Just over a month ago, I ran into a friend at a CES event. While I see this friend around town once in a while, this was the first time I’d seen him in a non-casual setting since Blogworld 4 months earlier. After exchanging the usual pleasantries, he asked me an odd question: “Is this like your conference party outfit?”
Indeed, I was wearing the exact same clothes I’d worn to the event four months earlier. Since he doesn’t usually see me dressed up, it stood out enough for him to remember. But that’s not the real point, here; the real point is that I have few clothes suitable for “adult” gatherings.
I have a suit, of course, for weddings and funerals. (I haven’t had a job interview in 9 years, but if I did, it would be suitable for that, too.) And I have my day-to-day clothes, which aren’t awful but which aren’t anything to brag about, either. Functional casual, basically: jeans and khakis, an assortment of button-front shirts, some cotton sweaters.
As a college professor, there’s not a lot of pressure on me to dress up. If anything, it’s just the opposite. For one thing, I interact regularly with younger people, mostly teenagers (I teach 100-level courses), and being too formal creates a barrier between my students and me. That might be ok in business or law (think John Houseman in Paper Chase) but for my classes and my teaching style, some level of rapport is crucial. For another thing, my fellow professors don’t exactly set the sartorial bar very high – and there’s a certain sense of bohemian “me-against-The-Machine” attitude expressed by violating “corporate” standards of dress.
But mostly I dress the way I do because I’ve never really learned how to dress otherwise. Like a lot of my fellow geeks, fashion just wasn’t on the radar for me. Fortunately I have a brother who has always been very fashion-conscious, and he’d take me in hand every few years when my fashion sense got too out of touch with reason and social acceptability.
Well, my friend’s off-hand comment was a wake-up call for me. I mean, I’m a grown man – I should have more than one pair of slacks and one shirt nice enough to wear to an industry event without embarrassing myself! So I set out to educate myself on some fashion basics – what shoes go with what kind of trousers, how to distinguish various sorts of dress shirts, and so on.
I did what any true-blooded geek does when he or she wants to find out about a new topic: I googled it. But what I found was scattered, often contradictory, and for a newbie like me, downright confusing. A lot of the information out there is tied to specific social contexts: the workplace, the nightclub, and dating, mainly. And a lot of it’s quite vague – the answer to most questions is “it depends on your personal style” which I’m sure it does, but what if you don’t know your personal style yet?!
With some perseverance, a few trips to department stores, and the help of friends on Twitter, I managed to assemble the following rules. As with all rules, they’re meant to be broken – but only by people who know how to break them. For the rest of us, this is a pretty good primer on basic men’s fashion.
Dress Suits
1. You eventually want to own three suits. Your first suit should be either navy blue or gray, possibly with a light chalk stripe (like a pinstripe, but softer), and in an all-season, medium weight. Either of these colors will fit into most social settings. Your second suit should be the one you didn’t get the first time around. Your third should be black – not for funerals, but for black tie affairs. If you work in a field where suits are the norm, you’ll probably want more than three; once you’ve covered the basics, you can move on to more distinctive suits (pinstripes, different weights, unconventional colors, etc.).
2. Suits are made of wool or cotton. Higher thread counts signify higher quality, but are ironically not as durable, so stick with something mid-range. Ask the salesperson to help you with this. (Yes, ask the salesperson. Suits are not self-serve.) Synthetic fibers need not apply.
3. You never button the bottom button. Apparently, Edward VII got fat and couldn’t button his vest over his belly, so now nobody does. On a three-button jacket, you button the middle; the top button is optional. If you have a jacket with 4 or more button, you obviously know what you’re doing already.
4. A gentleman carries a handkerchief in his front breast pocket. You don’t have to get fancy, just fold it square to fit and have 1/4” to 1/2” sticking out the top. Then proffer it as needed. And wash it after.
Shirts
1. Don’t wear your sleeves too short or too long. 1/4” to 1/2” of cuff should show beyond your jacket sleeve.
2. Shirts with button-down collars are not dress shirts. They’re sports shirts, so wear them with a sports coat. Polo players used to button their collars down so they wouldn’t flap up in their face while they played. (Are you beginning to sense a theme here? Fashion rules are largely dictated by what English gentleman and nobility did generations or even centuries ago. Sports coats? You wore them during sport, i.e. hunting. Regimental stripes on ties? They indicated your regiment in the British military. And so on.)
3. If you unbutton your collar, remove your tie. You can wear a suit or sports coat without a tie – just ask Obama – but wearing a tie with an unbuttoned shirt looks sloppy.
4. You can unbutton the top button always (provided you’re not wearing a tie), the second button usually, the third button only on disco night at the Rollerama.
Trousers
1. Wear your pants at your natural waist. Too high and you look like Grampa, too low and you look like a high school kid. Your waistband should sit 2-3 inches below your belly button.
2. Pants should almost touch the ground without your shoes on. Jeans can be a little longer, since they shrink a bit when you wash them.
3. One pleat, maximum. If you’re a big guy, like I am, you learned somewhere along the line that pleats are slimming. They’re not. At best, they look like you’re a big guy trying to look slimmer; at worst, they actually make you look heavier because they pull out across you, broadening your appearance. In any case, the job of a pleat is to maintain that crease sown the front of your pants. For pants without that crease (and many with it), pleats are unnecessary; for pants that need the pleat, they only need one.
4. 1” to 1 1/2” cuffs. Or not. There’s nothing wrong with cuffs, there’s nothing wrong with no cuffs. They are understood, however, to be an older man’s style – not in a bad way, think sophisticated, experienced, distinguished, and conservative. For younger men, a cleaner line is generally preferred.
5. A useful piece of trivia for the American abroad: in British English, “pants” are underwear. So if, for instance, you are in London and get invited out and maybe your trousers are dirty from work, don’t say “I’d love to go out, I just need to go home and change my pants first.” And if someone should ask, “Why, are your pants dirty?”, don’t say, “Yeah, I always get my pants dirty at work.” You will be laughed at. Er, I assume.
Shoes
1. Pay attention to your shoes. Everyone else does. It’s hard for the non-fashion-maven to tell a more expensive suit from a less expensive one, a high-quality shirt from a medium-quality one, and so on. But everyone can tell cheap or poorly cared-for shoes. Buy the best ones you can afford, and take care of them. Polish them regularly (a few swipes with a wax-infused polishing cloth is often all it takes) and store them covered if you won’t be wearing them for a long time. Shoe trees, it turns out, are important: they not only hold the shape of the shoe but the cedar ones absorb moisture (and thus odors) which helps preserve the leather. (Aside: women tend to pay a lot of attention to men’s shoes. Keep that in mind when a) dating, and b) interviewing for a job.)
2. Shoes are made of leather (besides sneakers). Anything not made of leather you can consider a non-shoe. Leather breathes and adapts to the shape of your foot. The soles don’t have to be leather, but the uppers do. (True story: as a young man, my brother was a car salesman here in Vegas. In the summer, the tarmac could get well over 150 degrees F. Standing out there with leather-soled shoes could give you second-degree burns! So they wore rubber soles, which melted after a month or two and had to be replaced.)
3. You need more than one pair of shoes, but not too much more. Black oxfords (lace-up dress shoes), black loafers (slip-on shoes), brown oxfords or loafers, and you’re set (not counting your athletic shoes, of course). A pair of ankle-high boots in black or brown can substitute for the loafers. Ox-blood (burgundy) shoes are harder to find but in theory go with everything. You can pretty safely ignore white shoes.
4. The shinier the shoe, the dressier. Matte-finish shoes – nubuck (that pebbly leather), suede, and distressed leather shoes are automatically compatible with jeans or khakis; shinier shoes might still go with jeans but it depends on the rest of your outfit, the dressier you are the shinier your shoes can be. If you can wear them with a suit, you probably can’t wear them with jeans, and vice versa.
5. Shoes should be the same tone or darker than your pants. This is all the rule you need to know when trying to figure out what shoes to wear. This is why you never wear brown shoes with black trousers, but you can usually wear black shoes with brown trousers. When in doubt, wear black.
Accessories
1. Match your belt to your shoes. It doesn’t have to be a perfect match, as long as you wear a black belt with black shoes and a brown belt with brown shoes.
2. Match your socks to your pants. Again, it doesn’t have to be a perfect match – a little lighter or darker is fine. If you don’t have socks to match your pants, you can match your shoes, or just wear black socks.
3. White socks are for sports. Only. Unless you are a) wearing sneakers, and b) doing something athletic in them, avoid white socks.
4. Your tie should reach your belt. Anything short of your belt makes you look like a rube.
5. Try a front-pocket wallet or money clip. This will save wear-and-tear on your back pocket (helping to avoid the heartbreak of “buttsquare”), help avoid pickpockets (a little – the good ones know…), and save your back. Plus: classy!
6. You’re allowed one affectation. A fedora. A pocket watch. A bracelet or class ring. A vest (if you’re not wearing a three-piece suit). An expensive wristwatch. Pick one, but no more – give your whatever-it-is space to say whatever-it-says.
If it feels like these rules are arbitrary and stifling, they are. Think of it like learning how to paint: first, you do a still-life (arbitrary) using just one color (stifling). Eventually you move up to two and three colors, then maybe a warm or cool palette, and your subjects might expand to include figures or landscapes. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can begin to press against the rules, juxtaposing non-complementary colors or painting unconventional subjects.
In fashion as in art – style emerges not from a lack of rules but from a mastery of them, from making them serve you instead of the other way around. If you’re a geek like me, you need to dial a fresh start – clear your closets of all those conference freebie t-shirts, put a shine on your shoes, and burn your butt-crack pants. Ultimately, these rules are not at all about tamping down your personality but about learning how to express it. And unfair as it is, people will take you more seriously when you dress with a modicum of style.
Anyone else have tips for the newcomer to the world of style? Give us your best advice in the comments.
QUICK UPDATE: Comments are coming on this post faster than I can get them modded in. If your comment was sent but doesn’t show up, don’t send it again – it’s in my moderation queue and I’ll get to it as soon as I can. Thanks – loving all the great comments on this post!
Let’s get real: when you work on an hourly basis, there are two ways to increase income: raise your rates or increase the number of working hours. I’m assuming you don’t really want to spend more time working, so let’s talk about something that a lot of people don’t like talking about: raising your rates. Raising your rates is a way to increase your business income that is often difficult for people to face, and there are many reasons why.
First of all, let’s get over the biggest issue business owners face when raising their rates. I’m just going to lay it out there bluntly. The number one reason solo professionals don’t raise their rates is self-worth issues. In all my years of working with clients, I have yet to run across a single entrepreneur who hasn’t balked at raising his or her rates, saying some version of either “I don’t need that much!” or “My clients would never pay that much!”
But when we get down to it, eventually they have all realized that these aren’t the real reasons they aren’t raising their rates. More often than not, keeping your rates “low” or “reasonable” is a function of one thing: fear. And believe me, I get it. I really do. There was a time several years ago when I was scared to raise my rates. I was scared that I would lose clients and that I wouldn’t be able to get new ones. But my fears were unwarranted, and while at the time I firmly believed it wasn’t about self-worth, when I started to get really real and dig deep about what was holding me back, I realized that indeed that’s exactly what was at the heart of it.
So how can you get past that? Well, first of all, you need to do some soul-searching. Dig deep and find out why you think you’re not worth earning more. Hint: If you start saying, “I just love what I do and I’d do it for free if I could afford to,” dig deeper. There’s a lot more going on there than you may initially think.
Second, stop charging by the hour. Instead, create packages with a lot of value built in. Make sure you are really offering something great, something that will produce a high return on your clients’ investment in working with you.
Third, start talking more about that value that your bringing to the table, instead of what people will get from working with you. When I talk with prospective clients, I do cover the features (like how many sessions are in each package, for example), but I focus more on the benefit of working with me. I talk about the value I’m bringing to their business, and show them how working with me will help their businesses grow.
Once you figure out what’s at the heart of how you’ve set your rates and made these slight shifts, you’ll be amazed at how fast your income will grow.
Susan Baroncini-Moe started her entrepreneurial adventures with a lemonade stand. Now, Susan is the CEO of Business in Blue Jeans, dedicated to helping you design a business you'll love or transform your business into optimized profitability. Learn more at BusinessInBlueJeans.com.Other links: Blue Jeans Web Sites and Susan's No Suits Allowed! E-zine.
In part 1 of this post, I discussed the communications offerings that Google offers and the role they might play for small- and medium-sized businesses. In this follow-up, I will cover their productivity and promotional services, ranging from the productivity suite Google Docs to the free hosted blogging service Blogger. While Google’s communications tools are generally quite excellent, their productivity and promotion tools are much more a mixed bag. After the overview of Google’s various services, then, I’ll offer a short analysis of how well-suited Google apps are for business use overall, as well as discuss some new tools that might make a big impact in the near future.
Productivity Apps
Google Docs offers a reasonable alternative to costly office suites, although for complex work comes up short of Microsoft Office or even OpenOffice.org’s desktop-based software. Consisting of a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software, Docs imports from and exports to all of Microsoft’s default formats (although it cannot save to Office 2007’s docx format yet).
The word processor is great for creating, editing, and viewing short documents, offering a range of formatting options typical to basic word processing tasks. For longer documents, however, Docs comes up lacking: page numbers can only be applied to printed output, and the size of the document itself is limited to 500K, plus up to 2MB per inserted image. This makes Docs poorly suited to the creation of technical or training manuals, as well as formal documents like legal briefs.
Spreadsheets and presentations are similarly size-limited. Spreadsheets can be up to 256 columns, 200,000 cells, or 100 sheets, whichever is reached first. Presentations started within Google Docs are not limited in size, but imported presentations are limited to 10MB or 200 slides. Below those limits, however, both applications are very strong. The spreadsheet allows you to use most common spreadsheet functions and even populate cells with data pulled from Google searches. A form generator makes it possible to collect data from, say, website users, and view the data as a Google spreadsheet.
The presentation editor is well-designed, making putting presentations together about as easy as it is with any other program. A number of themes are included, and you can import your own backgrounds as well. Giving presentations is another story, however. The presentation mode, even when you use F11 to make the browser full-screen, still includes a Google toolbar at the bottom of the screen, detracting attention from your slides. You also won’t be able to control your presentation using a PowerPoint remote.
Where Google Docs excels is in collaboration and sharing, making very effective use of the Internet to get work done. Documents and spreadsheets can be easily edited by multiple users, with tracking and permissions to make sure nothing irreparable happens. Presentations can be delivered remotely, paired with Google Talk and controlled from the host’s computer. Anything created with Google Docs can be shared on the Internet, either as a webpage or as an embedded document.
The newly released Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook allows Premium subscribers to use Google Apps as a replacement for Microsoft’s expensive Exchange. Installed alongside Outlook, the program allows calendars and contacts, to be shared and searched across your company, with features like schedule availability that users expect from Exchange. Notes, tasks, and journals are not shared, but for businesses that don’t rely on them too heavily, this might be a fairly effective replacement for Exchange. A migration utility allows existing Exchange systems to be easily transferred to your Google Apps account, making the whole process transparent to your employees. (A similar program exists for Lotus Notes users.)
Google Sites, a simple-to-use wiki engine, offers further options for collaboaration. Combined with the task manager in Gmail and the Google Calendar, you can handle most basic projects fairly easily. More complex project management isn’t possible, though – for flowcharting, GANTT charting, and other project management mainstays, you’ll need a dedicated application.
Google’s Calendar is quite powerful, making it easy to add and share events. A natural language text-entry system parses statements like “Lunch with Bob Smith at Joe’s Cafe at noon on June 27th,” or you can add appointments using a form. Calendars can be easily shared, and third-party iCal streams can be subscribed to as well. Several non-Google services, like the task manager Remember the Milk, use Google’s API to allow access to their services from the Calendar interface, as well.
On the near horizon is Google’s new Wave platform, a real-time communications and collaboration tool that combines elements of email, instant messaging, wikis, document editing, multimedia sharing, and social networking. Wave is still in invite-only testing, and as with all things Google we can probably expect it to remain in Beta for a long, long time. From what Google has released about Wave so far, it looks like it will offer great functionality to a limited audience of corporate teams and departments, where traditionally wikis might have been the main form of collaboration. For small face-to-face businesses, it’s hard to see what Wave offers, but larger businesses may find it a significant step up from current collaboration platforms.
Promotion
Google is, most properly, an advertising company, especially with their purchase of online advertising giant Doubleclick. Thus it stands to reason that for promoting your business, Google would be a fine place to turn.
Blogger, Google’s blogging service, offers a decent enough platform for a simple website. Features are limited, and the lack of customization options might make branding your site tricky, but it’s free, even if you post the site under your own domain name (which is simple to do and well-documented in the help section). For anything more complex than a simple blog, though, you’re going to want to turn to another service.
Google’s AdWords are an effective way to promote your business on the web. You choose how much you want to spend and what keywords to display your ads with, and Google handles ad placement on relevant search pages and sites that host Google ads. Make sure to add your business to Google’s local search and Google Maps at the Google Local Business Centeras well, so you come up when people search for businesses in your area.
Can you run your business using Google applications and services?
So, can you run a business using only Google applications? The answer is, “it depends.” For small, local businesses, Google Apps along with a Blogger site and Google Voice might be more than enough to handle virtually everything they need. Businesses that do a significant amount of collaboration will find Google Docs useful, regardless of size.
For larger companies, as well as businesses that handle a great deal of sensitive information, privacy and security issues loom large. Having your email, documents, and other material stored on third-party servers is worrisome, no matter what Google’s policies promise. And Google is a big target for hackers and other nefarious sorts – though your data might never be targeted, there are plenty of people out there taking a stab at cracking Google just to see if it can be done.
The lack of customer relationship management (CRM) is a challenge, as is the lack of any sort of database (ironically, Google Base is not a user-programmable database). Spreadsheets combined with forms just don’t quite act as a viable substitute. A small sales team might manage, but a large sales team will need more appropriate tools.
Offline access is also a concern, one which is only partly solved by Google’s offline plugin, Google Gears. Gears ostensibly offers the ability to work offline and synchronize your updates when your computer is back on the Internet, but generally offers only a subset of the full capabilities of Google’s apps. In Gmail, for instance, you can read and reply to emails, or compose new ones, but you cannot attach files to emails when in offline mode. Google Docs is worse – access is read-only when offline, meaning you cannot create new documents or edit existing ones. So much for getting work done on the plane…
Finally, there’s the question of uptime. Google promises 99.9% uptime on Google Apps – but that’s an industry-standard promise that has little meaning for end-users. Attempting to log in only to find yourself in the middle of that .1% downtime can be a big hassle, especially if you are waiting for an important email or about to send an important document.
On the other hand, small and medium businesses experience security and downtime problems just as severe (if not more) all the time, whether through lack of expertise, user error, or just plain bad luck. And chances are you don’t have anything like the resources, personnel, and security know-how Google has at its disposal to protect you.
In the end, whether Google applications and services are right for your business depends on your needs. Carefully weigh your requirements and choose from Google’s menu of applications when they adequately fit the bill. Where they don’t, look at their competitors at Zoho, ThinkFree, and even Microsoft (such as Office Live, soon to offer online versions of Office applications). But you could do much worse than considering Google first.
As a big fan of online, Web 2.0 applications, I’ve long followed Google’s ever-increasing stable of web-based services, from Google Docs to Google Voice to Google Reader. Their large and growing collection of online applications and services make it increasingly possible to consider running the bulk of your business using free (or low-cost) Google applications. Even big businesses have gotten in to the act, with mega-corporations like GE giving Google’s Google Apps for Business suite a whirl. And with recent additions to the Google stable such as Postini, an email security and discoverability service, a lot of concerns about security and compliance are finally starting to be addressed.
Though I don’t actually run a business any bigger than myself, I recently took a look at Google’s offerings and how they could be used in a small- to medium-sized business setting. Here we’ll look at some of the basic tasks businesses need to accomplish — communication, productivity, and promotion — and how Google’s services, both those in their Google Apps package and among their standalone services, can help businesses get the job done – and where Google just doesn’t seem to make the mark.
Communication
One of the core functions of any business is communication, both among its employees and with clients, vendors, and the media. Google Apps combines email, chat, calendaring, document creation and editing, and collaboration tools in one suite. Other services include Google Voice (formerly Grand Central), a phone forwarding and voicemail service that also offers cheap outgoing calls.
Among these services, Gmail is easily the strongest. As part of Google Apps, businesses can quickly set up @yourdomain.com email addresses, each with its own online mailbox. Gmail’s integration with Google’s powerful search technology makes accessing archived information easy, and full POP and IMAP access means you can access email through the desktop client of your choice, including Outlook.
Online users of Gmail also have access to a variety of features from Google Labs (accessible from the upper right-hand corner in Gmail), such as the ability to save and re-use boilerplate text. The online interface also includes a simple task manager, which is shared with Google Calendar, allowing dated tasks to be placed directly onto your calendar without leaving Gmail. Gmail’s contact management is fairly weak, with nothing like customer relations management (although Salesforce.com users can take advantage of Salesforce for Google Apps, which integrates with Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, and Google Talk.).
Postini, a newer Google acquisition, provides rule-based security and email archiving and discoverability for businesses that need to assure HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, or simply need a high level of security on both inbound and outbound messages. Some of Postini’s services are integrated with Google Apps Premier; others must be purchased separately. All of Postini’s features are available as well to non-Gmail users by routing your email through Google’s servers.
Google Talk is not the most popular IM system out there, but it offers more than enough power for inter-office communication. The service can be accessed through a dedicated client, a pop-up client within Gmail, or third-party clients like Digsby or Pidgin. Voice and video capabilities are decent, but lack the ability to cross over to standard phones like Skype or other VoIP systems.
Google Voice replaces traditional voice mail and forwarding services, giving users a single phone number that can be forwarded to one, some, or all of the user’s other phone numbers – or different combinations of phones based on user-created rules. Messages can be picked up through traditional voice mail, or audio files can be sent via email. Unfortunately Google Voice does not offer a business-level service that would allow it to replace a PBX system. Also, at the moment, it is not fully open to the public and requires an invite to sign up.
For keeping on top of industry news, world events, blogs, Twitter searches, and even information and updates within your organization, the freeGoogle Reader offers perhaps the best RSS reader on the market. Since most apps in the Google suite (as well as other online applications and services) offer a stream of updates via RSS, Reader can easily become the “hub” of your business. To keep tabs on how your business is being discussed on the web, add in feeds from Google Alerts, which allows you to create searches against Google’s web, news, blog, or video search engines, as well as within Google Groups or across all five with a “comprehensive” search. All of them let you know when a particular term shows up in the top 10 (top 20 for Web, top 50 for Google Groups) search results on that term. Google alerts are ideal for tracking how your business or products are being written about on the Web – set them up for your company and brand names, as well as for general searches in your field to keep track of your competition. (Google Alerts can also be sent by email).
For communication among project groups, try setting up a private list on Google Groups, a free email list management system. Groups can be public or available only to the people you add directly, allowing communication both within your organization and with your public. Like all Google products, the ability to search your archives using Google’s search engine is the strongest point of the service, which is otherwise comparable to other mailing list services like Yahoo Groups.
In part 2 of this post, I’ll discuss Google’s offerings for productivity and promotion. To be honest, though, Google’s offerings in communication are their strong point; their productivity applications, while useful, tend to be far more limited than similar offerings, even their online competition. I’ll close with a short assessment of where Google’s services may or may not be appropriate choices for small- and medium-sized businesses. See you then!
If you are a first year MBA student, especially if you are at a lesser-known MBA program, networking is going to be an essential component to landing your summer internship.
Start Early
If there’s any piece of advice that I would give first year MBA students it’s that your job search stats the day you start school, and if you are really a go-getter even before you arrive at school. There are several reasons you should start early. First off, the later you start, the less leverage you have when you talk to people. When you start later, people know you need something from them and are less likely to help you in the process. Another reason you should start early is because getting in touch with people can often take time and an early start will save you from scrambling to get things done in a short amount of time. Effective networking as an MBA student is really about planning and an early start will help you formulate a plan.
Informational Interviews/Research
Informational interviews are REALLY important to your networking strategy. First off you may have certain impressions of the industry you want to work in and those impressions could be completely off. For example, when I started business school I was convinced that I wanted to work in the entertainment industry. After about 4 conversations with people in the entertainment industry, I realized I had no desire whatsoever to work in that world. Using informational interviews also enabled me to build a network of contacts at Harrah’s (an organization that didn’t recruit at my school) and get to the final round of interviews for the MBA internship program. Here are a few things that you should keep in mind about informational interviews:
Keep it short and sweet, 15-20 minutes tops.
Have a list of questions about the company/intern program.
Find out what skills you need to develop during your MBA to get hired.
Send a copy of your resume to interviewee prior to the interview.
Don’t ask for a job.
Conduct multiple informational interviews (different perspectives will shed more light on the position and the organization).
Send a follow-up note thanking the interviewee for his or her time.
LinkedIn
At this point in your career, it’s highly unlikely that you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, and if you don’t, set one up right away. LinkedIn is an essential asset to networking. If you want to find recent MBA graduates or people who have completed an MBA internship at an organization that you are interested in, LinkedIn is a great way to connect with these people. When I targeted Harrah’s President’s associate summer program, I used LinkedIn to identify all of the current President’s associates at various Harrah’s properties and set up informational interviews with all of them. Thanks to these efforts, when I had my first interview with the recruiter, I was so well-versed about the organization that the first round was a breeze.
Alumni Networks
Depending on where you go to school, an alumni network can be a huge asset. When approaching alumni keep the same tips about informational interviews I offered above in mind. I would recommend you try to reach out to at least one or two alumni a week. If you connect with one alumni every single month that you are in business school (i.e. 2 years) and form a solid relationship, at the end of two years, you’ll have a network of 24 solid contacts who can help you.
Networking Events
With the current state of the economy there are so many networking events going on that it would be foolish not to take advantage of them. If you do a Google search for networking events in your city, you’ll find a list of events that occur on a monthly or even biweekly basis. I recommend trying to fill your calendar with at least one event a week. Try to make at least one solid connection at each event that you go to.
Volunteer Work
In Brian Tracy’s book The Luck Factor, he mentions doing volunteer work as one of the most effective networking strategies ever. While your immediate thought might be soup kitchens and homeless people, there are numerous opportunities to do volunteer work for organizations in your area of professional interest. The most amazing example Brian Tracy gave in this book was how his work as a volunteer for the chamber of commerce eventually led to a committee position, and ultimately connected him to many influential leaders in the community. As a result of doubling his number of contacts, he doubled his income.
Social Life
Your social life can provide another tremendous outlet for networking. Simply turning and saying “hello” to the person next to you at a bar or lounge can connect you to some highly influential people. As a result of doing this, I’ve met other MBA graduates, real estate developers, and other people who could be of tremendous value in my networking efforts.
While each of these strategies is effective at different levels, be smart. Use the 80/20 rule and realize that 80 percent of your results will come from 20 percent of your efforts. So rather than trying to do them all and do them poorly, choose the ones that work for you and do them well.
Srinivas is a volunteer for the Quality of Life Project. The website shares best practices on getting the most out of life from well known types like Richard Branson and Tom Skerritt to lesser known but equally interesting individuals. The mission of the organization is to help people live more enjoyable, purposeful and contented lives. Srinivas also writes at www.theskooloflife.com.
Coaching is usually about ‘the big change’: generating significant new business strategies or leadership behaviours. But along the way there are dozens of small adjustments that make a big difference as well. Many of those are in the realm of technology.
Especially when working with small businesses and lone entrepreneurs, I suggest to a variety of tools and approaches to build capacity and pull down obstacles. Here are 10 tips that are drawn from interactions I have with clients every day.
A word on security. This article does not deal with security issues. If you are using off-site servers, Bluetooth connections, storing data on your phone, etc. there are significant security issues. Lifehack, Google, About.com, and other sites can provide important, current information on these issues. Or talk to your local technology guru. Just so you know.
That said, here we go:
1. Learn how to share and export files
Regardless of which bookkeeping software you use, learn how to export to an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma separated value) file. This allows a coach or consultant to review your financial situation easily (without charging you for re-entering the data manually!). Most financial software will have a ‘Save As…’ or ‘Export…’ item under ‘File’. Check it out.
CSV files are also a standard format to export contact information from your PIM (Personal Information Manager) like Outlook or Entourage. When you export your contact information for example, you can load it into a spreadsheet for mail merges, or upload it to services like Constant Contact to create electronic newsletter campaigns.
When you send documents (such as resumes, reports, or business plans) by email for review you want to be sure that the document arrives looking exactly the way you sent it. You also want to protect your documents from malicious or accidental alteration. The best way of taking care of both concerns is by saving the document as a PDF (Portable Document Format). A locked PDF document arrives looking EXACTY like you sent it, and cannot be easily altered. Newer versions of most office and graphics software can save, print, or export in a PDF format. There are also a number of free- or share-ware programs that you can download which will convert almost any document or picture file into a PDF.
2. Be systematic in using folders and files
Whether it is individual document names or whole file systems, create a name- and location- system you can repeat. You will save time and reduce errors. For example, I have a ‘New Client’ folder that has all the empty sub-folders I normally require for client documents. When a new client comes on board, I simply copy and rename the ‘New Client’ folder and I am ready to start populating the already-named sub-folders with new documents. That way I know each document I create has the same home for each client.
Ever looked for a file in a certain folder and not found it there? We are creatures of habit. As likely as not, you will look there again the next time you want that file. Unless there is a clear reason not to, when you do find the file, consider moving it into the folder you first looked for it in.
When naming files, use a standard structure so that a) the name tells you what you are looking at and b) your files sort properly when you open the folder. One tip for this is to name files ‘year-month-date-filename.doc’ for files that you have multiple versions of (e.g. 2009-07-23-newsletter.doc), and set the sort criteria for that folder to be ‘date – most recent first’. That way each time you open the folder, the files are sorted so you can see the file you worked on most recently at the top of the list.
3. Backup
I know. Unbelievably boring. But really, if you don’t back up your stuff you are asking for trouble. And today, with the various back-up solutions available, there is no reason to have that icy cold feeling creeping up the back of your neck when you realize something really bad has just happened to your computer.
If your software has an auto-save function, use it. How long should the interval be between auto-saves? I don’t know. How much work are you OK with re-doing? 10 minutes? 20 minutes? 2 minutes?
Full-system backups. Today you can get external hard-drives, off-site network backups, and back-ups that occur while you sleep or while you work. One of my favourite backup utilities is SyncBack SE. The technology is cheap and easy to use. There is no excuse.
Smart phone as backup. Your smart phone can do a lot of cool stuff. Did you know you can use it to store your contact information and calendar? A good smartphone like a Blackberry, IPhone, or Palm will easily store all of your contact information and your calendar, and keep it up to date. These phones come with software to allow you to synchronize data with your main computer. You can ensure that both devices have the same calendar and contact information. Never a bad idea. Which brings me to the next item…
4. Sync or sink!
Did you know that your phone can synchronize your contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, and more, with your computer? If your phone and computer have Bluetooth built in, you don’t even have to plug anything in. Increasingly through off-site servers and Bluetooth, you have the ability to store key word processing, spreadsheet, PDF and other documents on your phone as well.
By syncing your computer with your phone, not only will you keep your PIM items up to date, but you have created another form of back up!
5. Dig a little deeper
A colleague or client will sometimes mention that they are planning to buy an expensive piece of software to solve a specific problem. Most of the time, the software they are considering is overkill. It is not that the software is no good or that it won’t solve the problems that they want it to, it is simply a question of ROI. The investment in money and training time is often not justified by the return on productivity.
The solution? Dig a little deeper into the software you already have. Have you actually watched/read any of the basic tutorials for your office suite or bookkeeping software? Most people are surprised at how much they can do with what they already have on their computers.
If a certain functionality is missing, there is a very good chance someone has plugged that hole with free software you can download or use on-line. I am experimenting with Tungle for example, an online solution that allows people to book appointments in my free slots. The online bookings are automatically synced with my Outlook calendar. And it is free.
6. Learn your sums
While spreadsheets were originally invented to handle basic bookkeeping functions, where they really shine is in modeling possibilities and options. The more sophisticated stuff is for full-time spreadsheet specialists, but there are basics that I use almost every day in making financial recommendations to clients.
Spreadsheets allow me to compare various averages and ratios, changing some numbers and seeing the different results instantly, without having to redo the calculations every time.
Knowing how to create a basic budget, including sums, averages, and ratios, in a spreadsheet can give you greater control over your finances.
7. Calendars, tasks, & alarms
Our minds can only hold about 4 – 7 pieces of information at one time. Why take up that precious memory capacity remembering to stop at the dry cleaner when you could be thinking about how to deepen relationships with customers?
There are many tools available for your smart phone and your computer that can manage your schedules and to-do lists. I prefer these tools to using paper. Why? For me, the big advantage of digital PIM tools over paper are:
The information can be synchronized between devices (no book to lose or forget);
They can actively remind you of things that need to be done (so you don’t to have to remember to check your book to remember what you need to do);
They can be set to schedule your repeating events and reminders, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. This saves you the time of having to write every repeat event down. When the schedule changes you don’t have to erase and rewrite.
8. Email & SMS Text
Email is more than just a way of communicating. One of the most powerful benefits of email is that it is a great way of tracking and organizing communication.
I love face-to-face conversation, but there are times when I am glad that there is a way of tracking exactly what was said when there is a disagreement. Even little disputes like the date or time of a meeting can be confirmed in a way that is not possible otherwise.
Email is also the easiest thing to organize. Simply create folders representing the way you organize your information (see Item 2 above), and drag/move the emails in.
A lot of professionals haven’t caught on to SMS (small message service) “texting” as a communication channel. Obsessive texting about trivial things is a huge time waster, and can give the illusion that meaningful communication is taking place. Furthermore, text messages can’t easily be organized like email. All of that said, texting is a useful tool because it can be done between different kinds of phones, not just the more expensive and complex smart phones, and because it is fast and discrete. If you are trying to figure out which movie theatre someone is meeting you in front of, you may not want to send an email. Further, there are times when you want to send someone a short quick message and a phone call is not appropriate (say if they are already in the theatre). Sending a text message can handle that.
Telephone calls, email, and texting each have their strength. Like Social Networking the trick is to know when to use the right tool.
9. Social networking
This topic is much larger than can easily be covered in a brief list like this. But every business person should be aware of it. In my experience there are four main social networking platforms that every business owner and leader should understand.
Facebook. This is so far the least business-oriented of the networking platforms. I recommend to most clients that they keep Facebook for their personal social network. I know Facebook is working hard to reposition itself, and there are a growing number of experts providing reasons and approaches to using Facebook in business, but so far I have not seen enough potential for return to invest the time.
There is one exception: Facebook is a powerful and cost-effective way to advertise. Facebook allows you to advertise to people of pre-determined demographics, and allows you to set a fixed budget that relates to the number of times your ad will appear on the pages of people who fit the profile you are looking for. For the right product or service this can be powerful.
YouTube. Like Facebook, YouTube started as a non-business platform. However, recently a growing number of businesses are using YouTube to post low-cost, guerrilla-style video promotions. If you have a business that has a significant visual component or can educate the public through video, Youtube can be a powerful tool. Don’t know how to shoot and post a little video about your business? Get one of your Generation Y employees to show you how it’s done! They can even show you tools that allow you to shoot, post, and promote videos on YouTube, all from their smart phones!
LinkedIn. This is a business-only site that is like Facebook only on the surface. Under the hood they are very different. Privacy controls are tighter and even your profile is more like a resume. LinkedIn’s singular focus on business and professional networking has created an environment that is a fertile ground for networking, career and job seeking, and professional development. Formalized referral systems, common-interest groups, business and personal branding opportunities, etc. are all well thought out and work well. If you are a professional or business owner/leader and you don’t have a profile on LinkedIn, you may be missing an opportunity to grow your network in a powerful way.
Twitter. This micro-blogging site (limits you to 142-character posts) is rapidly becoming another powerful networking and communication tool for professionals. Businesses are using it to keep customers informed about new promotions, and many professionals are using it to share ideas, links to useful articles, and announcements of events in their communities and markets. When a post catches on in Twitter it can go ‘viral’ in hours and find its way to thousands of people. Increasingly, stories about significant events (as defined by the people who care about them) are spreading rapidly on Twitter even before they hit traditional news channels.
An interesting note on Twitter is that unlike other social networking channels, it is not being picked up by the majority of adolescents/Gen Y’s. There is a great deal of debate about why this is, and my two cents are that it is so ‘content’ oriented in its structure and as a medium that it does not lend itself to the repetitive and relatively inane use to which channels like SMS texting are often put. It is difficult to restrict your messages to a limited group of ‘friends’ so it doesn’t function well as a purely social tool. Tweets really are ‘micro-blogs’ with a focus on ideas and information (at least the ones anyone reads), and both users and non-users seem to have unconsciously reinforced that reality (for a hilarious proof that not everyone ‘gets it’ check out http://tweetingtoohard.com/ )
10. Think of your smart phone as a digital Swiss Army Knife
You can use smart phone for telephone calls, email, and/or texting. But it is also a powerful tool that can make your professional life easier in many other ways. Here are some tips and tricks:
Use your phone’s unique ring-tones or signals for different events. Want your phone to remain silent unless a key client or family member phones? You can set your phone to do this.
Want to get a discrete signal that your meeting hour is almost up? Set your phone’s clock or timer to vibrate at a certain time.
Want to remember where you parked your car at the airport? Take a snapshot of the area with your phone’s camera.
Record voice memos when you don’t have the time to write a note
Calculate tips or bill splits at lunch.
On some smart phones you can now find an address or retrace your steps using built-in GPS.
You can store and update shopping lists, check out movies playing in your neighbourhood, and access Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter on your phone.
Remember, this is just a list of activities and solutions that I have found useful in my own practice or in the work of my clients. It isn’t even close to exhaustive. If you want to know more about some of the things I have mentioned, or wonder if technology can solve a particular problem, feel free to contact me!
Clemens Rettich is a coach supporting business and leadership clients on Vancouver Island. With a degree in music and an MBA in Executive Management, and careers from artistic director to international marketing, Clemens brings a rich web of experience and passions to his work. Check out his web site at clemensrettich.com.
With the world economic and business outlook still so uncertain, a key question is just how the businesses world can continue to do good as well as maintain their bottom line.
Over the last few years, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become such a buzz word for business people with companies sprouting all sorts of CSR initiatives, but are companies really embracing CSR because they believe in it or are they in it for entirely selfish reasons?
Are they really acting out of some kind of moral duty or is the reality still that they only care about the bottom line?
In simpler terms, CSR means “doing the right thing”. A company’s commitment to CSR therefore implies ethical conduct and a moral sense of what is right and what is wrong, and it should aim to eliminate or minimise any negative impact of its business activities.
With the unscrupulous behaviour of the major banks over the last few years which has led to the current worldwide economic downturn, never before has it been so pertinent that business people are seen to be doing the right thing.
Even President Obama has been urging businesses to do the right thing and become socially responsible. His approach and vision is refreshing from all that has gone before us for so long.
So the business person today faces a major dilemma. Whereas on the one hand, his or her company has to minimise the negative impact of its business activities on the environment, employees, suppliers, customers and the wider community, on the other hand it is only by maximising the company’s return can all these stakeholder groups be served adequately.
What is Personal Social Responsibility?
The pre-requisite for understanding and accepting the need for CSR and subsequently implementing it successfully is the concept of Personal Social Responsibility (PSR).
PSR is all about doing to others what you would like others do to you. It is about recognising how your behaviour affects others, and holding yourself accountable for your actions. It is about being in integrity and doing the right thing for the right moral reasons.
The key question to ask is how can we as individuals and businesses improve the world?
Ideally a PSR aware person will:-
1. Always endeavour to have a positive effect on others.
2. Have a mind set to contribute.
3. Refrain from causing negativity in his environment e.g. by throwing litter on the ground, or by gossiping.
4. His social and economic activities will have a positive or neutral impact on the environment.
However the real challenge the world faces today is for people at the top of the business world to do the “right” thing for themselves, their children and the world.
Increasingly more and more companies must wake up to their responsibilities to the environment, the larger community and the global implications of their activities.
Create your own PSR vision and journey
Clearly the business debate is no longer about whether a company should make a substantial commitment to CSR but just how? Business people really do have to get their CSR act together and actually start doing stuff.
So where do you begin? Start by firstly becoming aware of the concept of PSR. By coming from a place of being socially responsible for all your actions, you will immediately begin to think differently. And that will form a solid foundation for understanding and developing CSR in your business.
Remember that PSR is more than just merely recycling paper or giving out money to your chosen charity. It is all about taking a firm stand and making a commitment towards giving back to society and at the same time ensuring the long term viability and profitability of your business.
To get you started, my PSR vision is that as individuals we always do the best for us and the people in our lives, and at the same time our businesses endeavour to do the best for the world at large.
Reach your own PSR vision by spending some time and answering the following questions. These questions will help you to develop your own understanding of PSR and CSR and ultimately create a plan of action that suits you and your business:-
1. How will the world be a better place because you have lived?
2. How will the world and future generations benefit from your company’s activities?
3. What legacy are you leaving behind through your work?
4. What would you like to be said about you after you die? And about your work?
5. If you only had six months to live, how would you spend some of that time making a difference in the world? In which area would you create the most urgency and why?
6. What does Corporate Social Responsibility mean to you? What does it mean to your company / business?
7. Do you believe that you and your business have a moral duty to respond to world problems? Why? What’s the ideal response to the various problems?
8. Can companies be socially responsible and be profitable at the same time? What level of profits is acceptable to you and why?
9. What do you think about this statement – “Responsible business should be about profit making, not profiteering?” Why?
10. What positive lessons can you learn from businesses that you think have a social conscience? What do you really like about the ethics of those businesses whose ethics you admire? What can you learn from them to apply in your own business?
11. If your children asked you if your business was ethical in all its activities, would you be able to look them in the eye and honestly say YES?! If NOT, what will it take for you to answer YES?
12. What legacy is your business creating for the children of tomorrow? Socially? Ethically? Environmentally?
13. What do you NOT want your business to continue doing?
14. If there was one thing you could change about your business and its ethics policy, what would it be? When will you make this change?
15. What is really stopping you and your business from being more socially responsible? What will you do next?
16. Having been on this short journey of discovering Personal Social Responsibility, how will you now live your life differently?
17. In what ways will you apply Personal Social Responsibility in your life from now on?
So begin today on your journey through this exciting, challenging and ultimately fulfilling world of business ethics, social responsibility and sustainability.
Make your life and your actions count from today.
Make it happen! Good luck and enjoy your journey.
“Come from a place of being socially responsible – you owe it to our future generations.” ~ Arvind Devalia
Arvind Devalia is a social entrepreneur, speaker and writer. His main books are “Get the Life you Love and Live it" and “Personal Social Responsibility”, available from Amazon.
Arvind writes about “Making it Happen” for your life and the world at www.ArvindDevalia.com/blog.
If you are going for an interview as a prospective employee then you should do some research. Read the job description and requirements carefully. Browse the web site to see how the organization presents itself. Search for news items and comments about the company on news sites and blogs.
For the interview itself you should dress smartly and appropriately. It is important to have some questions prepared and here are a few that could really help:
1. What exactly would my day-to-day responsibilities be? It is essential that you clearly understand your role and the tasks that you would be expected to undertake. It is easy to make assumptions and get the wrong impression of what the work would be so it is vital for both sides that there is clarity in what is expected of you. If the interviewer cannot give a clear answer then this is a worrying sign, so politely follow up with more questions. Some people even ask to see exactly where they will sit.
2. What are the opportunities for training and career advancement? This question serves two purposes. It helps you to understand where the job might lead and what skills you might acquire. It also signals that you are ambitious and thinking ahead.
3. What is the biggest challenge facing the organization today? This sort of question takes the interview away from the detail and towards strategic issues. It allows to you see and discuss the bigger picture. It proves that you are interested in more than just the 9 to 5 aspects of the job. It can lead to interesting discussions that can show you in a good light - especially if you have done some intelligent preparation. If appropriate you can follow up this question with some questions about the objectives of the department and the manager who is interviewing you.
4. When did you join? After the interviewer has asked a number of questions about you it can make a good change to ask a gentle question about them. People often like talking about themselves and if you can get them talking about their progress in the company you can learn useful and interesting things.
5. What are the criteria that you are looking for in the successful candidate for this position? The job advertisement may have listed what was wanted in a candidate but it is very useful to hear the criteria directly from the interviewer. The more that you can discover about what they want and how they will make the decision the better placed you are to influence that decision.
6. How do you feel that I measure up to your requirements for this position? This follows on naturally from the previous questions. It may seem a little pushy but it is a perfectly fair thing to ask. In sales parlance this is a ‘trial close’. If they say that you are a good fit then you can ask whether there is any reason you might not be offered the job. If they say that you are lacking in some key skill or attribute then you can move into objection handling mode and point out some relevant experience or a countervailing strength.
7. Would you like to hear what I could do to really help your department? If you want the job then this is a great question to ask at the end of the interview. Most interviewers will reply, ‘Yes.’ Drawing on what you have learnt in the conversation, you can give a short sales pitch on why you fit the criteria and why your strengths and ideas will siginficantly assist the boss to meet their objectives. Make it short, direct and clear with the emphasis on the benefits for them of having you in the team. At the end ask something like, ‘how does that sound?’
Many candidates take a passive role at the interview. They competently answer the questions that are put to them but they never take the initiative by asking intelligent questions that steer the interview in a helpful direction. If you are a proactive candidate who asks the sorts of questions given above then you will be seen as more dynamic and you will significantly increase your chances of being offered the job.
Paul Sloane is an author and speaker on leadership, innovation and lateral thinking. His most recent book is The Innovative Leader. He helps organizations improve innovation, creativity and leadership. He is the founder of Destination Innovation. He has written 15 books of lateral thinking puzzles and hosts the lateral puzzles forum.
Coaching is usually about ‘the big change’: generating significant new business strategies or leadership behaviours. But along the way there are dozens of small adjustments that make a big difference as well. Many of those are in the realm of technology.
With the unscrupulous behaviour of the major banks over the last few years which has led to the current worldwide economic downturn, never before has it been so pertinent that business people are seen to be doing the right thing.