A recommendation is an act of trust

I’ve been getting requests for recommendations on LinkedIn.com lately from students and former students and it made me realize that a recommendation is an act of trust–both ways.

My students are trusting that I will say positive things about them that will help them get a job and I will only agree to provide a recommendation if I trust that they are worthy of recommending.  I am not going to put my own reputation on the line for someone who is not a good prospective job candidate.

An article asks how to use social media for employee referrals, but neglects to look at the use of LinkedIn.com recommendations as a source of referrals.  I write recommendations for students because I figure that prospective employers will evaluate them online before they hire them and so a positive evaluation from me will hopefully boost them to the top of an interview or offer list.  If I were hiring, I would definitely look at the recommendations a prospective employee has on their LinkedIn.com profile to give me a sense of that person’s ability and credibility.

Do you use LinkedIn.com recommendations?  Do you ask for them?  Are they helpful to you?

-karen

Best and Worst Jobs of 2012

According to CareerCast.com, as reported in today’s Wall Street Journal, here are the best jobs of 2012:

CareerCast.com, a career web site owned by Adicio Inc. ranked 200 jobs from best to worst based on five criteria: physical demands, work environment, income, stress, and hiring outlook. The firm used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other government agencies to determine the rankings. The 200 jobs were selected for their relevance in the current labor market as well as the availability of reliable data. For instance, enlisted military personnel – the third worst job of 2012 – was added this year thanks to new data released by the Department of Defense.

Tony Lee, publisher of CareerCast.com, said he wasn’t surprised to see software engineers topping the list. But he was surprised to find human resource managers rising to the No. 3 spot. In an era of layoffs, anxious employees, and cutbacks that often reduce back-office functions like HR, he says, he often hears HR managers complaining about the stresses of their jobs.

But with hiring on the rebound for the last few months and expected to heat up further as the economy recovers, the job outlook for human resource professionals is bright, and that brought the career to its high ranking.

The worst job out of the 200 examined? It’s lumberjack. The job replaced last year’s loser, roustabout, also known as an oil rig worker. With oil prices trending high, hiring for energy jobs is robust, while the ongoing slump in new housing construction has depressed demand for lumber and thus for lumberjacks, says Mr. Lee. Add to that the physical dangers of the job and a midlevel salary of $32,114, and it ranked at the bottom of the CareerCast.com list. 

Here’s an interactive table of the 200 jobs that were ranked.

Do you agree with the rankings?  Where is your job on this list?  Our jobs as professors are not specifically listed, but as we love them, we would say that they should be ranked highly.

Aneil

Do’s and Don’ts of Resumes and Cover Letters

I’ll be conducting a resume writing workshop at Okemos High School next week, and would love to get your input on what should and should not be included in one’s resume and cover letter.  What have you find to be most useful, either as a job-seeker or when evaluating  job candidates?

Thanks very much!

Aneil

Are Students “Customers”?

The debate about whether students are customers, ongoing for more than a couple of decades now, continues in today’s New York Times:

A recent article in The Chicago Tribune described a continuing debate in business schools over whether their enrollees should be regarded as “customers” rather than as traditional students. Should the students have more say over what they are taught and even how they are judged? What’s the risk of the student-consumer approach in M.B.A. programs? And does the issue reflect broader issues in higher education?

• Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus, George Washington
• Edward A. Snyder, dean, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
• David Bejou, dean, Elizabeth City State University School of Business
• Richard Vedder, professor of economics, Ohio University
• Mark C. Taylor, professor of religion, Columbia University

Personally, I’ve always thought of my students as co-producing with me and the faculty and staff at the school they attend the two key outcomes outlined by Stephen Trachtenberg:

Schools of business have two purposes as far as students are concerned. The first is to educate. The second is to place students in challenging and well-compensated positions after they graduate so they can use their educations to build careers and lives. Along with the quality of the faculty is the effectiveness of the job-placement office. The university is society’s gatekeeper. Students see degrees as tickets of admission to the big show: the marketplace.

In other words, you get out what you you put into an endeavor.  I never thought of myself as as a customer when I was a student, but rather as a junior partner in the education process.    I was blessed to have great faculty mentors help me get jobs, but I doubt they would have helped me unless I had demonstrated my worthiness through my hard work and strong results over several years

Karen and I always find it sad when students asks us to write recommendation letters for them when we’ve only taught them for one semester in their last year, but we’ve been asked because we supposedly know them better than all of the other professors they’ve ever had.  How can that be?  In these instances, clearly both the school and the students have failed to create the collaborative relationships necessary to get the most out of an education.

Aneil

Using Social Networking to Enhance Your Career Prospects

There’s a very good column today in today’s Wall Street Journal that discusses the benefits of using social networking tools such as Facebook and LinkedIn to market your talents and capabilities:

Except in the case of bulk hiring positions, employers and recruiters are Googling candidates’ names as well as searching on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, according to Mr. Schawbel. “This is done primarily to ensure the integrity and behavior of candidates and to make their resume piles smaller,” he says.

Kate Ruddon, vice president of talent acquisition at Activision, says that she uses sites like LinkedIn early in the recruiting process. She and her staff use social-networking sites to obtain background on a candidate’s work experience, area of expertise and education. “We utilize a number of professional networking sites and search sites like Google for the purposes of conducting research on a particular candidate, like press information,” she says. “Has the candidate spoken at industry events? Have they received any awards or public recognition? Additionally, we conduct research from multiple sites on specific companies we are targeting to recruit from.”

I am increasingly using my LinkedIn.com page as my online resume and set of references/recommendations, as it’s easy to keep up to date, it’s accessible by a wide variety of professionals, and it allows me to incorporate lots of good biographical information that I can’t easily summarize in a resume or curriculum vitae.  It’s also part of my email signature which aids people in finding out more about me when I first communicate with them.

What is your experience with using social networking and other Web 2.0 tools as part of your career strategy?

Aneil

Use Your Alumni Network for A New Job!

I was interviewed this week by Miriam Salpeter on how to use one’s alumni network to land a new job.  Here are some excerpts of the interview:

Old-fashioned networking with a modern twist is alive at Wake Forest University. Business school professor Aneil Mishra, co-author of the book (with Karen Mishra), Trust is Everything, maintains a network of well over 1000 current and former MBA students whom he helps find opportunities for free via his “Trust Network.” He receives “scores of job opportunities” via his network and then passes them along to students and other alumni.

Mishra is connected to members in a variety of business school networks, including Princeton and U-Michigan alumni. He notes, “There is not much of a chance that Princeton, Wake Forest, and Michigan alums would have naturally had the opportunity to learn about and share such opportunities with each other, so we thrilled about how [the network has] taken off.”

Ben Holcomb, Mishra’s former student, learned about his current job via this network. He says, “The Trust Network was an invaluable tool to further my career upon completion of my MBA at Wake Forest University…I was connected with Green Resource LLC, a rapidly growing business (in the top 5 of The Business Journal’s FAST 50 Awards Program) who sought a Controller to manage the company’s finances. Without being a part of the Trust Network I would not have been presented with such a great opportunity.”

Here’s another link to the interview, which contains some other useful information for job seekers and career development.

I’ve benefited greatly from the networks I’ve been part of going back to Okemos High School, including reconnecting a decade ago with Melanie Bergeron of Two Men and a Truck, International.  My Princeton and University of Michigan regularly make a difference for me.  Karen regularly utilizes her Michigan Business School (Ross School of Business now) in her own career.  The natural next step for us to take was to build up the school networks our current and former students belong to benefit their careers.

Aneil

I Found My Mate as a Date in College

Original Post 1-31-08

Although”officially” Karen and began dating the summer before I went off to college, we dated each other throughout college and she was my “steady” (a term probably unheard of on today’s college campuses. So once again, I felt like I was a Neanderthal when I read this in today’s Wall Street Journal:

College life has become so competitive, and students so focused on careers, that many aren’t looking for spouses anymore. Replacing college as the top marital hunting ground is the office. Only 14% of people who are married or in a relationship say they met their partners in school or college, says a 2006 Harris Interactive study of 2,985 adults; 18% met at work. That’s a reversal from 15 years ago, when 23% of married couples reported meeting in school or college and only 15% cited work, according to a 1992 study of 3,432 adults by the University of Chicago.

On the bright side, more students are having fun on group dates; also, deep, but platonic, male-female friendships are more common. With the benefit of hindsight, though, some grads may yearn for the stretches of time on campus for extracurricular activities and studying with the opposite sex.

Exactly. If Karen and I had waited until we got our professional lives settled (we’re still working on that), before seriously dating each other, we might have never gotten married. We might have moved to opposite ends of the country instead of meeting back in the middle again (in Michigan). Karen has done the bulk of the career sacrificing for the kids until recently. Now armed with her Ph.D. and a professorship at Meredith College, I am only too happy to let her take the lead while I take up more of the slack. Meanwhile, I’m sure that Maggie and Jack are both delighted that Karen and I chose to get married 22+ years ago.

Update 2-10-08:

Lori Gottlieb complains in this month’s The Atlantic Monthly about women in the 30s and 40s having “to settle” if they are going to find a mate before they can no longer reproduce or don’t want to grow old alone.  If I have time to draft a letter to  The Atlantic, I’ll recommend she read this blog posting.  She wanted to have it all:  perfect job, perfect lifestyle, and perfect mate.  Not finding the perfect mate, she chose to have a child on her own, and then still hope that a decent-enough mate might still be out there.

Unfortunately, not only is Ms. Gottlieb unrealistic to seek perfection, she hasn’t learned even in her 40s that you don’t seek out the ideal life (including a mate if that’s what you seek), you make it.  The same holds for careers, homes, and anything else it is making sacrifices of your time and energy.

Update 12-13-08

Now Charles M. Blow in the New York Times today writes:

To help me understand this phenomenon, I called Kathleen Bogle, a professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia who has studied hooking up among college students and is the author of the 2008 book, “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus.”

It turns out that everything is the opposite of what I remember. Under the old model, you dated a few times and, if you really liked the person, you might consider having sex. Under the new model, you hook up a few times and, if you really like the person, you might consider going on a date.

I asked her to explain the pros and cons of this strange culture. According to her, the pros are that hooking up emphasizes group friendships over the one-pair model of dating, and, therefore, removes the negative stigma from those who can’t get a date. As she put it, “It used to be that if you couldn’t get a date, you were a loser.” Now, she said, you just hang out with your friends and hope that something happens.

Here’s what I then commented on the New York Times site:

I dated my girlfriend, now wife of 23 years, for four years while we were both in college and then we were engaged for several months before we got married. During this time, I had plenty of friends who were girls with whom I could have a great time going to parties, etc., but for which there was no expectation of a romantic or physical relationship BECAUSE I had a steady girlfriend back home.

We had lopsided ratios at Princeton in the 1980s (more men than women back then, rather than the opposite which is now the norm on many college campuses), so I don’t think that was a factor (women could have taken advantage of the ratio in ways that men can now do I suppose, but they didn’t).

What’s changed in my opinion is that women have now decided to give up the self-respect they had 30 years ago in an effort to “catch up” with the boys in loose behavior. I suppose if women behaved back then as they do now, we guys would have taken advantage of that, to the detriment of both sexes. I find it ridiculous and ironic that when I was in college, before there was AIDS, we were more careful than now when AIDS is an epidemic.

Aneil

Networking is not just for a job, but for life

We met with Emily Meehan, former WSJ reporter last week and asked what she learned writing her 20-something column for the WSJ.  She mentioned that 20-somethings don’t know how to network.  They don’t realize until it is too late that they need to know more people–in related fields or folks who are older than they are in order to network to find that next job.

That is why I will now admit that linkedin.com is a great way to network.  I was skeptical of it in the past, but I’ve come to use it so much that I have started a group for my undergrads and  coach them all to start their linking with me.  That is also why we started a trust network group on linkedin.com as well.  Through our own networking efforts, through this blog, and through our university connections we’ve learned about the power of the network.

Networking is such a negative term, because it sounds like you are some smoozing type of salesman, but the truth is that networking is not just for a job, but it is for life.  You may be pleasantly surprised at the wealth of information, mentoring, and yes, even jobs that will come out of your networking.  You might even make some good friends, too.

Karen

Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

In my teaching, I emphasize the need to overcome the status quo.  That not only applies to your organization, but yourself, as I said in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Pay attention to metrics. Lackluster progress reports and not hearing feedback from a supervisor is a good way to tell if your work has become routine. Aneil Mishra, an associate professor at Wake Forest’s Babcock Graduate School of Management, suggests you constantly look at how you’re helping the organization improve. Doing so can prevent you from getting complacent in a position.

Make time for career research. Set aside time to explore new avenues. “Think about your career like you do going to the dentist and getting a checkup every so often,” says Mr. Luzzo. If getting out of your comfort zone isn’t possible in your current company, look for a challenge elsewhere. If you stay long enough, you “become wedded to the culture,” says Mr. Mishra.

Aneil

Whom do You Ask for Advice?

In an article by Carol Hymowitz in today’s Wall Street Journal, several CEOs talk about how they rely on their spouses for advice on important issues. I think this is a great idea, even if the spouse isn’t a business professional. Getting input from as many intelligent people as possible before making strategic decisions is always good practice, and if one’s spouse complements the CEO in terms of how he or she processes information or makes decision, it should help the CEO make a balanced decision. As one person quoted in the WSJ article stated:

Unlike in past generations, when executives might simply have vented about a work problem over dinner, many executives today seem more likely to have lengthy discussions with spouses before making important hires or launching a new strategy. Most of those interviewed say spouses saved them from mistakes — hiring the wrong person, passing up a job opportunity, or not standing up to a boss, for example.

Many of these executives have partners with careers equally demanding to their own, similar educational backgrounds and a deep understanding of certain industries. They value having a spouse who can give frank feedback and keep matters quiet.

Of course, spouses aren’t the only ones to seek out for good advice. In addition to my wife Karen, I’ve consulted with certain trustworthy others before I make any “big” decisions (e.g., career or health). I also talk with these other individuals whenever I need a different perspective on what is going on in my life.

Some of my biggest mistakes in my life (e.g., choosing the wrong place to begin my academic career, getting sinus surgery without a second opinion in 1999) have been because I either didn’t listen carefully enough to Karen, or didn’t seek out other opinions from informed others before making my decision.

Who do you trust to give you good advice when making important decisions?

Aneil