Welcome to the making and reality podcast this is Kelly Barnett, I’m the director of the Newhouse Career Development Center here at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Today we’re going to back talking about in our first ever podcast is just some job search updates. What can we do to try to stay on track with our job search and I think a good place to start with us to kind of go through the steps that the Career Development Center recommends for your search.
So one thing we have to remember is that you have to be proactive. The good thing about being proactive is it means that you are in control of your job search. I know this is something that can seem scary and it can feel overwhelming but that’s unless you have a plan. If you have a plan you can go about this in a step-by-step manner and luckily that’s what we do here at the CDC. That’s what we talk about in the Job Hunt Marathon so let’s just recap a little bit of the material that we go over in that job hunt to get us going.
So, we really preach this four-step proactive method: focusing on skills, that’s the foundation of your whole search. We compare the job search to a house so in this scenario, focusing on skills is really the foundation of the house. What we’re doing here is thinking about the skills and experiences that you’ve had, what did you enjoy, what did you not enjoy, identifying skills and other things that you want to use. It’s really not about your major, it’s about skill sets and your strengths, the things that you really enjoy doing. Remember that we have worksheets – we gave a packet out at our job hunt session and if you lost it you can come on into the Career Development Center, 313 Newhouse 3 and pick up a new one. But if you look at that first worksheet, we’re talking about different types of skills and thinking about how you apply them and different work situations. Going through that is really going to help you to create a filter – basically something you can use to rule out certain companies or certain types of work and identify ones that will be a really good fit for you. If you don’t do this step and you just skip ahead to either networking or to any of the other steps that follow it, you’re going to end up resorting to more passive methods. This isn’t something that we want you to do. With that, you’re really forfeiting control of your job search. You have to drive the bus and this is your job this is you figuring out what you want to do. Again, that can seem overwhelming but that’s where we’re going to rely on this plan. So I don’t you to forfeit that control and I don’t want you to give up control. You’re the one in charge so that this by the horns. So that’s really the focusing step.
The second step that we talk about is developing a target list. This is a target list of companies that will allow you to use the skills you identified as being important and avoid the things you really don’t enjoy doing or try to make those as minimal as possible on the job. A list of 20 to 30 specific places but before we come up the specific company names, you want to think about types of organizations. Depending on what you want to do, you may have more options for types of places. For example, if you’re somebody who knows that you really want to work in news, well we’re really looking at networks or local affiliates. So that’s more limited. If you were say a PR student, well we can practice PR in a lot of different places. So you’re going to have some different ranges depending on which major or which area you’re looking to get into in the business.
So really we have the types of the organizations, and we have that worksheet for the target list as well. In “Section A” you’re really talking about what things are most important to you from that focus step. What really stands out to you as things that you want to incorporate or things that you want to avoid and then what you can do to start thinking about your types of companies from there. Once you have the types of companies flushed out a little bit, you can think about geography. This is where broadcast is a little bit of an outlier. With broadcast, I know that you wish that you could say “Oh I want to go be in Philadelphia or I want to be in New York or a top 5 market.” We don’t really have that luxury starting out in broadcast, you don’t really get to pick the city that you’re in. So in that scenario, I would say for broadcast students, make sure that you’re picking a region more so than a market. For everybody else, you can really pick what interests you. If you want to go back home and be in a smaller town, that’s fine too. I would say with that though, you would probably want to look at cities in towns that are outside of that one area. For example, if I wanted to stay in Syracuse, Syracuse isn’t a huge market so I would probably look at areas around it like DeWitt and East Syracuse. That type of thing. But if you’re in a big market like New York, Chicago or any big city really, if that’s the one place you want to focus, you only have to have one on your list.
Once you have your geography narrowed down, you can start to look at specific companies. With this we’re trying to think of companies, again using that filter, that will fit the things that you want to do. What are some sources for that? Well you could use industry directories, those are those large reference books up here at the CDC and speak to professors. One thing that we know in the Job Hunt Marathon is that you probably have all had a professor who is very outspoken and somebody who wants to give you advice. Go back to that person and even if it’s been a while. For grad students during boot camp and you haven’t seen that person since, it’s a great time to reconnect. Go to his or her office hours or set up a time for coffee, see if you can pick their brain and say, “Hey this is what I’m interested in. These are some of the companies I’m thinking of. Do you have any recommendations for me?” This is a really great thing to do. Other students, if you’re not a grad student and you weren’t in bootcamp, think about professors you’ve had over the years. Is there anyone you can go back to? That’s not a strange thing to do. These are people who were out in the field doing the jobs that you want to have. So, who better to talk to? Also on this list of people to talk to are internship supervisors or anybody you may have worked for who may have insight into the industry. These are great people to talk to. They have good insight, they’ve been in the field, they can give you tips and let you know what works for them and it might open the door to a conversation about you may be working there if you really liked working there. That is something to express and maybe they’ll say, “Oh well we can talk about opportunities after graduation.” So it’s always a conversation to have, you know going back to those people who have been in your life who have trained you, have given you guidance in the past. Going back to them and saying, “I’m thinking about what’s next for me and I’m wondering if you have a couple minutes that we could just chat or we can meet for coffee. I’d love to get your insight about what the next steps are for me.” And if you walk in prepared, because you have done your focus step, you know what interests you and you know what you want to focus on, and you’ll be prepared for that meeting and you’ll be able to have a really good conversation.
So this list of companies that you’re developing, keep in mind that this will keep changing. This is something that you’ll add companies to as you find new ones. You’ll probably be taking some off after you talk to people or maybe through your research you learn something about the company doesn’t offer you the type of opportunities you’re looking for. The company may be set up in a way that’s not really going to work for you. Whatever it might be, you can take companies off.
You’ll also be adding companies as you talk to people and learn of the industry so know that it’s kind of a work in progress but the goal there is to have about 20 to 30 companies. I guess one more thing to note here is that your target list is really the walls of your search. This is giving structure keeping you on course and again it’s giving you some parameters. If you don’t limit things at all ,you’re going to feel really overwhelmed and we don’t want that so this is keeping you on course and putting some limits on your search so that’s not overwhelming and keeping you chugging along.
So after your target list, you can move on to step three which is research. Admittedly,you may end up research as part of developing your target list because you can’t think of every company off the top of your head. But that’s okay just make sure that your research is thorough. Once you do have companies on your list, you’re really trying to find out everything that you can about those companies. This means reading the news, reading your trade magazine, and remember those trade magazines give you the information about what’s going on in your industry. You can find those online a lot of time and they have subscription services – not to the whole publication because those are very expensive. Also you can look up in the Newhouse Reading Room, which is on the fourth floor of Newhouse 3. They have a lot of those trade magazines up there that would be a good place to check. They tell you who the movers and shakers are and give you some ideas for companies. Also, when you see a company that is adding new business, you know that they may be hiring in the future which is always a good thing to know about. So you’re trades and you’re looking at their website, and I think the news section is always a good place to check out to see what the latest news is with a company so that you’re well informed when you go to speak with people. Also, looking at their social media outlets. Things like their Twitter account, they probably have multiple Twitter handles. They probably have a company one and then a company HR handle and then there are probably people who identify as working at that company – those are all good folks to follow, to retweet to favorite, you know try to get on their radar. If you can have interaction on Twitter, that’s a great place to start a networking relationship. We’ll talk about networking a little bit more in our fourth step. So with your research though, you’re really just acquiring as much information as you can. We talked about Twitter, but LinkedIn is another good social media outlet to look at. A lot of companies hire through LinkedIn, so you might want to look at job postings as you get closer to graduation. But remember, communications doesn’t hire way in advance and it’s on an as-needed basis. So you’re not really a viable candidate till about six weeks before graduation. It’s just good to know what they’re doing and know what the market is like.
Once you’ve done your research, and that’s really an ongoing process too, you’re going to find that you have a lot to discuss with networking contacts. Certainly anything that comes up in your research is going to be a really good networking question, and that’s our fourth step. Steps two through four are really ongoing steps. You don’t ever complete them but there’s so much information out there so really it’s a good thing. So research was our roof in our house that we’re building here because it covers you when you go to talk to people. Our fourth step is networking and we compare that to the windows of the structure rather than the front door because we think back to the job hunt we had that picture of a stack of resumes that came in after only a few hours of a job being posted on a big job board, we don’t want you to compete in that, we want you to have another way in. So HR, in that stack of resumes, is basically the line at the door to this house. But you have another way in and that way in is through the windows and those windows are your networking contacts. We’re huge advocates of networking at the CDC. When we talk about networking, we’re not talking about building frivolous relationships or that insincere schmoozy type relationship. We’re looking for you to build professional relationships – basically professional friendships with people who are in your field. This is incredibly important. The key here is that you never know what contact or what company is going to offer up a lead that’s going to work out for you. So, we want you to be in many places at once, meaning having people at many different companies know who you are, so that one of those places will be the right place at the right time. We don’t know where that is, so that’s why we need to build that network of contacts. The more people who know who you are and what you want to do, the better you are when it comes to finding a job. You’re going to do this process over and over again because you won’t be at that first job forever. So it’s a really good thing to learn how to do well and to keep those connections alive.
On our next podcast, I will have a special guest, Bridget, to talk a lot more about networking and just some key things that we talked about in the job hunt. But the first thing is you want to remember that networking, again, is that sincere relationship-building process. You’re getting to know somebody by asking questions that you actually want to know the answers to. I think a lot of times people who are new to networking might think, “Oh it’s just kind of a game and I’m just doing this so in the end I’ll get a job lead.” But if that’s your mindset, you’re really not going to be good at networking. You really have to commit to this and realize that you’re getting to know a person. Networking is really involving people. So it’s a personal, social process and it’s going to be partially getting to know you personal chit-chat that type of thing. But it’s also going to be partly purposeful for your job hunt – you’re going to be collecting information about the company that you can’t find anywhere else. A company is not going to write on its website what it’s actually like to work here and it’s not really going to have testimonials from people. You really need to talk to someone who has the job that you want or who used to have that job and is out of school to really have an idea of what it’s like to work at a company and what the day-to-day is like – that’s the type of information you should be collecting. Not only does it inform you about the company, but those types of questions and that type of information exchange is what really helps you to get to know people. And, remember you know these are professional friendships, so just like any other relationship that you’ve had in your life you know it’s based on something that you have in common. So you know growing up it could have been that you both played hockey or you both were in the yearbook. Those are things that you can have in common. Now it seems new and strange because you haven’t really had a professional life before, but you’re starting one. Here we are! These are things that you have in common with the networking contacts – the type of company, the things that you’re really good at or your skills – all that good stuff is what your bonding over. So that’s really the fourth step, and like I said it’s always ongoing.
There’s a lot of different ways to connect with people and you certainly can meet people in person, you can talk on the phone or social media. But one thing that we did talk about in the job hunt is this ladder of communication and the least personal is really social media, which seems a little strange because so many people connect that way but it’s the least personal – it’s public, there are character limits and it’s bottom of the barrell. A little bit better than social networking is email – it’s more private and you can really craft a message there that’s a good place for anybody to start. If you have an email address, go with that. That’s where you can really start to have conversations between the two of you. But better than email is a phone call, and maybe that’s something you work up to or when you first reach out to somebody that’s never a bad idea to say, “Would you prefer to speak on the phone? If so, I’d be happy to do that.” So a phone call is better because of that human element – it’s a voice. That’s a human on it and if you were reading the content of this podcast rather than listening to it, you would probably feel less of a personal connection to the message. But since you can hear me, I seem like more of a person and that’s really how phone calls work. Better than a phone call is meeting in person because you can cement a relationship. That is something we definitely encourage. If you have time over Thanksgiving break or over Winter break or Spring break down the line or any of your weekends, it’s great to go and meet up with people. If you have that option to go to the city, you want to be in to meet contacts in person, that’s wonderful. It can help cement that relationship. Saying, “I’m going to be in town for these days so would you be available to get a cup of coffee or can I stop by your office?” That’s the best thing to do so you can continue the conversation in person and really that’s where the personal connection comes in. So regardless of where you enter this ladder, you always want to try to climb up it. So if you start in social media, try to move to email and then to phone. If you start with email then move up to phone and it may be there in person. The farther you can push these connections up that ladder, the stronger they’ll be and the more personal it will be. So it’s a really good thing to do so.
One of those things that we talked about in the job hunt is really giving you some homework . What we gave you was that packet with all the worksheets, and again if you lost any of those or you want new copies stop by the CDC Newhouse 3 and we can get that together for you. So with some of your homework here, if you want to keep chugging along in your job search, which is what we’re going for, keeping up with those worksheets, think about the questions that really resonated with you – that you were like “this is really important to me.” Those are going to be on things that are really important to you in your search and those are things you should add to kind of your little filter that you’re using to look at companies through. Also, start your target list. Make sure that you are thinking about as many types of companies as possible before you move into specific company names. While you’re doing that process, that will give you more options in the long run and, yes, you’ll have multiple companies in a location that fit into one category. So if you’re thinking of nonprofits in Philadelphia, there’s going to be more than one and that’s okay.
Probably work on your resume. Cover letters are probably something that everyone struggles with but those are harder to write if you don’t know where you’re applying. But your resume is going to be really helpful in your job hunt process because obviously you’ll need it to apply to jobs, but if a contact asks you for your resume, you’ll need it write away.
Another thing we talked about in the job hunt is your elevator pitch. Elevator pitches are so important. You need to be able to talk about yourself and to be able to put it into words, “what is it that you have to offer? What do you bring to the table?” In a really strong elevator pitch, you’ll give some context to that. Don’t just talk about what you want to do but also, in that pitch, really give a pitch talking about where those skills came, from what internships, what types of things have you been involved in on campus or have you been pursuing on your own. Those things are valid as well. But saying, “Because of these experiences I’ve had, I’ve learned that I’m good at this and I’m interested in doing this,” that’s a really good elevator pitch because it gives me some context and being able to talk about where you want to go with that. I think that a lot of students struggle with talking about themselves because they don’t want to come across as arrogant and I appreciate that. I think that’s great that you have that self-awareness but remember that strengths are factual. Everybody has them and everyone’s good at something.You’re interested in something – that’s not being cocky. Saying, “Oh I’m the best ever at this,” yes that would be crossing a line. But you’re not saying that – you’re saying this is something that I’m really good at and I know that I could bring to your company. That’s what we’re looking for – you to be able to put that into words and to sound confident doing it. There is a little bit of “fake it till you make it” and that you might not feel confident at giving that speech yet, but it will come through practice. So practice in front of the mirror, practice in the shower, practice when you’re on the bus coming to campus – whatever it might be or maybe to a friend. I know it seems weird, but a lot of your friends are probably in the same boat in terms of having to prepare for interviews and for networking and meeting people. This is a good skill for everybody so practice as much as you can.
Start your contact list. If you have people who know who you are and what you want to do in the industry, create that Google Drive Excel spreadsheet that we talked about and start getting organized. Put the person’s name, their contact information, their title, what you talked about last and when that was and that due date column – that column is so important so that you don’t let any of your contacts fall through the cracks, so put people who you already consider contacts in there and if you haven’t been in touch in a while reach out to them. See if you can reconnect you can talk to them on the phone and work your way up with that connection.
Check on your LinkedIn account. LinkedIn – everyone should have one and if you don’t, you should check in on the CDC and we can talk about that. You should have a nice professional picture on there, you should have your experience on there and links to things. People do get offers and get interest from companies through Linkedin, but a lot of times if someone gets contacted by someone, they look you up. That used to be on Facebook that people would look you up but between privacy settings and people kind of moving away from Facebook, LinkedIn is becoming more of the source for that. We want to make sure that your profile is reflecting good things, that it’s showing all the things you have to offer and that you look professional and polished. You can come in to the CDC and if you bring your phone or you bring a camera, we could take a picture for you if you’re looking for a professional headshot. But, just like everything else, you have to be the one to decide to come on in. But we’re here when you do come in.
Try to work on developing new contacts once you do get into the networking stage – that ongoing process. You should shoot for about two new people per week. Getting started, I would say reach out to about five people and then once you get all of those people where you get to the stage where you’re just keeping in touch and letting them know that you’re out there – that you’re out there popping up on the radar – so that you’re top of mind. That’s a good time to reach out to another handful of people. It’s nice because they all kind of self-stagger so no one gets back to you at the same time so it’ll kind of spaced out that way. But if you added people as you roll other people into the maintenance mode where you’re just kind of keeping in touch with them, then you’ll be pretty organized and it won’t be too overwhelming. But this should average out to be about two new people per week.
Make sure that you’re staying on top of your news. We talked about that, in the research stage as an ongoing thing, be informed about your industry. What is really appealing to recruiters is people who are really engaged and passionate about their industry. And yeah we’re talking about networking, but this is a good habit to fall into so, not only that you sound good with your networking contacts, but so that, down the road, you’re in good shape with recruiters and people who are interviewing for different positions.
What else? Join relevant professional organizations. For every area of the industry, those are great to join. A lot of them have some chapters, for example PRSSA. Other ones for other areas of the industry know it’s a great way to connect it’s also a great way to get contact information for new contacts, so it’s another source that we can dip into when we’re looking for places for contacts.
Just keep chipping away at this. When it comes to job hunting, we know, here at the CDC, how easy it is to put this off. It’s really easy to say, “Oh, I’ll get to this over Thanksgiving break and then Winter break is around the corner.” And then, before you know it, you’re saying the same thing about Spring break. You’ll feel more stressed. As we get closer to graduation, the less you’ve done the more stressed you’ll be. So, if we can just chip away a little bit here and a little bit there, you’ll be in good shape.
What do I mean? Do you have a break between classes? Do you have a day of the week where you have a lighter class load? Maybe those are times where we can fit in some job hunting and it doesn’t have to be a tremendous amount. Like I said, we’re just chipping away. Maybe you do some research on that day when you have a break between classes. You’re researching companies, you’re looking up new places that might be a good fit for you or you’re looking up company competitors. Because, remember, they’re competitors for a reason. If you like one company, you probably want to check out its competitors as well. Maybe you’re doing that research between classes. If you don’t have any classes at all on Fridays then great! Maybe you set aside an hour, hour and a half, two hours – which sounds like a lot but it will go by fast – where you writing emails or you’re having phone calls. Little job hunt things throughout the week and then you can give yourself the weekend off, guilt free. When it comes to Thanksgiving break or Winter break, you’ll know that you’re kind of making progress throughout the year.
The goal is for everybody by the end of fall semester or if you’re graduating at the end of spring semester, to have about 15 contacts, or more, who know who you are and what you want to do. But that’s just a good initial goal. Remember that networking is all about quantity. We need to have a lot of people know who you are. So that one of those places will be the right place at the right time. But, it’s also about quality and quality takes time. Contacts do know that if you wait until April to get in touch, and you haven’t been doing anything else, that you waited till the last minute. They were in your shoes once too so don’t put it all off. Make sure that you’re doing this throughout the year.
One of the other things we talk about in the job search, is that only about a quarter of the class graduates with a job. I know that sounds scary, but that’s normal. That’s just the nature of the communications industry – they’re hiring as needed and a lot of those hiring cycles start over the summer. So that means, that only a quarter of the class will have that job, and you could be in that quarter, I hope you are, but if you’re not that means you still have some work ahead of you. That means giving yourself structure. When you’re on campus, you have so much structure: you have classes that are bookended by group meetings and on-campus involvement or maybe sports. Whatever it is that you’re involved in so you have to work in your job hunting into that schedule. Once you graduate, you really don’t have those bookends. You have so much freetime that that becomes overwhelming. It’s just like the job search without parameters – having so much freetime without anything limiting that can be tricky. It’s hard to get motivated. A lot of students will want to take a week off after graduation and that’s fine. Go ahead, do that, have sometime where you’re not in school. You’ve never had that before so by all means take a little time off. But give yourself a start date and tell whoever it is you’re living with your start date. Tell your parents, tell your friends. Maybe even put a note on the fridge that says, “here’s my start date and here’s my plan.” If you are home with parents, remember that informed patients are happy parents. So, in addition to putting your start date on the fridge, I would also put your schedule. What’s your job hunting schedule going to be? Maybe on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you go to the gym, come home, shower and then you go in your job hunting. That works. Or maybe you have a part-time job or maybe, like a good number of our recent-grads, you have a post grad internship. We talked about that in the job hunt too and I know it’s not ideal. You want to have a job and be done with the whole internship thing but it’s a great foot in the door. We talked about how companies look internally first, so if you’re that great intern they’ll probably think of you. So if you have an internship during the week, great then kind of book end those obligations with some job hunting. Throw that in there and, again, you can have the weekend off you just need to make sure you’re chipping away at this. And a lot of times when we hear students have that frustration, it’s because they’re not putting enough time or effort or recent grads have their frustration they haven’t put in the time or effort to the right degree. So you have to really be honest with yourself. Am I committing to this? Finding a job is a full-time job so, “Am I putting the time and effort in that’s required?” If you feel frustrated and the answer to that question is no, then we have to up the time effort. But if the answer is a yes, it’s probably a timing issue. I’m doing all things I need to be doing and putting the time and the effort in but if you haven’t yet had any success, it could be that kind of issue. You don’t know when people are going to get back to you or what companies are hiring, what they’re hiring for. You have no control over those things and that’s why they’re the most frustrating. So, when you have those come up, you have to kind of acknowledge it’s going to happen and then channel that frustration to something that’s proactive. Reach out to more people, go to a networking event, join your local alumni networking club. Those are fantastic and right now is great because there’s a lot sports going on and then you’ll see that again next fall. These are great events to go to because they’re lighthearted but you also get to interact with a lot of people who you may not otherwise have run into. So those are all good reminders.
A fun fact about job hunting is 427,000 resumes are posted each week to Monster. Why am I telling you this? It’s a reminder to remember that you’re a very small fish in a very big pond and when you rely on those passive methods, like job posting boards, just handing your resume out to everybody, those are not people based and not relationship based. Those are the things that are not going to be as fruitful. Do people sometimes get jobs through Monster or sometimes sending out your resume unsolicited to a company? Yes, but is the turnaround for that a high number that I would say rely on that for your job search? Absolutely not. So, remember that your job search should be about 80/20. 80 percent of the time do the things that are proactive methods – things that are people based, talking to people who are doing the job that you think you might want or you can hire for that job, people who are a little bit older who have been through those jobs – those are great people to get on their radar. Those are people who will end up offering those leads to you and remember what it was like. But that’s most time and then 20 percent of the time, go ahead and look online to submit your resume to a different company websites – those types of things. But just make sure that we’re weighing our time so that you’re spending the most amount of time doing the things that will be the most productive.
If you have questions anytime, remember you can come by the Newhouse Career Development Center in Newhouse 3 Room 313. One other thing that I didn’t mention is that if you’re having trouble chugging along in this, you feel like you’re going to keep putting things off, remember if you ask for help we can provide that. If you come into the office and set up an appointment, then we’ll talk about your job process. Then you can schedule another meeting a few weeks later and we can talk about what you’ve done and all of the progress you’ve made. Having somebody else know that you’re working on this and expect something, that can keep you moving along. So if you need help being held accountable, we’re here for that too but you have to be the one to come in and ask for that help because, remember, you’re the one driving the bus.
