort of endeavors as students would sit there bewildered, perhaps having a new appreciation for what their parents have navigated to get their sons or daughters to this point in their education. Some of the more common observations I’ve had are that students have no understanding of the language and machinations of how money & finance works on either the micro or macro scale.
Sadly, this series of workshops on finance that I have done for the colleges, were never a mandated part of anyone’s curriculum and it should be. It was simply a need that I had witnessed so put it up on offer. There is no reason or excuse that a student leaving college has no concept of personal finance, taxes, benefits, how to balance a checkbook even. It really would be a simple addition, if not an all-out mandate, to one’s four-year experience. In fact, the cost-benefit of such is a huge consideration in that graduating students, future alumni/ae, can look back and say that they were ‘better prepared.’ No matter as to one’s major; if it be Economics or Dance, once departing the hallowed halls, they need to be able to understand how it all relates to function in the world they choose to live. What’s critical, in my view, is that each student leaves college with an understanding of personal finance and how it relates to their transition to the working world.
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