Tag: career advice

Congratulations! You just accepted an invitation to interview with your dream firm. All the company research, resume polishing and networking at Meet the Firms, at information sessions and with your network, has paid off. What are the next steps to ensure you are ready to conduct a successful interview? Sally Pinckard, the Associate Director of Career Education at Olin’s Weston Career Center, provides this advice to ace the job interview:

Learn everything you can about the company

Both parties are looking for the best fit. Learn as much as you can about the company, culture, and specific process, so you are ready to demonstrate that you are the candidate who best fits what they are looking for. Along with your research, one of the best ways to learn about what to expect in the interview is to connect with alumni in the firm. If there are alumni connections, ask for advice and insight into the interview process. Talking with recent hires at information sessions and workshops, using LinkedIn’s advance search process to find Olin and WashU alumni in the company you will be interviewing with, and asking for insights from fellow students in the student groups where you are a member are all great ways to connect with alumni for guidance. Most are more than willing to help.

Prepare for the type of job interview the recruiter will conduct

Include this in your company research. Most interviews will fall into these categories: behavioral, technical, and case interviews. Some will be conducted face to face, but many first round interviews will be conducted over the phone phone or on Skype. For detailed information on how to prepare for these interviews, see pages 41 and 42 in the WCC Career Guide. Also be sure to check out the Weston Career Center’s Behavioral Interview Questions Guide and Functional/Technical Questions Guide.

First impressions count. Practice your interviewing skills

It’s always important to present your best self. The impressions you leave during the interview (and after!) should be no accident. Practice your answer to, “Walk me through your resume” and other interview questions in a mock interview with a Weston Career Center advisor. Prepare well-informed, inquisitive, and articulate questions for the interviewer during and at the end of the interview. Make sure they are questions for which the answers can only come from a person who has worked in the company (and not something you can find quickly on the company’s website). Check the apparel you plan to wear to the interview to make sure your clothes are clean and in good shape.

Follow up after the job interview

Be prepared so that you can write a thank you note shortly after the interview is complete. Recruiters tell us repeatedly that they are surprised that more students don’t send thank you letters after an interview. Therefore, the letters they do receive stand out, especially well written notes. (AND, recruiters often comment on how impressed they are when the notes are hand written the old fashioned way.) Why? In addition to being a polite way to acknowledge the time spent with you, thank you letters are another opportunity to sell yourself. Have professional stationary on hand so that you can write your thank you note in a timely manner, which is usually within 24 hours of the interview. By writing both an email and hand written thank you, you are signaling your high level of interest in them because you took the time to express your thanks in writing. For more information on the follow up process and thank you notes, see page 45 in the WCC Career Guide.

Sally Pinckard has held positions in merchandising, retail management, and human resources for May Department Stores, now Macy’s. Sally teaches MGT250A, Building Your Career Foundation, and is a certified business etiquette instructor. 

In addition to expert advising and free coffee, Olin’s Weston Career Center offers courses, skill-building workshops, networking activities, and resources to prepare students for a lifetime of career management.

Students new to Olin may not be aware of the plethora of resources the WCC provides students. (Did we mention free coffee?) Allow us to introduce some of the WCC’s best offerings for students interested in career development or embarking on the job search:

Access to the Bloomberg Terminal

The Bloomberg Terminal allows students to access the Bloomberg data service, which provides real-time financial data, news feeds, and messages. The terminal is available in the WCC office by request.

Career development videos

On the Olin Careers website students will find recruiter advice and insights on topics such as résumé writing, effective business communications, interviewing, and strategic relationship building.

Guidance for veterans

Veterans have a proven record of performance and are ready to serve in civilian jobs where there is a need for leadership, team building, organizational commitment, and advanced technical training. The WCC offers coaching and resources for veterans and collaborates with the Olin Veterans Association to prepare students for the transition to civilian employment.

Interview Wiki

The Wiki is a student-editable archive of historical interview questions, along with other information, that is searchable by company. Students can update the Wiki questions after interviews to ensure that the questions are current.

LGBTQ resources

For the sixth consecutive year, the WCC was recognized with the highest level of certification (A+) by the national OUT for Work Career Center Certification Program.

The WCC offers resources to LGBTQ students seeking information on locating gay-friendly companies, coming out during the job search and transitioning into the workplace. In addition, the Weston Career Center partners with the WUSTL LGBT Student Involvement and Leadership office to provide a variety of programming. Any student seeking a confidential advising appointment may contact the Weston Career Center at wcc-director@olin.wustl.edu.

Management 201–Management Communications

A collaboration between faculty and Weston Career Center career advisor, MGT 201 Management Communication is a required course for all sophomores and offers students tools for a successful job search. Students get individualized attention to identify, articulate, and sell their value to an employer. They will develop their résumés, elevator pitches, and interview skills and build a strong online brand presence. Each professional development session is supplemented with workshops led by Weston Career Center experts, to provide hands-on tools and exposure to the technology and resources offered at Olin and the Weston Career Center. The course also teaches students to develop their business writing and public speaking skills as they solve real life client communication challenges.

Seminar series and workshops

Designed to give Olin students an advantage in the marketplace, seminars and workshops are presented by outside experts and corporate partners.

Working closely with our network of alumni, employers, and faculty, our employer relations team explores domestic and global markets for hiring trends and employment opportunities. We’re continually cultivating our partnerships with exceptional companies—and building a reputation for interns and graduates who are ready for business, with the tools and talent to create value for their organizations.

A student meets with a representative from evetos at the 2013 Meet the Firms event.

On-campus recruiting

Throughout the year, hundreds of companies recruit Olin students through on-campus, phone, and Skype interviews. The WCC interview-suite computers are fully equipped with Skype services and webcams that are available for student use.

BSBA and specialized masters students can apply for positions and sign up for interviews through CAREERlink. MBA candidates can do the same through MBAFocus.

Upcoming recruiting events: 

• Wednesday, Sept. 14: Meet the Firms
• Tuesday, Sept. 20: Meet the Firms

Networking road shows and career fairs

The WCC sponsors several events to provide networking opportunities, including Meet the Firms events, domestic and international road shows, symposiums, New York and Silicon Valley Career Treks, and club-sponsored activities. Other networking opportunities include all-campus career fairs at Washington University.

A network of professional associations

Olin has chapters of the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA), the National Society of Hispanic MBAs (NSHMBA), National Association of Women MBAs (NAWMBA), and Net Impact. These organizations sponsor annual career conferences that provide access to recruiting companies. In addition, these associations encourage academic and career development.

Olin is also a member of the Forté Foundation—a consortium of major corporations and top business schools that has become a powerful change agent in educating and directing talented women toward leadership roles in business.

In addition, Olin is a founding member of  The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management—the country’s preeminent organization promoting diversity and inclusion in American business. The Consortium has built a 50-year legacy of fostering inclusion and changing the ethnic and cultural face of American business.

Information sessions

Companies host these events to enhance visibility on campus, preview the quality of Olin’s talent, and serve as a precursor to their on-campus recruiting schedules. Don’t miss the chance to meet recruiters and learn more about their companies, industries, and career opportunities.

Upcoming company information sessions:

• Tuesday, Sept. 6: AT&T, Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), Bain & Company, and Raymond James
• Wednesday, Sept. 7: Capital One, The Resource Group, and Bain & Company, Inc.
• Thursday, Sept. 8: Deloitte Consulting LLP and ECG Management Consultants
• Monday, Sept. 12: Cardinal Health and Booz Allen Hamilton
• Tuesday, Sept. 13: Bayer, Lincoln International, Kimberly-Clark and Travelers
• Wednesday, Sept. 14: Wal-mart and Bain & Company, Inc.
• Thursday, Sept. 15: Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Protiviti, Avascent, and General Mills
• Friday, Sept. 16: Deloitte Consulting
• Monday, Sept. 19: RBC Capital Markets & MasterCard International
• Tuesday, Sept. 20: Nielsen & Bloomingdale’s
• Wednesday, Sept. 21: Nielsen, Citigroup & Villhard
• Thursday, Sept. 22: Anheuser-Busch, Essilor & Accenture

Salary information and employment statistics

The WCC compiles internship and job-offer data to provide employment information to students, employers, and relevant partners. Information that is reported is confidential, and statistics are aggregated in report format.

Think of your online profiles, posts, and tweets as a dynamic résumé—an online presentation of your personal brand. They reveal your interests, personality, and expertise. A space like Facebook or Twitter may seem more personal, while LinkedIn is clearly a venue for professional networking and job searching.

However, there are still useful ways to leverage these ‘more personal’ channels to grow your professional network.

“Like” or follow companies

Search for pages of your target companies, and “Like” them. Interact on the page’s wall to highlight your interest in the products and services. Similarly, be sure to follow official company accounts on Twitter—it is a good way to stay up to date on industry and company trends.

Share relevant links, info, and stories

Post links to your profile that will position you as an expert in a field and may attract the attention of recruiters and hiring managers. Remember to stay away from controversial topics and inappropriate content or photographs.

“Like” articles on the web

Don’t be afraid to hit the “Like” on blogs, online news articles, websites, etc. When you “Like” interesting stuff, others may want to connect back with you as a resource, and it begins another connection.

Many people use Twitter to keep up on the latest buzz, including job opportunities. It’s also an efficient networking tool, and 140-character tweets force you to keep your message or question concise. When you make new contacts in your field of interest, ask whether they have a Twitter handle to follow. At conferences and social events, include your Twitter handle on your name badge.

Use Twitter as you would a business card—a point of entry for follow-up conversation.

As you build your network of colleagues and professionals, reach out to ask questions. And reciprocate by quickly answering questions directed to you.

How to tend to your network—using social media

Networking online doesn’t need to be time consuming. You can develop your professional reputation and help others in the process through simple etiquette practices that require only a few minutes each day:

1. Be the first to have a point of view. Share relevant news articles, and add value by including any observations.
2. Let them know they’ve been heard. Listen to what your network has to say, and make an informed suggestion or relevant introduction.
3. Establish yourself as the go-to-person. Consider connecting your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts to establish more visibility.
4. Try to add at least one new person to your network a week. Growing networks are far more effective than stagnant ones.

Protect your reputation online

Even with the strictest privacy settings, no social space is truly private, so heed our suggestions to protect your online reputation. On the other hand, don’t be afraid to be yourself; you’ll make your best impression if there’s a real human behind your online identity.

Don’t let social networking jeopardize your career opportunities. Protect your image by following these simple tips:

Keep it professional
Don’t post anything that you wouldn’t want a prospective employer to see. Derogatory comments, revealing or risqué photos, foul language, and lewd jokes all will be viewed as a reflection of your character. Carefully select your privacy settings. And since you can’t control what others post, you may want to block or hide comments from friends who don’t practice the same level of discretion.

Be prepared
Check your profile regularly to see what comments have been posted. Remember that other people can tag you, so check regularly, and if a post is not appropriate, untag yourself. Use a search engine to look for online records of yourself to see what is out there about you. If you find information you feel could be detrimental to your candidacy or career, remove it—and make sure you have an answer ready to counter or explain “digital dirt.”

Respect the wall
If you wouldn’t want to read it on a billboard, don’t post it to your Facebook wall—or anyone else’s. This holds true even if you use Facebook only to socialize. Remember, anyone you “friend” can see your comments, photos, and YouTube video links. Email or use Facebook’s messaging feature instead.

When you are searching for a job, demonstrating strong communication skills is essential, yet most people understand this concept superficially. The Weston Career Center put together this checklist for students looking to improve their business communication skills:

Know your audience

Whether you are writing a letter, interviewing, or presenting, the number one rule of business communication is to know the audience—the people who will be receiving your communication. Let’s put this into the context of looking for a job: Research the company. In addition to reading the company’s website, find out about the culture, and learn about its specific business problems. It is hiring people who can solve business problems. What do you have to offer the company? Also, do you fit with its culture?

Go beyond basic research, and use a little psychology. That recruiter you’re talking with has been flying around the country talking with one person after another, day after day. Can you put yourself in that person’s shoes? He or she wants to talk with an interesting and confident person who’s ideal to work with and who stands out from the crowd. You’ve made his or her day if you turn out to be the right person to bring in for a second interview.

In the cover letter and interview, briefly convey your knowledge of the company, and communicate information that demonstrates your fit with the company and the advertised position.

Know yourself

You can’t effectively communicate what you have to offer an organization if you don’t know your own talents, strengths, and weaknesses. To effectively differentiate and sell yourself, know what makes you unique. In the cover letter and the interview, prove with examples and results that you have skills to help business professionals solve their business problems.

Prepare

Good presenters and writers prepare in advance. They rehearse their presentations and tweak their writing until they feel their messages are clear and compelling. Even if you are a charmer, no one will be impressed if you demonstrate little preparation for the interview. For interviews, predict the questions you could be asked, prepare for them, and practice answering them.

In letters, customize your message for that particular audience.

Be concise and organized

You’ve heard that time is money. That’s why businesspeople won’t have patience for a disorganized and wordy paragraph or a rambling answer during an interview. Avoid wordiness. Consider whether headings, subheadings, and bullets in your written correspondence will help the busy reader easily navigate your message. In general, make the first sentence of each paragraph the main point, and then support that point.

Be accurate and truthful

If someone discovers you’ve lied, you’ll lose your credibility. Proofread, or you’ll be perceived as someone who doesn’t pay attention to details.

Know when to listen and when to talk

Good communicators have different personalities. Some are outgoing, and some are thoughtful listeners. The best communicators can listen to the other person and keep a conversation going.

One strategy for keeping a conversation flowing is to demonstrate interest by asking good open-ended questions.

Really listen, and you’ll learn a lot about the job and the company.

Being intentional in your career transition is, in my mind, the most overlooked “step” in successfully going from A to B. If you Google “intentional career transition,” what are the results? (Because face it, everything these days starts with a Google search, right?) I found a few websites for services to help with career transitions; however, the number of references were fewer than I expected. When I Googled “steps for a career transition,” I hit the jackpot. On the first page alone there were sites or articles that listed as few as five steps or up to 10. Most of the steps are very tactical: “Put together a resume” or “Update your LinkedIn profile.” All good advice, but I am going to talk about a more strategic step.

I believe the first step is to be intentional. Being intentional when you decide to venture into something new is along the same lines as putting together a solid project plan when you are about to implement new software or develop a new marketing campaign. The project plan documents your intentions. Documenting your intentions in your career is not really all that different.

When documenting your intentions, or your plan, you need to specify the five w’s – why, what, when, where, and who.

Why am I seeking a career transition?

You need to articulate why this change is occurring. Being very clear with why helps to make sure your plan is focused and leading to your desired end state. Without a clear understanding for why, then you may easily veer off into something interesting but not necessarily relevant. Ask yourself: Why now? Why something different?

What am I looking for in this career transition?

This is the big Kahuna of intentionality. This is where you get down to brass tacks on what exactly the plan is going to achieve. What is it that you are looking for in your next career or job? Can you define the characteristics, objectives, outcomes?

When will this transition take place?

Depending on when you are looking for a change, the actions you take to get there may be different. Timing is also partially dependent on what it is you are looking for in the future. If you are thinking the change should happen in six months there may be one set of actions to get there. If it is a longer-term plan (say 3 years) there is a totally different set of actions.

Where are you looking to go?

We are taking simple geography here. If you need to – or want to – only look in a particular part of the world then you need to be clear on that. Don’t waste your time looking in say, Australia, if that is simply not realistic. While the job down under sounds fun and exciting, if it really isn’t in the cards don’t put it in the plan. Being distracted during your intentional search will derail your progress.

Who will help you in this career transition?

This is where your network comes into play. You have a network, right? If not, you need one. (I feel another blog topic coming on!) Being intentional with who you want to connect with about your new career/job search will allow those connections to be meaningful and sincere. Again, it is about intentionality, the foundation for focus. Additionally, you don’t want to abuse your connections, and if you simply randomly tap into your network you could wind up alienating them and doing more harm than good.

Being intentional is hard. I know–I have been there myself. Determining the 5 W’s for my own career transitions laid the foundation for all the changes I made. Some of my transitions were made in six months, some in three years. Whatever my time frame was, I approached it intentionally. I can help you do the same.

This post originally appeared on LMHAdvisors. In addition to LMHAdvisors, Lisa Hebert serves as a Career Advisor specializing in supply chain, consulting, and Olin’s veteran student population.

To be an exceptional job candidate in today’s media-immersed world, personal branding is a must—especially in marketing. Why would a company hire you to develop a brand strategy if you can’t even brand yourself?

Last week, I attended the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference here in St. Louis, and fell into a session led by a panel of marketing experts, who confirmed the above. With graduation just around the corner, their discussion about the job search as a marketing pro especially grabbed my attention.

Check out the top insights from marketing experts at Daugherty, Perficient, and Mizzou’s Journalism School, among others.

1. Brand yourself through social media

Use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook as an extension of your resume, demonstrating your passion in and knowledge of a particular area.

“LinkedIn is the first thing I look at as a recruiter,” said panelist Jerry Bernhart, of Bernhart Associates Executive Search, who added that a sloppy or neglected page is an immediate turn off for a recruiter. LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool—you wouldn’t, for example, attend a Weston Career Center networking event without copies of your resume or business cards (at least, I hope not). LinkedIn is your digital resume.

Each social platform caters to different audiences and conversations, and you can stand out from your peers by using them correctly.

2. Prove yourself as a strong writer and communicator

As a business student, you need to be able to effectively (and persuasively) communicate with clients and prospective employers. There is an art and subtlety to compelling marketing.

“It’s not about hiding the fact that it is advertising, it’s about being really great at it,” said panelist Brad Best, Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication at Mizzou. “Too often people go tactics first,” he said, when marketers should start by outlining goals, creating a strategy, and then work on the ‘how.’

If you’re interested in content marketing, for example, brand yourself as a knowledgeable source by blogging. Write about which metrics matter in Google’s algorithms for preferential search or how to get the most from a Facebook ad campaign. You’re providing tangible proof of your communication skills, knowledge, and experience, while creating a great digital footprint for yourself.

3. Cultivate technical know-how

As a marketing student, you’re not expected to code apps or build new websites. That said, fundamental knowledge of basics like semantic coding or even graphic design can go a long way for your marketing career. The “jack-of-all-trades” students are “unicorns” for recruiters, said panelist Stuart Draper, of Stukent.com.

The content part of your content marketing strategy may be great, but understanding the behind-the-scenes factors that influence search engine rankings can give your content a boost. “Google is your professor,” said panelist Musonda Kapatamoyo of SIUE. Take a few hours to learn more about HTML or Google Analytics. Proving you are hungry to improve, learn, and add value to a company is a highly attractive quality. Luckily, Olin has provided that resource for students, staff, and faculty for free: Lynda.com.

Obviously, this list focuses on digital marketing and doesn’t address every way a marketing student can get ahead of the competition, but it does highlight some great ways to stand out when applying for marketing positions. What do you think about the panel’s recommendations?