Category: Food For Thought

Friends on the Inside

by Julie Vick

If you plan to apply for a job at a company or organization where a friend works, think carefully about how to “use” that relationship in a positive way.

It might be very helpful to ask your friend for information about the department or division as you prepare to submit an application or for an interview as you prepare for an interview. If the friend mentions to others that you’ve asked, no harm is done, because your question shows that you are trying to prepare thoroughly.

Once you’ve had your interview but haven’t heard anything, it’s difficult to know what’s really happening. If several weeks go by and you haven’t been contacted there are several possibilities: they haven’t finished interviewing; a reference said something to give the hiring manager pause; or you presented yourself well and your references are positive but you’re simply up against some very stiff competition. Even though your friend might be able to give you some insight into the process you should avoid being a pest and above all, don’t say anything negative about those who interviewed you.

Once an offer is made, however, think hard before involving the potential colleague in a salary negotiation. If it’s a very good friend in the same department, you might ask how flexible the department tends to be in negotiating offers, but leave it at that. For example, the friend may have done a poor job of negotiating, realizes it, and now finds him or herself in the awkward position of advising a new colleague about how to get paid a higher salary! If the friend is in a different department, the situation is less awkward.

Employees develop loyalty to their employer and, particularly in tough times when people want to hold on to their jobs, they don’t want to do anything that could be perceived as disloyal. As a rule of thumb, if you have to ask whether you could trust someone with information about your job search, you probably don’t know the person well enough to assume their loyalty would be to you, rather than to their employer.

Can you (and you, and you, and YOU?) hear me now?

by Sue Russoniello

You’ve heard all the job search advice about cleaning up your voice mail message and untagging Facebook photos of you at that incredible party last weekend.  Hopefully you’ve even followed that advice.  But have you thought about the conversations you have with friends while walking across campus, or on your cell phone while standing in line for coffee or working out at the gym?

Remember that there are people all around you and you don’t always know who they are. There was a man near me on the train one evening talking on his cell phone.  He had obviously had a bad day – I’m guessing even a bad week.  He was very loudly sharing this with a friend on his cell phone and, in turn, with every occupant of that train car.  This man was naming names and giving specific examples of things he didn’t like about his place of employment, his boss, his co-workers, his clients.  After about 10 solid minutes of this rant, no one on the train could possibly read their book or work their Sudokus and we were all exchanging glances with each other.  When I got up to leave, I SO BADLY wanted to suggest that he be careful during his next conversation that his boss’s wife wasn’t sitting in the next seat. Can you imagine if that really had been the case?!

Think everyone here wants to hear your conversation? Think again. (Image via Tarotastic on Flickr)

There were students next to me at a popular campus restaurant earlier this week conversing in the explicit vernacular of many college students about the OCR process — what they REALLY thought of the internship search, how they were as good as that #$%^&* loser George who got 8 @#$%^&* interviews, how they’d rather sit at home with their &*%$# parents (the ultimate bad Friday night) than listen to their @#$%^&* friends talk about their @#$%^&* job search.  On and on it went.  Think about this; if I was a recruiter grabbing a quick sandwich on my lunch break and I overheard this conversation, what image of them would have been left in my head?  What if you were one of these students and you went to your interview that afternoon and came face to face with me?   And you’re already lamenting how competitive these interviews are?  You may have just helped that recruiter make the very difficult decision between hiring you or the next guy.

To broaden the scenario, maybe I’m a professor you are about to start a class with and you need a letter of recommendation from me for your med school applications. Or I’m the administrative assistant to a person you’ve been dying to get an appointment with for job shadowing. There are any number of other nightmares waiting to haunt you in that sea of unknown faces that surround you daily.

The advice about emails applies to public conversations as well…..if you wouldn’t write it on a postcard, say it directly to the person you’re talking about, or use that language in front of your mother (yes, that pesky mom again) then perhaps you don’t want to share it while walking down Locust Walk, sitting on the trolley or waiting for your cheese steak.

Do yourselves a favor and don’t air critical opinions and inappropriate language in public.  Help that recruiter or professor think of you as the mature, polite person you are, ready to join the professional world.

A Day in the Life of a Penn Entrepreneur

Read Rich Cisek’s archived tweet feed here: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/RichCisek_Feed.pdf

Energy Efficiency Entrepreneur and SEAS ’93 Alum, Rich Cisek is our first alumnus featured on our newest initiative @PennCareerDay (http://twitter.com/PennCareerDay).

Rich Cisek is the Founder and CEO of Green Home Energy Management, a company that specializes in solutions for utilities to help consumers better manage energy costs.  The Green Home solution consists of proprietary monitoring hardware and specialized data analysis software.  This product helps individual consumers reduce their energy use and in addition it aggregates data so that utilities can help all consumers learn how to better manage energy costs.   Green Homes is currently conducting field trials and raising venture financing.

Rich has a deep background in product development and operations.  Rich graduated from Penn with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1993 and he also has an MBA from the Wharton School.  Early in his career he designed air traffic control solutions for Lockheed Martin, followed by various operations and business development roles for America Online where Rich played a significant role in launching AOL’s broadband service.  Prior to founding Green Home Energy Management, Rich served in various senior leaderships roles at Comcast including the general manager for Comcast.com where he had responsibility for the overall site user experience and online sales.

This is your chance to find out what a typical, or not so typical, day is in the world of an entrepreneur focused on energy.  If you have questions for Rich, @reply to @PennCareerDay and check back here for his answers at a later date.

The Job and Internship Search Process…

By: David Ross

…can be somewhat unpredictable each year. Regardless, it’s great to see many students contemplate and pursue a myriad of employment opportunities with a keen interest in obtaining experiences that will serve them well for their future endeavors. And while there are “do’s” and “don’ts” that can be helpful as guidelines, one thing never changes: the process is unique and distinctive for each individual.

Why is this important? Well sometimes it may be easy to get caught up in day-to-day activities without taking a moment to consider the process. What may be helpful is perspective and reflection on the bigger picture. As students here at Penn, all of you have already accomplished great things and are destined to continue to do so in the future. You are all extremely talented individuals with great things to offer. Don’t ever lose sight of that. The odd thing about searching for jobs and internships is how unpredictable the process can be even when applicants proceed with great diligence in a structured manner. Sometimes the search may take longer than anticipated or require more effort than imagined. But that’s ok (and common!) – ultimately the number of interviews you receive and how long the process is irrelevant.

I encourage everyone to keep focused on your goals and remember that jobs and internships will continue to become available over the next few months. Think broadly about your interests and consider utilizing your background and skills in creative ways. Try not to depend on one job/internship search resource – diversification is key. Hang in there. And one last thing…take some time to do something enjoyable – everyone deserves to have some fun at some point.

Vampire Teeth and Other “What Not to Wear” items for OCR Interviews

By Claire Klieger

I guess the Twilight series had a more profound impact on college pop culture than I thought because earlier this week we actually found some fake vampire teeth in our waiting area at Career Services. (Sorry, if they were yours and you were hoping to claim them, I’m afraid they’ve already found their way to the trash). While it should be obvious that fangs are inappropriate interview attire (and I would think inappropriate to bring to Career Services in general—but hey, maybe that’s just me), students do often agonize about what is appropriate to wear to interviews.

Taking the "bite" out of interview attire.

As we enter into the start of OCR interviews this week, here are some tips:

1) Go easy on the “pieces of flair.” I once saw an interviewing guide that encouraged people to wear no more than 13 accessories, but I think even that is too much (frankly, I’m not sure I could even list 13 different types of accessories). Any jewelry you wear should be fairly subtle. Avoid overly large or dangly earrings and especially if you have a facial piercing, you may want to consider removing it for the interview. Essentially, you don’t want to wear anything that will distract from what you are saying.

2) Skin is not in. As popular as they may be at frat parties the world over, short skirts or low cut tops are not a good idea. Trust me ladies, those are not the assets you want to be stressing in your interview. Skirts lengths should be right around your knee and while you certainly don’t have to wear a turtle neck, use good judgment about necklines.

3) Know “the uniform.” What you wear to an interview depends a lot on the culture of the organization in which you’re planning to work. For more conservative industries like finance and consulting, this means wearing a dark suit, and ideally, for women, a skirt suit. However, for interviews with say….Polo Ralph Lauren, what you wear is a chance to highlight your fashion sense, which is much more central to your job. Similarly, for interviews at tech organizations that often have a more business casual working environment, you may look much more like a member of the team if you dress in business casual attire.

What you wear to an interview should be something that makes you feel confident, which, in turn, will help you come across that way to a recruiter. The best attire draws the attention to your face because ultimately, you want to remembered for what you say, not what you wear.