Managing your job search messaging from the conscious to the subconscious

By Dr. Joseph Barber

The career exploration and job search processes are very active, fully-conscious experiences. It is important to be intentional, proactive, and to communicate in very direct ways your career goals to yourself (yes, sometimes you still need convincing too) and others. Throughout the process, however, there are some occasions when paying attention to communication happening at a more subconscious level is also important. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage, other times, you want to make sure that it is not putting you at a disadvantage. Here are some examples:

Networking

When you reach out to someone to request an informational interview (an opportunity to learn form them about their job and experiences getting to where they are today so that you can use this information as you possibly apply for similar jobs), there are a handful of reasons why they may say yes to your request to chat:

  1. They are an awfully nice person, and love chatting with new people
  2. They benefited from someone helping them in a similar way in the past, and are happy to pay it forward with you
  3. They are actually looking for a possible candidate for a role that might match your experiences and interests
  4. Someone has recommended them to you as a great person to speak with

Points #1-3 are specific to your contact’s needs and interests – you won’t have any influence here. Point #4 involves an external party, however, and this begins to create a situation where you can have an impact. In terms of networking, if I can reach out to a contact and bring in a third party into my introduction (e.g., Julie says that you will be a good person to reach out to with my questions), then I am giving my new contact a good reason to respond to my outreach because they probably don’t want to lose any of the social reputation that they now feel that they have (albeit at a subconscious level). After all, if Julie recommends them as a great person to talk with, she can also change her opinion and feel the opposite if she hears that they don’t actually take the time to chat to people she recommends. Leveraging this type of subconscious social pressure by reaching out to people you know so that you can then reach out to people that they know is an effective networking strategy. This won’t guarantee that people will respond to you, but it certainly increases the likelihood that they will.

Resumes

Most of the resumes you send when applying for jobs will first be “read” by Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) that matches your keywords to those from the job description to determine whether there is a high enough match for your application to be passed on to an actual human. For the time-being, it is likely that these robots are just doing their tasks in an objective manner without too much of a subconscious to worry about (at least I hope so!). However, when your resume makes it through to an actual person (thanks to all of the customizing you did before submitting it), it is time once again to think about how your language and formatting can affect what they think about you.

Small fonts and margins, and a lack of any white space in your resume will make it feel cramped, slightly intimidating, and possibly overwhelming – not concepts you want associated with you. On the other hand, resumes with too much spacing between lines, excessive margins, overly large fonts, all spread out over multiple pages will make it hard for the reader to picture all of your experiences at once. It will feel as if you are communicating too slowly and inefficiently.

Your resume will have an experience section. If you call it “Work Experience”, you may be limiting what you talk about to formal, paid positions. However, if you call it “Relevant Experience”, then not only do you create a subconscious signal to the reader that what they are going to being reading is relevant to them (you still need to make sure it is), but you can also include experiences that are not purely employment related. For example, you can talk about your research as a student or postdoc, or an independent project you worked on with outside collaborators, or the role your played as part of a student group or club. So long as the experience is relevant to the job you are applying to, in terms of the skills you are illustrating, then they can be concentrated together in this one section.

Occasionally, people will create a section in their resume that is called “Other Experience”.  The term “other” doesn’t leave the reader with much in the way of exciting imagery to associate with the experience or skills. Indeed, if the writer doesn’t know what these experiences or skills represent, then the reader is going to have a much harder time deciphering the value of a section that feels a little like a “stuff” section.

When it comes to writing bullet points in the resume, a commonly used phrase to describe experiences is “responsible for…”.

Responsible for coordinating a 300-person professional development event in coordination with 4 local universities

The challenge with this phrasing is that the reader has a couple of options in terms of what they will take away from this. If they, and their subconscious, are feeling generally optimistic, then they may feel that you have successfully taken on lots of responsibility – which is a positive. Alternatively, if they are feeling more pessimistic, they may note that while you were responsible for doing this, you didn’t actually state that you did it. Yes, you were meant to have done it…, but that is not quite the same thing. A more direct approach that minimizes the ability of the reader to take away alternatives meanings from the bullet point will be to focus on the actual skill used, and how successful it is.

Coordinated a 300-person professional development event in collaboration with senior administrators at 4 local universities, bringing in 14 employers and 22 alumni

Overusing verbs such as “helped”, “participated”, and “worked on” will also create a less tangible image of you in the mind of the reader, because it is hard to picture exactly what you may have been doing when you say “worked”. What specific images to these bullets create in your mind?

Worked on key projects that resulted in 20% increase in revenue

Participated in group projects related to research and development

Interviews

Being the most confident version of yourself is a great goal to have during job interviews. One way to communicate confidence at the subconscious level is to ensure that you have strong beginnings and strong endings your answers. This is a common beginning of an answer people give to questions I pose in mock interviews:

“Ummm…., I think…”

Both of these utterances drain the impact that your answer will have. Here are some better responses:

“Yes…, I…”

“That’s a great question…, I…”

“I was actually thinking about this question this morning, and I…”

The questions you will ask during an interview are also important (because you are definitely going to ask some questions, right!?), and should be framed from an optimistic standpoint. Some students are tempted to ask a positive/negative question:

“What are some of the best and worst part of this job/employer?”

This might be a question better suited to an informational interview, rather than a job interview. In a job interview, none of your interviewers are likely to want to paint the job or their company in a negative light, and so you wouldn’t get valid information anyway. However, making people think about the negative aspects of their work life will make them experience a wave of negative emotional states inside, and your interviewer’s subconscious might associate you with these negative states since you were the one who triggered them. As the interviewers gather to discuss the final candidates, any negative feelings associated with you, even at a subconscious level, are not going to help your cause.

I have seen advice that asking the “what does an ideal candidate look like from your perspective?” question at the end of the interview gives you a last chance to convince the interviewer that you can be that candidate. There is certainly some truth to this. There is also a risk that by answering the question out loud, the interviewers create an ideal image in their head that no longer matches you and your skills and experiences. Asking this question may undo some of your hard work from the interview, and leave the interviewer wishing for more – even if they had been happy that you could do the job based on what you had already answered moments before. They wouldn’t be interviewing you if they thought you couldn’t do the job. You should spend the interview providing illustrations of your skills in use so that they can see what value you bring, and then skip this question.

And asking questions that force your interviewer to do some of your work for you will also leave them feeling a little deflated about the experience. For example:

“What questions haven’t I asked that you think it would be important for me to ask?”

The job search process is a great time for you to market the best, most confident version of yourself with dynamic examples, lots of energy, and good dose of optimism. Doing this in the right way will ensure that you are leaving the best impression on the conscious and subconscious of your future employers.

Curtain Call

J. Michael DeAngelis, Senior Digital Resources Manager

Penn alum Harold Prince (COL ’48) passed away today at age 91. Prince was a legendary theater producer and director, responsible for such classics as West Side Story, Cabaret, Company, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Evita, The Phantom of the Opera, Parade and many many others.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Harold Prince about ten years ago right here on campus. He had come, as he did on more than one occasion, to speak to the Penn community about his career and take questions from students. I had the additional luck of attending a reception after and I recall the twinkle in his eye as he reunited with some of his fellow classmates, by then all in their mid-80s, but giggling in the way that only friends from undergrad do.

During his Q&A session, I asked him what made a good book to a musical, since he had previously said it was the most important ingredient. “I don’t know,” he said, “I just know that if you don’t have a good one, you’re dead.” Back at the reception, I introduced myself as the person who asked about books, explaining that I had just been published as playwright for the first time by Samuel French, Inc. His eyes lit up and he suddenly seemed ten years younger, throwing his arm around me: “ME TOO! I wrote one play and it’s with Sam French! Keep it up. Don’t stop!”

I could have lived in that moment forever. Here was a living legend, tossing his arm around me as if we were absolute peers. I’ve carried that gratitude with me since then and I hope that I’ve been able to pass that on. I’m no Hal Prince, but I’ve been lucky in my career and I feel I owe it to those striking out on a similar path to make them feel welcome and encourage them, as Mr. Prince did for me, to not stop.

No matter what your career path, I ask today that you follow in the steps of Harold Prince. Be bold in your ventures, be kind in their execution and be supportive of those who want to follow in your footsteps.

Ways to Build Your Leadership Skills

Tiffany Franklin, Associate Director

Photo credit: iStockPhoto - marchmeena29

Now that summer is finally here and you are starting the internships you have worked so hard to secure, it’s the perfect time to consider ways you can make the most of this opportunity and build your leadership skills. Focusing on your professional development while you are in entry-level roles will help you gain skills that not only help your current team, but could also position for opportunities in the future, whether with your current organization or a new one. Just as athletes train throughout the year to improve their performance during the season, you can use this summer to design your leadership strategy.

It’s helpful to consider the qualities that make a strong leader: emotional intelligence, strategic risk taking, effective communication, relationship building, flexibility, problem solving, resilience, vision, and the ability to listen and take purposeful action. Great leaders possess a solid grasp of fundamentals in their field, yet they also surround themselves with people who make up for what they lack. They are constantly learning and envisioning what could be, but not ignoring current realities and historical context. They excel at conceptualizing a path and empowering a team to bring that vision to life.

Reading a list like that sounds like a tall order, especially when you’re in your first internship, but you have been building many of these skills for years through coursework, activities, sports, volunteer work, summer jobs, and more. Here are ways to cultivate your leadership skills. Notice that many of them do not involve an actual leadership title right now – instead, it’s about focusing on what you are learning.

  • Leading/Contributing to projects: Volunteer for more responsibilities. Seek out opportunities for impact and ones that may not seem glorious, but are important for building the foundational knowledge.
  • Build your network: Look for opportunities to work across your company; look into affinity groups or other ways to become involved in your company’s community beyond your own department.

  • Learning opportunities: Does your office host lunch and learns, webinars, or speaker series? Attend these both for the content and to meet more people.

  • Seek out mentors: Express genuine interest in colleagues and what they do. These initial conversations can turn into regular coffee chats and may help you find a mentor within the company or new work friends.
  • Leadership within professional associations: Become involved with your industry’s professional associations. The rates for student memberships are usually reasonable. Volunteer to help plan an upcoming event or help with the next conference. This will greatly expand your professional circle, can be a lot of fun, and a perfect way to learn from others in the field.
  • Learn as much as possible about your field and leadership in general: Read industry publications and remain informed on current events. Look at the syllabi from top MBA programs like Wharton and see which books their students are reading about leadership – check those out and discuss what you learn in your networking.

Taking these steps will help you build valuable skills to benefit you throughout your career. Enjoy your summer and remember that Career Services is here to help you with this process.

Effective Networking Tactics: Time for Introductions?

Here we go again – another blog post on networking…how will this be different?  Well, let me start with a short anecdote:

Recently, I attended an event and had a conversation about networking. We talked about different approaches and tactics – one idea that emerged from that discussion focused on asking for introductions from mutual acquaintances to connect with other professionals you may not know.

You may be familiar with the term “cold-call” or “cold-email” – basically an effort to contact someone you don’t know, commonly used in the context of networking or inquiring about job or internship opportunities.

While there are different opinions on the success of cold-calling and cold-emailing, I encourage you to try asking for introductions to people you want to meet from individuals you already know as part of the networking process.

Think about individuals you know and their existing contacts – one way to explore this could be through LinkedIn 2nd or 3rd degree connections. If you want to connect with someone else that shares a mutual connection with you, consider asking the mutual connection for an introduction. In some cases, introductions from individuals that are trusted can lead to a higher volume of responses and initiate meaningful conversations.

That being said, always be mindful of quality over quantity. Don’t simply focus on the number of conversations you have – the quality of your conversations is most important. And always be authentic with your introduction requests and conversations. Think carefully why you want to be introduced to someone and how a conversation with that particular individual would be helpful.

Let me know how you fare with asking for introductions from mutual contacts as you attempt to expand your network.

Do you have any examples of situations where an introduction from a mutual contact was beneficial for networking purposes?  Feel free to share them below.

Looking for more tips on networking?  Check out a few online videos and social media networking tips here: https://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices//networking/howto.php

The Psychology of Networking

Dr. Joseph Barber, Senior Associate Director

With my Ph.D. in animal behavior, I have been specifically trained to identify and analyze subtle changes in the behavior of animals that I observe. The fact that I spent my time watching chickens for my Ph.D. will become relevant in a moment as I start talking about networking.

As an animal behaviorist, I have developed testable hypotheses about why behavior changes, and what internal or external factors lead to such changes. As a career adviser, I still use this scientific knowledge when it comes to human behavior — we are just another type of animal, after all.

One of the most interesting career-related situations that is rich with behavior is networking. It is a social behavior, which tend to be some of the most complex behaviors we see in the animal kingdom. If I were trying to create a behavioral ethogram (a well-defined list of behaviors that observers can use when collecting data on behavior), I might define networking along the lines of a social, affiliative interaction involving direct or indirect physical or vocal communication between at least two individuals

If that is all networking is, then why can it seem so stressful to many of us? In terms of how I, and the many introverts like me, perceive networking, I might change the definition slightly to state: a social affiliative interaction involving direct or indirect physical or vocal communication between at least two individuals that results in a measurable stress response — and one individual (or possibly even both) running back to their room, hiding under their covers and vowing never to do it again.

That’s not a scientific definition, but it is an accurate description of how many people experience networking events. That is how I experience them when faced with meeting lots of new people in a short, concentrated space of time (hello, every conference I have attended). Given that I studied chickens, perhaps my interest in understanding the struggles to network effectively makes a little more sense. If chickens were actually a cowardly species (they are not — read this), then I would certainly associate myself with them when it comes to networking.

But chickens are not cowardly in the least. They are highly social, superinquisitive, and have been shown in research to identify up to 90 other chickens they have interacted with as familiar. They are probably much better networkers than I will ever be — if they didn’t peck the living daylights out of unfamiliar birds they meet and tread in their own poop, that is. So, if chickens can actually be effective networkers in their own way, then there is also plenty of hope for those of us who find some parts of the networking experience draining and overwhelming at times. Here are some best practices for introverts based in the science of animal behavior, more or less:

Keep your social groups small. Speaking with another person where the ratio is one to one rather than one to many is always going to be easier to manage. You will find that this networking approach suddenly just feels like having a conversation and is not bad at all. It is OK to avoid large networking events, or find opportunities for small groups conversations within them, and it is great to prioritize one-on-one informational interviews with people in career fields that interest you.

Focus on the needs of others to distract you from any negative emotional states. One of the key approaches to any networking outreach is to make sure the person with whom you are interacting feels positive about that interaction. I have talked about the fear response I get if someone asks if they can “just grab a coffee” here. If someone I didn’t know reached out and asked if I could forward their résumé on to a hiring manager in my office, it would first make me feel a little awkward — how can I say no politely other than just ignoring the request? — and then perhaps a little angry. Why am I now spending so much time worrying about how to say no? Why would this person put me in a position to be angry at myself? All of these negative feelings become connected with the person who reached out to me.

So how do you make people feel positive? You value them for who they are and appreciate what they are willing to share, and you thank them — authentically and often. For example, if someone were to reach out to me and ask what some of the trends are in the field of career professionalism for Ph.D.s and postdocs, I would need to give this some serious thought. Serious thought takes time, and even after a lot of this time, I still wouldn’t be able to come up with a very satisfying answer for this high-level question. The question is a neutral one — it doesn’t make me feel bad, but it doesn’t leave me feeling positive.

Now, if I was asked what I have done at Penn to focus on career professionalism for Ph.D.s, it wouldn’t require deep thinking. It would give me an opportunity to talk about something I have invested lots of time in already and that am likely to be engaged by. If the person I am talking to finds hearing about the approaches I have taken here to be interesting and valuable, then that is going to make me feel good.

Positively reinforce behaviors you want to see more frequently. If you have given your dog or cat a treat immediately after they have performed a behavior you like and want to see more of, then you are engaged in the process of positive reinforcement training. Once an animal makes a connection between a behavior and the reward, the behavior will occur more often.

You can train most animals in this way. If you want people you meet through your networking outreach to continue to provide you with great insight, then make sure that you positively reinforce them, too. Always send a thank-you note or email to people who have taken the time to speak with you within 24 hours after meeting them. This works just as effectively after speaking with employers at a career fair or an actual job interview. The longer you wait, the less effective the reinforcement is.

If a contact you have met suggests someone else you can speak with, go ahead and do so. Thank your new contact after you have met them, and then get back in contact with your initial contact to tell them how helpful your conversation was with the person they recommended. Everyone likes to be thanked. If you are authentic in your thanks, you might find that your contact is more willing to suggest someone else that they know as your next outreach contact.

Use your social connectors effectively. People often ask me how they can tap in to the many second-degree connections that they have on LinkedIn. (Second-degree connections are people whom you don’t know but someone whom you know does know). That is a fantastic way to grow your networking and make the sometimes scary step of reaching out to new people much more effective.

Let’s say I want to reach out to James, who works as a senior scientist in a biotech firm I am interested in. I don’t know James, but I see that I am connected to Magda on LinkedIn, and Magda is connected to James. I can leverage my existing relationship with Magda in one of three ways to establish a connection with James. I could ask Magda to share the email she has for James. First-degree connections on LinkedIn can see each other’s email addresses. With this email, I could reach out directly, but that could still be a hit-or-miss approach if I don’t leverage my social connections. Or I could ask Magda to introduce me to James. Magda might send an email to James directly, copying me in and asking if James would be able to speak with me. That is the most effective approach, but it requires the most effort from Magda. As a third alternative and good middle-ground approach is to ask Magda if I can use her name when reach out to James. For example, I might write:

“Hi, James, I saw on LinkedIn that we both know Magda Patel. I worked with her for a couple of years at Penn in the student consulting club. I contacted Magda, and she highly recommend that I reach out to you and said that you would be a great person to ask about some of the genetic sequencing projects at your company. This is an area I am very interested in exploring in terms of industry career paths, and so I would love to hear a little about your experience in this field. Can I send you a couple of quick questions by email or set up a time to chat on the phone, if that is easier? This would be so helpful in my exploration of possible paths to focus on when I graduate next year.”

The reason that James might be more likely to respond to this email is that he might not want to lose his social standing and reputation that he now feels he has with other people — in this case, Magda. If Magda highly recommends him, and says he is such a great person to talk with, and then he turns down my request, it will result in an immediate loss of perceived status. If I reached out to James directly without involving Magda, he could easily ignore my outreach without feeling too bad. As soon as another person is involved, James is likely to be much more aware of how he is perceived both by me and the person whom he knows. The truth is, I may have just asked Magda if she recommended James and thought he would be great to reach out to, and she might have just said yes, but that is good enough to get the social connection process started.

So there you go: some easy to use, biologically sound, behavioral-based approaches to help you (and your chickens) with networking!