Career Diversity

1. Have a compelling reason for why you want to be there, as in “why did you decide to join the firm?”


2. Know what it is that uniquely qualifies you for the position so that you can answer the how, as in “how did you actually get a job here?”


3. Be able to explain what ties together past and current experiences in a way that is compelling and makes sense — what is the glue that holds your story together?

1. Think relevant, not recent. There’s no rule that says you must talk about your resume in reverse chronological order. Mike was a marketing executive who took a sales position abroad for two years. Yet when he returned to marketing, he kept introducing himself as a someone who had just made a career switch, always leading off with an anecdote about his short stint in sales. Instead, Mike should have started with the fact that he was a seasoned marketing professional who had taken a sabbatical but was now back where he belonged — putting his marketing prowess to work and thinking about what drives consumer spending habits.


2. Focus on skills-based versus situation or industry-based qualifications. You don’t have to have a background in finance to be good at finance. Alex was a chemist and researcher who had gone back to business school to get her MBA. She decided she wanted to work in corporate finance for a large pharmaceutical company but she was afraid no one would take her seriously given her background. When I pressed Alex to explain to me why she chose finance, she exclaimed, “That’s the way my brain works.” Her thinking was methodical, mathematical and formulaic — all of which translated to someone who was a natural fit within a corporate finance department. Instead of focusing on the fact that her background was in academia, Alex could emphasize to colleagues and clients that she was a numbers person at her core.


3. Connect the dots — what ties it all together? If you are a chemist turned finance professional or a marketing executive with experience in international sales, you should find a way to bring together the richness of your experiences and show how each one complements the other. For me, personally, I had a significant hurdle to clear with clients as a former Peace Corps volunteer turned investment banker. I explained away the dichotomy of the two by emphasizing to others that I was big picture thinker by nature and a numbers person by training. Banking was a perfect combination of the two — I liked looking at client’s challenges and issues from 30,000 feet and then digging down into the details to come up with creative financing solutions. Whether the client was the mayor of my Peace Corps town in Chile or the CEO of a healthcare company, I could start at a high level and drill down quickly and effectively.

1. Send "TOUs" or thinking of yous. Share articles of interest or relevant news stories. Keep your mentor's projects and areas of influence on your radar so that you can weigh in periodically on thought-provoking topics. You can even set up Google alerts on her key clients to make sure you're the first to see breaking news — then pass it along and make sure she's "in the know" too.
   


2. Provide insight into the rank and file of your organization. By definition, you are more junior (in terms of age or experience) than your mentor. Senior leaders often feel out of touch with the cubicle culture and lack meaningful interaction with the front lines of their organization. You may be able to share reactions of your peers to a new corporate policy or change in organizational structure. Giving your mentor feedback or insight into employee morale is a great way to give back.
   


3. Help with extra-curricular activities. Perhaps your mentor does a lot of college recruiting for the firm or runs a leadership development program for women. Why not offer to accompany her on a recruiting trip, sift through resumes in advance or bring her ideas of guest speakers for the leadership program?
   


4. Buy 'em lunch. At the very least, if you really struggle to find ways to add value, take your mentor to lunch or dinner. Even if your mentor tries to foot the bill, be firm and generous in your offer. Let your mentor know that you appreciate his help and it's your pleasure to be able to return the favor in some small way. A nice glass of wine or good steak goes a long way toward building good will.

Great on the Job takes it one step further. I use TOUs, or thinking of yous, to encourage people to reach out to others in their network. TOUs are short emails and whereas an IOU makes you indebted to someone, TOUs instead create goodwill. Thinking of yous are inherently generous and the goal is to maintain relevance with someone by sharing information or passing along well wishes, with the side benefit of keeping someone on your radar or staying on theirs.

So what should the subject of these TOUs be?

Here are five foolproof ways to ping someone this summer with a TOU:

(1) Pass along an article of interest: Julie, I read this article in the Boston Globe today and I thought of you and wanted to pass it along. This sounds like its right in the sweet spot of what your team is working on. Hope all is well. Best, Erica. [* extra credit for highlighting or bold facing the relevant paragraph or sections of the article]

(2) Congratulate someone on good news: Adam, I spoke with Aaron last week and he mentioned your promotion / new baby / move to Chicago. Congratulations, I’m very happy for you. Once you get settled in, let’s schedule coffee to catch up and see how things are going. Fondly, Kevin

(3) Share a job lead: Cynthia, I wanted to reach out let you know that L&M is looking for a new property manager. If you know anyone who might be interested, please feel free to forward along to colleagues or friends. Warm Regards, Casey

(4) Acknowledge a sport fan’s win: Nathan, congrats! I watched the game last night and saw that the Buckeyes pulled it off at the last minute, enjoy your bragging rights today. Roger

(5) Reference a run-in with a mutual friend: Elise, Eric and I saw Katherine today and she’s just come back from L.A. and sends her regards. Let’s try to all get together soon. Jodi

Job searching is almost like shoe shopping. You walk into the shoe store and point out the type of shoe that you want, the color, and your size. The salesperson goes to the back of the store to check and see if they have a perfect match. They know their inventory better than you do, so no matter how much you want a particular shoe, if they don't have it, they have to tell you "Sorry, we don't have a match!" If that happens to be the case, all you can do is:

1. Try another store that may have a similar type of shoe or
2. Look for a different type of shoe in the same store

When a particular store doesn’t have the shoe that we want, we rarely look at it as a negative reflection of our physical self. We don’t say to ourselves, “My foot is too big” or “My foot is too average.” In the same way, when jobs don’t work out, we shouldn’t say to ourselves, “I’m not unqualified” or “I’m just too average.” Most people look at rejection from a job as a bad thing when in reality it is just a data point. Employers are looking for fit and as an outsider looking in, you can never possibly know as much about the company as an insider regardless of whether you read the websites, talk to employees, and even visit the office.

When a particular job (or shoe) is in high demand, oftentimes finding the perfect match is matter of persistence and luck. If you don’t land the job you’re looking for the first time:

1. Try another company (perhaps less brand name) that may have a similar type of job and better fit for you or
2. If you really like the company, look for a different type of opportunity within the same company

Have you ever bought a pair of shoes that didn't fit? Even if you have to walk barefoot for a while, know that there is a perfect match out there for you. There is nothing more painful than a pair of shoes that don't fit, so be patient and keep shopping.

Jullien Gordon
The Personal Development Guru
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When it comes to letters of recommendations, there are two criteria that application readers consider:

1. The CREDIBILITY of the recommender and
2. The recommender's ABILITY to speak to your ABILITY

A lot of people go for CREDIBILITY. If I can just get the CEO to write me a letter, I'll definitely get into to business school.

Wrong!

First, your letter of recommendation doesn't get you into business. But, it can keep you out if it's bad or from the wrong person.

Second, you want to try to combine CREDIBILITY with ABILITY.

One of my classmates worked closely (ABILITY) with President George Bush (CREDIBILITY) before going to Stanford and George Bush wrote his letter of recommendation.

Now imagine if another applicant to the same school got an identical letter of recommendation from President George Bush and the only thing that was different was the name. How would an admissions officer perceive that?

The both received letters of recommendation from a CREDIBLE source, however, since the letters were identical, that writer did not have the ABILITY to speak to each of their unique ABILITIES. If this scenario actually happened, both applicants would probably get denied because they chose CREDIBILITY over ABILITY.

When considering who you want to write your letters of recommendation:

1. Think about ABILITY first. Who can speak specifically to your unique ABILITIES.
2. Based on that list, who are the most CREDIBLE people in your eyes and why

At the end of the day, a letter of recommendation that can speak to your ABILITY from a less CREDIBLE person is more valuable than a letter of recommendation from a CREDIBLE person who can't speak to your unique ABILITY. A great letter of recommendation writer will have both.

Jullien Gordon
The Personal Development Guru
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Most people think that business school is just for:

1. people who are interested in working in corporate America or
2. people who were business majors in college

That's not the case!

Master in business administration is really a misnomer. A better name for it would be an MLM or Masters in Leadership and Management. The skills taught in business school help students lead and manage teams. It could be a team of two or a team of two thousand. It just so happens that the dominate institution in the world today are businesses and therefore they take all of the talent coming out of the top business schools across the world.

Nowadays, MBAs are taking their skill sets to various types of organizations beyond just businesses. They are leading nonprofit organizations, government programs, social enterprises, and educational institutions.

At Stanford, they called people without a business background "poets". If you look at Stanford's class of 2010 profile , you'll see that 46% of students majored in the humanities or social sciences, 35% majored in engineering, mathematics, and natural sciences, and ONLY 19% majored in business related fields.

As minorities, our parents typically only respect medical and law degrees, but I encourage everyone who considers themselves to be a leader to consider pursuing a Masters in Leadership and Management (aka an MBA). It is perhaps the most valuable and flexible graduate degree there is.

Jullien Gordon
The Personal Development Guru
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The MBA application process isn't cheap. You should set aside almost $6,000 to prepare for the process. At the end of the day, the investment is small. In most cases, your salary will almost double after business school. Download this Excel document to craft your own budget.



Jullien Gordon
The Personal Development Guru
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Quite often I get calls about preparing for the GMAT and one of the first questions asked is “How do I start to prepare?”, invariably my answer is the same “Take a test." Before you decide to sign up for any course or tutor undertake any type of study it only makes sense that you find how much study you will need. Far too many people make assumptions about their scores. Whether you assume your score will be good or bad is irrelevant, it makes no sense to guess if you have the resources to find out the truth!

Everyone considering applying to business school (and thus by nature considering preparing for the GMAT) must immediately and without delay go to www.mba.com, download GMATPrep, and take a practice test under as realistic conditions as possible. This is the only practice tests created by the writers of the GMAT, and it will give you a highly reliable assessment of your current level of readiness to take the test.

Once you’ve taken the test you must spend some time analyzing your performance and understanding what you need to do to achieve the score you want. Below is some information that will help you understand your practice test score.

Your practice test score will give you an approximate range for your current GMAT score. Think “if I took the GMAT today, I would have received a score within 30 points of this score.” Based on this score you should have a strong sense of how much time and work you will need to make a significant improvement in your score (significant meaning a score increase that will get you from one range to the next, i.e. from 200 – 400 range to 400 – 480 range)

Consider the following when you look at the score results from your practice test:

Akil Bello
The GMAT Expert
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Have you always wanted to get an MBA? Are you were the person who doesn’t remember a time when an MBA wasn’t a part of your career path? Maybe you got on the bandwagon when you got to your job and saw the big things that the MBA graduates seemed to be doing? Or maybe you don’t even know at this point if an MBA is for you.

Regardless of the duration and depth of your interest in a Master of Business Administration, your “now what” first step is the same. Drum roll please…you have to answer “why”. Why? It’s that simple or it’s that complicated depending how much clarity you have about your reasons for desiring a MBA.

When I ask “why”, I am not necessarily interested in the original reason you wanted an MBA, but rather I want to know, at this moment in time, why you think an MBA makes sense for your career. You might have been planning for an MBA in the tenth grade, like I was – I had picked the school and the graduation date (which by the way, I nailed), but clearly also like me you had no real idea of the value of an MBA. Regardless of your original reasons, you now need to get very clear about why you want an MBA and you need to be able to articulate that for yourself, and eventually for others.

I know some of you are thinking “I don’t know what I want to do with my career, that’s why I want an MBA”. To start, consider the following questions;

• What do you want out of your career and your life?
• Where do you see yourself in 10 and/or 20 years?
• What impact do you want to have on your family? Community? On this world?
• What are you good at?
• What do you value? What drives you?

None of the questions above mention the MBA or even directly relate to the MBA. But before you determine that you should quit your job and pack up and move across country for a two-year MBA program, you have to explore who you are, what drive you and what you want out of life. When you make progress on this, you will be better equipped to truly assess why an MBA is right for you.

At this point you may not have answers to all of these questions. No worries. It will come in time as long as you diligently seek it (that sounds very Zen!) So I encourage you to:

1. Read – read articles and books about personal and professional growth, successful people and business and related industries
2. Talk – talk to your people, who work in the areas in which you are interested, who you respect and aspire to be like, or who have pursued an MBA – this may help to shape your vision of the life that you do or do not want to have.
3. Listen – listen to family, friends, peers, managers and mentors – get feedback from other people about your strengths and areas of development. [Disclosure: I am not suggesting that you listen to all of them, but rather that you gather data that you can use to form your own opinions.]
4. Work – work really hard – at work, in your community activities and in your personal life. This will give you additional data points to determine what you like, what you don’t like, what you are good at, what you will never be great at. [Willingness to work hard and demonstrated work ethic are prerequisites to an MBA – if you don’t have these yet, forget an MBA for now and get to work!

by Nicole Lindsay
The MBA Admissions Adviser
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