The Crow

Lose the Bong, Get a Job

  From Davin G's photostream on flickr

I got a call the other day from someone at a very well respected publication, looking for insight into how agencies bring on interns. I love that. Being asked for my opinion, that is. Because I have an opinion on just about everything! As I thought about it, my advice for interns isn’t much different than advice I might give to other candidates. Here are a few things to think about when trying to score an internship or a job:

1.       Be excited about the opportunity. There is nothing more annoying from an interviewer’s perspective than trying to interview someone who fails to exhibit any amount of enthusiasm for the role, opportunity, or company.

2.       Think beyond the classroom, or your usual space. Have an opinion about what the company does, and what their competitors are up to.

3.       Be prepared. Make an effort to understand how things work in the industry or field you are interviewing in. If you want to work in an ad agency, do some research and try to figure out what the roles look like in your potential department. Don’t just walk in and say, “I’m creative, so I want to work in creative!” Not impressive. Cliché and lame. And yet, alarmingly common.

4.       Show and tell. If you are a creative, have an online portfolio. For everyone else, bring samples of your relevant work, nicely presented, or put together a website. It NEVER hurts.  No matter what level you’re at.

5.       Don’t be too cool.  If you are really tied to your dreads or body jewelry or uber trendy clothes, save as much as possible for Friday night. Dress like a normal person in an interview.  Even if it’s a cool company. If your interviewer is covered in tats, I give you permission to compare notes!

6.       Clean up your social media presence.  Beer bonging or flipping off the person wielding a camera is not considered cool in the working world. No one wants to hire a jackass. Honestly, talking about your political and religious views can also be treading thin ice. Just…Get rid of that shit. People will look at it.  And most of them won't like it.

7.       Be resourceful. Leverage your network shamelessly to get an interview. Neighbors, friends of friends, the guy you met at the bakery. This is how people get internships and ultimately, jobs. Find out via the company site, Facebook or other avenues whether the Company is sponsoring or going to attend any recruiting events…and go! Connect with relevant people on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter, and strike up a conversation, or ask for an informational interview. Figure out what the company’s email protocol is and get a direct message to the right person.  Don’t just target the HR person. In fact, sometimes it’s better to find a sympathetic manager. HR people get so much of this kind of stuff sometimes it gets missed.

8.       Be yourself. You don’t want to work somewhere that’s not a good fit. It won’t last.

To get a job, you have to do your homework. You also have to create and shamelessly leverage your network .  Good luck.

tracy c

Life Ruined by Love Affair...with Facebook

_{Image by Eric Charles posted by MobiusTripp on Flickr}

She is probably not the first. She won’t be the last. Another woman screws up her life because of a love affair…with social media.

I have mixed feelings about this one. The headline reads, “Canadian Woman loses benefits over Facebook photo”.  Apparently, she was on disability for depression, and the adjuster saw pictures of her having fun posted on her Facebook page, so they denied her claim! Ouch!

On the one hand, if she’s faking it at all, she deserved this if for no other reason than natural selection. How clueless do you have to be to post images of yourself cavorting when you are on leave for depression? Now, if this woman really suffers from depression, I feel for her. And, I understand that one can suffer and still enjoy the occasional outing to Chippendales (not a personal testimony, it was in the article…Really!).  However, I’m not sure I can excuse the lack of forethought that went into her apparent need to post all of this stuff in a public forum, for all the world (including her claim adjuster) to see. What on earth was she thinking? Not much, apparently, except for alternating thoughts of all things sad versus Pete the Policeman removing his uniform in one motion.

As if we needed it, this is just one more example of how our collective obsession with social media can impact lives – not always positively.  For this individual, if she had simply resisted the temptation to tell all and sundry what she was doing, the adjuster would probably have not known she was out having a good time and her claim would have run its natural course. Most of us wouldn’t blame her for trying to do something to get her mind off whatever it was that was bothering her.

But… Like most love affairs, it’s fun while it lasts but the reckoning is a bitch. Think about that the next time you post, my friends.

tracy c

Love and Basketball...

 

Video from CBS via YouTube

 

Employees and HR professionals alike often wonder…What should we do about the collision between personal and professional when people to act like, well, people…at work, complete with flaws and bad judgement?

Enter exhibit A, Ron Artest. Artest is a Laker - that’s a basketball team for those of you not so into the whole sports thing. But stay with me! Artest has been rightfully characterized as a not so nice guy (for more, read Fear the Beard's rant). Why? Because a guy named Kyle Slavin, in the open and non-hierarchical world of social media, decided to send an open letter to Artest, welcoming him to the team and also giving him a bit of constructive feedback. Artest, rather than ignoring it or providing an innocuous response, decided to say,

No law when it comes to me.
I let you type critics write and I just keep it hood.
That will never change.
I am not kissing no ones ass because I'm in LA. Suck a c***.

...Only, he didn't use stars for that last bit. Nice open door policy! I will say, after the guy said essentially, hey, I am just trying to be helpful, Artest responded and apologized. But, Artest is a person who does stupid stuff because he is not the sharpest tack in the pack. And he doesn’t use apostrophe’s correctly, but that is beside the point. Needless to say, the reactive HR people and lawyers at the NBA decided on Wednesday they’d better get a policy out on social media asap.  A memo was sent to teams on Wednesday telling them that cell phones and other communication devices can't be used from 45 minutes before game time until after players have finished their responsibilities after games, including halftime. I am not sure what this changes. Is he going to be less likely to pop off an inappropriate response when he’s not in the midst of a game? I suppose, at the very least, it ensure he’s not screwing around during a game, which is something.

Most workplace policies were created because someone failed to exercise common sense, somewhere along the line. As an employee…what do you think about this? Would you be cool with a policy that said no personal communication (email, twitter, facebook, etc.) during work hours? As an employer…is this the kind of policy you should implement in your workplace?

Exhibit B, the other big news this week that had the HR “ouch!” written all over it, was David Letterman’s multiple indiscretions with interns. Besides the fact that it’s obnoxious and he’s gross and you can’t help but feel a tiny bit sorry for him that this whole thing blew up the way it did, really did the world need to know about this…It begs the question: What is the right and wrong about consensual relationships at work?

Some companies have a policy against it (“it” being fraternization between employees), but imho that’s sort of like telling the sun not to rise. So to speak. Adults are going to do what they do. Whether the employers like it or not.

So as an employee, how do you manage it when you can’t resist that relationship with a coworker? Do you tell HR? A manager? Anyone? And as the employer…what do you do when you find out one of your execs is, er, taking liberties with the help? Most companies do have some sort of policy around this, and rightly so...It really doesn't do to have people in a position of power wielding it in the bedroom and the boardroom.

I always remind managers, at least, of the risks of lawsuits (which alas are very real). Other than that…honestly, I have better things to do.  It really is common sense driven. I’m sure that’s how the bigwigs at CBS felt about Letterman until that guy decided he’d try to make some money of the pathetic adventures of Letterman’s apparent ongoing midlife crisis. Interestingly, none of the women were complaining, or if they had, it had been brushed under the rug long ago.

Between Artest and Letterman, it’s clear that there is one commonality: all it takes is one (or two) bad judgement calls to turn a harmless act (i.e. email, sex, a tweet) into a very visible nightmare, creating a tsunami of policies from the HR and Legal team to try to deal with it, not to mention damage control from the PR firm.

My advice? Use common sense,  keep your hands to yourself, and don't go off in a way that would offend grandma...or the legal department. Don't be the person that causes yet one more policy to be written.  I bet both Artest and Letterman are wishing right now that they weren't in that spot. But, they're both human, they'll probably make more mistakes, and they won't be alone. I call that...Job security.

tracy c

“Why the fuck are you calling this a job fair?”

Most employers do their best to ensure job candidates have a positive interview experience, with varying degrees of success. Some try harder than others, some have more consistency in their process, some just have better managers and recruiters.

Any decent HR person knows and will be happy to tell you that if a candidate has a bad experience, it can potentially tarnish your company’s via word of mouth, and now in the era of YouTube, it can potentially hurt a brand exponentially in today’s world of viral video.

Maybe McDonald’s is just too big to care, but the recent video of the woman totally going off about her interview experience there was a crack-up at McDonald’s expense for sure. Will they sell less hamburgers as a result? Maybe not. But as the recent video fiasco with Domino’s has proven, employers need to be wary of the intersection of brand, interview experience and viral video.

As a candidate…Should you get out there and spread the word like this? Amusing as I might find some of this stuff, I have to say no, since whatever you do out there on the WWW is there forever, and if a future employer finds you going off about another employer, they are going to avoid you like the plague. Why wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t want to risk you doing the same thing to them!

As an employer…It pays to note what folks are saying about other employers, competition or not, because there are definitely lessons to be learned. The McDonald’s rant woman had a couple of good points buried within her hilarious diatribe, the first of which, “Why the fuck are you calling this a job fair if only one position is available?” I had to agree with. There’s nothing more annoying than employers overselling what they have, whether it’s a role or the number of roles.  Treat candidates with respect and be straight with them.

I particularly loved the well meaning manager who tried to explain to the candidate that she needed a resume, receiving a response of, “You don’t think that I know how to flip a patty? You don’t think that I…Can go from ripping a bag open of French fries and dropping them in the hot grease…You think I need a resume to know how to do that?” Most of us would probably agree with the candidate on this one. On the other hand, it’s a well known fact of life that you have to have a resume for just about any job. Like it or not. Bringing a resume along is now as much of a requirement as wearing clean presentable attire, even for the most entry level jobs. So, employers, be prepared to treat your candidate like a grown-up.  And candidates…be prepared to act like one.

tracy c