Young and Employed

I haven’t had a chance to write in a few weeks, but I am working on it. In the meantime, I read an interesting piece in the Boston Globe today that I would like to share: http://www.boston.com/jobs/topworkplaces/2009/dresstoimpress/

My Friend Hisham posted a video of The Fun Theory (sponsored by Volkswagen ), and call me extra sensitive, whinny or plain girly, but I teared up looking at what some brains a lot of creativity and experience can accomplish. Maybe it was the music, the great ideas behind it, or maybe I’m PMS (I’m a guy!), but on the other hand it may be my inner creative, smart and experienced professional feeling jealous of these marketing geniuses behind the videos.
I paid my dues, went to college, grad school, work hard, and keep on learning as much as I can every day, yet knowing that I’m doing better than most is no consolation for me; I want more. I want to feel useful 24/7, I want a challenge, a team, a job well done, and someone to notice it.
I want to think that most of us feel the same way. This professional society where we go to school and learn ONE and only ONE thing prevents us from reaching our potential, yet the comfort of it makes it almost impossible to leave. One thing I learned when I was working for a company named after me, is that when there is no one else to do the job, you will learn how to do it. One day I was making a website, the next a white paper, and before the end of the week I was programming a GUI; heck I also learned how to make the best Egg, Ham and Cheese sandwich in the world; because there was no one else to do it.
Do we all need to go to such extreme measures in order to feel competent, challenged and successful? Shouldn’t this attitude be prized somehow by our employers? I guess the fact that I didn’t get laid-off when 30% of the company did back at the beginning of 2009, means they notice some of that attitude in me; but how long would that last?
I need and want more, more out of myself, but I also have the psychological burden of wanting someone to notice (and pay me for it). What can I do, if every project accepted does not present a challenge for me, and the ones that would are too scary for management to approve?
I ask the more experienced readers; what would you do?

My last post about the lack of stability in modern careers spurred some thoughtful comments about employee loyalty so I thought I would write about that.

Loyalty is a great quality to have as an employee. It means you are always looking out for your employers best interest and that you more than likely work hard for your company. But loyalty can have downsides as well. Is it smart to remain loyal to a company that isn’t loyal to you?

Whether you are talking about a romantic relationship or a professional relationship loyalty is a two way street. And while I think it is good to be a loyal employee, someone who wants to work hard for their employer’s long term success and be there for the long run it is also important to realize when your loyalty is hurting you.

At the beginning of the year I had some personal issues to attend to at home. Of course these personal issues came at a time when life at my job was also very hectic. Luckily, my employer was flexible enough with me to let me take some time off and to let me work a flexible schedule so that I could deal with the personal stuff as well as the job stuff. For example, I would go into work at about 7:30 or 8:00 until about noon, then I would leave for a few hours to attend to the personal issue, then around three I would start working again (from home). I’d then stop working around 5 to do more personal stuff and then I would work from around 8 to about midnight and start again the next day.

If you added up the hours I worked that week it was probably way more than the normal 50 I usually do. However, I didn’t mind, my boss and my employer was being flexible with me, the work needed to be done and being a loyal employee I thought that is what mattered. Then right after the “big project” was complete I was laid off. I don’t believe for a second that it had anything to do with the time I needed to take off for my family. Layoffs were happening all over the country at the time and our department was being restructured. But that is logic talking. My emotions told me that I was loyal to the company and they should be loyal to me – but now they were getting rid of me.

I learned something from this experience. I learned that I owe a company to do my best and work my hardest while I am employed, and they owe me a paycheck and opportunities to learn and grow. This is loyalty. Laying me off was not being disloyal; it was doing what was best for the company at that time. Leaving one job for another that will offer career advancement, additional opportunities to learn or even more money is not disloyal, it is doing what is best for you. Staying in a job that no longer offers these things (with the exception of money, money isn’t everything!) isn’t being loyal it is being stupid, or not caring about your career advancement. Perhaps career advancement isn’t what is important to you. And in that case staying isn’t stupid, it is perfectly fine. But don’t stay in a job simply out of loyalty, stay because it offers you something you need, a paycheck, fulfillment, a short commute, a flexible work schedule or whatever it is you need.

That said, leaving job after job for a bigger paycheck or other small reasons and having absolutely no loyalty is stupid as well. As one person commented on my last post: this will make potential employers question your commitment to your job, and will prevent many employers from hiring you. You should remain loyal to any company that continues to offer you what you require from a career (again whatever that is for you).  And you do owe it to your current employers to help them provide what it is you need.  For example, you want to learn more about graphic design, ask to be a part of a graphic design project (in addition to your normal responsibilities). The point is let your boss know what your goals are. Chances are they will want to help you meet them, because that is a company’s way of being loyal to you.   You work hard and share your goals, they pay you and help you achieve your goals (with training etc.)

But I must reiterate; do not reject new opportunities that will provide you with more of what  it is you want if you can no longer get what you need out of your current employer. They will get rid of you if it is best for the company, you shouldn’t hesitate to leave if it is really what is best for you.

I have a secret. Well, not so much a secret but a fact about myself I thought was a secret – I crave stability especially in my career. Apparently everyone already knows this.  I want the perfect job and for me that means it will be challenging, pay well, will be at a company I believe in and that I will work with and for smart and ambitious yet nice people. But most of all it means I want a job where I can stay at the company for ever. I am envious of the people who have worked for a company for 20, 30 or even 40 years. When I hear about someone retiring from GE after 40 years of service I think “wow that is awesome”. But this just doesn’t exist anymore (not in the world of mass layoffs and corporate mergers) and somehow despite my longing for a long term career at one company I keep moving around. Since graduating college in 2005 I’ve had four jobs and while I want to find a place where I can stay for a long time (for me that might be 3 years) I realize that moving from job to job can be a good thing.

When you enter a new job you bring with you all the skills you’ve obtained throughout your career. When you are young and trying to build your career you need to build your skills and there is no better way to develop a diverse skill set than to try different jobs and often times this means at different companies. This is why some great companies like Gilbane and IBM offer management training programs. They allow you to try different jobs and to build your skill set while remaining at one company. But most companies aren’t looking for long term employees anymore. Instead they need an employee who is productive at their job now.  So you take a job at a company, work hard, learn new things and then move on to a job that is a little more challenging, that pays more and where you can learn more. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact it will help you develop a better career.

But what about all those warnings about job hopping? Well, yes, if you leave a job every 6 months at some point employers are going to look at you as a flight risk. But at the beginning of your career when you have the most to learn most employers will accept that you’ve had 4 jobs in 5 years. As job hopping becomes more and more common for younger workers employers will be even more willing to accept this.  At some point you’ll have to keep jobs for longer than a year but to be honest I am not sure when that point is. Perhaps it is when the learning curve starts to straighten out and you won’t learn that much more at a new job. Perhaps it is when you decide you need more stability. Perhaps it is when you are at a company you really enjoy and you can see yourself there for a long time. Or, perhaps it is when you decide you want to have kids, I’m sure it is easier to have children and a career when you’ve been at one company for some time (you’ll be able to get more flexibility if you’ve already proven to be a great employee). The point is only you will know when it is time to slow down your ‘job hopping’ and look for long term jobs that will benefit your career.

The other day I was talking about Jobs and Careers and what is the difference between them; therefore decided to write something about it.  But I realize that this is something that has been said and written thousands if not millions of times.  I believe most parents tell you this when you decide to go for a less traveled career (like music, for example), yet, I wanted to recollect some of that knowledge instead of adding just another opinion to cyberspace.

Wikipedia defines a job as: “A job is a regular activity performed in exchange for payment, usually as one’s occupation. The duration of a job may range from an hour to a lifetime. If a person is trained for a certain type of job, they may have a profession. The series of jobs a person holds in their life is their career.”

And Career as:” Career is a term defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as an individual’s “course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life)”. It is usually considered to pertain to remunerative work (and sometimes also formal education).”

Thank you Wikipedia, that’s all fine and dandy, but there is a lot more to it that just a plain old description that our grandparents mentioned once.  Suzanne Lainson says that “Most people earn their living by working (as opposed to inheriting money or winning the lottery). Some have jobs, others pursue careers. The difference between the two approaches has as much to do with attitude as it does anything else.

If you say you have a career, that implies that you have conscientiously chosen this field of work and that each job you take helps you advance to higher and higher levels. Careers involve long-range planning.” and the funny thing is that she was talking about athletes, a career that few follow, yet it involves the same amount (or more) or preparation and dedication.

Patty Inglish, MS suggests that “Many people believe, or have been taught, that a career and a job are the same thing. However, these two entities are not identical. In fact, a well-planned career usually encompasses several jobs in a logical progression upwards in pay rate, fringes and perks, and responsibilities. In other words, a job can mean survival and a career can mean choice. It is much more enjoyable to have a choice about what one does for a living. A life-long career should not be only a survival mechanism and it should certainly not be punishment.

While not everyone can work at their true, individual, special calling throughout their lives, they can plan toward that goal and take actions and make choices that will enable that goal to be more closely approached and met. Usually, this does not happen by accident.

Any specific job is only one piece of the lifelong learning and career puzzle. Any job is only a part of a larger, life-long career.

At one time in America, a person could graduate from high school, find a job with a good company and work in that job until they retired, perhaps being promoted and receiving raises in pay during that time. This is rarely possible in today’s business environment.”

Bottom line: your job is what you are doing today. Your career is what you’ve done over the past years and what you plan to do in the future.  If you don’t know where you want your career to take you, is because you have no career, you have been falling by chance in some jobs that provide you with what you need.  So when you think “career”, you have to think long-term.

And when you think long-term, you begin to realize the following:
• Everything you do counts
• Everything you do needs to have a good reason behind it
• You have to make good decisions
• Always think “What’s my next step?”
• What you do today determines your tomorrow
• Mistakes can potentially haunt you for a long time

“You should pay serious attention to this “career” thing. Your job feeds you and your family today. Your career will feed you and your family tomorrow and beyond. “ Suzanne Lainson

Good Luck

-Frank

I “professionally” recorded my first multi-track song when I was 15 years old and back in 1994

that was quite an accomplishment; these days, my 16 year old nephew has more videos on the web than I do.  Media editing, once a respected and complicated profession has become the hobby of thousands of kids that make songs on their “garage band” (included in every mac) or make their own videos on Windows Video Maker (included in every PC), and these sometimes sound and look way better than those produced by media companies a few years ago.  My brother posts HD videos of my 4 months-old nephew for the love God.

David Meerman Scott starts his book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, saying that you shouldn’t hire a video company and pay them $80,000 (average) for an online video campaign, that you should get that $200 video camera and upload it yourself (as he did for Microsoft Corporation a few years ago), and I’m proud to say, that I’ve been saying the same thing for a couple of years now. Earlier this year I hired a company to make a product video for close to $10,000 and then made another version of the same from scratch using Adobe Flash and some free music I found online for FREE.

These examples present me with the idea that this industry is going through some changes that we already saw the music industry go through after the whole Napster lawsuit, and the birth of affordable computer recording; the question is: For how long will it survive?  My bet is five more years, till some new technology comes along, and everything known to man as the media industry dies as we know it.

Since this is called YOUNG AND EMPLOYED, I feel obligated to ask “what’s going to happen with all those jobs in the industry?”  There are only so many Starbucks to work at, and these are people with degrees and years of experience doing what they do.  I’m not saying that everyone will suddenly be unemployed, since there will still be room for SuperBowl commercials that require better quality than Youtube but a big chunk of these people will no longer be needed.

IF you believe in my hypothesis, I would recommend one thing.  Everything you get paid for is for business, and even if you don’t understand business at all because what you do it carry a video camera around, it is a fact that they pay you because you help them make money.  Chances are you won’t find another job with the similar description in 5 years unless you go to Hollywood, so learn about the business part of your job, a manager in the media industry can be as successful as a manager in the hotel industry, but if you know nothing of the business you work for and stay working on your JOB, instead of your CAREER… you are in trouble.

Good luck

-Frank

 Since my engagement I’ve been subjected to countless comments about marrying to young, the divorce rate when you marry before 30, and asked “why would you want to be married so young?” Let me just say that I have never regretted getting married when I did, but that isn’t what this post is about. This post is about having a career and a marriage, or any serious relationship when you are young.

Much like marriage, the first few years of your professional career can be exciting and stressful at the same time. You’ve probably completed a few internships and are ready for some more serious responsibilities, yet you are asked to proof read other’s work or do other tasks you feel you have outgrown. Well as much as I wanted to think I could run my own department right out of college I have to admit that nothing trumps experience. You can be smart, hard working and ambitious, and all these things will help your career but until you’ve worked in the professional world for a few years you still have to prove yourself. And that is where the conflict between your professional life and your personal relationship comes in.

In the past young employees were expected to be the ones who stayed late to finish projects or to travel because they didn’t have families at home that depend on them (let’s leave the mommy tracking topic for my next post). But what if you do have a family – just because you don’t have kids does not mean you don’t have a family. And what if, you are (gasp) one of those people who actually enjoys spending time with your significant other? This is where the proverbial work-life balance dance that so many of our older colleagues talk about becomes important.  You have to figure out what your own balance is and what works for your family and a lot of that depends on how far you want to go in your career. Now that isn’t a judgment at all, not everyone wants to be a VP or a CEO and there is nothing wrong with that (I tell myself more than anyone). When I first graduated college my goal was to someday be a CEO. I didn’t care what the company was, but my personality dictates that I be the best at everything I do. I don’t like the idea of not working to be at the top. This is one of the reasons I got such good grades in college, it is also the reason I give myself anxiety stomachaches.

Anyway, as I gained more experience and saw more of the corporate world I realized I didn’t want to be a CEO. My family is important to me and I noticed that CEOs have to work – A LOT. That isn’t what I want. I want a successful fulfilling career, and I think I can have that by getting to a level that has a good amount of responsibility but without being the boss of an entire company.

The other thing you need when trying to balance career advancement and a happy relationship is an understanding spouse. It is going to be difficult to discuss having to work late several nights in a row to a  husband who doesn’t value your career. A big part of having a supportive spouse is also having a spouse who not only cares about you but has his or her own interests. That way while you are working late he or she can be doing something they enjoy. This will also create a more rewarding relationship because you will have things to talk about other than work! (I think you should have your own hobby as well, it is important that your life isn’t all about work and your relationship).

At the beginning of this post I said that I never regretted getting married when I did, and I meant it. So you have to ask yourself if being married young makes it difficult to grow your career than how is it possible that I never even for a second regretted it. Well the truth is there are advantages to being a young married professional – the largest of which is being able to relate and have something in common with your older co-workers. Traditionally this benefit only existed for men who could complain about the old ball and chain with the other guys at work. Also, employers view married men as valuable because they have families to support, while married women are probably going to just have a baby and they have to get home to make dinner anyway. Well I’ve noticed this isn’t as true as it once was. Most of my bosses have been married women, and there is something about being married that makes people assume you are either a)older than you are or b) mature for your age. I’ll take either of those assumptions in the workplace any day.

How about you? Does anyone have any thoughts on why it is difficult or helpful to your career to be in a serious relationship?

Reading through the one of the last posts of Money and Investment, (I seriously recommended it) where the author presents us with the need of an Exit Door for most negotiations in your life.  I start thinking of where does this door come from and how do you manage to get to it.

If you are reading this chances are you are some kind of professional, maybe with some college education and some years of experience; that may have given you an exit door, but in no way the ability to use it.

We’ve all been there, at the comfortable job.   That job that becomes a routine and plain-easy, that we can do while “facebooking”, reading books and blogs, spending too much time at the kitchen, taking long lunches and leaving early every day.  Even though for some this may sound like paradise (it did to me at some point), this is the definition of career suicide.  Sure it’s nice not to feel work-associated stress in a daily basis, but if your job became a routine that prevents you from challenging your skills or acquire any new ones, you are just wasting your time.

How to know if you got to that comfortable cloud of mediocrity:

• When you realize that your “job description” hasn’t changed in more than 6 months
• You have been using the same templates over and over
• You haven’t stayed late in over a month
• People only talk to you when they run into you at the kitchen or the restrooms
• Your email inbox seems to be quite empty every morning

If you have noticed some of these “symptoms” chances are, you got too comfortable and your job has just become so easy that a monkey could do it, and chances are your bosses boss will notice at some point.

Sometimes its quite unavoidable, you may be in a position that is not really needed and some other monkey in the company could push into his to-do list.  Some other times your boss may lack of some management skills; or any other reason/excuse for your misfortune.  But there is only one thing to do… RUN! …as fast and far as you can.  Look for a job that will challenge you, that will teach you, and help you achieve new levels of professionalism and skills, or soon you will become obsolete in your early 30′s.

I hear you; the economy is bad, and with an almost 10% of unemployment it’s hard to find a challenging job these days… Then make yours challenging one way or another.  There are at least 50 ways to do this, but all of them start with deciding to bring some change to your professional life.  When?  Today, you already wasted enough time, or you would have never found yourself in this position.

** Some useful ways to challenge your stalled career:

• SwapYourShop Blog
• Start a volunteer program at work
• Propose a new plan of action that includes your boss’s boss
• Make a plan to re-ignite your career

- Frank

No matter where you work, you will always find that one person who everyone makes fun of  because he/she keeps repeating the same phrases over and over; but have you ever thought, it may be you?

Reading an article in yahoo: ” The Most Annoying, Overused Words in the Workplace“, I laughed over and over, until I ran into something I’ve been known to say from time to time: “It is what it is…”  I would like to use my “English-is-not-my-first-language card, but I will take responsibility for the annoyance.

Here a list of phrases that annoy the bejesus out of me! (yes, the bejesus is one of those):

• Lets put your ducks in a row – Lets go to the town fair
• What do we have for OTB (open to buy) – How about asking how much money we have left?
• Circle back around – Wait, what?
• Timecrunch
• “Lets look at the CRN ASAP, to find our OTB, and cross-reference with our QTD revenue, to see if we could buy some more SEO and SMO services…”  - at some point you just feel like throwing in some more, FBI, ATF, CIA, JRR TOLKIEN!

You may be nodding while you read, and chances are when you close this window, you won’t ever think about it again, but don’t close it yet.  Think of how many of this things are on your resume, or cover letter, or on emails to clients or superiors… its not so funny anymore.

I’ve read many resumes, that I dont understand what they do, did or want to do, and not because its not expressed but because its in some weird lingo that only apply to a certain industry.  As a musician, I tend to say things like: “Wow, the Horn player was amazing“ and even though you can guess he was a wind instrument player, which instrument will still be unknown, some other phrase could be “That axe player has a serious stink” (translated), alright, so if you ever listened to K.I.S.S. you know the axe player is the guitarist, but what is it with body odor and musical talent?  Some phrases become annoying for someone out of your industry; and completely useless.

A little list of phrases we all have put on our resumes at some point:

• Results-oriented professional – Oh No, I like the other kind of professional
• Cross-functional teams – Its like cross gender but less of a hassle
• More than [x] years of progressively responsible experience – could you add more adjectives?
• Superior (or excellent) communication skills – Ok, so you know how to speak, and write, what else?
• Strong work ethic – according to the fact that you have not been sued for sexual harassment
• Extremely responsible – according to whom?  I swear I’m the most handsome guy in my office, but thats just my opinion

Are you running to look at your resume right now? Wanna bet some money you may find some of those there?

Lingoes are useful and somewhat necessary in a certain aspect of business, but you have to be really careful when you leave the comfort of your cube, office, farm barn or street gutter.

I know you just thought of 20 more, send them to me, I need a good laugh.