Owner: Flipping Burgers and Beyond: Find Your Own Path Through High School, College and Life URL:http://flippingburgersandbeyond.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:35:42 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Providing high school students and college students with college application, internship, job and career advice as well as advice for young people starting out in their careers or revisiting their careers a few years after high school or college graduatio Site statistics:Click here
Avoiding Spelling Errors on a Resume 2008-04-01 16:32:00 I was reading the April 1st Wall Street Journal “Managing Your Career” column by Joanne Lublin about a 34-year-old man’s switch from the factory floor to a desk job in a different industry. I was impressed with everything the man -- Christopher Pearsall – did during this job transition, including taking college courses and applying for a product-management internship (yes, at his age). Then I came to this sentence in the article: “A resume sprinkled with misspelled words, however, nearly killed his candidacy.” Lublin went on to quote Michael Harvey, the Concursive executive vice president who responded in an email to Pearsall after receiving the misspelled resume: “This is not, frankly, a good way to impresses a potential employer.’ A product management inte Read more:Errors
, Resume
Talking to People to Learn About Possible Job/Career Paths 2008-03-31 15:58:00 The day I first learned that Los Angeles had railroad police, I was talking at a party to a man I didn’t know, and he told me that’s what he did. I had never heard of railroad police, so of course I asked him to describe in more detail what railroad police did. That day I learned about a possible interesting career – not necessarily for me, but just a piece of information to be filed away for a future time. And when you’re considering possible career fields for yourself, an interest in asking people about themselves and what they do can be very valuable. I also remember the day a professor at a California college disparaged someone working in banking. This Ph.D. thought if you were in banking that meant you were a teller. She had no idea about the number of varied Read more:Talking
, Possible
, Career
, Paths
Girl Scouts Need Marketing Help 2008-03-30 18:00:00 The March 25th Wall Street Journal had an interesting advertising article by Ellen Byron titled “Girl Scouts Seek an Image Makeover.” The Girl Scouts organization is naming its first chief marketing officer – Laurel Richie – and she’ll have the mandate of “modernizing the image of the Girl Scouts.” (Ms. Richie is a former senior partner and executive group director at WP Group’s Ogilvy & Mather.) Reading this article I thought – here’s an opportunity for people wanting to test out a marketing career to offer marketing help in their own communities. This marketing help could be, for example, working with a single troop or having an unpaid internship with one of the 109 leadership councils (restructured from more than 300). Although the organization Read more:Marketing
Career Advice: Put Yourself Out There – Politely 2008-03-28 18:32:00 I received an email about an illustrator/graphic design position at a Los Angeles company. Whenever I get such an email, I stop to think who I know that might be interested. I forwarded this email to someone – let’s call him Jeff -- looking for work after being laid off when a web company closed. Jeff emailed back thanking me for this announcement and saying that he’s interested in the position but he doesn’t have all the job requirements. I suggested to Jeff that he reply to the job opening – telling the company truthfully what he had just told me – and adding that he’d appreciate it if the company kept his resume on file for future job needs. Here are the exact words of Jeff’s reply to me: “Wow. I was kind of shy doing that but you have a point! Will Read more:Career
, Yourself
Thinking Outside the Box for Career Skills 2008-03-27 21:53:00 For learning most career skills there is the tried-and-true path, the one that most people know about and have followed. Yet, in some cases, thinking outside the box for certain skills may give you an advantage over people who have followed the well-traveled road. Here’s an example: Aspiring writers ask all the time: “How can I improve my writing?” And the usual answers include taking writing courses, reading books on writing, and studying examples of good writing. Recently I gave an “outside the box” answer to this question because the person asking it wants to be an advertising copywriter. Now anyone who has ever seen, heard or read an advertisement knows that a good ad starts with an attention-grabbing headline and, in most cases, has very brief copy after th Read more:Career
, Outside
, Skills
Life After Active Military Duty 2008-03-25 12:59:00 The front-page of the March 25th Wall Street Journal has this news blurb: “Returning veterans earn less than civilians and have a harder time finding work, a government report concluded.” An hour after reading this news item I received a message on MySpace from “Jay.” He told me about a website www.afteryourservice.com to help former military personnel earn good pay in civilian jobs. I’m not endorsing this website because I don’t know enough to do so. What I am saying is that this is a very important topic – civilian employers frequently do not adequately value the skills and talents that ex-military personnel have learned in the military. And this leads to the lowered earning power and harder time finding work. One reason for this may be because civ Read more:Active
, Military
Watching What You Post on MySpace and Facebook 2008-03-24 18:24:00 We’ve all heard people say that our reputation is one of our most precious possessions. And that once our reputation gets tarnished, it’s very hard to untarnish it. Another one of the advice points from the book by Harry H. Harrison Jr. -- “1001 Things Every College Student Needs to Know” -- is: “You need to know many career and graduate school plans have been derailed by pictures of drunken, half-naked students being posted on Facebook
and MySpace
. Employers and graduate school admissions officers have computer access too.” In FLIPPING BURGERS AND BEYOND I spend a great deal of time discussing how to protect your image. The advice ranges from getting a professional email rather than something such as “sexyme” to looking the part for the type of job for which Read more:Watching
Using a Lull in One’s Career to Explore New Possibilities 2008-03-23 11:09:00 I’ve just been in contact with a 30-year-old man laid off a month ago when an aspiring web company threw in the towel. I don’t know the particulars of his story – his ultimate goals, where he wants to go from here – yet I’ve been giving some thought to what opportunities there might be at this time in life for him. (I do know that he started out in life as a musician, and that there are often not numerous steady paying career jobs for musicians.) Let’s take this young man’s case as an example. We’ll call him George. And right now George is looking for a full-time job. Yet as he has flexible hours at this point, is there some place at which he could volunteer for a few hours a week? Some place that might connect him to a job in computer programming or a job Read more:Career
, Possibilities
Graduating From College Takes Preparation 2008-03-21 19:31:00 I spend a great deal of my time talking to teens and parents about getting into colleges. Yet there’s a related topic that I don’t usually talk about. This is going all the way on the journey – finishing college with a degree. According to Harry H. Harrison Jr. in his new book “1001 Things Every College
Student Needs to Know,” the statistics on the number of students who start college and then actually graduate are not encouraging. He says that “only 54 percent of college freshmen graduate within six years.” Harrison has a great deal of good advice, and some advice with which I don’t necessarily agree. Yet this one piece of advice about college really made me smile: “You need to know that preparation is a key to graduation. Showing up to class unprepared
Learning Social Graces for Your Career 2008-03-20 18:04:00 You may be one of those people who knows exactly what to say and do in any social setting. You’re at a baseball game with your office co-workers and you can yell at the ump with the best of them. Or you’re at a charity fundraiser cocktail party and you can easily mingle with people you don’t know. For the rest of us, it can take years of observing other people’s social skills as well as practicing with friends before we get to that comfort level. Being a journalist early in life taught me that people love to talk about themselves. If you show a genuine interest in people, they’ll usually be happy to talk about what’s important to them. And what’s important to other people should be important to you. Here’s an example: At work on Friday a colleague mentions t Read more:Career
, Learning
, Social
Proper Etiquette for Young People at Job Interviews and at Work 2008-03-19 19:36:00 On a visit to Chicago I had the opportunity to read the Chicago Tribune’s “Ask Amy” March 16th column in which Amy Dickinson addresses the problems of a small deli owner who can’t hire good help. The deli owner’s complaints: “People show up wearing short tops baring their midriff, and rings in their noses, eyebrows, lips and bellybuttons. They often have very poor hygiene.” His complaints also included the taking and making of personal calls at work or checking cellphones every 10 minutes. Then on March 17th The Wall Street Journal had a careers article by Carol Hymowitz entitled “Executives Teach Inmates How to Be Employees.” The article described how Mark Goldsmith, a former executive at Revlon and Shiseido, in 2005 launched nonprofit Getting Out and Staying Ou Read more:Proper
, Etiquette
, Interviews
, Job Interviews
Encouraging Women to Attend Graduate Business School – Part II 2008-03-19 10:37:00 In my last post I asked the question: What do business people do? The answer: EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING. That’s the thrill of a business school education – it can be utilized in so many different kinds of positions and industries. Some of these positions you may be able to name – accountants, Wall Street stock brokers, marketing people, computer programmers . Yet these are only the beginning. And what about industries? Oil companies, retail chains, consulting practices, brokerage firms, food manufacturers, automobile manufacturers. The list is endless. This is where internships during the college years come in handy. Pick an industry that appeals to you – and get an internship in that industry. Then talk to the people who work there and see what education they Read more:Women
, Graduate
, Business
, School
Encouraging Women to Attend Graduate Business School – Part I 2008-03-18 10:21:00 U.S. law schools and medical schools in recent years have been successful in bringing their classes up to 50% women, yet top graduate business schools still cannot get classes of 50% women. Many theories abound for why this is so. One such reason is that, while students usually go to med school or law school right out of undergraduate college, nowadays graduate business schools want their students to first have “real world” business experience for several years. This requirement, the theory goes, pushes women up against their “biological ticking clock.” The problem is being addressed in several ways. One recently announced special Masters of Business
Administration (M.B.A.) program is Harvard’s 2+2 , in which college liberal arts majors who are juniors apply to Har Read more:Women
, Graduate
, School
Learning From Graduate School Application Rejections 2008-03-12 18:08:00 Yesterday a friend told me her daughter didn’t get accepted to a graduate program to which she had applied. This happened even though the daughter had made the first cut based on grades and standardized test scores and thus got an interview on campus. I suggested to my friend that her daughter call the graduate program and ask what she could have done to have gotten an acceptance. In other words, what could she have improved that would have made the difference? Was her essay not strong enough? Were her interviewing skills weak? Or were there just too many applicants with similar backgrounds to hers, and the graduate program wanted a more diverse student body? My friend wasn’t sure that her daughter should try to find out why she hadn’t been accepted. After all, it’s o Read more:Learning
, Graduate
, School
, Application
Formatting a Resume for Internships 2008-03-11 10:29:00 Everyone has an opinion about formatting a resume. Some people like education listed at the top; some like education listed at the bottom. Some like hobbies included; some don’t. Here are the important points no matter what resume format you use: 1) Make sure that your resume has no spelling or grammar mistakes. 2) Only capitalize proper nouns. 3) Have someone unfamiliar with your information read your resume to ensure that everything makes sense. 4) Go for ease of reading above all else – don’t use several different fonts and other fancy elements that muddy the readability. 5) If you have a passion, there should be items on your resume that indicate this passion. 6) Mak Read more:Resume
, Formatting
How to Fill Out Your First W-4 IRS Tax Form 2008-03-10 13:14:00 You’re excited when you arrive at your first day of work for your first real job. Then your new employer hands you a W-4 form and tells you to fill it out. You have no idea what to do. Below is advice from tax attorney Mitchell R. Miller. (This information is also available at www.flippingburgersandbeyond.com along with other valuable free information.) If you have a simple tax situation (see * below for who doesn’t have a simple tax situation) – do the easy part first: Fill in your name, address, and social security number on lines 1 and 2. Check the box in line 3 for single or married. Only one thing remains – how much income tax withholding should be taken out of your check. (A lot more than just income tax will be automatically taken out: there’ll be social se Read more:First
Your Resume: A Job By Any Other Name … 2008-03-09 17:36:00 This weekend I saw the new movie “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.” In the movie a destitute governess plays along as if she is the person sent to fill the position of social secretary to a young woman. What’s interesting about the switch from governess to social secretary is that the skills Miss Pettigrew uses are basically the same in both jobs: applying common sense to the organization and behavior of someone else who – either due to a very young age or to a particular personality – is incapable of doing these things for herself/himself. This re-direction of the same skills has much to do with your figuring out how skills you now have – from photocopying book manuscripts to entering expenditures in a computer program – can be applied in a new job or situation that yo Read more:Resume
The Impact of Your Career on Others 2008-03-07 10:15:00 Yesterday I talked about creating your own internships to check out the reality of what you want to be when you grow up. This got me thinking about unusual careers that people I know have.And what popped into my mind was something a fireman once said to me about why he didn't like his career: "The best day of your life is the worse day for someone else."And because this unhappiness about his career affected his relationships with his family, he was trying to pave the way into a new career. During the long hours at the firehouse waiting for "that call," he worked on writing screenplays. And he took vacation -- complete with his wife, children and mother-in-law -- in Los Angeles to attend seminars on getting your screenplays bought in Hollywood.This was someone who had given serious co Read more:Career
, Others
The Importance of Internships 2008-03-06 20:53:00 I'm currently in the process of revising the teen success guide I've written: FLIPPING BURGERS AND BEYOND: FIND YOUR OWN PATH THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL, COLLEGE AND LIFE (www.flippingburgersandbeyond.com)In the guide I stress the importance of internships for: college applications, learning about possible career fields, and trying out careers before committing to grad schools such as law and medicine. And one of my favorite aspects of internships is creating these yourself rather than trying to compete with hundreds of other people for formal internships.Today's Wall Street Journal careers article titled "Students Craft Internships to Fit Interests" is exactly what I talk about in FLIPPING BURGERS. I particularly like the quote from Northwestern University grad David Fine about an internship
If You’re a Junior in High School Now -- Don’t Panic About College Acceptances 2008-04-03 11:45:00 Today The Wall Street Journal had it annual doom-and-gloom article about how low the college acceptance rates were this year at prestigious colleges and how many high school seniors didn’t get into the schools to which they applied (“Bad News U: College
s Reject Record Numbers” by Anjali Athavaley). Here’s a reader beware caution: You almost have to have a degree in mathematics and the mind of a copyeditor to truly understand the numbers behind the alarming headline. Yes, the acceptance percentage rates are down at some prestigious schools. But this does NOT necessarily mean a smaller number of students has been accepted this year. These schools had higher application numbers this year, which affects the percentage of applicants accepted. Simple math – if you acce Read more:Junior
, School
, Panic
, High School
Rectify Any Negative Perceptions of You in the Workplace 2008-04-02 19:18:00 I remember the moment in junior high school when I had an epiphany about my public image. Contrary to my belief that no one was talking to me, I realized that I wasn’t talking to anyone. At that moment I determined to be the first to speak to my fellow students and to appear to look “open” to talking to others. I wish I could say that, with my new outgoing persona, I became very popular. But that wouldn’t be the truth. I still had hair that wouldn’t rat, not very fashionable clothes, and in general wasn’t a very “cool” kid. Yet I did make friends and – all-important in those days – have other kids to sit with in the lunch room. What does this story from long ago have to do with your career goals now? Perception. In other words, what you may think is h Read more:Negative
, Workplace
Proper Etiquette for Returning a Business Phone Call or Email 2008-04-04 15:42:00 I admit I get seriously annoyed when I’m in the midst of doing a favor for someone in a business arena and that person doesn’t respond to my phone call or email for several days. (For example, someone may have asked me to make an introduction. I get the other person to agree to a brief meeting. Yet when I email the person who made the request in order to check on times for a brief meeting, I don’t hear back for days.) One of the most basic of business etiquette rules is to reply promptly to emails or phone calls from people who are helping you. And this is so easy to do in this day and age. (I started working in a world without fax machines and self-correcting typewriters; cellphones and email would have been science fiction.) Part of the problem of people not returning Read more:Proper
, Etiquette
, Business
, Email
, Business Phone
Sports Can Play a Part in College Acceptances 2008-04-07 12:54:00 The April 5th Wall Street Journal had an interesting “Golf Journal” article by John Paul Newport about teen girls having a good shot at college golf scholarships. Newport said: “….girls have better odds than boys do” (of getting college golf scholarships. “Only a third as many girls as boys play competitive golf in high school and on the junior-tournament circuits (the same gender ratio as for adults), yet there are substantially more total golf scholarships available for girls.” Newport goes on to explain that the reason for more golf scholarships for girls is Title IX, the 1972 federal legislation mandating gender equity in college athletics. In many colleges, all-male football programs reduce the number of scholarships for boys in other sports. Yet before a Read more:Sports
, College
The Question of Cubicle Manners: Crossing the Divider Between Cubicles 2008-04-09 13:07:00 Last week a young person asked me a question: When you work in a cubicle that only has a waist-high divider, when is it appropriate to respond to something you’ve overheard? It’s a very interesting question and the answer probably has several components. When I started out as a journalist at college in the late 60s and then on a weekly Philadelphia newspaper in the early 70s, all our desks were crammed together. I would never have thought twice about saying something in response to what I heard the reporter at the next desk say to someone else. Nowadays there are these dividers between desks. Does it matter if the divider is waist-high or taller? Does it matter what kind of business is being conducted? Does it matter whether the other person is having a personal conve Read more:Question
, Manners
, Crossing
Good Manners in the Workplace Needed by New College Graduates 2008-04-08 10:55:00 Yesterday I began reading the book “How to Succeed in Your First Job: Tips for New CollegeGraduates
” by Elwood F. Holton III and Sharon S. Naquin. The premise of the book is that, because new college graduates have spent the last 17 years in school, their mindset is not the mindset necessary for success in the work world. Therefore, according to the book’s authors, these new college graduates risk stumbling badly because they react to the work world as they would a school environment. Although I’d only read the preface and first four chapters, I found myself disagreeing with the book’s premise. The specifics of college that the authors list as radically different in the work world didn’t resonate with me. For example, the authors listed “frequent, quick and c Read more:Manners
, Workplace
The Importance of Time for Your Job and Career 2008-04-10 18:11:00 There are so many things that we can’t control in life, especially when it comes to our job or career. Frequently we’re even evaluated based on things that are out of our control. It is for this reason that things that are in our control become even more important to do right. We need to get those “did-good chips” in order to compensate for the times that things outside our control go wrong. What’s the one thing you can control? Being on time to work. If the company where you work starts the workday promptly at 9:00 a.m., that means you have to be there by 9:00 a.m. In fact, this means you should be at your desk a few minutes before 9 so that there’s no question you were on time. What if you’re the kind of person who invariably misjudges time? You alwa Read more:Career
Maximum Effort Helps to Achieve Maximum Result 2008-04-11 12:49:00 A good friend called me to report on the illustration submissions she had received for a children’s book project of hers. “I’m planning to go with the person who put in the most effort,” she said. She went on to say that, in order not to ask for too much on spec, she had only requested the finalists to each submit one drawing each for the children’s book. Some people had submitted the one requested drawing, and several people had submitted two or three drawings. Then there was the person who submitted several drawings in different styles, complete with connecting these drawings with the book text. My friend had already selected the illustrators whose style she liked best. Thus she already knew she liked this person’s style when he put in the most effort. She said Read more:Maximum
, Effort
, Result
Suggestions for How Best to Follow Your Boss’s Instructions 2008-04-14 02:08:00 This sentence of career advice caught my eye: “When your boss makes requests or gives instructions, what should you do to exceed his or her expectations?” (from the book “How to Succeed in Your First Job: Tips for New College Graduates” by Elwood F. Holton III and Sharon S. Naquin). Probably why I paid particular attention to this sentence was because a friend had just complained to me about a young person she’d hired for temp work. She said that she hired him to help her get organized in her home-based business, and he hadn’t been good at following instructions. Thus the concept of “following instructions” got me thinking: First, it’s important to follow instructions before exceeding expectations. While this may seem obvious, it isn’t necessarily so. I Read more:Instructions
Following My Passion – Introducing My Novel MRS. LIEUTENANT 2008-04-15 19:32:00 Whenever I write about preparing for college applications, I stress that the most important activity during the high school years is to follow your passion. And by passion I mean doing something or learning to do something or learning about something that you truly love. I coach high school students to follow their passion without worrying about the passion’s career potential. And I coach parents of high school students about facilitating the passion of their children. For example, if a high school student wants to option a book for a possible movie, her parent does NOT say: “But, dear, you’re way too young to do this.” Instead her parent helps find out how to do this and to follow through. The knowledge learned from doing this project can be quite valuable regardless o Read more:Following
, Passion
, Introducing
Have the Courage to Let People Know What You’re Looking For 2008-04-16 17:51:00 Most of us are brought up not to toot our own horn, as the saying goes. We’re taught that it’s not polite to “brag” about one’s accomplishments. Unfortunately, we then allow this reasonable advice about “bragging” to be confused with the equally reasonable goal of “putting it out in the universe” when we’re looking for something specific. What’s an example of “putting it out in the universe”? Most of us would agree it’s easy to ask a friend or even someone we just met for a referral for a good running shoe. We’re putting a request for information out in the universe with the hope of getting the answer we need. Then why do most people tremble at the thought of saying to friends or people just met: “I’m interesting in talking with architects t
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