Monthly Archive for April, 2008

Mariah Carey's Career Advice on American Idol

Published on April 17, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Do you.

When asked what final advice she had for the remaining seven American Idol contestants, Pop Diva and this week’s American Idol mentor Mariah Carey said: “Do you.” (In case you missed the show, that is a statement, not a question, with the emphasis on you.)

“Do you. And do a great job. And say a little prayer, and every things going to be alright.”

What sound career advice! In Darden’s Career Development program, we help students craft a story, perform during interviews, negotiate offers, and get off to a good start in their jobs. But in the end, in the job search process, and in the job, Mariah Carey is probably right: just do you. Do a great job. Say a little prayer. And everything has to be alright. Because in the end, all you can do is you.

The opposite of doing you is to be a pretender. Many people spend a great deal of their career as a pretender. They pretend to love the job, the benefits, the money, the trappings. But one day they realize they are trapped, and that they have been pretending. The job is boring, the commute is killing them, and the family is missing them. Many only wake up to this reality when the company wakes them up with a pink slip. Some are lucky enough to come to this realization on their own. Even luckier are the ones that realize they are pretending in the first part of their career.

Closer to home: I know students who take a summer job or first-year associate job because they think others think this is the job they should take. So from the first day, they pretend to like the job. They may even pretend they can do the job. But as each day goes by, they are confronted with the reality that others around them are better at the job than they are, or “like” the job more than they do. But they go on pretending, until one day their boss calls them into the office and lets them go because they just don’t seem to “fit” with the organization’s culture or because they just aren’t keeping pace with their peers in terms of performance. This reality is happening in Wall Street firms right now as recent graduate receive pink slips because of the softening financial sector.

So are you doing you, or are you pretending? Are you in business school because it will help you realize your passions, or because someone told you to go to business school? Are you taking a summer job in Investment Banking because you value the work and the experience, or because your friends are going into Investment Banking? Are you working a job right now in which fear that someone will discover you are pretending?

I enjoy working with all students, but I particularly enjoy working with students who come into my office in September of their First Year and are themselves — their career search is true to their calling, or their search is unashamedly to find their calling.

My advice: heed Mariah Carey’s advice: do you. Do you, and you won’t live in fear of being discovered a pretender.

american idol

Build It and They Will Come

Published on April 7, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

In the classic 1989 movie, Field of Dreams, a farmer played by Kevin Costner hears a voice: “If you build it, (they) will come.” The movie ( http://www.fieldofdreamsdvd.com/) is about man’s need to pursue his dreams. In the movie, if Costner builds a baseball field in the middle of his Iowa farm, then the (late) great baseball players of all times will come to the field and play.

fieldofdreams

While the analogy might be a bit dramatic, I’m pleased to introduce the first phase of the CDC “field of dreams,” our new CDC career portal. The new portal will “go live” April 21, and even though many of you are past the job search phase of your time here at Darden, I invite you to visit the portal, play around and tell us what you think. (If you would like to provide us feedback on the test site this week, please email me, and I’ll send you log in instructions to the test site.)

Why a New Portal?

Because the old one was not very good (see my blog 1/28/08). The CDC website is a collection of information that has been assembled over the years and put on a website with some semblance of order. However, as the amount of information has added up, it has become harder and harder to find. Further, the CDC website resides next to the “CDC System,” the action part of the site where a student would sign up for briefings, interviews, etc. These two components were not integrated nor user friendly. Another issue: the website is static and does not contain up-to-date information on companies or events. Therefore, the CDC has to resort to multiple forms of communication to insure that students get the information they need.

Objectives of the New Portal

So as we set out, we included several objectives in our new design:

  1. Helpful to your job search: the site must be a place where you feel you can go to advance your job search. You can find information that will make your your job search more efficient and effective.
  2. Intuitive and User Friendly: the new site must be familiar and intuitive. You must be able to find information and take actions whenever, wherever you are in the site.
  3. Up to the Minute: the site must provide the most accurate, up-to-the minute information on companies, events that are important to your career search.
  4. Yours: we want the site to be your site. We want the content to be your content in the format that you want.
  5. Communicative: we want the site to replace the many forms of communication you receive from the CDC today (I can’t promise no more emails, but I sure intend to reduce the number).

So what we did: the highlights

Several months ago we engaged a consultant (a Darden alum) to help us think through our needs and to explore the possibilities with us. We assembled a team of CDC folks and began the process. We also listened to feedback you had given us. After months of work, here are a few highlights:

  • Integrated the two separate components. You won’t have two places to enter the portal now, only one. You shouldn’t see different information on the “actions” side versus the “information” side, because there is only one side.
  • Created a dynamic home page with up to the minute announcements. The home page will change whenever there is new information. The announcements will be our primary way to communicate with you.
  • Designed in student-content areas. In the site you will find “discussion board” type areas for you to communicate with the CDC and with each other. There are areas for sharing contacts and job leads, for publicizing club events and off-grounds networking events, and for storing your resume, cover letters, and target lists of companies.
  • Facilitated company research. We have created the company Wiki where all information on companies is stored. We will update the content, but even more importantly, so will you. Input contacts, reviews, whatever you want other students to know about the company.
  • Updated all content. All instructional content has been updated and supplemented. We want you to be able to access critical information on any part of the job search when you need it. We have linked the multimedia modules, the Powerpoints from Career Management class, and other critical information all laid out in the critical stages of the job search.
  • Created special resource sections for International students, Women & Minorities, Venture and Entrepreneurship, and Off-Grounds searchers. In these sections we have assembled all the resources available so that you can find them easily.

We know we are not done. Now we need your input. Today we have given access to about twenty students to surf the site and give us feedback. We need to know if it works. We need to know if you can find what you are looking for. We need to know if it is user friendly. We need to know if this is the quality of site that you expect from a top MBA program. Don’t be gentle. My “field of dreams” is still growing. While I have the shape of the diamond and the lights up, I still don’t have the bases in place, and the grass is just being planted. We built this, so you’d come. We want you to say “wow, this is cool.” But we need you to tell us how to make it cool, so we can spend the rest of the summer putting in the extras.

In the meantime, I’d like to thank the folks who have worked so hard to cut down the corn and put in the infrastructure. Sue Haas from Darden Enterprise Solutions has provided great technical leadership to the project, and her team members, Nancy Brown, Weiping Gong, Richard Guendelsberger, and Kevin Russell, have put in countless hours. From Darden Solutions, our internal software development company, Rosemary Wagner, Dave Engler and Tom Healey have worked hard to integrate the old system into the portal. I’d like to thank Darden alum Adam Healey (’04) for his encouragement and design expertise. (Adam, we didn’t quite get to the beauty of www.vibeagent.com, but we made progress.) I’d like to thank the CDC team members who have worked hard on the content and finally, Margaret Weeks, whose leadership and hard work have been an inspiration. Way to go Margaret!

Speaking of Margaret, for the foreseeable future, Margaret is the queen of communication in the CDC. If you have ideas, let Margaret and me know. We are ready to listen.

Bee Movie Guide to Career Development–Part 1

Published on April 3, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Bee Movie (Widescreen Edition)

At a classic moment in Jerry Seinfeld’s new movie, Bee Movie (www.beemovie.com) , the head of the “Bee” Placement office delivers a graduation speech to the graduating bees and delivers a insightful line, “We know you have worked your whole lives…so that…you can work your whole lives.” Seinfeld plays Barry B. Benson, the graduating bee “who wants more out of life than the inevitable career that awaits him and every other worker in New Hive City — a job at Honex…making honey.”

So I ask: have you come to business school so that you get the inevitable job with McKinsey or Goldman Sachs and then “work your whole life?” While those jobs are fantastic (see post from 3/31/08), they are not for everyone, and they are not perhaps life’s calling for many who take them. I have heard that many students have grand visions when they apply to business school, only to see those visions blurred when the mass of students attend the “normal” company briefings and attend the endless cocktail parties and networking events. A job at some of these prestigious firms becomes a real badge of honor for students, and the visions of entrepreneurship or sustainability fade.

If you are a First Year embarking on a summer internship in investment banking or consulting, congratulations. I invite you to use this summer to add “data” to your first week’s self-assessment exercises. When you get the offer at the end of the summer, say thank you, but don’t say yes right away. Look at the data from your life themes. Look at your original career objective and perhaps the essay you wrote to get into business school about your future aspirations. Is this job what you set out for? If yes, fantastic. You can accept the job confident that you will be successful, because the job lines up with your themes. But if it is not, and if the job does not line up with your life themes, then I encourage you to embark on a job search next fall that will lead you to where your dreams started out — not where your classmates may have led you. Success for me in my job is helping you find a job you will be in for five to ten years, not one that you will only stay in for two (or less).

If you are just thinking of going to business school, I invite you to really think about your career aspirations. At Darden we believe in starting the career development process with self assessment. We use a website called www.careernextstep.com. The website helps you organize your life’s data into life themes and from there, the site helps you begin to evaluate different career paths for “fit.” Then when you get to business school, follow your passion, not your classmates. Business school is a time to re-invent yourself. Don’t let someone else re-invent you. If you follow your passions, all the work you have put in your whole life, like the bee Barry B. Benson, will not be “so that you can work your whole lives.” All the work you have put in your whole life will have prepared you for the next forty years of the “fun” you will have of living out your passions.