How to Network – Party More

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I am not joking. I will prove it to you why “partying more” will help you with networking.  I went to a Deloitte Consulting alumni event last week and had a blast. I met up with so many old friends, had fun, and discussed quite a bit of business at the same time.

I worked for Deloitte for 10 years but still was pleasantly surprised to see I knew half of the alumni at the event. Some are now Senior Managers and Partners at Deloitte and others are senior executives or successful owners of their own business.  The funny thing was as I was talking to people and recounting old times, I realized I never worked with 95% of the people I knew.  Instead we discussed the good old days of lavish consulting retreats, late night illegal golf cart rides, and dancing up a storm at the annual Christmas parties. ...  read more

What is Interpersonal Communication – Definition and 3 Myths

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Effective interpersonal communication at work is essential to your career success. Yet it’s often not clearly understood nor easy to improve. After researching on Google regarding how others discuss interpersonal communication, I will offer my own perspective – a detailed definition of what is interpersonal communication and 3 most common myths about interpersonal communication. ...  read more

Recently Launched – 3 New Features + Free Coaching Idea

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Thank you for your continuing interest and support.  I am excited that over 5000 unique visitors from 100+ countries have checked out this blog in the last 30 days.  Please pass this blog along to anyone that may find it helpful.  I am pleased to announce 3 new features to further help you use this site and my knowledge. ...  read more

Job Application Email – 4 Tips to Stand out

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Sending a job application email can be tricky.  Recruiters and hiring managers receive hundreds of emails a day.  How can you stand out in your email?   Here are four tips you can use to attract the right attention to your job application email.

  1. Meaningful Subject Line – If the subject line reads “Position Title + Years of Experience + Industry Experience + Education”, the receiver may be more interested in opening and reading it especially if it’s impressive. For Example “Application for Product Manager + 10 year of experience + Stanford EE, Wharton MBA.”  Focus on 6 -10 words that highlights your best qualifications.  This kind of subject line will attract attention and encourage the email receiver to open your job application email as soon as possible.
  2. Warm Referral – The best opening line in an email would be “persona X recommended that I contact you regarding this position.” This mean the receiver knows person X and that person is implicitly endorsing you for this position. So before you send in a job application email, see if you can find a warm connection to that company or hiring manager. A warm introduction is still the best way to apply to a job
  3. List 4 to 5 bullets why you are a good candidate – In the email, don’t just say I am applying to position X and attached is my resume. Summarize why they should care and get a jump on looking at your attached resume. It’s a like a shorten version of a cover letter (no need to also attach a cover letter).  The best way is to use bullets as people can read it faster and keep it short (1-2 sentences each) describing why you think you are a great fit for this job.  Look at the job description and use their terminology or synonyms to cover all the areas where you have experience.
  4. Call to follow up – email is not always reliable.  You could end up in the spam folder or overlooked just because the receiver is swamped.  If you don’t hear anything in a week, call to follow up to see the status of your job application.

If you do these 4 things for your job application email, at least you know you did everything you can to stand out. The rest is up to circumstance and timing. For more job search tips, see my other 60+ articles on job search.  I have articles for how to find job, how to write a resume, interview tips, networking tips, and salary negotiations. Best wishes on your job search.  I am always in your corner. ...  read more

Career Success – How to Succeed like an Executive

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There are five types of job skills essential to career success.

  1. Hard skills – These are trade skills (like programming, accounting, finance, chemistry) that you need to perform your job.
  2. People skills – There are 20 soft skills (including communication skills, interpersonal skills) you should develop on how to best work and interact with others so you can influence their perception of you, your work and motivate their actions.
  3. Self management skills – There are eight soft skills (including patience, stress management) you need to manage how you perceive yourself and how you react to adverse situations
  4. Work Attitude – Establish positive work attitude (such as hard working, loyal, willing to learn) that is typically valued by companies
  5. Professionalism – Practice the basic etiquette of business in the way you dress, speak, and act
After working 15 years in corporate america with a Stanford bachelors degree and a Wharton MBA, I realized that good schooling could only take me so far.  The secret to succeeding like an executive (VP level and above) in any corporation is actually mastering soft skills (20 People Skills and 8 Self Management skills).  Here is why
  • Soft skills are the most difficult to master and will separate you from the mass. Almost anyone can learn basic Professionalism and the necessary Work Attitude that are fundamental to career success.
  • As for hard skills, many schools have rigorous programs regarding how to develop specific hard skills.  As long as you are smart and can study hard, you can master the hard skills.   Soft skills, on the other hand, are not taught well in school and require dedicated effort and practice while working to develop.
  • Soft skills is what will get you promoted to executive level (VP and above).  If you look at any executives you admire today, I would bet that the reasons they advanced to that level is heavily due to their leadership skills, communication skills, or ability to inspire action and deliver results – all soft skills. You can find many engineers with great hard skills that have had difficulty achieving executive level due to lack of soft skills.

If you want to achieve career success and executive level status in any corporation, then it’s important to develop your soft skills.  You can read books and take training; you can learn from your mentors; you can practice at work every day to develop these skills.  I can also help. ...  read more

Can’t Find a Job After College – 6 Ideas

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Knowing how to find a job after college in today’s economy requires you to do much more than just send out resumes.  As even experienced people are accepting lower pay jobs to survive,  the college graduates are facing a even larger challenge with limited experience or ways to differentiate themselves. Recently, I received an email from a Berkeley graduate (David – not his real name) who is can’t find a good job after college.  I want to share his story and my recommendations for him in case they can help others. David’s story and questions I’m a 23-year-old somewhat recent graduate (2009) from U.C. Berkeley. I have spent the last two years working in various odd jobs and also backpacked through Central and South America.  I did this because I didn’t know what I wanted to do and didn’t want to think too hard about a career.  I have seen and experienced many things I had been curious about, and have matured.  I feel a strong urge, now, to focus and leverage my abilities to develop a career.   Unfortunately, I am having a really hard time finding a career opportunity.  My questions are:
  1. I graduated 2 years ago, what is the best way to convincingly distance myself from my past inconsistent work history and assure an employer that I am a serious candidate?
  2. A good proportion of entry level positions are in sales. I can do sales, but I don’t want to stay in sales. Are these positions worth pursuing to get in the door?
Here are 6 tips to help David find a job.    Hope they also help others who can’t find a job quickly after college
  1. Change your negative mentality and Focus on your strengths –  Don’t over-worry if your past experiences are not ideal.    Thinking only negatively about your past experience will come across in interviews.  You need to change your own mentality about your past if you want others to believe it.  Instead, come up with a good story and keep it short.  David can try “”The economy was bad so I decided to take 18 months off to travel and mature.  Now the economy is recovering, I am ready to work.”   Explain it only when asked.  Also focus on what strengths you can offer a company – skills, passion, experience, and dedication.  Even with David’s situation, there is an upside, he will be more mature than graduates of 2011 and is okay with a new graduate job / pay.
  2. Network with your “3rd cousin” –  I don’t mean this literally but to illustrate a point.  Everyone will tell you to network to get a job.  What does it really mean?  It means three things
    1) at every social interaction, you are already at, find opportunities to discuss what people’s jobs are like and/or get advice about how to find a job after college.  You never know who will know a good hidden opportunity to share
    2) Proactively cold-call alumni, family, friends, and anyone that could have information for you about the nature of their job or job opportunities.   Go beyond your comfort zone.  College does NOT do a good job of describing all the different jobs available out there.  By aggressively networking with anyone you encounter, you could learn about cool jobs you never thought of (e.g., international trade specialist, retailer buyer), hone your skills at networking which is needed in any business career, and uncover hidden job opportunities other graduates won’t know.
    3) Networking also includes finding and cold-calling the hiring managers of a job opening and skip the recruiter.  When you cold call hiring managers, be prepared with a succinct story of why they should consider interviewing you.  Making the effort to reach them directly can help you stand out.
  3. Work for free to get in the door –    This can get you into companies, especially start-ups, that may not have actual job openings.  David should especially consider this to show his dedication and focus to a company.  Set it up so that you work for 1-3 months for free and then convert to a paid position if you do a good job.  This is easier for the company to say yes and let’s face it, you could spend another 3 months or more looking for work if you didn’t do this, it’s worth it to offer this alternative so you get a chance to prove and differentiate yourself.
  4. Be open to multiple career paths –  Define up to five career paths that may interest you and will teach you skills that you can apply to other jobs.  This will give you focus without limiting your options.   With that said, when you pursue any opportunity in any of the five careers of interest, you need to sound focused on that one career and communicate credible reasons why you want to pursue it.  You don’t need to share that you have 4 other careers of interest.   To David’s question, is Sales a good career to pursue?  In general, yes as a job in Sales can teach a person important soft skills, like interpersonal skills, communication skills, negotiation skills that can be used in many careers.  David should find a few Berkeley alumni who are in Sales and do information interviews – find out what they like and dislike about sales and what it takes to be successful.  He can use the information to build his application for sales positions and may even uncover a few hidden sales openings from these contacts.
  5. Show passion for the product/company – Go after careers based on your passion.  Many college graduates are not sure what they want to do when they grow up.  I was definitely one of them.  This is normal.  It’s possible to not know your career passion but still have passions for products/services as a consumer.  If you love Farmville, apply to Zynga.  If you love shopping trends, apply to be a buyer at a retail company.   Those who shows they have passion for the product a company offers will stand out in their interviews.     See this article of one Stanford MBA who got a job with Foursquare because of his passion for its services.
  6. Lastly, there are two risky options David can try for his resume –  For a good resume template, click here.
    Option 1) summarize disjointed experiences into one experience on your resume – In David’s case, his odd jobs in food services, EMT, and factory worker will cause concern.  Instead, he can list his last two years as one experience,  This is taking some creative license with the resume but if the story is true, it’s your right to market yourself in the best light.   For example, David can write the following  – David Smith Enterprises – Discovery Analyst  (2009  to 2011).  Test different headings as there is no best answer.   Then he can list underneath it 3 to 5 bullets of how some of his experiences in the last two years help him develop maturity,  interpersonal skills, communication skills, appreciation for diversity, etc…
    Option 2) skip the last two years all together in the resume and be prepared to explain the gap if he gets an interview.
Neither option in #6 is ideal which is why David and any other graduates who can’t find a job for awhile after college should focus most of their energy on the first 5 tips to find a job.   

Job search is your job ...  read more

Examples – Interpersonal Skills are More Important than Hard Skills

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Have you ever wondered why having the best answer to a business problem sometimes makes no impact at all? In school, we were always incentivized to give the best answer – the best answer leads to good grades, which lead to job offers. So, naturally I brought that mentality to work. I would work tirelessly to get the perfect, best answer, but was often disappointed when nobody seemed to interested in hearing it. ...  read more