A few months ago I was invited to speak at a conference geared towards graduating seniors in the communications department at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The topic was how social networking had evolved and where it was going.
I struggled with it for a few days. I knew there would be other people at the conference giving statistics and quoting how fast Facebook and Twitter are growing, and I wanted to say something different. But I was stumped.
The night before my speech I went to sleep at 2 a.m., ill with the flu and sick with worry because I had nothing. Sure, I had a backup plan that would have me showing screenshots, graphs, and case studies, but I dreaded resorting to that. It would be so boring. I wanted to wow them, but I was having a hard time finding the "wow."
At 5 a.m. I awoke with a jolt. I had it! I knew what to do -- I would just tell them about myself.
And that's what I did. I kept my presentation to about seven slides and told the students the story of my life: what I did in college, how I got to where I am today, and what I've learned along the way. My speech went over great. It was one of the best I've ever given.
The key, I told them, was that they have opportunities today that didn't exist for me and that didn't even exist five years ago. They needed to seize these opportunities.
And that, I told them, is the optimistic part.
On the other hand, they were about to join the workforce at one of the worst times in recent history. Close to 10 percent of the country is out of work. The competition is fierce. They were going to lose. So I told them, if you are going to lose, lose big!
Ok, that's the setup, now here is the specific advice I gave to them and now bestow on you.
I boil this down to three main points:
- LinkedIn
- Blog
- Lose big
It is all about creating your personal brand, the authentic you. Companies do it and so should you. Follow my advice and, while I can't guarantee that you will get the job that you are applying for, you will be at least 10 times farther ahead than the majority of graduates with whom you will be competing.
LinkedIn
How long have resumes been around? I have no idea. My guess is that it has been common practice to deliver those one or two sheets of paper to potential employers for at least 100 years.
You still need to do it, so put in the effort, but don't stop there. LinkedIn should be your new best friend. It is the amped-up online version of your resume. It not only expands on your work history, it also allows you more room to emphasize your experience and make the words jump off the page.
Most of your contemporaries haven't embraced LinkedIn yet. For those of us who have been working for several years now, we have learned to make LinkedIn our go-to resource for sharing information about our careers. College students have typically been slow to board this train, so while your sorority sisters are busy checking out what photos have been uploaded to Facebook today, you can be leaping ahead of them by building out your LinkedIn profile.
When we post a job at Fanscape, we get hundreds of resumes within the first day of the post. Do you know how hard it is to go through that many resumes? It is a giant pain. So, we go through a weeding out process. If your resume pops and my hiring manager likes it, then it gets sent to me. My next step is to go to your LinkedIn profile. Your page better look great. A well-written page with no spelling errors and great insight into you is what I want to see.
You can drop widgets on your LinkedIn profile that point me to your blog posts, your Twitter feed, even the books you are reading.
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