rome wasn't built in a day

Have you ever read Moby Dick? I did for school. Was not a fan. Was a little slow for my little attention span. Wish I had the cliff notes. Today, however, I can share with you the cliff notes version of a recent job search event I went to. 

The Advertising Women of NY, or AWNY, is a local, professional association that has brought tremendous value to my life. The association has a career development arm that offered an event this month that focused on digital job searching. [would have been cool if they really took on the digital theme and streamed the event online] 

I saved my job search shekels and $35 later was registered for the two hour event. Half hour was spent networking and an hour listening to a panel talk about online job searching. Pammy Brooks from 24/7 Real Media (moderator), Rochelle Geller from Rochelle Geller Associates, MaryAlice Almendinger from Google, and Virginia Hanchar from Mediacom composed the expert panel. Here's what the ladies had to share about online job searching:

PB - 24/7 Real Media

• LinkeIn is a game changer.

RG - Rochelle Geller Associates

• LinkedIn is a great resource to use when romancing a company.
• Just because LinkedIn is available and convenient is not a reason to present an informal or unprofessional side.
• Right now hiring managers are looking for big picture thinkers and in the weeds workers.
• When delivering the experience of you, consider your intuitive and empathic sense of self. 

VH - Mediacom

• Aim for positively assertive when following up on a job interview. 
• Researching a company gives a candidate competence and confidence. 
• Take the time (or money) to have a complete online profile created to represent you. 
• Don't underestimate your relationships with people. It's like managing an PR campaign for yourself.

MA - Google

• When Google gets a resume, a real person reviews it. 
• Aim to make all your communications powerful and valuable. 
• Don't apply for multiple positions at one company at one time. 
• We use key words to create boolean searches for qualified candidates. 
• Google looks for four things in a candidate: experience, cognitive ability, leadership in your professional or personal life, and "Googliness".
• A candidate will be considered questionable if we see inconsistencies across resumes and online profiles. 

a win-win situation

And now, dear friends and followers, we come to a most important recommendation. It just so happens that Amy [a commenter from the previous posting AND an AWNY member ~ hey, hey, hey] has set the conversation topic for the day – make it a point to meet your network connections. Before we launch into that, I just want to remind everyone that I am trying to keep within the frame of the blog topic/mission, which is to locate a job using only a computer/the internet. I completely agree with Amy that meeting face-to-face is the number one way to go, but for now we’ll keep communications web based – online phone calls, Skype, and email. And away we go…!

I’ll start off with the oh-so-smart Lynnette Lebron from Simon & Schuster. During our call a few weeks ago, she dropped that HR departments are “actively recruiting” candidates. Lynnette and her team are “at the helm and ready to go”. When a position opens up and a candidate is needed - they have cherry-picked the best folks for the gig. Nice! How do we become one of these at the ready representatives? Lynnette’s advice is to conduct “exploratory interviews”. Get into the ear of an employer. Start the dialogue for a potential new future. Lynnette says she knows a sincere candidate when she sees one. Another good tidbit Lynnette shares: during an informational interview, “ask for more internal references”. Expand your chances.  Clever, eh?!

Need a little helping hand? This online pdf from FSU [man, I love acronyms] is just what you need. The easy-to-read guide walks you though finding contacts, preparing for an informational interview, questions to consider asking, actually arranging the interview, and of course, follow up.

Have you ever participated on either side of the informational interview process – interviewER or interviewEE? Let’s hear from you…

don't burn your bridges

A lot of people find opportunities in life through people they know.  Not having the nepotism card to play, I've been relying on personal and professional contacts to search for a job. I belong to the Advertising Women of New York group, AWNY for short. Joined about six years ago. This group has given back to me in so many ways that I can hardly keep my typing fingers from running ahead of my whirling and grateful thoughts. I’ll start with the most recent experience and digress from there.

I have always wanted to work for Google but I have never been able to get the timing right with a position and availability. Rewind to a few weeks ago, when we started researching companies we would like to work for – queue Google to the top of my list, and low and behold, they have a position. After having already worked over my resume from our resume posting, I still end up spending a whole day re-framing my experience for the position I was already well suited for.

Here’s where the network connection kicks in. I go online to the AWNY web site and search for all the members [mostly women] that work for Google. My search yields over two dozen connections with women who work at Google. I email them all. My message was simple. Hi. I don’t know you, but we are AWNY members and I’m hoping you will help out a fellow professional in this difficult employment time. Can you please circulate my resume? Note, this is not verbatim what I said, but almost ten members responded. Email message replies varied.

Got one sorry I can’t help unless I know all about you because Google has very rigid recommendation guidelines. Many women said sure thing and sent my resume along to the HR dept. The greatest number of responses gave me excellent coaching. Do this or that to your resume. Google needs to see a GPA – add it. [which I had never included before] A couple ladies even told me that my Yahoo email address wouldn’t fly and that I should be using a Gmail account. [not the biggest surprise coming from Google, but still a big ol' wow on the details]

I am sad to report that exactly one week later, an Ops person from Google People got back to me and said that they did not have a position that matched my qualifications.

[come on man, I spent a whole day directly re-positioning my resume to fit the listed position] Aside from sharing my disappointment, I wanted to share this story, because at the heart of it is a great handful of women that did all they could to help me get a job at a company I have always wanted to work at. This, dear friends, is just one of the advantages to making connections and seeing how the networks you surround yourself with can help support you!

One last shout out about AWNY. For the Givers of this world, consider becoming a Mentor. AWNY has 'em, and I got the US Marketing Manager from USA Today when I first moved into the city and was looking for guidance. For the Get-ers of this world, check out your groups to become a Mentoree and learn more about the industry and to start the hand shaking.

AWNY also has an AwEsOmE VIP Silent Auction. Until I turned thirty, this was only available to young professionals; I had a great time buying my way onto top VP's schedules. Think about it: having the opportunity to lunch with:

Carl Fremont, Executive VP/Global Director Media & Digital Marketing, Digitas
Ed O’Donnell, Senior VP Marketing, NBC
David Verklin, CEO, Carat North America
Caroline McCurdy, Director Business Development Marketing Communication, Wall Street Journal

A one-hour lunch with each one of these folks is a mind-bending experience. Wanna see what the AWNY group is about? On March 24th, they have a networking clinic, as well as a year round activities calendar. Give it some thought.