culpwrit

Anxious college juniors and seniors are launching searches for summer internships earlier than the traditional spring-break starting date.  This is good use of time only if you’re responding to specific job postings.  Otherwise, most agencies don’t seriously look at internship resumes until early April or later. 

Don’t panic if you’re not aggressively pursuing internship opportunities at this time.  Focus on classes and the extra-curricular activities that will separate your resume from others.  Most employers will begin to assess summer hiring needs after spring break. 

Internship hiring generally is tied to client work demands, which often aren’t determined until the last minute.  The number of interns varies from year to year at most agencies depending on workloads.  PR agencies appear to be weathering the recession better than other marketing organizations, which is good news for aspiring summer interns. 

Recent college grads and seniors need to be vigilant about checking online job postings since a majority of internships are no longer confined to summer months.  Full-time, entry-level jobs with agencies come mostly via the internship route.   

Focus on paid internships, but realize that unpaid internships can offer important door-opening opportunities.  I’m not a fan of unpaid internships unless you’re gaining essential training that will benefit your future job search.  The Wall Street Journal’s Jonnelle Marte recently wrote an interesting column about internships, covering legal requirements of employers and other valuable insights. 

Q.  I was relieved to read the Wall Street Journal column about office romances.  “Relieved” because an agency co-worker and I have been secretly dating for nearly a year.  My parents advised us to hide the fact we’re dating since someone in my dad’s office was fired for dating a co-worker.  I’m thinking that we’re being overly sensitive?  -MK

A.  Knowing what I do about agency grapevines, I’m sure your office already knows about your relationship.  I don’t see a problem as long as you don’t date a subordinate or your boss.  That would make for a difficult situation for you and your co-workers.  Ideally, dating colleagues should work on separate project teams, but that’s not always possible in smaller offices.  Unless your agency has a policy prohibiting dating co-workers, there’s no reason to observe “don’t ask, don’t tell.” 

   Clarkson Hine 

I was fortunate to begin my career in Washington, DC.  It’s an exciting city that brings together people from all across America and the world.  And it’s a place where one can earn a lot of responsibility (if not much money) at a young age. 

At Cornell University, I had majored in History and minored in Government, and also served as Sports Director of WVBR-FM.  My interest in politics, combined with a summer internship at the Defense Department between my junior and senior years, gave me an incurable case of “Potomac Fever.”  After graduating, I pounded the pavement in Washington and landed my first job – an entry level position at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign committee for Senate Republicans.  Within three months I was given oversight for an office of seven people who handled written correspondence and phone calls (alas, this was before e-mail) from members of the Republican Presidential Task Force (a distinction earned by donating $10 per month). 

After the 1986 election cycle, I moved to the Senate Republican Conference, where I was able to combine my passion for politics with my radio background to lead and build the service Republican Senators use to communicate with their home state radio stations.  In three years at the Conference, I worked closely with most Senate Republican offices and regularly hosted cable television call-in programs for several Senators.  In 1990, I was fortunate to begin a seven-year career with Senator Bob Dole, serving first as the Senate Republican Leader’s Deputy Press Secretary, then Press Secretary for his final three years in the Senate, Deputy Communications Director for his 1996 presidential campaign, and as the Senator’s post-election communications advisor. 

I found the skills necessary for success in political communications translate well to the private sector.  After a year at a Washington public relations/public affairs firm, I was recruited to my first corporate job at Fortune Brands, a diversified consumer brands company that puts  my entire toolkit to work – and remains a fulfilling place to be after more than ten years.   

Here’s my career snapshot:

·     National Republican Senatorial Committee (1+ years)

Ø     staff assistant

·     Senate Republican Conference (3 years)

Ø     radio services manager

·     Senator Bob Dole (7 years)

Ø     deputy press secretary, Office of the Senate Republican Leader

Ø     press secretary, Office of the Senate Majority Leader

Ø     deputy communications director, Dole for President

Ø     communications director, Office of Bob Dole

·     Susan Davis International (1+ years)

Ø     senior vice president for public affairs

·     Fortune Brands (11 years and counting)

Ø     director of communications

Ø     vice president, corporate communications

Ø     vice president, corporate communications & public affairs

After being critical of the bold, four-color resume of a senior I met during a visit to the University of Kansas, I recently received a toned down resume from him–but it still looked like an Oscar-nominated movie ad in the New York Post.  The resume was cluttered with too many type faces and sizes, and featured a 2″ x 3″ photo. 

My advice:  Stick with traditional resumes.  Don’t be misguided into thinking that sizzle replaces the “steak” of education and experience.  The folks at Microsoft offer excellent free resume templates for basic resumes, job-specific resumes and situation-resumes. 

If your creative flair requires more than a one-page standard resume, then develop a quality online portfolio.  But do not substitute the online portfolio for a resume, which some job seekers have attempted to do.  Include the link in your cover letter and resume.  Regular Culpwrit reader Jamie Kim has designed a low-key, yet clever and elegant online portfolio.  Provide a link to your online portfolio in Comments below. 

Chris Spooner of Spoon Graphics provides an excellent review of 10 sites, including my favorite–Carbonmade, which help guide you through the process of building an online portfolio. 

  Dr. Anne E. Beall   

Because I write and give seminars about nonverbal communication, people often ask me what’s important when it comes to body language in an interview. 

Is there a specific sign that you have made a good impression?  Unfortunately, body language is not that simple.  One needs to look at many areas of the interviewer’s nonverbal communication.  I use a system called PERCEIVE™, which summarizes all the major areas of nonverbal behavior.  In this guest post I’d like to discuss one area of PERCEIVE™, which is the eyes. 

When you’re interviewing, you can determine how interested the interviewer is in what you’re saying and how much this person likes you from their eye behavior.   Obviously having the interviewer’s interest and liking are both crucial to getting a job.  Below is an excerpt from my recent book ‘Reading the Hidden Communications Around You.’ 

The Eyes Reveal Liking and Interest
 
Generally, we look longer and more frequently at people and things that have our attention. That point seems almost intuitively obvious given that we rely on our sight probably more than any other sense when we are gathering information about the world. We reveal if we are engaged with a presentation by how much we view its content. We reveal how interested we are in another person’s conversation by how much we look at him while he is talking. In one study researchers found that people tend to gaze more at someone who is giving them positive feedback but that they reduce their gaze when they are receiving negative feedback.  The eyes reveal how much we want to take in around us.

What’s amazing about eye behavior is that we secretly reveal whom we like and dislike just by the amount that we look at them. Aside from the intentional stare that is associated with anger and a desire for a confrontation, we generally look most at those whom we like and find rewarding. In one study, men looked more at other men with whom they had just conversed and who had nodded at them during a presentation.  It’s unlikely that these men had formed strong feelings of liking but that they had mildly positive feelings about the other person, and their eye behavior showed it. People avoid looking at someone who has just made negative comments about their performance and who is presumably mildly disliked.  Mothers of children who have temperament problems actually look less at their problematic children.

Gazing also reveals prejudices. In a study of racial prejudice, researchers had people interview with Caucasian or African American interviewers. The interviewees who felt the greatest racial prejudice toward African Americans actually gazed less at the African American interviewer. Of course, they didn’t know they were looking less at the interviewer or that their attitudes about an entire race were being betrayed by their eyes. As people increase their liking for one another, they increase the amount of mutual gazing that they do. (Mutual gaze is when two people are looking into each other’s eyes). The most obvious example of this occurs along the continuum of relationships. We don’t look for long periods at strangers, but we clearly engage in mutual gaze with our good friends. Romantic relationships have the highest amount
of mutual gaze.

If you want to learn more about reading body language, Anne Beall’s book is:  Reading the Hidden Communications Around You: A Guide to Reading Body Language in the Workplace.

Over the weekend, I heard from two friends–one who has decided to start his own PR consulting business, and another who wants to abandon his 3-year-old freelance practice and return to a full-time agency job. 

I wish the call order had been turned around since I perhaps was overly encouraging to the first caller.  Meanwhile, the freelancer provided some sound grounding as to the ups and downs of being on your own.  “The peaks and valleys of being overly busy or bored is driving me crazy,” said the freelance escapee.  “I might work five days and nights straight on a project, then not have another assignment for a week or two.”  He also said he missed the socialization that an agency environment provided.  “It’s a lonely, digital world,” he said.  “I sometimes don’t see anyone for days on end.”

I encouraged the recently jobless first caller by citing a Challenger, Gray & Christmas report that 8.6% of unemployed executives last year decided to start their own businesses.  That’s a 3.5% jump since 2008, and the outlook is even stronger for 2010. 

After the second call, I looped back to the would-be entrepreneur with some additional thoughts about his possible venture.  I suggested that he thoroughly research the niche PR consulting he wants to pursue.  The Small Business Administration provides an excellent tutorial for individuals who want to start their own businesses.  Another government-hosted website provides 10 Steps to Starting a Business with links to a variety of start-up resources. 

Since my friend appears to be passionate about his probable venture, I called his attention to entrepreneur-focused website StartupNation, which features an excellent post about the importance of passion in creating business success.

Starting a new PR consulting business is not easy, however.  According to the Small Business Administration, nearly 50% of new businesses fail within five years.  Besides studying all the pros of starting a new business, it’s also necessary to consider the cons, including the Seven Pitfalls of Business Failure. 

I love college basketball, and predict who’ll win before each game begins–and I’m often wrong.  With that fact in mind, I decided to wait until we got a month into 2010 before discussing what the new year might hold for the PR profession.  My view hasn’t changed.  In fact, I’m more bullish on the growth prospects for PR than at any point in the past several years. 

This positive view is supported by the just-published annual Communications Industry Forecast by private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS).  As the media landscape gets more complex, companies will spend $8 billion on PR by 2013, with more than a third going to word-of-mouth and other social media.  That’s a huge 55% increase over 2008 expenditures.

According to VSS, PR has fared far better than advertising during the recession.  Strength in word-of-mouth and social media budgets is driving PR growth, while traidtional PR budgets also are slightly down or holding their own at most agencies.  “With the 24-hour news cycle, different outlets and formats including online, companies need more advice around PR than they did in the past,” says Jim Rutherfurd, EVP and managing director at VSS.

The report notes that the investment in PR, event marketing and other PR-related mediums has come at the cost of advertising.  Ad spending has been decreased 11% in the past two years.  According to VSS, traditional advertising will decline by another 3% by 2013. 

I hope we’re starting to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.  PR appears to be weathering the economic storm better than other communications functions, and propsects for further improvement in 2010 and beyond is encouraging. 

Sales positions dominate classified ad sections in many newspapers and online sites, yet many  PR job seekers pass over them in search of more career-specific opportunities. 

During my tenure at Eli Lilly, management employees were required to go through sales training and apply those skills for six months as pharmaceutical representatives calling on doctors and pharmacists.  I went reluctantly, but then didn’t want to return to headquarters when my sales stint was finished.  Many organizations that rely on product sales require such hands-on experience. 

At Sara Lee, whenever I proposed a new PR initiative that had significant cost implications, President Paul Fulton would ask:  “How many pairs of underwear do we have to sell to pay for that?”  (Sara Lee owned Hanes and Champion at the time).  Fulton instilled the fundamentals that you had to sell something before you could afford to do anything else. 

Bottom-line oriented executives appreciate the practical knowledge that comes through sales experience.  Cristóbal Conde, president and CEO of software company SunGard, offered this career advice in a New York Times interview: 

“Along the way, have a sales job.  You could be selling sweaters.  You could be selling ice cream on the street.  It doesn’t matter.  Selling something to somebody who doesn’t want to buy it is a lifelong skill.  I can tell when somebody comes in for an interview and they’ve never had any responsibility for sales.”

A sales position is a logical alternative until the right PR opportunity arises.  Many of the experiences gained from sales will apply to your future job, and it will gain you a lot of credibility with people like Paul Fulton and Cristóbal Conde.

Q.  I graduated in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in PR. Due to the poor economy; I decided to teach English in Asia for a year.  Now, I am considering teaching for another year and am wondering how this will affect my ability to transition to a PR job when I return to the US.  I would like to find a PR job that allows me to utilize the skills I have built while in Korea, i.e. public speaking, training, and relationship building. I would like to stay away from a traditional writing-based PR job. Do you have any suggestions?  -MS

A.  Your teaching experience might lend itself to the growing number of training positions that I feel will be created as the economy improves.  Many organizations curtailed training programs over the past few years, but agencies and companies are reassessing their training needs as a way to keep and develop employees. 

A teaching-only resume, however, will not be sufficient when competing with young professionals who have been working in PR for the two years you’ve been out of the country.  While in Korea, you should seek out resume-building volunteer activities that support your interest in PR.     

Finally, most PR jobs–including training positions–require proficiency in writing, so you may need to adjust your thinking.  While public speaking and relationship building are important elements of PR, very few jobs rely solely on these limited aspects of the profession.  Success in PR requires a broad base of relevant experiences and abilities, beginning with writing.

  Bill Coplin 

Students who have been successful in academics and leadership roles in college have a very tough time in their “dream jobs.”

Here is a tale of two May 2009 graduates who have been communicating with me for the past six months. The first is a Teach for American Corps member. Most of the 35,000 who applied were stars in college, but she was one of the 4,000 who shined the most brightly. The other is in a corporate training program with a very small acceptance rate. Both had outstanding academic records and met every challenge they faced in college, or at least they thought they did. Now in the real world, they are faced with one setback after another. It did not take them long to realize that college is a day on the beach compared to the world of work, especially work in high performing organizations.

The First Year Teach for America Corps

   Katelyn Hancock was a superstar who maintained a high GPA while accomplishing a lot outside of the classroom. Just to give a brief taste of her accomplishments, she single handedly developed a website and a fundraising campaign for the John Dau Foundation, which built and supports a clinic in a remote part of South Sudan. Her work led to contributions in excess of $100,000 the first year. The Board tried to stop her from taking the TFA position. Sometimes I think she wishes she had. Two sections from her blog Katelyn Today reinforce my point. The first is entitled “Crazy Overachievers” in which she writes:

Throughout my life, people have often called me an “over-achiever.” However, at Institute (summer training program for TFA) I am just average since every corps member here is also a hyper over-achiever. In fact, compared to some people, I actually feel like an under-achiever. There are some crazy corps members here who I have no idea how they are doing Institute on top of other demands in their lives.

The other statement comes from her blog entitled “If I were a quitter”:

After 2 ½ weeks as a teacher, I have decided that this is the hardest and most exhausting, humbling, time-consuming, stressful and high-stakes job I will probably ever hold. After completing my two years with Teach for America, everything I will ever do again should be relatively easy in comparison. In fact, if I was a quitter, I’d quit this teaching thing. Sometimes, in the moment, all of the trials and stress just don’t seem worth it.

Yes, I agree. I want to quit.  However, I’m not a quitter and there is too much at stake for my students if I quit. Therefore, I will continue to teach for the next two years no matter what- through plenty and in want; in joy and in sorrow; in sickness and in health; through bad days and good days. Somehow, I will make it.

A Recent Grad in Corporate America

The Corporate Trainee, whose name or affiliation I cannot reveal, not only maintained a high GPA, he was president of his fraternity as a sophomore and won a prestigious summer fellowship at a foundation as a rising junior when the foundation almost always gives it to a rising senior.  He was leader on campus in many different venues. He writes the following:

Life has been a roller coaster ride to be honest. Some weeks I do not do much reflection, other weeks I think too much. I am going through a phase, not sure how its defined, some sort of transition though, where I am asking a lot of questions. First, I realized I know nothing. Second, I realized I know nothing.

College is good because it gives you a taste of what it would one day feel like to be powerful and successful and rich and happy. It is like a teaser. You finally get there senior year. You got to be the president of this, the adviser to that, the delegate to this, the candidate for that, the manager for him or her. You were chosen to do things, your voice was needed, your ideas were fresh and new and acted upon. You were actually special.

Exit fantasy. Enter reality? College Ends. WORK begins.

You join a program with everyone else who lead, managed, chaired, ran, developed, succeeded. You were a big fish now your fish bait. Actually, you don’t get to even swim in the pool. Not because of anything you did but because of the nature of this phase of life. But everyone goes through this phase right? 

There isn’t a warp zone like in Nintendo games where you go through a special tunnel or take a secret road and by-pass this part of your career? When will I be good enough again? When can I lead like I know I can? When does the change ever happen when can I once again become important?

Even though I warned them, they seemed surprised. Where would we be without potential leaders whose naiveté allow them to take risks that will eventually lead to their triumphs?

Bill Coplin is a professor of public policy at the Maxwell School and The College of Arts and Sciences of Syracuse University, and author of “Ten Things Employers Want You to Learn in College” (Ten Speed Press, 2003) and “25 Ways to Make College Pay Off: Advice for Anxious Parents from a Professor Who’s Seen it All” (AMACON, 2007). Readers may  e-mail him at wdcoplin@syr.edu.