Kelly: Thanks for tuning in to Navigating the Unexpected the podcast series from the Newhouse Career Development Center in which we chat with communications industry professionals about the career obstacles they have overcome and how they have made the most out of unexpected situations. I’m Kelly Barnett. In this episode we are chatting with Mary Quinlan, a friend of new house and communications industry veteran who now coaches new grads entering the working world. This conversation took place via Zoom in front of a student audience, so you’ll get to hear some of their questions at the end. Some portions of the conversation have been edited for clarity. Let’s get going.
Kelly: Hi, everybody. It is my pleasure to introduce to you Mary Donohue, Quinlan. So she’s been a great friend to Newhouse over the years. She spent the earlier part of her career as a senior magazine publishing executive selling programs across integrated platforms including print, digital, Social and events. And she worked for brands, including just maybe a few you may have heard of, like Cosmopolitan magazine and the Wall Street Journal and basically the entire collection of Conde Nast. So she knows this industry. She launched her own company career prep in November of 2007. And she’s helped many recent grads make the transition from school to the working world. And today she also serves as an adjunct professor at LIM College in New York City teaching career management. So this is her wheelhouse. This is the stuff that she knows best. So please help me welcome Mary Quinlan.
Mary: I’m so excited. Thank you so much. You heard my introduction. I’m a magazine and communications junkie and I still subscribe to 15 magazines. It’s ridiculous. I had a great career. I love media. I love advertising. I started the ad agency and I met S.I. Newhouse, son of the founder of the Newhouse School, I worked for him. So this is my little self-effacing story. I’m 40 years old. I’m not 21 I’m 40. And I’ve gotten the job at Conde Nast. But they want me to go meet S.I., even though I’m in the job of corporate Sales Director, I’m gonna sell for all the magazines. And I said, Okay, and I said, What do I call and they said, you always call him Mr. Newhouse, until he says, Call me S.I. which he may never do. So I’m sitting in his office, it is you can’t see my house but it’s the size of my first floor. It’s all painted white, simple, like Armani did it. There is a huge reception area for his assistant, then a huge conference room for private secret conferences. And then his office, and around the office are all these original drawings from the New Yorker, which he owns from newspapers, which he owns, for some unknown reason, at 40 years old. I am completely overwhelmed. Then I’m going to meet this mega mogul. So and he comes and he looks at me.. So I was so nervous that instead of shutting up, I just start to babble when I get nervous. And I looked around and I said oh my goodness. I love these drawings. Did you do them? So that was my fluff, just, you know, you can still scrub an interview when you’re 40. I recovered nicely. They kept the job, but he never told me the con side when I worked for him for 4 years.
Okay, so you’re not going to believe me now. And you may not believe me in 10 years, but you’re going to at some point, believe me that there is a silver lining to this crazy, crazy pandemic that happen to you. And I’m sorry it happened to you as seniors. But the good news is you’re seeing just as you’re entering the workforce, that this stuff can happen in life. The life is not just a bowl of cherries that you just keep rolling along. The first time it happened to me I was in my in senior management as a publisher of a magazine when 9/11 happened and the world stopped. The world is on pause now the world stopped and business stopped and we didn’t know what to do. We sat there senior executives saying what, what, what, what, and after three days, here’s what we came up with. You might do it carefully, you will do it respectfully, but you must go on, you just make a plan B, there’s always a plan B and you go on. Knowing that now when something hits, somehow something hits every 10 years, I was doing the math this morning, something hits every 10 years. And then if you heard about the class of 2009, they had a terrible time finding jobs, because the economy, everything’s terrible, you know, that lights gonna go on. And next time something happens, you’re gonna say, Oh, this is nothing compared to COVID-19 I got this, let’s just keep going. Trust me, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen to you 10 times in the life we’re gonna set up. This is nothing compared to COVID-19. So you guys have gotten this. So here’s what I want to say. Well, you think the world is on pause. This is not a time for you to pause. And I’m going to tell you why. And I’m going to kick your butts a little bit because it’s so easy to just, I mean, I’m getting up every day and doing yoga just because I gotta have a routine. I gotta get up out of bed and you just have to keep yourself and set up a schedule. So you do not want to pause now there is so much for you to do to get ready and to look for a job. And just cause you don’t see people on the streets. Do you have any idea what’s happening in business? Have you seen any new commercials that address COVID? On TV? Who do you think did those your people, new house people, they’re still happening behind closed doors in from remote. You’ll notice a lot of them are just stock photos cut and then some copy, but it is happening. My daughter works at JP Morgan she’s she’s working from eight to eight every day on the phone on conference calls on Salesforce. So don’t think business has stopped. It has not. here’s here’s the perspective I’m going to take, do your exams because it’s hard and you might as well you have no excuse not to get straight A’s. Give yourself the time, a week to weeks off after graduation. And then it’s time for you to do your job and find a job. And here’s the things you can do. And you can keep so busy and keeping busy will keep you engaged in it. Okay? The other reason you want to do this now is there’s going to be a lot of people who just unplug, and if you’re that person, the other people are going to be way ahead of you when the floodgates open. Okay, so the first thing is you have to get yourselves market ready. Now I’m sure a lot of you are in this place. But you have your resume done. Yes. Ready to go. You need a follow up letter. And all of that should not have any typos. Why? Because if I have 10 people that I’m interviewing and they’re all going for an entry level position, the one with the typos the first one out, I still have nine left. What do I need you for? Also, I hate to say this, you are from the Newhouse School. The level of expectation for your communication is here. If somebody from a state school has a table, you go there, but you are the Mecca. You raised bar of communications. So you in particular, have your mother, your roommate, your dog, check your spelling, but don’t have any typos. Okay, LinkedIn profile. Does everybody have one? Okay, how are the pictures? The big thing? It’s my classes favorite class. once a semester, we do LinkedIn and we look at everybody’s pictures. The women, half of them have pictures from weddings, and they have spaghetti strip dresses with cleavage showing. No, that’s a Tinder picture. Right? The men, half of the men your age have tuxedos on because they’re taken at a wedding because they never wear jackets and ties. So we know you’re at a wedding. And it takes see them. You could just have a white shirt, you know, button down shirt, and a blazer, no tie and stand against a white wall. So it’s very important. And also, don’t be so austere because I want to know that you’re nice. You don’t have to be laughing. But if I’m going to spend eight hours a week with you eight hours a day with you. I want to know that you’re not cranky. Right. So I like a little smile and have it be approachable. Then you’re going to have there’s a place to click Is it okay for people to reach out to you for jobs? Do you see that? When you click that, a note to self here, it means recruiters can find you too. So you will have someone who will clearly state that you want a job in social media. And they will say, we have a job whose customer service and insurance company like what? No, don’t even take the interview. Just say it’s not a good fit. Okay? Clean up social media accounts. Neither make the account private or take it down. If you think people don’t look, you’re wrong. The first thing people look at By the way, if you’re they’re down to a shortlist, they look, they look you up on LinkedIn. That’s why that picture is so important. Because again, in case of a tie, in five years, this is a different story, because someone you have more experienced than someone else. But right now you’re on an equal playing plane. You don’t want anything that’s unsavory you know that you can either make it private or get rid of it. The last thing is to prepare for video interviews. Hopefully not those ones against a blank wall because they’re so unnerving. They’re awful. But there’s so many places you can find a way to do interviews. And I bet Kelly, I bet you have some places that do you have any resources for them to learn video interviewing?
Kelly: Oh, yeah. So we actually have a resource called Big Interview. And you guys can access that either, actually just go right to Handshake. If you look under Resources, you’ll see it there. What big interview does is it lets you practice answering questions and it’s not with a live person; though the CDC can help you with that if you want to make an appointment. We can always practice, but big interview is great because they have different recordings of different people. So they have the friendly interviewer with you know, medium hard questions and they have the mean looking person who’s giving you like a hardball question. Different demeanors, different levels of difficulty with those questions and you can record yourself to see How you responded, you don’t have to do anything with that recording it’s just to watch yourself. But that’s great practice if you’re trying to shake off some of the nerves of, I don’t know this person, they’re going to ask me a question. I want to be prepared. I have different sets of questions you can go through. And there’s like different tools you can use, like interview roulette, and it just randomly gives you a question. So you don’t know like what’s going to be in the mix. But that’s a really great resource. It’s available to all SU students. And again, it’s just under that Resources tab, on handshake.
Mary: That’s great. Thank you. Because so many people are working from home, you’re going to get video interviews this summer. So I know you know what to wear. You’re going to dress the part at least from the waist up for the video interview. And I cannot tell you if I ever was if I ever could recapture moments in my life. I would take pictures of the people I interviewed I hired and I would interview all these interns like this because it was it was I guess it was Skype, right? A FaceTime to I cannot tell you how often there was this person dressed in makeup, hair, perfectly professional. And behind them was a pile of clean laundry with undergarments hanging out all over the place. And you’re just like, everything looks so good and your backgrounds. Awful, right? For example, maybe your call depends on if you want to differentiate yourself. Maybe you don’t want to have a cat walk across the table during an interview for a month for me it was a good distraction. If I was your interviewer, I would think it was cute, but somebody else that so but think about your background and your lighting. So you want to practice that not for today, but for your interviews, because you want them to see your bright shiny smile. Okay, any questions about the video interview?
They’re common, like it or not. Okay, so what’s next? Most of you because you are at new house probably have a general idea where you want to go right with basic ad agencies or media or Whatever. But you do know that you can research companies. And you should have no more than two or three directions that you want to go in because you want to stay focused. So if it’s an ad agency, there’s two or three jobs there. You could go. Job types, you could go after departments you could go to it could be Meteor account, or creative, or social or digital or a good place to research these places is Glassdoor. Anybody heard of Glassdoor? It’s good to research industries and companies. I want you to be careful about Glassdoor though, with researching because a lot of people they’ll say what what’s it like to work at Omnicom and disgruntled employees are the first ones to write not employees who were happy? Never did you ever give a bad review to a restaurant on Open Table or TripAdvisor? Now, see, you’re so often if you have a baby come home, you do it immediately. And if you had the meal of your life, you don’t write about it. So just be careful. Don’t take it all so seriously. I like to use for job research if you’re not sure what position I like to use, Indeed, just hear me out. Indeed is an aggregator of jobs and so they will have a huge collection of jobs. So you research and you say, Well, what is it digital media planner, what is an account coordinator and you read the job descriptions and then you get a feel for what position you’re looking for. Then you can put that on your LinkedIn right looking for to be an account coordinator at a TV company at a television brand. Whenever you see something like do not apply on Indeed, you’ll see on there you can see how many people have applied some some people, there’s 3500 people and apply to a position. I mean, it’s really nuts. Go to the company’s website and apply there. So Indeed is going to be your research tool, but not your application vehicle. Other places to look for jobs and we’re going to talk about Newhouse in a minute, but Idealist.com if you’re interested in not for profit work not for profit needs. Also find Spark.com as a place that is geared towards promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace. And they’ve changed, Kelly, way in here if you don’t like it, Wayup.com used to be for internships Wayup.com, but they have a lot of jobs now for recent graduates and yet and they also there’s so many multiple listings industry organizations because you pretty much all know your industry. This is not the same as talking to Penn State because they’re all over the place, Newhouse they’re probably already on this site somewhere. But there’s the American advertising Foundation, the American Marketing Association, the Direct Marketing Association, interactive marketing bureau IAB, which is interactive means digital, but not social. So it’s online, public relations society, social media Association, American Association of advertising agencies forays, and things like that.
And they all have jobs, some more than others and some will have 51 day and then you go three months later and they’ll have three. It’s not their main job. I’m big on the trade books too. I’m sure you all know adage media week and week and media week just did a promotion for average employers, so employers have to pay to post the job. It’s not much but they have to pay. And they just said, Well, well, this is going on. You don’t have to pay to list your jobs. Immediately. Nice, right? And then I’m a big person unsetting a routine. As I said before, so just pick this once you’re doing your job search, you’re done with your exams, how many hours a day you’re going to do this and do three hours a day and take Friday off. I always get myself ready. Are you going to do two hours a day, but if you do book it, say 12 to two every day. There’s so much you can do because for example, when you go on a Indeed and start looking, there are thousands I put in what did I put in the other day? I went to Glassdoor. I put in marketing coordinator, New York City. Maybe there’s a good entry level work 2198 job listings for one position title in New York City. So that could take days to get through which ones of those you’re interested in? Because remember the great thing about marketing and communications and everything you’re doing. You could do it at Cosmopolitan magazine for the New York Times, but you could do it at Merrill Lynch for at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Right. So your skill set applies to many industries. So you kind of to figure out what industry you think you’re drawn towards?
Kelly: I would add on to that, but think about the situation that we’re in right now in which industries are doing really well. And which ones are not. So if you’re somebody who’s a PR student, and you’re like, I love travel and hospitality, there’s not going to be a lot there right now. So you want to think about, you know, those industries are not doing so well. So what would be a place that we could go to maybe that’s the area you want to be doing work for, but maybe we can go somewhere else and learn the skills and get experience that you can use them transferable, so when those jobs do open up, you’ll be able to move into that area later. Same thing for anybody who’s interested in healthcare. There’s a ton related to healthcare right now. Right? Or consumer goods. We all keep hearing about toilet paper and PRL and Clorox wipes. Those industries are doing well, right, because people are buying those things. So places they have those clients, publications that report on those areas. Those are the places that are better funded right now. So keep that in mind when you’re looking at jobs. Think about how that might fit in with your interests and what you might want to do.
Mary: Right, thanks. Okay, so now you’ve got your market ready. You’ve got all your paperwork, your LinkedIn, everything ready to go. you’ve researched you’re ready to go you in you even found jobs that you’re interested in. And now it’s time to apply. The most important thing I’m going to say today is you don’t get a job by sending out resumes. You get it by getting interviews. So you can send that you can find all these things and all this online, and here’s what could happen.
Now picture this is 10 years ago, 10 years ago. I was at Holy Cross women in business event and I ran into a woman. And don’t forget her first job. And she said, Oh my goodness, ba ba ba. And I’m a GE right now. I’m in their HR department and I said, Oh, my daughter was a math major, applied to the GE management training program. It’s not that she wanted to her mother wanted her to. So she did. She hires 40 people a year from all over the, you know, from anywhere in the world, 40 people a year to go into their management training program, college grads. So she said, Well, Mary, I’m so grateful to you, I’ll pull her out of the queue and I’ll get her an interview and great, so she pulled her out of the queue. She got an interview. It was her first interview, which wasn’t ideal for her. And she apparently did okay, except when she wrote the follow up letter. Listen to this. It is the guy she the gentleman she interviewed with was Ted and she wrote dear Tim, thank you so much for your time. So she didn’t get the job because it mistake that small or big. Like you’re out soon. blank. I said, Just out of curiosity, this is 10 years ago, just out of curiosity, how many people were in the queue for this job? 10,000 resumes 10 years ago. You think anybody reads 10,000 resumes? No, they don’t read 100. If they read 10 and pick out two or three, you’re number 11, you’re out, you’re out. Nobody even sees your resume. Imagine if it’s 10,000. So what you need to do is apply so that you can say you did, and then you need to figure out a way to get an interview. And here’s where you have an advantage that a lot of schools don’t. Number one, there’s LinkedIn, which we’re going to talk about. And number two, there is the old on new house network. Okay, so Kelly’s gonna tell me that in a minute. So you find a job you apply. Here’s what you’re going to do. This is unbelievable. When you go to LinkedIn, if you scroll down On your LinkedIn page and just scroll down to Newhouse School or Syracuse, I don’t know what the logo comes up, you click on it, and it will bring you to their page. And on the left is it says jobs. You don’t want jobs there unless you want to work at Syracuse, those are jobs at Syracuse. Then it says alumni, and you type in radio in New City, you scroll down, and there’s a picture of a person of every alum in radio, it’s their picture, their major, their name, the company, they work at the position they hold the year they graduated your school, you can scroll down and see maybe there’s 30 people that you can reach out to you go to connect with them, you go to you know how to click in and connect with them on LinkedIn, right? And in the message, you say, Hey, I’m a fellow orange. Like I would say I’m a fellow Crusader. I’m a fellow orange. Okay, it does sounds weird. But there’s Nittany Lions. There’s all kinds of this blue hands Delaware’s a blue hand. You know, what the heck is that? So you see and you say can you give me 15 minutes, say 15. Because otherwise people think, oh, I don’t have time. I’m looking for your advice, your counsel or your insights there three words that make people feel good about themselves and that they’re willing to help you. My experiences, if you write to 25 of these people, you will get a 30 to 50% response, which is huge. So one is just as you’re digging, is to just say, can we talk because you want to go to that company, let’s say, let’s say put an NBC there’s probably 15 to 25. Who knows how many new house people are there and try and get a meeting with them because then you’re on their radar, then when they hear something, they’ll reach out to you. They might hear the next day that someone left a department and they’re looking for someone. I’m telling it 50 people like they’re not reading 50 resumes you can use in a similar way the new house network Kelly, can you address that for me?
Kelly: So the Newhouse network has been around since 1991. It used to be a paper binder where you Come in and put through that. But these days, it is an online community. It is not every alum who’s ever graduated from new house that’s nice in its own way. It’s something better though, in my opinion, it’s more than 4000 people who have said, Yes, we’re willing to help. And they’re in every nook and cranny of the industry. And any student has access to that kind of indirectly. You can meet with the CDC, we can make sure that you feel good about your outreach and tell us the companies that you’re looking for. And then we can provide you some context. Or if you are graduating, you’re a grad student, you are a senior, you can go to our job hunt series to get unrestricted access yourself.
Mary: So they signed up and said, Yes, I’d be willing to work with somebody. Yeah. Another thing is because of this crazy time, people are looking or more willing to help, they want to reach out and do something. So I just wanted to reach out to the class of 2020 because it’s gonna be fine. But I just wanted to do whatever I could to inspire you to just keep on going. Your LinkedIn connection I’m giving you more work to do when you when you start doing your job. your friends, your family, not your cousin who’s a freshman at Penn State, necessarily, but your uncle might own an insurance company. Will you link him in? Because maybe he knows somebody whenever classmates and anybody who’s had internships, anybody here have had internships? Yes. Have you LinkedIn, all those people you worked with? It’s important. Here’s why. Let’s say you worked with with Mary Smith, at Omnicom. And she was your supervisor. Now suddenly, you get a notice that she just went to opposite oxygen. And then you say congratulations, you remember, I was your intern that summer. Great, sounds great options seems like a great place. Now suddenly, she goes to Snapchat and you’re like, Oh my God, that’s my dream job to go to Snapchat. Then you reach out to her, you know, you’re keeping track and you keep in touch with her. When you see someone gets a promotion, you write to them and say, that’s great. You’ll get an email saying Mary Smith got promoted. When sure I’m in front of her LinkedIn network. Okay, and then this is important to do an action plan to how many people you’re going to reach out to a week. And then be sure and follow up. Nothing makes me crazier than someone from my college, I start helping them I start working with them months back and forth. And then I find out three months later, oh, they got a job. And they never told me. Like, just say, hey, great news. I’m working at Pinterest now. Okay, so I have one little wrap up remark, and then we’re going to take questions. I would love you to please stay focused on your dream. Do not just take that job that comes along at an insurance company because it came along and they’re going to start your 50,000 and you want to take it because you’re scared. That job that you don’t want will be there in two months, in six months, and in a year. It will be there. It will always be there. Give it your shot. I honest to goodness would rather have you proofreading online or waitressing and when restaurants open or tending bar at night and interviewing during the day going for Your second be your dream job. It’s an entry level job, but in the career and the field that you want, that you connect with, do not walk away from that. And especially Don’t let a recruiter move you away from that not this early in the game. You’ve worked too hard. looking for a job as a full time job. Give yourself a little time off after your exams, and then go to work for you and your future. You’ve got this, you’re in the present your own company now. Okay. Be proud of yourselves, like how far you’ve come the past four years? Who has questions?
Student 1: So I’ve heard mixed things about your LinkedIn like title. Right now. I have seeking full time opportunity May 2020 grad. Should you change that to be more specific? And what if you don’t know exactly like what career or what industry you want to go into?
Mary: Well, seeking full time is is a given if you’re looking for a job, right? Right. So I would say looking for a position entry level position in marketing, marketing, or advertising or, or if you research those jobs on indeed, you might find you want to be an account, an account coordinator, the more specific you can be the better. But no put up marketing for a month and change it to advertise in the next month if you want to see what happens. The full time position now, what’s your major?
Student 1: I’m actually not in Newhouse and marketing and supply chain.
Mary: It’s okay. I’m sorry that I wasted my side story on you. I would put marketing and supply chain major seeking position in and give it a broad industry. You’ll see when you read the job descriptions, you’ll see buzzwords, keywords, and then that’s how they search. I’m three years out of corporate America, I still get 100 searches a week because they’re searching for sales directors.
Student 1: And then I’m like I’ll get a ton of messages on LinkedIn. Since I’m open to opportunities from like Sales and other things that I don’t want to go into. Are you supposed to answer those and just say not interested or does that not matter?
Mary: Reply and say thank you. Thanks for reaching out. I don’t see this as a fit for me. Okay. Anybody else?
Student 2: Hi, um, yesterday, arecruiter finally emailed me, and we have a phone call. And she wants to introduce some jobs for me, but I need to sign up with her to like, allow her to introduce the job to help me to find jobs. She’s does like counter for the companies and for the people who want to find jobs. Should I sign an agreement with her?
Mary: Okay, Kelly, I want to help you. I’ve never heard of this. I think you need to read it and have somebody else read it. It sounds to me like she may want you to pay her commission.
Kelly: Yeah, at entry level roles you never want to use a headhunter or anyone who’s saying, Oh, yeah, you just pay me and I’ll find you a job. It’s not a thing that’s going to end well. Later on in your career, people will come to you as headhunters and want to do this for you and you won’t have to pay. What I recommend for you is you can actually take advantage of su legal services, they’ll review that contract for you. So if there’s anything that you have question about that they want you to sign you can go to them and have them look at it. And that’s a free service to you as a student.
Mary: I have never heard of that. And it does not sound good to me. Like, you know, I agree with Kelly 100%.
Student 3: thank you. What’s your advice for getting into big tech companies for an entry position? I know networking certainly will help.
Mary: Big like Google and Apple?
Student 3: Google, Apple, Facebook, or even an internship there.
Mary: I would I would go immediately to that LinkedIn, or the network that Kelly talked about the Newhouse network, and see who works there, and get on the phone with them immediately. Those places are pretty tough for entry level, I have to say my experience, you could get your next job there. But it’s worth a try. You have especially you’re a junior, go for it. And if not get an internship at a place that they’ll be interested in.
Student 3: What I’ve seen is seems that it’s pretty easy for people who’ve worked at big companies to like if you’ve worked at Big, big name places, it’s easier for you to jump to other places, too. So when I consider my first entry position. How much I mean, how much would you weigh that when you choose your first job?
Mary: Well, if you have that big brand name, it’s impressive, right? So if your first job is that New York Times it’s like wow, but I have to tell you and I want Kelly to comment on this. There’s a pro and a con to this. So if you go to an I am a big proponent of starting at the big company because you learn best practices, your how an organization runs, you learn how reporting should be done, you learn chain of command, you learn, you know, and then you can go and translate it little it’s like going from PC to a Mac, yes. But the other ones, the Mac to the PC, which is hard to do. If you get in a startup company or a smaller company, you get to do more, it’s more hands on, you’ll be exposed to more you’ll be in higher level meetings. So as opposed to at the big company, here’s your role and your roles, like in a box. It’s not a bid box. But you’re not going to be like, oh, let’s grab Jackie and bring her in the clients here from LA let’s, you know, it’s not going to be like that. Well, what do you think, Kelly? I agree.
Kelly: Yeah, when it comes down to it, hands on experience will always be the most important factor in hiring, whether it’s for an internship or for your first job or your ninth job. So people want to see what you’ve done. So if that tiny company allows you the chance to get your hands dirty, get a lot of experience, as Mary mentioned, you know, big companies, there’s mobility, you can learn the structure, you can learn the culture, you can learn, you know, there’s a lot of places you can go in that company. So really depends on the opportunity itself, you know, you really want to look at that. But when it comes to your next interview, after you get your first job, they’re gonna want to know, what did you do? And so whichever company is going to provide you the best, the better answer is probably the way you want to go.
Student 4: I guess sort of apropos of what you were talking about before with not applying to everything. Even if you don’t think it fits your role that you’re looking for. I’ve sort of gone to the other side of the spectrum. And I have this tremendously inconvenient like pigeonholing or I’ve now like pen to a very specific role that I see myself in. And I found only a handful of roles that really fit that description. Would you recommend sort of just expanding a search beyond things that I really feel like I could enjoy doing for first job just because at this point, like, it’s difficult to find a role that I could really genuinely enjoys an entry level job.
Mary: Are you comfortable sharing what that job is?
Student 4: I’m really interested in getting into politics or government so that it also includes like nonprofits. But a lot of the political campaigns have completely halted or never started recruiting because of COVID. A lot of government agencies have sort of stopped posting jobs. And a lot of nonprofits that work in the political space, I found are either posting, they’re kind of converting their entry level roles into more high end more senior roles because they don’t want to take the risk to hire new grad, or they just never really posted the jobs to begin with.
Mary: It’s COVID it’s a political year and you want to get in Oh, it’s like, it’s like the perfect storm. I almost don’t even want to say. First of all, the federal government is at work. I was on a two hour webinar the other day, they’re at work, they’re doing their contracts, they’re doing their whatever So if you want to go that route fine, but if not find out what do these people want. They want PR they want social media skills, they want survey skills, get that job somewhere else. And then when the dust settles, you can go into the arena. Here’s what I always said. I could have sold for guns and ammo for field in stream for any magazine because selling is selling immediate, immediate, right? I don’t like fish. I will hang fish for dinner tonight. And I like fishing. And I hate guns. TMI. I love lipstick. Call me vapid. I love I have 400 lipsticks. Most of them are red. So why wouldn’t I go to cosmo? But I can always change fields once I got my skill set is what I’m saying. So if you get the skill set that they want, those will translate to another field. Does that make sense? Yeah. So you don’t get to choose that necessarily. Maybe you start out working at Merrill Lynch in their marketing department. And you really want to get into Ralph Lauren. But they’re not hiring, you know, you can make that once you have the skill set, you can change over,
Kelly: Just reinforcing that. Your job search should be skill set based. So you want to have limitations like limitation in a job or internship search is a good thing. You need focus and direction, but you need to make sure that you’re not being too limited and I worry looking for a specific role is doing that. So everything that Mary said and just reinforcing that, you know, skill set basis, the way to go, because that’s going to keep you going in the right direction towards that very specific job.
Student 5: I was just curious, it’s kind of like a very specific question, but I’ve spoken to like a few people and I’m in NOJ but I would really like to be in like the magazine industry and Because there’s like not really ad revenue, there’s not much positions hiring even in like news. There isn’t a ton of hiring going on right now. And I was just curious after like, because you have experience in the magazine industry, like, do you see them taking longer to bounce back then let’s say like other businesses, like do you see that that would be like a longer process? Or do you think it’ll be about on par with other places that are laying off people and not hiring?
Mary: I think it’ll be it should be on par. I don’t see it being worse. The magazine business is in a transition, but it’s it’s magazine brands. So there was cosmopolitan, the magazine now there’s cosmopolitan, the website, the Facebook page, the Twitter that Snapchat, right? And the magazine business, you might not be on the print, but they’re hiring digital people all the time. And they’re hiring social media people all the time. And they’re mean maybe not today because of COVID. And you want to talk about doing that search, go to your network and go to LinkedIn. Where do you see the new house in Syracuse all over the business, start reaching out to them. Yeah, I’m a big content is king, you must have learned that somewhere. Tell me you heard that somewhere along the line somebody or that in the four years from there, everybody wants content. And so magazines have content and they’re just dispersing in different ways now. Thank you. Yeah, we’ll get on LinkedIn and and new house network a bit anything. There’s coming as people didn’t have network yet right in there. And don’t wait. Don’t wait till September. Try this network. They can tell you you want insights, not just on the job on how to get in. How do you get it cool. Anybody else? I’m so proud of all of you. It’s all going to be fine. It’s just going to take a little longer if you plan that we’re starting to work July 1 thing December 1, you work a long time, six months is not going to change your life right now.
Kelly: Totally. Six months sounds like so much time, but I promise, it’s going to be fine. Our timelines just delayed. You’re gonna be okay.
Mary: And just go be the president of your own company. Go run your company.
