Case of the Fridays: Your (Anti) Resume-Tips Video and Links

By Mindy on October 30, 2009

It's Friday. It's the day before Halloween. It's time for a funny video.

Obviously Resume Richard is not the person to listen to. I'd talk to a counselor at your career center before you take his advice too seriously.

And, as promised, a few Links... We'll be back next week with some exciting ThinkTalk guests!

Jobacle.com Busts 3 Candidates Who Have Identical Cover Letter: Three people submitted the exact same cover letter for an editorial assistant position. All of the them lifted the template right out of a resume-writing advice book. Although this HR professional and blogger says he "understands" why they did it- like being able to apply to higher number of positions- he also thinks they should be blacklisted for being so lazy.

One Day One Job Finds a Position at Mars: In honor of Halloween, an job at the king of candy companies. "they have job opportunities in areas including Engineering, Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Logisitcs, Manufacturing, Marketing, Purchasing, Research & Development, & Sales." And they have internships.

The Brazen Careerist On Why It's Important to a Genuine Networker: "It is often said that those who are perceived as the best conversationalists are the ones who listen the most. People remember how much you pay attention when they share with you... If you go into every new situation with an agenda, you’re going to end up being disappointed a lot of the time."

Embracing the Journalist as Entrepreneur

By Zack on October 28, 2009

As Mindy yesterday's post we just wrapped a great interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times financial reporter and author of Too Big To Fail, a very extensive and very engrossing play-by-play of last year's Wall Street Crisis. Andrew was great, we got some really good info from him, and I can't wait to put the interview up online. But in the meantime, it got me thinking about careers in Journalism.

Andrew did not have what use to be called a traditional path to the Times. He didn't start at as a cub reporter at a small town weekly or daily and work his way up the markets to a prime time gig. He scored an internship and used his specialized knowledge of the internet to land an opportunity to write a feature story. He did a great job and parlayed it into a successful career.

20 years ago, this would have been rare. Anymore, however, it's the specialized journalists, consciously aware of their own career paths, who are going to succeed. I point to blogger Conor Friedersdorf post today at The American Scene in which he expounds on the interesting work at NYU's Journalism School.

Though I understand a graduate degree in journalism seems like an insane proposition to many right now, applications are up at all the programs where I’ve spoken to faculty, and if you’re going to pursue that course of study, I am more convinced everyday that NYU is the place to do it. Among readers of The American Scene, Jay Rosen is probably the most well known professor. His analysis of the changing media landscape is certainly more sophisticated than anything being done at Columbia University. And beyond Professor Rosen, the program as a whole is making an effort — how successful it’ll be is beyond knowing — to train students for the actual world they’ll be facing, rather than running a program as if they’re all going to get jobs as cub reporters at daily newspapers.

An example just posted on the course listings: “Entrepreneurial Journalism, taught by Adam Penenberg.”

Journalists who can successfully navigate these turbulent media times must be equal parts journalist and entrepreneur. In this seminar students will learn how to build successful freelance careers, manage their own journalism brands that they will extend through social media platforms like Twitter, pitch ideas for media start ups, write their own business plans or book proposals, and explore ways to attract venture capital. There will be a lot of learning by doing. Students will work as media entrepreneurs and run their own online publications, which they will operate as a business. At its center will be a blog, where students will post several times a week.

They’ll retain an ad server, market their work to the blogosphere (and beyond) and track traffic. The semester will culminate with students either drafting their own business plan for a media start-up that they will pitch in class to a venture capitalist, or penning a formal book proposal, which a literary agent will also critique in class. Guests will include well-known journalists, successful media entrepreneurs, literary agents and venture capitalists.

I'm familiar with Rosen's work (even follow him on Twitter) and Friedersdorf is absolutely right. He quite simply has an amazing grasp of and insight into how technology and the changing media landscape could be used by existing and future journalists. Rosen's Rebooting the News podcast with Dave Winer is a great example of this. So if you cannot get into NYU, are still an undergrad or just have a passion for journalism, you should be paying attention to Rosen.

Similarly, I love this concept of journalist as entrepreneur. I'm a bit hesitant to fully embrace all the "personal branding" talk, but there is something to be said for cultivating the public's perception of you as a journalist. A personal blog, twitter, LinkedIn and even Facebook can be useful, as a student or young journo, to spread the reach of your work. Furthermore, you can use your personal work and online presence as the foundation for future work (this is all loosely established in Chris Anderson's Free which lays the groundwork for using free content to promote yourself or your product). The more (positive) results you have in a Google search, the more credibility and authority your work will have. This means that for freelance purposes or even snagging a full-time writing job, you have an advantage of recent grads who don't have that kind of presence.

Are You a Time-Management Ninja?

By Mindy on October 27, 2009

The George Washington Hatchet featured a profile on one college senior who might be just that. If Ryan Hudnall isn't some kind of superhuman, then he's absolutely a master of time management. He is able to "juggle six classes, a 30-hour-a-week internship on Capitol Hill and his current position [as night manager] at Starbucks that he acquired over a year ago."

Hudnall says that enjoys his crazy schedule. Even though night shifts at the coffee shop are sleep-depriving, he likes the social interaction and the comic characters he meets. His double major and internship on the Hill will hopefully prepare him for a job where he can help people, something he's truly passionate about. So one lesson to learn from Hudnall about managing your time is: Love what you do. Well, that and stop sleeping...

[Hudnall] said he only gets about five hours of sleep each day, which is broken up into two naps that last two and a half hours each.

"Monday morning I have to be in my office by 9:30 a.m. So I'll get off at Starbucks, go home and sleep from 6:30 to 8:45 a.m. Get up, shower, go to the Hill and work on the Hill all day until about 5 [p.m.]," Hudnall said. "Then I go home, sleep, wake up at 9:30 p.m. and go back to Starbucks until six in the morning. Then on Tuesday, I wake up and I have six classes from 9:35 a.m. to eight at night. It just repeats."

That's dedication. NYU's student paper, Washington Square News, interviewed another successful over-achiever. Sophomore Ria Hill is a full-time student and published author. Her novel, The Song of the Siren, began as a bunch is disconnected scenes and characters, and after Hill decided to write them up as a book, it took her 2 years to finish 400 pages and the time-consuming editing process.

"I wrote most of the book late at night when I couldn't sleep or at lunch on loose leaf notebook paper," she said.

The question that comes to my mind is, "Are the long hours and lack of sleep really worth it?" For our latest ThinkTalk guest, the answer is definitely yes. Andrew Ross Sorkin is a financial reporter for the New York Times and author of Too Big to Fail, a study of the 2008 Wall Street crash.

During the interview, Sorkin modestly told Zack that his successful career at the NYT was due to luck, but I'm willing to bet it had more to do with hard work and persistence. Sorkin had an internship at the NYT in high school, and was assigned a story by an editor who didn't know he was just a student. Because he did a great job, Sorkin was offered a position at the paper and published 71 articles before he graduated from college. How's that for making great use of your time in school?

If you're looking for some more information on strategically managing your time, the video below has some good ideas and Penelope Trunk has good multitasking tips at her blog.  Don't forget to stay tuned for our interview with Sorkin next week!

Sometimes For Success, It's Best to Do It Yourself

By Zack on October 26, 2009

I'm currently taking a grad-course on social and digital media and have just finished reading Wired editor Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail. The book is essentially about the new economy created by the proliferation of new technologies. That aspect of the book, while very interesting, is not what I want to talk about in relation to ThinkTalk and careers, however. (But if you would like to know more about the book you can check out my personal blog which I use for class assignments and thoughts.)

In the book, Anderson briefly uses a colleague's band, Birdmonster, to illustrate a point about the reduction in barriers to entry encouraged by new technology. Birdmonster was able to build an audience using MySpace, blog attention and select music-focused websites and as a result, had mild success. Anderson writes:

Labels were calling with deals, but Birdmonster turned the offers down. As [lead singer Peter] Arcuni put it, “We’re not anti-label in principle, but the numbers (risk vs. reward) didn’t add up.”

A music label exists primarily to fulfill four functions: 1) talent scouting; 2) financing (the advances bands get to pay for their studio time is like seed capital invested by a venture capitalist); 3) distribution; 4) marketing.

From Birdmonster’s perspective, they didn’t need that. A growing local fan base, amplified online, had already spotted their talent. Improving digital recording technology had made studio time cheaper than ever—they could record the tracks in a few days in the studio and then mix and overdub them at home using personal computers. The cost to record the entire album was less than $15,000, which they covered with credit cards and savings. CD Baby and a similar company called Cinderblock provided the distribution, which gave them a reach as broad as iTunes, Rhapsody and the other top services. And MP3 blogs and MySpace were free marketing.

Why sign their life away now to a label, they reasoned, when they can record and distribute their music themselves and keep their creative independence? If the first self-released album does well, they’ll be in a much stronger negotiating position with the label for re-releasing the first album in stores, or for the second album.

This approach is called DIY or "Do It Yourself," and is largely a punk rock ethos dating back to the late 70s and early 80s. The DIY movement offers a note of encouragement to any aspiring entrepreneur or careerist who is simply looking to find success through alternative means to the mainstream. As for ThinkTalk, DIY was best summed up in our interview with American Hardcore director Paul Rachman and writer Steven Blush. The two give excellent insight into how to build a stable and successful career with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit, hard work, grit and a DIY attitude. For more info on how you can utilize the DIY ethic successfully, check out our interview below:

If Ya Don't Know, Now Ya Know: Knowledge and Learning From Mistakes

By Zack on October 23, 2009

A recent Scientific American article has been making the rounds for introducing new research which indicates that people are more likely to retain information if they learn through error. That is, searching for an answer and getting it wrong will help you to remember the real answer once you find it (via Jonah Lehrer).
Students were asked to read the essay and prepare for a test on it. However, in the pretest condition they were asked questions about the passage before reading it such as “What is total color blindness caused by brain damage called?” Asking these kinds of question before reading the passage obviously focuses students’ attention on the critical concepts. To control this “direction of attention” issue, in the control condition students were either given additional time to study, or the researchers focused their attention on the critical passages in one of several ways: by italicizing the critical section, by bolding the key term that would be tested, or by a combination of strategies. However, in all the experiments they found an advantage in having students first guess the answers. The effect was about the same magnitude, around 10 percent, as in the previous set of experiments.

What are the career implications of this? Remember those old commercials, "The More You Know," well, as lame as they were, they're pretty much true. While in college or once you get on the job, you are constantly going to have to keep growing and adapting as the environment and your assignments change around you.

Also, this is pretty good indicator that you shouldn't be afraid to take risks in your career. If we do indeed learn more through error, it never hears to take a calculated gamble here and there. If you succeed great, if you fail, learn from it.

All this also reminds of an excellent chart I came across from Jessica Hagy's This Is Indexed blog (via Flowing Data):

That should make it pretty clear, right? OK, kiddies, that's it for this week. Check on Monday to see our interview with Law Abiding Citizen Director F. Gary Gray. And, of course, another week of blogging. If you haven't yet, get your questions in for Andrew Ross Sorkin and Jared Hess. Have a great weekend ... and learn something!

Learn to Market Yourself: How Director Kirk Fraser Got to ESPN

By Mindy on October 22, 2009

Zack sat down with director Kirk Fraser today to talk about his documentary films and latest work, Without Bias. It turned out to be an interview that any aspiring filmmaker needs to watch- Fraser had some great, practical advice about how to get your movies to your audience. Fraser became one of the directors for ESPN Films 30 for 30 series because he's a genius at guerrilla marketing and self promotion. His project The Life of Rayful Edmond became a cult classic in Washington DC because he worked hard to "create buzz." The Washington Post reported that Fraser ended up selling more than 20,000 copies of the DVD:

For more than a year, Fraser [had] been talking up his film on local radio -- even though it was nowhere near being released. He announced release dates, never intending to keep them, he said.

People were asking about [The Life of Rayful Edmond] for months before it was released July 12, local retailers said. When the copies finally arrived the night before, there was no waiting for the official release moment, said Tucker, at Mad T. "It's not like Harry Potter, where we're going to keep it boxed up in the back until midnight," he said. "When you're waiting a year and you're selling to people who know the pulse of the streets, you can't tell them to wait."

Stories of it selling out only fueled the interest of buyers -- and of bootleggers, who, Tucker said, were selling copies by 3 p.m. the day of its release and who say it has been a brisk seller for them, too.

Fraser's do-it-yourself PR landed him on the cover of the Washington Post. According to The Washingtonian, his success encouraged him to try a different marketing tactic at Sundance for a documentary about the late basketball player Len Bias:

Moviemakers often turn to gimmicks to generate some buzz, but sometimes it’s done the old-fashioned way. Predawn darkness and freezing temperatures at the Sundance Film Festival didn’t stop a group of Washington filmmakers from making the rounds with their posters declaring LEN BIAS: THE LEGEND YOU KNOW, THE STORY YOU DIDN'T.

The film wasn’t opening at Sundance—it wasn’t even finished. But director Kirk Fraser and producers Sammy Steward and Kali McIver, along with their writer, cameraman, friends, and lawyer (“to make the deals or get us out of jail”) blitzed the snowy Utah village full of film executives and distributors with posters and DVDs. It worked.

It definitely worked- Without Bias will be premiering Nov. 3 on ESPN. For those of you who want to break into the film industry, but don't know how to get started, Fraser had solid career advice. Stay tuned for our interview and check out Without Bias on ESPN.

Keg Stands and Senators: A Career In Foreign Service

By Zack on October 21, 2009

If you like to travel, enjoy meeting new people and like to constantly be on the move, a career in the US foreign service looks to be a pretty good path to take. I'll admit, I'm a bit vague on this career path, so I was instantly intrigued when I saw an excellent interview with a diplomat posted at snarky, news-ish site The Awl.

The post's author, Logan Sachon, catches up with old friend, and current foreign service employee based in Libya, Chris Andino. The interview is well worth an entire read as it outlines exactly what someone who works for the foreign service does, and gives some insight into just how much fun it can be. For instance, Chris talks about the amusing amount of parties that they host with keg standing students in one room, and policy conversations with Senators in the next. Here's the nitty-gritty on the jobs specs:

There are five tracks, but we can all do any of them. We’re hired to be generalists. There’s a political track, you do the traditional representational things, talk about bilateral relationships, the other component is that you’re like a reporter, you talk to people, figure out what’s going on and then you write about it. So having some journalistic experience is really helpful. Another track is economic, which is like political but with more emphasis on economic policy. Consulate is visas and passports. Management, one of the hardest jobs, they make sure the embassies are up and running, and then there’s public diplomacy, which does a lot things to make us look good, like coordinating scholarships for people to come study in the US.

[...]

Every two years you get a new job. For me, slightly ADD, this is great. I can choose a new country and a new function. I’m picking my next assignment now. You have input on where you go. It’s like a normal job hunt. They have a list of available positions and you apply. It’s kind of like fraternity bid week or something, not that I’d know much about that, but it’s similar: you try them on, they try you on, and you see if it’s a good fit. There are more jobs than there are people so you’ll always find something, but we’ll always be understaffed some place.

Sounds very interesting to me. Andino mentions that he studied international relations, but I'm not so sure that what your BA is matters. Salary.com has an excellent article on foreign service careers that outlines what specialties you need and what salary you can expect.

Strong candidates generally have a knowledge of history, government, political systems, cultures, world geography, international affairs, and political and social issues across the world. Basic accounting, statistics, management, interpersonal communication, and knowledge of basic economic principles and trends are also important skills.

Someone with a BA can anticipate a starting salary around $30,000, and the pay structure is similar to that in other government organizations. Senior foreign service officials can make over $100,000 per year.

This is a government job, so obviously you shouldn't expect to make more than low 6 figures. But if you have a sense of adventure, want to serve your country and enjoy travel, this may be a career to look into. For more information on foreign service careers and on the examination itself (a requirement), visit the U.S. State Department's Career Page.

Is Journalism School Wrong For Your Career?

By Zack on October 20, 2009

I'm a pretty big Malcolm Gladwell fan. Say what you want about his quirky approach to writing (or his hair) and the leaps and liberties he takes with the science he presents, the fact of the matter is that the guy opens up your mind to ideas and experiences you wouldn't normally consider. His books and his New Yorker articles are a must read and, to me, he is an excellent example of the magazine journalist.

That being said, he should be a pretty good source for advice on a career in journalism, right? Time has a great Q&A with Gladwell that covers topics like how he chooses a story, his thoughts on education and what advice he has for aspiring writers:

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

This sounds like some pretty sound advice to me. Look, traditionally, to be a journalist, you needed to be flexible. Over the course of your career you may cover a number of different beats. I have a friend who started out covering real estate. She moved to the local crime beat and ended up the bureau chief in Iraq. That's flexibility.

But one trend I see in a number of journalists that I interview for The Blank Page is that they have formally studied something other than journalism. Journalism is something that you learn on the job, in the field, much better than you can in a classroom. Economics, statistics and political science are the exact opposite. They are steeped in research and theory and are better understood from a scholarly angle than in the thick of the action (if anything related to statistics can be termed "Action").

So I have to agree with Gladwell here. If you are a graduating J-student or a recent grad thinking of Grad School, consider strengthening another core knowledge area and using that specialization to land yourself a job.

A perfect example of this is The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin, a mergers and acquisitions columnist and reporter, whose newest book Too Big To Fail tackles the economic crisis and releases today. Andrew will be a guest next week on ThinkTalk, where among other things, we will discuss collegiate background at Cornell. If you have questions for Andrew, make sure you get them in right away.

And since we're on the topic of journalism, and I promised to post bites from our National Book Festival show each day this week, here's our interview with PBS's Gwen Ifill. Enjoy!

"Malcolm Gladwell" courtesy schipulites via Flickr Creative Commons

Great Advice From Talented Writers at the 2009 National Book Festival

By Zack on October 19, 2009

One of my favorite recurring events at ThinkTalk is quickly becoming DC's annual National Book Festival. For a show (like our Blank Page) that aspires to secure advice for aspiring writers from well established writers there is hardly a better venue.

To give you a quick behind the scenes, basically we head over to the National Mall (about 5 blocks away from our studios) with a camera and a host. Then they just let us loose on the mall to collect words of wisdom from the 50 plus writers roaming the grounds, signing autographs, lecturing and seeking attention (just kidding on that last one). It's kinds of like an Old Country Buffet for the literary minded.

This year - taking a cue from our experience last year - we had a better strategy and were able to get a lot more interviews and cover a lot more ground ... which is good for everyone. We were able to score some advice and career tips from:

Novelists:

Non-Fiction Writers:

Cartoonist:

All in all, I pretty good score, I think. Now, there is a ton of useful and helpful advice packed into these bites. So, even though you can visit the National Book Festival 2009 page and watch them consecutively, we have also broken them up per author, so that you can browse around to the writers who pique your interest. Also, over the next few days, we'll post one of the interviews here, in the blog, so you can follow along here as well. Enjoy ... and hopefully you learn some great writing tips.

First up, Junot Diaz, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao:

The Big Headlines on Campus

By Mindy on October 18, 2009

I'd like to give a shout out to our awesome ThinkTalk interns this weekend. Molly and Jillian have done some valuable research and writing for us this fall, and have been learning the ropes in the TV studios. To top it off, Jillian found some great articles featured in campus newspapers this week to keep you updated on what students at ThinkTalk schools nationwide are doing to help their careers. Thanks guys!

At Frostburg State University, The Bottom Line had an interesting article about optimism in the job market. Student reporter Terrence Woods found that it may not be so hard to find a job after all, even in this market:

OneWire.com, which has "assembled a seasoned management team with more than 100 years of combined experience in financial services" and has created a Career Management Tool that it feels "transforms the way financial firms and industry professionals connect," recently conducted a survey of college and university campuses around the nation regarding what the job market will be like after graduation for present students. Frostburg State University's Career Services center participated in this survey.

The survey revealed that most feel the economy-and, thus, the job market-will soon improve.

According to this survey, roughly two-thirds (an overwhelming 67%, to be exact) of interviewed colleges and universities feel the economy will begin to better sometime next year. The remaining third, a considerably minute sum, does not think the economy will turn around until the year 2011 or later.

Of the respondents, 91% noticed an increase in the amounts of alumni who offer help to career centers for graduating students to find employment, and 41% noticed students are planning for their jobs further ahead of graduation than in times past.

One counselor at FSU Career Services Center also believes that recent college grads are appealing to employers because they are less of a financial investment. According to Dr. Robbie L Cordle:

For college students it may be easier because organizations won't have to spend a lot on experienced people.

It's something to think about, anyway.

Whether optimist or a pessimist, it pays to know as much as you can about the job market. Here's some more news from ThinkTalk campuses:

The New Hampshire Reports That Journalism Majors Are On The Rise: Journalism programs across the country are still seeing a significant increase in enrollment, despite the uncertain future of traditional paper and ink publications. Fortunately, even though larger papers are seeing major cut backs, local papers are stepping forward to offer opportunities for new graduates to get their foot in the door. "In addition to the rising number of graduate school applications, enrollment in undergraduate journalism programs has gone up 35 percent nationwide over the last 10 years, according to [an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education last month]."

16-Year-Old-Student Is a CEO, Producer and Entrepreneur: So this isn't a campus newspaper article, and Daniel Brusilovsky isn't even in college, but this is a great example of young person who took advantage of opportunities to build a valuable personal brand. In an interview with Dan Schawbel, Brusilovsky gave "three recommendations for making it big: 1. Don't give up 2. Innovate 3. Persistence."

The Rocky Mountain Collegian Check Out inDegree.com: Alex Miningham is a masters student who created a Web site, inDegree.com, to help fellow graduates find a job through networking with alumni and corporations. At the site, users can contact alumni of their university and apply for jobs not listed publicly. "inDegree, which has a strategic partnership with the National Association of Graduate and Professional Students organization specifically, targets accredited schools within NAGPS -- CSU is a member -- to bring top talent in each field to top employers, such as Fortune 500 companies."

The Daily Orange Interview Student Entrepreneurs About Their Online Gaming Business: Two Syracuse juniors created a gaming site, skilladdiction.com, which matches gamers based on their skill level in tournaments. Taylor Louie and Ray Williams wanted the site to be unique in that it's based on skill gaming instead of luck, like most gaming sites are. "'If nothing else, I'm talking about this in every (job) interview, and it's featured very prominently on my resume,' Louie said."

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