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In the early 1990s, Bruce Webster wrote and published The Art of ‘Ware (M&T Books, 1995), a reinterpretation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Basically, Webster applied Sun Tzu’s work to creating and marketing IT products. Webster recently updated his original version. If you’re a Sun Tzu fan, you’ll enjoy what Webster has done. (Photo from Wikipedia)
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My buddy, Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, had a strong reaction to last week’s post about PR by Marge Zable Fisher. So much so that he penned an alternate solution to the challenge of a good client-agency relationship: Don’t hire an agency and do it yourself. Here’s what he wrote.
Nobody knows if Charlemagne could read because an advisor always read aloud for him. It was considered humbling for the king to do anything himself. The same fears drive the most captivating, articulate entrepreneurs to hire publicists. Who wants to risk looking like a fool? As a result, hardly anyone in technology ever tries to talk to a journalist by herself—except Guy, of course.
That’s too bad. Just the other day a newspaper’s technology editor told me, “It’s just so hard to meet entrepreneurs these days. You always get their PR people.” A dozen entrepreneurs sprang to mind who would kill to tell their stories. All have agencies. So what I am recommending is not howto manage an agency, but something more radical: not hiring an agency at all. Here are ten reasons why.
The truth will set you free. Over and over, publicists tell their clients to stick to the agreed-upon message to avoid mistakes but this guarantees you’ll never say anything thoughtful or spontaneous. Maybe your company has two and a half customers. So what? If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably not dumping toxins into a river or selling cigarettes to teenagers. Let GE and Philip Morris retain agencies. If you were stripped absolutely naked for the world to see, a few warts might show up, but more people would do business with you. Once you get comfortable with that, you’re ready to deal with the press on your own.
The rolodex is already online. Almost every journalist publishes his e-mail address, and many have a blog. You can also use LinkedIn and Jigsaw. The point is that you can communicate with journalists without a PR person. Usually a sincere note from an entrepreneur is enough to start a conversation. Pick out something good that the journalist wrote and say what you really think. Make a top-five list of what your company has learned in its first six months. Suggest an idea for a story. Keep it short; ask for nothing. It’ll mean a lot more coming from you rather than a publicist. Odds are you’ll hear back.
You don’t have to seem all grown-up and boring. Every entrepreneur feels vaguely disreputable. Maybe you drive a crappy car. Maybe you never went to prom. There are enough stuffed suits in this world to fill fifteen Wall Street Journals a day. As anyone who watches American Idol will tell you, what this spun-out, over-hyped world is absolutely famished for is a little genuine personality. And, outside of your technology, it’s probably the only thing you have. So stop trying to be like IBM and just be yourself.
Ideas are the precious things. Most entrepreneurs are bursting with unconventional ideas: Maybe you think an ad-crazy Silicon Valley has lost its nerve; maybe you’re a grown woman delivering pizzas to diffident recruits in Stanford’s computer science lab; maybe you’ve always wanted to meet the hairy guy living in a trailer park who sends you the inspired spam about mail-order pheromones. These are the kinds of ideas that journalists love.
Imagine how you would finish this sentence if you were having two beers with your best friend: “You know the strangest thing about what we’re going through is …” What comes next is your best story idea. Even if the story isn’t about your company, you’ll be a part of the conversation. The rest will come naturally.
Let the fur fly. When proposing a story, consider Michael Jordan’s response when asked how much to bet on golf: “Whatever makes you nervous.” If there’s no drama, there’s no story. Most publicists are terrified of a genuine story with real characters and an unpredictable outcome, so no journalists are allowed into your data center on launch day nor can they mingle with customers at your user conference. As an entrepreneur, you’re going to be more comfortable with risk than a publicist. And you won’t win as a start-up without taking risks, over and over again.
Nerd-to-nerd networks are where it all happens—and value speed in everything you do. Most publicists feel threatened by the Internet’s systems of attribution, glorification and punishment, where Digg can make an obscure posting more important than the evening news. Agencies don’t have the street cred, the technical chops, the instinct for candor, the distinct voice and, above all, the commitment to speed to engage in a meaningful conversation with the blogosphere. In the thick of things, you don’t want to have to coordinate with consultants or get permission from anybody. Just ask John Kerry.
Even bad coverage isn’t so bad. I was once profiled in a national business magazine doing odd things in my underwear. It was terrible; I lay face down on a couch for an hour after reading it. And you know what? It wasn’t that bad. Never whine to the journalist about coverage, avoid narcissistic story-lines, and don’t worry if you make a few mistakes.
Go in alone. It’s hard to make a move when your dad drives you on a date or to sound contrite about the neighbor’s begonias with your mom standing behind you. It’s just as hard to connect with a journalist when a publicist is always at your side. You often need a candid space in which you can say what you really think. Just bring a notebook so you can jot down any follow-up items and you’ll be fine.
Passion + expertise = credibility. A publicist will never have your passion for your project, and she’ll never have as many colorful customer stories as you do. A friend of mine once told me about “the greatest idea in the history of capitalism,” which turned out to be a semi-pornographic massive multi-player video game. A publicist would never have pitched it as well as he did.
Make time. Most entrepreneurs say they don’t have time for DIY PR. Sure, it takes a while to spam 100 journalists with every press release. But that doesn’t work anyway. Focus on a few big ideas, and you can tell them yourself. Use a feed-reader and Google alerts to track industry news and company mentions. Conveying your company’s story in a personable, compelling way is one of your most important jobs.
(Who’s counting?) Hire an employee, not an agency. When you need help, hire a person, not an agency. This is especially important if you’re not interested in journalism. And if you can afford it at all, it’s worth hiring an employee rather than a contractor. You want someone who can dive into what you’re doing whole hog because he believes in it, without all the staff churn and management overhead of an agency.
What should you look for in this employee? The worst PR person has contempt for journalists because he either believes journalists can be easily spun or because he becomes aggravated when they can’t. The three best questions to ask when interviewing a publicist are “Who are your favorite writers in journalism?” Why are they your favorites?”—so you can find someone who actually cares about the craft of journalism—and “What is an example of a feature story that you’ve pitched?”—so you can find someone excited about ideas.
Also, ask for a writing sample. As with any other position, value brains, drive and a soft touch over looks. Most of all, don’t hire anyone fake. Of course, you’ll need to make it clear that the PR person won’t be managing an agency.
A battalion of agency publicists will try to terrify you about the perils of launching your company without their expertise, but anyone who tries to scare you from DIY PR, starting a company, or buying a house online usually isn’t someone an entrepreneur should heed.
Check out Launch: Silicon Valley 2007. It’s a half-day conference featuring thirty tech startups who are launching new products and services. Think of it as a poor man’s Demo.
June 5thI’ll be giving a speech called “How I Launched a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for only $10,918.09” at the conference.
Margie Zable Fisher runs theprsite.com. Every day someone tells her that he or she has been “burned” by a PR firm, and Margie’s goal is to help small business find the right PR firm. I asked her to provide the top ten reasons why PR doesn’t work:
The client doesn’t understand the publicity process. PR folks need to better educate people about how publicity works. The first thing many clients ask is, “Can you get me on Oprah or the front page of the Wall Street Journal?” The answer might be “yes,” but the process to get to the “yes” may take months or years, and may first include a series of smaller placements.
The scope of work is not detailed and agreed upon by both parties. Here’s a typical example: a client signs an agreement to spend $3,000 per month. Client expects to get three publicity placements per month. PR person expects to work 20 hours, regardless of the outcome. The inevitable disconnect leads to customer frustration and the feeling of being “burned.”
The client has not been properly trained on how to communicate with the media. Proper training for interviews is crucial; otherwise, key messages can be misconstrued, and even negative stories can result. Clients seldom blame themselves when this happens.
The client and the PR person or firm are not a good match. Example: Client hears about a local PR person, meets and likes the PR person, and figures it’s a good match. Or the client chooses the lowest price PR option. And the PR person, instead of referring the client to another practitioner who is a better fit, decides to take on the client—and the money.
The client has not gotten results quickly enough and ends the relationship too soon. Client should plan on conducting a campaign for a minimum of six months. And even that is aggressive. A year should really be the bare minimum to commit to PR The media works on its own timetable, which is usually much longer than the client’s.
PR people don’t explain the kind of publicity placements a client will most likely receive. Every client wants a big profile of the company on the cover of a major magazine or newspaper, but most stories are about a “trend,” several companies, or some recent news with quotes from experts. Profiles are few and far between. Yet, instead of explaining this, PR people often tell potential clients what they want to hear, in order to get the business.
Clients don’t realize that what happens after you get the publicity coverage is sometimes more important than the actual placement. My smartest client didn’t care if he got a quote or a profile—he just wanted to be included in major media. When it was time to get an agent and publisher for his book, he handed them a list of all his media placements, and this clinched the deal. The agent and publisher figured that if all of the major media was willing to include him as a source, then he must have something important to say.
Clients refuse to be flexible on their story angles. One of my clients once said to me, “We only want profiles.” When the media wasn’t interested, they refused to consider other story angles that the media was interested in. Now I make sure clients are willing to have us pitch three to four angles.
Clients get upset when the media coverage is not 100% accurate or not the kind of coverage that they wanted. One of my former clients said, “That TV segment on me was only a minute long.” When I explained that length of time was impressive in TV Land, she refused to understand.
Clients won’t change their schedules for the media. Clients need to drop everything if the media calls. This may be inconvenient, but the media waits for no one. If you want to be a “media darling,” then you need to make yourself available at any time. Those who do will reap the best benefits and placements.
I recently visited the worldwide headquarters of Threadless in Chicago and took a boatload of pictures. I’ve been to the offices of many startups, but few compare to Threadless’s offices in coolness.
The shirt is called “Sacrifice,” and it was designed by David Habben
The ability to print boarding passes for flights is a great convenience. Unfortunately, half the time you’re in a hotel room when you check-in online and can’t print the boarding pass.
Some airlines (Northwest for one, but I always fly United) will fax the boarding pass to you—but this still requires that you get the fax. Unfortunately, lots of things can happen between the hotel fax and your room—for example, the business center is closed until after you depart.
The Hyatt Regency hotel at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois has a very helpful solution to this problem: an airline board pass printing kiosk. It’s very helpful and shows that someone was thinking about the customer. I hope that the person who thought of the kiosk sees this blog posting.
Anastasia Goodstein covers Generation Y in her blog YPulse. She has worked for Current TV, AOL, and Oxygen TV. She recently published a book that will help you understand the online activities of young people called Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online
Question: How does being totally wired change being a teenager?
Answer: Teenagers are connected to each other, lots more information, and media 24/7. They need parents and adults to set limits on this use and act as guides as to what’s credible as well as to help them be more media and marketing savvy. It means that there is a new way of communicating that adds an element of distance, the possibility of anonymity, and the reality of much of this communication is public or can easily be made public.
Question: What are the positives and negatives of this development?
On the positive side, teens can say more digitally than they might feel comfortable with sharing in person. On the negative side, you can be meaner when you can’t see that person’s reaction—this has led to the new term cyberbullying. People should check out Cyberbully 411.
Teens are learning, often by making mistakes, that what they post online can be seen by more than just their friends. They are learning that what they post online or what others post about them, can be hard to take down, and that it can spread virally to lots more people. All of the impulses, motivations, desires, and feelings around being a teen haven’t changed, but technology definitely raises new issues and challenges we all have to deal with.
Answer: Teens put the “social” in social networking. Being a teen is all about individuating from your parents and spending more time with peers. We did this by hanging out in malls, parks and parking lots. Today’s teens are much more scheduled and structured, and today’s parents are more reluctant to let teens hang out unsupervised.
MySpace and other social networks have become virtual hangouts where teens can socialize without parental supervision. Teens also love decorating their MySpace pages as a way to tell the world who they are (at this week!) and find other teens who may be interested in the same things: for example, cars, video games, animal rights, and goth fashion.
Teens love being able to communicate to all of their friends with a bulletin and getting feedback through comments. Plus we all know high school is all about social status—now it can be quantified, exaggerated or minimized with the number of friends on your MySpace profile.
Question: Is banning MySpace and other social networks by schools a smart thing?
Answer: I advocate educating as opposed to legislating. Schools should bust teens for using MySpace when they shouldn’t be but don’t block it. Educators have a role to play in teaching teens when it’s appropriate to be on MySpace and when it isn’t, as well as what is kosher to post and what isn’t—and what it means to maintain a public profile.
Blocking technology doesn’t teach teens how to use technology safely and ethically or how to think critically about the sites they visit. For many low income teens who still may not have computers or access to the internet at home, a school library, public library or federally funded after school program are often the only places they can participate in Web 2.0 at all. If we block and ban these sites, a whole population will miss out on what their peers have access to at home.
Question: Is the danger of online predators exaggerated?
Answer: Yes. They’re out there, for sure, and parents should be talking to tweens and teens about how to be smart and safe online, i.e. don’t talk to strangers – even those who say they are teens, don’t post too much personal information, etc. But the reality is that more kids are abducted by someone they know, usually an estranged parent or relative than by strangers.
Kids and tweens are much more vulnerable to being manipulated by online predators and are usually experimenting with identity themselves at that age, so they may venture into an adult chat room and say they are 25 “just for fun.” Older teens mostly just ignore creepy adults, reject them as friends or tell them to go away. They’re there to socialize with their friends, most of whom they already have relationships with offline.
Question: Why do teenagers blog?
Answer: Some teens still keep written diaries with their deepest thoughts scrawled in them hidden away in their bedrooms, but this generation is more comfortable putting that stuff out there for their friends—and often the general public—to read.
Most teens blog as yet another way to communicate with their friends. They are more about the commenting back and forth and keeping the conversation going than writing lengthy blog posts. That said, there are lots of teens who post poetry and photographs and who actively journal on their blogs as well as teens who blog about specific topics like tech or music. Check out this teen-run blog network: Random Shapes.
Question: What is healthy sexual behavior for a teenager?
Answer: That’s a tricky question. I believe in teaching teens about human sexuality with a more holistic and developmental approach vs. focusing on just whether or not to have it and what kinds of diseases you can catch if you do.
A really positive and accurate site for teens about sex is Sex, etc. Teens meeting strangers online to “hook up” is rare—it does happen, but I would venture to say it’s a teen who is already engaging in other kinds of high-risk behaviors. Is “cybering” healthy sexual activity? I’m not a psychologist, but it’s definitely safe sex!
Question: What big brands truly “get” teenagers?
Answer: I’m not saying this just because you worked with Apple, but ever since the iPod launched, teens love Apple as much as any Mac fanatic. And it’s not that Apple is marketing to them specifically, they just have created great products and design that teens are crazy about. While MTV has ceded some of its trendsetting dominance to the internet, you can’t underestimate their understanding of teens and how to reach them. Other brands teens love: Nike, Toyota Scion, Xbox, Sony PS2/PSP, and Nintendo.
Question: Coming back to MySpace, can one make the case that MySpace teaches computer and writing skills?
Answer: Any time teens are playing around with language, whether it’s coming up with a new acronym for IM or a text message, it’s a good thing—even if you have to tell them not to use shorthand in their English papers. Writing on a MySpace blog, writing messages to each other, or commenting all involves writing and language skills.
It’s not the same as structured writing in school, but any time teens are expressing themselves through the written or typed word, it can only help their writing skills. And being on MySpace definitely teaches computer skills—teens spend hours on layouts for the pages, embedding video, photos and widgets and learning how to navigate and use new sites. They have a better understanding of Web 2.0 than many adults, including their parents and teachers!
You can also read an excerpt and listen to her radio interview
I liked Penelope Trunk's interview so much that I asked her for more material. Here's her list of the nine biggest workplace myths:
You’ll be happier if you have a job you like.
The correlation between your happiness and your job is overrated. The most important factors, by far, are your optimism levels and your personal relationships. If you are a pessimist, a great job can’t overcome that. (Think of the jerks at the top.) And if you have great friends and family, you can probably be happy even if you hate your job (imagine a garbage collector who’s in love).
Job-hopping will hurt you.
Job hopping is one of the best ways to maintain passion and personal growth in your careers. And here’s some good news for hoppers: Most people will have eight jobs between the time they are eighteen and thirty. This means most young workers are job hopping. So hiring managers have no choice but to hire job hoppers. Ride this wave and try a lot of jobs out yourself.
The glass ceiling still exists.
The glass ceiling is over, not because people crashed through, but because people are not looking up. Life above the glass ceiling is 100-hour weeks, working for someone else, and no time for friends and family. And it’s not only women who are saying no to the ladder up: Men are as well. People want to customize success for themselves, not climb someone else rungs. So if no one is climbing to the top, the glass ceiling isn’t keeping anyone down.
Office politics is about backstabbing.
The people who are most effective at office politics are people who are genuinely nice. Office politics is about helping people to get what they want. This means you have to take the time to figure out what someone cares about, and then think about how you can help him or her to get it. You need to always have your ears open for when you can help. If you do this, you don’t have to strong arm people or manipulate them. Your authentic caring will inspire people to help you when you need it.
Do good work, and you’ll do fine.
For one thing, no one knows what the heck you’re doing in your cube if you’re not telling them. So when you do good work, let people know. It is not crazy to toot your own horn--it’s crazy to think someone will do it for you. Also, if you do good work but you’re a jerk, people will judge your work to be sub par. So you could say that good work really only matters if your co-workers enjoy hearing about it from you.
You need a good resume.
Only ten percent of jobs come from sending a blind resume. Most people get jobs by leveraging their network. Once you have a connection, the person looks at your resume to make sure there are no red flags. So you need a competent resume and an excellent network. This means you should stop stressing about which verb to use on the second line of your third job. Go talk to someone instead.
People with good networks are good at networking.
Just be nice, take genuine interest in the people you meet, and keep in touch with people you like. This will create a group of people who are invested in helping you because they know you and appreciate you. Use LinkedIn to leverage those peoples’ networks, and you just got yourself a very strong network by simply hanging out with the people you like.
Everyone can put in a seventy-hour week. It doesn’t mean you’re doing good work. So here’s an idea: Make sure you’re not the hardest worker. Take a long lunch. Get all your work done early. Grand thinking requires space, flexibility and time. So let people see you staring at the wall. They’ll know you’re a person with big ideas and taking time to think makes you more valuable.
Create the shiny brand of you!
There is no magic formula to having a great career except to be you. Really you. Know who you are and have the humility to understand that self-knowledge is a never-ending journey. Figure out how to do what you love, and you’ll be great at it. Offer your true, good-natured self to other people and you’ll have a great network. Those who stand out as leaders have a notable authenticity that enables them to make genuinely meaningful connections with a wide range of people. Authenticity is a tool for changing the world by doing good.
I’ll be speaking at the Salesforce Developer Conference on Monday. This is a free event. I learned something recently: Salesforce.com is really a software-as-service “platform” that has applicability beyond “salesforce automation.” Ergo, this conference is also for software entrepreneurs. Hope to see you there.
Penelope Trunk is the author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.
My two favorite answers in this interview are #7 and #10. If I had a nickel for every time I had to answer questions regarding getting an MBA and a first job out of college, I would own my own ice rink by now.
Question: How much money does it take to be happy?
Answer: It takes about $40,000. It does not matter how many kids you have or what city you live in—that’s splitting hairs because peoples’ happiness levels are largely based on their level of optimism and the quality of their relationships. So as long as you have enough money for food and shelter, your optimism level kicks in to dictate how happy you are.
Question: Is it more important to be competent or likable?
Answer: People would actually rather work with someone who is incompetent and likeable than competent and unlikable. Most people nod in agreement when they read this. It’s the unlikable people who form arguments in their head.
But there’s more. At work, if you are unlikable, people start thinking you are less competent. So stop thinking you can skate by on your genius IQ because you can’t. You need emotional intelligence as well. This situation is so pronounced that there are special-education classrooms rife with kids who could read when they were three. Social skills matter as much as intelligence when it comes to long-term success, even for the geniuses.
Question: Should I sue a boss who is sexually harassing me?
Answer: In most cases, you will destroy your career if you report sexual harassment. So unless you are in physical danger, you should not report harassment. The laws governing sexual harassment don’t protect women who report. The law protects companies from being sued by the women who report. Human resource professionals are trained to protect the company, not the woman who reports.
When you report harassment it is usually the case that you lose your job through retaliation. Retaliation is illegal but nearly impossible to prove in court. And, even if you could prove it in court, you would go through emotional hell, with no salary, and high-profile drama that makes you unable to get another job. All this for a settlement that will almost certainly not enable you to retire.
This is simply how the legal system works. I am not saying this is okay. But I’m saying that if you care about your career, you’ll do everything possible to not report. Most women are not in the position to sacrifice their career—and their earning power—in the name of trying to bring down one harasser. The legal system needs to step in and take care of this.
Question: When should I ask for a promotion?
Answer: Maybe never. The average salary increase is four percent. Is that going to change your life in any meaningful way? On top of that, someone is promoting you up their ladder, but their ladder is not necessarily your best path. So stay focused on where you want to go instead of the paths other people have created for you.
Getting a promotion is so last century. Instead of letting last century’s carrots dictate your workplace rewards, figure out what will be really meaningful to you: training, mentoring, flex time, whatever it is that means more than four percent more money. These are all things that can really improve your life and your career.
Question: Is being a generalist or a specialist the path to the executive suite?
Answer: In Hollywood, the best way to get your pick of any role in the industry is to become a specialist—funny guy, tough girl, action hero—get known for being the best at something, and then use that star-power to branch out. The same is true in business.
Jobs that don’t require a specialty are low level. To move up you need to be great at something, and you have to let people know what you don’t do. No one is great at everything. Even if your goal is not to get to the executive suite, you should specialize. When you want to take five months off to hike in Tibet, if you are easily replaced, you will be. If you have a skill that is hard to duplicate, your job will be there for you when you get back.
Question: What do I do about the gaps in my resume when I traveled or couldn’t find a job?
Answer: Talk about them well. A gap is really bad if you spent your days on your sofa watching cartoons. But if you watched cartoons to prepare for your next career move into children’s programming, then you sound focused and driven. Same TV, same sofa, two different stories.
People don’t want to hear your life story. This is good news for people with sofa stints. In almost all cases, you learn something during a gap. Tell a great story about what you’ve learned and where you’re going, and your gap won’t get center stage. Leaving out details is not about lying; it’s about telling good stories.
Question: Will getting an MBA or any other type of advanced degree be a good use of time and money since I can’t find a job?
Answer: No. If you can’t find a job, then you should invest in something like better grooming, or a better resume, or a coach for poor social skills. These are the things that keep people from getting jobs. Instead of running back to school, figure out why you can’t get a job, because maybe it’s something that a degree can’t overcome.
Grad school generally makes you less employable, not more employable. For example, people who get a graduate degree in the humanities would have had a better chance of surviving the Titanic than getting a tenured teaching job.
Unless you are going to a top business school at the beginning of your career, you should not stop working in order to get the degree. Go to night school because you will not make up for the loss of income with the extra credential.
Law school is one of the only graduate degrees that makes you more employable. Unfortunately it makes you more employable in the profession where people are more unhappy. Law school rewards perfectionism, and perfectionism is a risk factor for depression. Lawyers have little control over their work and hours, because they are at the beck-and-call of their clients, and many are constantly working with clients who have problems lawyers cannot solve. These two traits in a job—lack of control over workload and compromised ability to reach stated goals—are the two biggest causes for burnout in jobs.
[May I interject here? I went to law school for two weeks and quit when I was young! Guy]
Question: What’s the ideal length of a resume in a world where every resume is electronic and not viewed printed out on paper?
Answer: A page. Still. Your resume is a marketing document, not a summary of your life, so every line should be about an accomplishment. The more amazing your accomplishments, the fewer you need to list. For example, if you can write “Evangelized Macintosh and made it one of the most beloved brands in the world,” then you don’t need any other sales and marketing bullets on your resume.
If you have totally lost perspective, and you think you have two page’s worth of incredible and relevant achievements, consider that hiring managers spend ten seconds evaluating a resume, and a scanner looks for ten keywords, which certainly fit on one page.
So unless you have a great connection with the hiring manager, and you know he’ll look at both pages, don’t bother sending them. And if you do have that great connection then you are probably going to get an interview even if your resume sucks.
Question: How should I prepare for an interview?
Answer: An interview is a test you can study for. So memorize answers to the fifty most common questions. Most interviewers ask standard variations on standard questions, and there are right answers to these questions.
Whether you are a stripper or a CIA agent, the answer to the question, “What is your weakness?” is a story about how your weakness interfered at work—in a specific situation—and you overcame it. Most of your other answers should be stories, too. This means you need to make them up before you get to the interview. Stories of your life are memorable. Lists of your life are not. Be memorable if you want to be hired.
Another way to prepare is to go to the gym right before the interview. It doesn’t matter if you never go to the gym—although you should, because people who workout regularly are more successful in their careers. You should go right before an interview because people judge you first on your appearance, and if do heavy lifting with your back and stomach muscles you will stand up much straighter in the interview. This will make you look more confident, which is half the battle in being judged by appearance.
Question: What’s the right strategy for the search for a first job out of college?
Answer: Don’t place too much importance on your first job. You’ll have a lot more. Most people have eight jobs before they turn thirty, and that’s fine. It is nearly impossible to know what career will be a good fit for you until you start trying things. So give yourself the latitude to try a lot. And don’t get hung up on a big soul search. To land a great job, you don’t need to know the meaning of life, just the meaning of hard work.
Question: Do only losers live at home after college?
Answer: On some level it would be insane not to move back home, which is why more than fifty percent of graduating seniors do it. Moving back to your parent’s house is a smart step toward finding a career that’s right for you.
Entry level jobs typically cannot cover the cost of rent, college loan payments, and insurance premiums—all of which are rising faster than wages. If you don’t have to worry about paying rent, you have more flexibility to wait for the right job and to take a job that feels very right but pays very poorly. The rise of the prestigious but unpaid internship intersects perfectly with trend to move back home.
Question: What should I do if I work for a jerk?
Answer: Leave. I know there are classic Bob Sutton examples of revered jerks like Steve Jobs, but I wonder about the people who put up with him. Can they not find another visionary to work for who is not such a jerk?
Staying in a job like this makes you look bad. People wonder why you put up with it. And, frankly, you should too. It’s like being an abused wife. The wife who stays always defends the relationship by how much she gets out of it, but to everyone else it is obvious that she should leave. The problem is a loss of personal perspective.
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