Job Hunting After Graduation?

Employers will typically judge whether or not to hire a candidate on these three areas: 

1. Experience
2. Culture
3. Gut Feeling

Let's break these down a little bit more, starting with experience for today. This will be a three part series. 

Many of you are just graduating college. What did you do during your time in school? It can be hard to get experience in the exact field you're trying to pursue for your career path. That doesn't really matter as much as an applicant who has shown that he/she was very balanced during college.

Many college grads have a hard time finding jobs during the 6-12 months after they graduate.Experience. Tangible work experience involves anything outside what an average student would do for summer work (pouring coffee, etc.). An elevated level or responsibility is key. Internships typically provide the answer to this. Job shadowing is great, but if you can find something where they'll actually give you a decent amount of responsibility, it's perfect. For grades, a perfect 4.0 GPA is hardly ever required, something above a 3.0 GPA is usually a standard. They're not necessarily looking for competence here; it's important that you can stick with something for a decent period of time (4-5 years in the case of getting a Bachelor's Degree).

Culture. Being able to effectively work in group projects is a must have. The Association of American Colleges and Universities rates the ability to work well in teams as the number one skill employers are looking for. Many employers will also do their interviews over lunch or dinner. They do this to see how you treat the wait staff. I've personally found that a boss typically treats their employees the same way they do the wait stuff when they go out to eat. 

Gut feeling. Everyone I have ever talked to that does a substantial amount of interviewing has always said that they hire the majority of their employees from their first impression of the person and their gut feeling after they leave the interview. When it comes to impressing the interviewer, there are a few things you must make sure to do: preparation is key (do you know how the company works? were you able to answer basic interview questions effectively? Here's Monster.com's list of potential interview ?'s), did you firmly shake hands and lastly if you were able to demonstrate your strengths and talk about your weaknesses through effective story telling. 

Harvard University also recommends getting as many interview opportunities as possible through networking. If you have a friend who works for the company you want to work with, have them help you set up the interview and recommend you (this may sound like a no brainer...but make sure to check out the Harvard University link above so you can build more of those types of relationships). It will help tremendously with the "gut feeling" aspect of getting hired. 

Your Job As A Marketer

Marketing is fun. It’s sexy. It’s exciting.

As a marketer, you're helping drive more leads into a business and sometimes managing a company's reputation through PR, etc. 

Marketing is all about your mindset. Marketers are constantly looking for different and better ways of doing business. Afterall, that's how businesses grow. What makes a marketer different from most jobs, is that they don't look for a way to just repeat a system that already works. The goal is to make it better. 

Here are what businesses are looking for from marketing consultants:

1. Show me a way to reach out to new customers. There isn’t a single business that’s saturated its entire market. No one has 100% market share. So how can you reach out to those customers? The Internet is where it's at right now. Facebook is the first place you need to look. 
2. Show me a way to get business in a less expensive way. Is it costing a lot of money to get customers? The first place you can look in the budget is where money is being spent on things you can't measure a direct ROI with. Find pieces in their marketing strategy that do not generate a direct and measurable result. 
3. Show me a way to do business with my clients in a more profitable way. Negotiation is key. Your job as a marketer isn't necessarily to help them with their accounting, but you can find things related to marketing that they're using other vendors for and help them negotiate lower prices. 
4. Show me a way to make doing business easier. What’s the process flow from the time a customer signs up to when the service is performed or the product is delivered? Find a way to automate and measure your marketing efforts more efficiently.
5. Show me a way to keep my client base and earn referrals. How many clients are coming back for more business versus those that get turned over? Of their loyal clients, how many are referring others to do business with them? Build marketing strategies around getting more referrals, they're the cheapest leads.

Have any other ideas? 

The Internet and Your Personal Brand

Ever “Googled” your name before? What popped up? Was it something on a website like this?

If it was, you might be in a little more trouble than you think.

In 2010, 70% of employers admitted to not hiring someone after they looked at their Facebook profile. That percentage is probably much higher now.

Whether you like it or not, employers are going to look all over the internet to dig up dirt on their applicants.

Here are 5 easy things you can do to create a better personal brand for yourself on the Internt.

1. Make everything private. Make everything on your Facebook page private. Your friends should be the only people who get to look your posts, comments and pictures (unless you're posting things others would find value in as well).
2. Don’t accept friend requests on Facebook from people you don’t know. There are all kinds of weird people that will try adding you, and most people just accept their request. They could be potential employers! 
3. Post appropriate content. Unlike Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are “Google Friendly.” Be smart about what you put up. Anything you put on those forms of social media will pop up in Google searches.
4. Get a LinkedIn account. Get as much information as you can on your profile that pertains to your resume. Employers are very active about recruiting these days and you will get job offers if you’ve set your profile up properly. It will also pop up on Google when someone types in your name.
5. Start a blog. There are a ton of free blogging sites: Blogger, Wordpress, etc. Start writing about whatever you’re interested in or feel like writing about. Blogs are big with search engines and will also pop up when you are “Googled.”

What are your thoughts? Any experiences you can talk or share about? 

EO Alchemy Update

A loser loses, and a winner wins. 

That’s a pretty powerful statement. Sit back and think about it for a minute. It’s a simple concept; it’s what separates the most influential 10% of the people in the world…with everybody else.

Magic Johnson said those words at the EO Alchemy event on Friday. He was the keynote speaker for the day. The guy’s charisma was just incredible.

For an hour, he gave his life story and then answered questions. He has a “rags to riches” story like a lot of really successful people do, but he didn’t talk about it too much.

Magic’s biggest challenge in the business world was breaking into it. He couldn’t keep from being thought of as a “dumb jock.”

“No one would take me seriously when I wanted to sit down with them. Most of the time they simply used it as a photo and autograph opportunity.”

Since then, Magic Johnson has grown his company, the Magic Johnson Foundation, to a multi-million dollar business that helps companies branch out from suburban to urban markets – something that most large corporations fail at. He's done work with ESPN, Starbucks and Best Buy to name a few. 

His philosophy is to “find where the demand in the marketplace is and then build a business around the customer,” and he’s been doing just that. 

One thing we can always do is work hard. Never be satisfied. If you don't dream it, you can never become it.

EO Alchemy Event This Afternoon!

The largest entrepreneurial conference this year on the west coast started yesterday and is going through today and tomorrow. 

EO Alchemy is a "group of people dedicated to the elevation of the human spirit and mind, and whose greatest ability is to transmute dreams into realities." The group is made up of Entrepreneurs from around the world who currently run businesses larger than $1 million in annual revenue. 

The event is taking place in Hollywood, CA and is the U.S. Western Region's first ever Western Regional Conference. 

Speakers this year include: Magic Johnson, John Paul DeJoria, Biz Stone, Reon Schutte, Michael Caito, Matthew Kennedy Stewart to name a few. 

I will be there! More news to come on this after the event this afternoon.