Let Employees Twitter

A guest post to my Newark Examiner Corporate Leadership column from the awesome Ellie Behling. She writes about Generation Y and the Workplace at www.y-rd.com.

When I log on to Twitter at work, I wonder whether I am doing something naughty or incredibly productive. That is the crux of the social networking/workplace conflict: While some workplaces scoff at or even block social networking sites, other organizations pressure and encourage workers to use social networking as a way to market the business brand. The latter group is onto something.

Social networking might take on new and better forms, but it isn’t going away. For many industries, social networking, such as the microblogging site Twitter, is the future of marketing. So it’s probably a good idea to let your employees get the hang of using them. The current form of social networking might feel slightly unprofessional at times, but that’s why social networking needs more corporate structure. Completely ignoring social networking now could cause problems for companies down the road.

Meanwhile, the workforce, from Generation Y on up through the Baby Boomers, is increasingly using social networking in their personal lives. Members of Generation Y have grown into adulthood comfortable with having both themselves and a digital projection of their identities. We go through our lives choosing just the right moments to convey digitally to the rest of the world. A workforce that includes the Millennial generation is going to have to include our digital personas too.

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Entitled to Lead: The Rise of the Millennial Female Leader

An excerpt from my recent posting on Ms. Career Girl: personal finance, career advice, and networking for divas...

In their book, Generation We: How Millennial Youth Are Taking Over America And Changing Our World Forever, Eric Greenberg and Karl Weber propose that millennials (or Generation We as they have affectionately re-branded us), the generation born between 1978-2000, is the first generation in American history to inherit a nation in social, economic, and ecological decline. Yet, they suggest we’re also the generation most optimistic about our ability to tap into our values, elicit our resources, and embrace entrepreneurship and technology to make a positive difference. 53% of us voted in the 2008 presidential election, making us 18% of the American electorate, and we’ll be the largest generational voting block in 2012.

We are the most educated generation in history, with over 60% of us enrolling in college and record numbers of us pursuing graduate degrees. We grew up in the most diverse classrooms in our nation’s history. 40% of us were Hispanic, Black, or Asian. But even if Koombiyah sounds like an appropriate theme song for our generation, are we ready to lead the world from recession to sustainable growth as we approach the next decade of the twenty-first century?

Yes and no. But mainly yes! As a member of this rising generation and a leadership development professional, I concur with Greenberg and Weber that I’m a part of a pretty awesome group. We are poised to ensure that our collective desire for change translates into results-oriented action.

Read the rest of this article on Ms. Career Girl.

Informational Interviews: 10 Steps for Getting the Most from Them

Last week I published the following article on George's Employment Blawg. The dynamic ladies of LYJ: Love Your Job, Love Your Life have also featured it, so I thought I'd give you a teaser here. Because approximately 5% of jobs are found online, it's vitally important for job seekers and those who advise, teach, and coach them to understand the art of the informational interview. So please soak up the following strategies and share with your network.

"Americans learned on Friday that unemployment has hit its highest level in 25-years. While the national unemployment rate is 8.1%, states like Michigan or my old stomping grounds, Nevada, are experiencing even higher rates, 11.6% and 9.4% respectively. This is sobering news for job hunters, but it should not be grounds for giving up on finding a job or calling friends and family for a couch to crash on until the recession ends. It simply is a reminder that traditional ways of conducting a job search, from perusing online sites like Monster and CareerBuilder to attending regional job fairs, probably aren't going to enable you to close the gap from job seeker to gainfully employed.

People who get employment in a down economy don't wait for opportunities to appear. They create them. They know where their expertise lies and how they can marry their strengths with unfulfilled needs in the marketplace. (And believe me, they exist.) Perhaps most importantly, they are proactive about reaching out to leaders in their fields for informational interviews so that they can learn from and make a positive impact on these key players.

Step 1: Scoring Face Time

So how do you land an informational interview? You compose a maximum of a one-page cover letter and email it both in the body of your email and as an attachment to the prospective interviewee. You explain succinctly and dynamically who you are, what results you have achieved, and why this person should give you the time to discuss existing and anticipated opportunities in the field. If somebody recommended you reach out or you have read this person's column, blog, tweets, etc., you mention this early in the letter. Finally, you state that you will call in the next week to set up a face-to-face, or if you are out of the area, telephone interview.

You DON'T attach a resume and you DON'T ask for a job.

While job opportunities often come out of informational interviews, this is not what they are for. Your goal should be to introduce a leader in your field to what you have done and what you plan to achieve next, learn as much as you can from this person's experiences, and make yourself so irresistibly attractive during the interview that the interviewee keeps his/her ear to the pavement for opportunities for you, many of which may actually be outside of the person's organization.

Step 2: Breathe and then Bulldoze Forward

You called your prospect when you said you would. And after a few rounds of phone tag, you have converted the person into an informational interviewee. Most likely you have a couple of weeks to prepare. It's important to celebrate this victory, and recognize that a little bit of smart work has paid off. Acknowledging the objectives we achieve on route to our goals keeps us motivated and engaged. But after a night off from online job searching (old habits are hard to shake so you're probably still trying out different keywords in Indeed.com), it's time to get back into preparation mode."

Read the entire article on George's Employment Blawg.

No Luck with the Job Hunt? You May Be Overthinking.

The most important word for me in college, graduate school, and as a professor has been praxis. Whether studying it from a women’s studies, education, or social change perspective, its core is the same- take action, reflect upon it, and then take new action and facilitate transformation. In other words, humans have a predilection to sit on their tushies, search for “the right answer,” and in their quest for perfection, never start closing the gap from where they are to where they want to be.

Positive psychologists have compiled a lot of research documenting the myriad of dangers attached to overthinking. In her book The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want, Sonja Lyubomirsky explains that excessive contemplation “impairs a person’s ability to solve problems, saps motivation, and interferes with concentration and initiative.”

Job seekers unnecessarily belabor the employment hunt and decrease their personal satisfaction by endlessly tweaking their cover letters, resumes, and emails and parking themselves in front of the TV or CrackBerry musing on the latest unemployment statistics. While I’m not suggesting one divorce herself from spell check or undergo delusions that we are not in a trying economic climate, it is worth remembering that most people will forgive a split infinitive and approximately 80% of Americans are still fully employed.

Lyubomirsky also writes that overthinking can actually undermine peak performance by impeding concentration and causing one to make useless social comparisons between herself and others. “People who pay too much attention to social comparisons find themselves chronically vulnerable, threatened, and insecure,” Lybubomirksy goes on to explain.

To stay motivated towards achieving your desired career goals, engage in these five action-oriented job hunting strategies IMMEDIATELY, as in as soon as you finish reading and commenting on this entry!

1. Request 5 informational interviews with key players in your field (My article on making the most of your informational interview will be on George’s Employment Blawg by the end of this week)

2. Develop and/or refine your 15-second pitch

3. Attend a networking meeting in your field and introduce yourself to AT LEAST 5 new people with your new pitch

4. Get busy building your platform by sharing your knowledge and resources with others. Post a new blog entry. Comment on the blogs of others. Send valuable articles via Twitter.

5. Know who you want to be when you show up to your “ideal job.” Practice being this person each day until s/he becomes habitual. (And you just might attract your platinum opportunity along the way)

Once you have taken these concrete actions, you can sit back and evaluate what you’ve discovered, where you’ve been successful, and how you can continue to work smarter, not necessarily harder, as you strive to move into your new job. And Lyubomirsky and I vow, you’ll be a lot happier for the praxis approach to the job hunt.