Penelope Trunk is supposed to be some kind of expert on generations and the workplace, but I don't think she could get the following more wrong:

"Do you know who is using social media? Gen X. The average Twitter user is in their 30s. The median age of LinkedIn is 40. The majority of people who are joining Facebook right now are over 35. This is because Gen X wants to meet new people online and reconnect with all the friends they lost along the way. Gen X is using social media to network. "

Actually, the average age of internet users--and the US population in general, is around the mid 30's.  To say that Gen X is doing more networking, and disproportionately so, is just misleading--it's just flat out wrong.  Social networkers pretty much reflect the makeup of the US internet user audience.  Gen X isn't any more networking savvy than any other group.

"Gen Y doesn’t need to. They never lost their connections because they’ve been online since they were ten. They do not need to meet more people online to expand their network because they are native networkers – they have had the tools and the predisposition to use them since before Gen X even knew what Facebook was."

This is just utterly ridiculous.  Gen Y doesn't need to meet more people online to expand their network because they've been online since they were 10?  I don't know about you, but nobody I know basically made all the career connections they ever needed to make between the ages of 10 and 21.  If anything, Gen Y needs the most networking help because they grew up with "Stranger Danger."  They got taught that people they don't know are likely to try to hurt them, so they tend to connect online to people they already know.  Facebook reflects that and it's the reason why Gen Y is so much less likely to use LinkedIn.  On Facebook you connect to your friends, and on LinkedIn you build your professional network, often reaching out to new people.  Getting Gen Y to use LinkedIn is like pulling teeth.  Perhaps Penelope should teach a class of college students over a full semester like I do to get a better sense of how Gen Y really networks online.

"So while Gen X is busy using Twitter to let people know what they are up to and promote the hell out of whatever they are doing, Gen Y is using Twitter for tweetups – meetups set up via Twitter. Which is a way of making genuine friends offline."

So Gen Y does tweetups more than Gen X?  Most tweetups are tied around some kind of professional group--not likely to be attended by a majority of Gen Yers.  Disagree?  Flip through who is actually Tweeting Up right this minute.  On top of that, most people on Twitter aren't really promoting anything.  Sure, the "gurus" and social media mavens are, but by number, most people on Twitter just follow a handful of people they know and just Tweet about their life.

Sherry Mason from Bowdoin College wrote "College kids I work with need coaching on tone & style" and she's absolutely right.  Just because a Gen Yer may have 1000 Facebook friends doesn't make them an expert at networking any more than following 10,000+ people on Twitter does so they follow you back.  (I always thought networking involved listening... I'm sorry, but you can't listen to 10,000+ people at once, even if you're using Tweetdeck.)

Networking involves the following basics, none of which I've found Gen Y to be particularly good at:

• Self awareness: How are people perceiving you?  Gen Yers, because of their lack of experience, don't have a great sense of professionalism and professional appearence.
• Storytelling: How can you package up your experiences, interests, goals into something memorable that others take with them and remember.
• Listening: I don't think any generation is good at this, Gen Y included.
• Outreach: Reaching out to the right people to build relationships--this is where Gen Y majorly falls down because those kids aren't any good at going outside the comfort zone of their own network--unless their mom schedules a playdate for them. 

Gen Y sucks at networking.  Don't let their Facebook friend list fool you.

Someone sent a note to the nextNY list about how he was unemployed and looking to work for a startup--how it was really hard to find something.  He sent a link to a piece he wrote on a site about being unemployed.

This was my response:

"So the one link you send us is on a site about being unemployed?

Why on earth would you market yourself as an unemployed guy?  In your first instance of participation in this group, you cast yourself as laid off and desperate.  Who wants to hire an unemployed person?

No one.

If I showed up to a date and the girl introduces herself by saying, "I've just been going on nothing but first dates and they never work out...   I'm so desperate to find someone" I'd be looking for the door in a heartbeat.

We all want to hire someone who kicks ass at something.  If you do not kick ass at anything, you should at least be in the process of learning how to kick ass at something.  Startups, or frankly any company for that matter, cannot afford to hire a non-asskicking generalist.

Think of it this way...  If you know the media, perhaps you could have spent the last five months doing free PR and marketing for a handful of startups.  You weren't working anyway.  The goal would be to be so good at it that one of those companies can't help but hire you--or some other company would hire you because they noticed how good you were at it--or worst case you'd suck at it but you'd really learn something.

Forget pursuing.  Spend 110% of your time honing some kind of value proposition that you'd be a no-brainer hire for.

Forget the "I'm unemployed" shtick and work on the being awesome without advertising the fact that you are awesome to everyone.  If you do not know what awesomeness is, try and figure out who the top 30 most awesome people in the NY tech scene are and interview them.  Publish the interviews on your blog.  Make a list and publish it.  Here are my suggestions:  David Karp, Anthony Volodkin, Chris Hughes...

And God help you if I see your blog and it's yourname.blogspot.com.  To be awesome, you must splurge for the $13 domain name."

I went to a very selective high school--Regis High School in New York City--and from very early on I was intimidated by my peers.  Our class was made up of the top 130 or so students out of nearly 1000 boys who took the test to get in.   I felt like I was #130, particularly at the speech and debate tryouts, where the guys waiting next to me were debating some political topic I wasn't even aware of.  For four years, I basically tried to hangout somewhere in the middle--and the top of the class both in terms of leadership and academics seemed unattainable to me. 

Fast forward four years and after an amazing internship, I felt ready to take on the world.  My time at Fordham was all about leadership.  I started a newspaper, ran clubs, interned, etc.  At the end of my time there, I was selected to be one of the top seven student leaders in my year.

So what changed?

It was a few things for me.  First, I didn't think I was capable of leadership--so why try if you're pretty sure you're going to fail, right?  Second, I never really saw a path to leadership.  I didn't really know where there were opportunities for leadership.  It was only when I got to college that I realized the third point--that you can create your own opportunities for leadership.  I had an idea for a newspaper about business in college and so I just went after it.  I did the research, figured out what I needed to do, and it was easier than I thought.

I'm curious about other people, though. 

If I said that the top people in your field, at your experience level, are active participants professional societies, write popular blogs about your industry, get asked to write articles for magazines and regularly speak on conference panels, that's probably a reasonable estimation of what it means to be on top, right? 

One would assume that such a person in a visible leadership position would basically be able to call their own shots in terms of the direction of their career, right?  If nothing else, they'd certainly be less likely to be laid off.

So, my question is why wouldn't everyone be setting that as a goal?  Of course 99% of people don't take a
look at their own industry and say "I'm want to be the most highly sought after person in this field... be recognized as an expert, and call my own shots."

But why don't they--specifically?

Is it because...

a) It seems like a big risk, because if you try and put yourself out there, you could fall on your face.

b) It seems like an awful lot of work and you don't have a ton of extra time.

c) You feel ok about your career and you don't really see the value in being one of those top people.

d) That seems like a good path, but you really don't know how or where you'd really start on a path like that.

e) Some other reason.

I'm curious...   Ask your friends that you think highly of, but who don't strive for leadership.  Ask yourself.  I really want to identify the causes.  I suspicion is that it's more of an information problem (what to do, where to do it, perception vs reality of taking career risks).

Are you stuck in a rut?

Don't like what you're doing, but can't figure out how to get ahead, or get out?

Ask for career advice on Path101.com on May 1st -- May Day -- as part of Path 101's "Career Mayday" Advicefest.

Path 101 has built up a community of career experts and experienced professionals to help get answers to your most pressing career questions.

What's even better is that when you ask or answer a question, you can connect your Path 101 account to Twitter or Facebook to help get answers from your network.  Check out some of these great questions and answers from our site:

Best tips for interviewing

Are unpaid internships worth it?

Staying in touch after an interview when there isn't an opening right now

Tomorrow, when you ask a question and connect your Twitter account, the Tweet will look something like this:

Mayday! Mayday!  My career needs help!  Please help me get an answer to my Path 101 career question.  http://bit.yl/32vwesd #mayday Plz RT

When you answer, it will look like this:

Just rescued someone through Path 101's Career Mayday.  Save a drowning career, give advice: http://bit.yl/32vwesd #mayday Plz RT

Just make sure you connect your Path 101 to Twitter...   After you ask or answer, at the bottom of that question, you can click a link to make a connection.  If you ask anonymously, we can't publish the tweet either (but that shouldn't stop you from just asking a question, of course). 

"I sent a cover letter. It should be getting me that job now."

"No, Lieutenant, your job search is already dead."

Alison Doyle defended cover letters today and was rather dismissive about the idea of finding your job by connecting to someone using social media.  I won't take up the social media debate now, but I will put to bed the idea that you should spend any time whatsoever on a cover letter.

What gets read first, a resume or a cover letter?  Ask anyone who has ever hired anybody in the last twenty years.  The answer is a resume.

Here's the short version of the proof, then:

Is your resume awesome? 

If no, then I'm throwing it right in the trash, along with the cover letter, which I didn't read, because your resume isn't awesome.

If yes, and it does not come with a cover letter, will I contact you?  Of course!  Half the resumes I got were from resume databases or LinkedIn, so much of the time, a resume or profile is all I have anyway.

Once you get contacted, then it's up to you and who you are... and that's what you were trying to do with the cover letter in the first place--get a response.  No hiring manager has ever contacted someone with a mediocre resume who wrote a really nice cover letter.  They never get to the cover letter of a mediocre resume--they don't have time!  If they say they did, they're lying to make it seem like they do extra work like read all the cover letters than come in.  I'm sure they don't rip the tags off their pillows either. 

More important than a cover letter, if a resume contains a link to a site, I am going to visit it.  If this site is a blog, and you write about your passion for the industry you're looking to get into or your insights, I'm going to be pretty damn impressed.  I certainly won't ask for a cover letter after that.  Think of this like rock, paper, scissor.  Resume beats cover letter.  Awesome blog beats resume and obviously also beats cover letter. 

No, you can't submit the link to your blog on the front end of a company website, but would Alison suggest that if I was hiring someone to run the career guidence office at a school, that being the About.com job search guide since 1998 wouldn't be enough?  Why would you even ask for a resume at that point?  When I left Oddcast a year and a half ago, no one asked for my resume, but I got 25 job leads from people who had been reading my blog for years.  Cover letters?  What's a cover letter?

Well, Alison defines a cover letter as "...a document sent with your resume to provide additional information on your skills and experience."

She suggests the following format:

1. First Paragraph - Why you are writing
2. Middle Paragraphs - What you have to offer
3. Concluding Paragraph - How you will follow-up

You know, because that's the "basic format of a typical business letter."

A typical business letter?

Has anyone actually received a "business letter" in the last five years?  (Besides ones from daughters of Nigerian generals looking to deposit money in your bank account or official looking solicitations for credit cards.)

Today, professionals are sending one line e-mails from their Blackberries that affect millions of dollars.  Have you ever seen what three paragraphes looks like on a Blackberry?  It might as well be Paul's Letter to the Corinthians.  People want just the facts, as quickly as possible.  Three paragraphes of prose and I'm either on to the next e-mail or I'm asleep.

It's funny, because, today, she expanded her definition of a cover letter to include "via email or a LinkedIn message".   Can you even type three paragraphs into a LinkedIn message?  I'm pretty sure there's a character limit, and if there wasn't, I'd think the person was just trying too hard or didn't really understand normal behavior on that site.

Twenty years ago, cover letters served a purpose.  They introduced who you were and how you found the position--because before widespread use of the internet, how you found anything was actually interesting.  Now, asking how you even know someone is becoming a joke, because we're hyperconnected.  As for who you are, we all know that your cover letter is your marketing pitch--no hiring manager takes that seriously.  They'll do their homework to figure out who you are.  They'll ask Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn who you are, who you're connected to, etc... and if they can't find you there, for a growing percent of the few available jobs, you might as well be persona non grata.

In today's world, if you're contacting someone you don't already know to get a job, you've essentially already failed.  It's too easy to find people and use your network to reach them that coming in without a recommendation reflects pretty poorly on the candidate.  If I was going to hire you to do sales for me, I certainly wouldn't expect you to just cold call all your leads.  I'd hope you'd at least figure out how to be innovative and networking savvy enough to find your say to a warm intro.

And yes, I know, not everyone uses the internet, and not everone can afford a computer, and three quarters of the world lives under the poverty line--I get it.  It's a terrible situation, but we're talking about job advice written on blogs.  There's a clear target audience here of people who have some amount of advanced education, socioeconomic mobility, etc.  For *those* people--if you're thinking a cover letter is going to get you anywhere, you're wasting your time.

There are also some jobs out there where your digital presence just doesn't matter at all because you're basically talking mass hiring of a certain particular skill.  Take nursing jobs.  Hospital systems need to hire 1000's of registered nurses a year.  So long as they have the right certifications and whatever references are needed check out, you're basically in, or at least in line.  Many civil services positions are like that as well.  However, not only does a digital presence not matter to be a police officer or a firefighter (Good thing for my dad, a 20 year FDNY vet), you also don't need a cover letter.

So let's focus on jobs that supposedly need a cover letter--jobs that are sought after enough where the candidate is looking to stand out from the crowd.  So we're assuming a crowd here.  Now put yourself in the position of the hiring manager.  Not only do you get 100's of not 1000's of resumes for each position that you have an opening for, but you're searching resume databases to find candidates, too.  It's physically impossible for anyone to read more than a handful of cover letters. 

Even resume expert Louise Fletcher says that "back when I worked as an HR manager, I never read cover letters".  Louise worked as an HR manager back in 1995.  She did say that her boss liked to read them, but assuming her boss was probably at least 5-10 years older than her, if not more, you're talking about a guy who started his career in the early 80's--almost 30 years ago.  Are we really giving advice to people on how to get hired by dinosaurs are should be dispensing advice on how to be the most innovative candidates out there and to try to get hired by the most innovative companies.

But Alison says "Innovation works for a lot of people/industries. Not others."

Everyone who wants to get hired into an industry that doesn't value innovation, raise your hand.

Ok, everyone with your hands raised, finish up working on those cover letters!

Have you ever felt like you never realized how much you were capable of, because, simple as it may seem, no one told you along the way? Despite the fact that I went to a magnet school, I never strived to be a leader in high school or to discover the unique imprint I could leave on the world, mostly because I just didn't realize that I could be on the same level as the high achievers.

And yet, somehow we assume the US is going to retain a leadership position in the world over the decades to come, even though we really don't spend much effort at all on leadership training.

Sure, we have lots of leadership problems. The top of every class get special awards, plaques, and wind up on lists, but how many of those students are actually getting the leadership tools they need to impact cities, states, countries, even the whole world?

What's worse, how many are being told they can?

What passes for student leadership these days is often pretty lame. Lead a club that had been on campus for generations. Get elected to the student council and run a new program. This will put you in the top 10% of your school in terms of leadership, but that's a pretty low bar, since we all know most students don't try too hard to be leaders.

The difference between that and being one of the top 30 under 30 years of age in your profession is huge, and most people don't know how to teach or motivate for that. In fact, I'm not sure they even try, because much of that level of achievement involves reaching across institutions and changing the way things are done, something most schools aren't even good at themselves.

Imagine, for a moment, what the top 30 people in your profession under 30 years of age are probably doing. Or the 25 under 25. Maybe your industry actually has that list . Maybe you need to create it. Identifying standout performances could help motivate yourself and others by identifying just how high the bar really is.

Many people don't strive for leadership because they don't want the pressure and responsibility that leadership comes with. What they fail to realize is that it's actually much easier to be a leader than being the low person on the totem pole. Leadership brings with it the flexibiliity to do more on your own terms, and the support of others who follow you who can help lighten the load because they believe in your vision.

So if you're a college student or in your 20's, think about what you need to do to be recognized as one of the top people in your field at such a young age--part of a 30 under 30. If you don't know what that would entail, go ask anyone and everyone that you know who is involved in the industry what it would take.

Publish the answers, strive the the goal, make an impact, because who really wants to ride in the back seat for this lifetime?

There.  I said it.  More often than not, when you "employ" students as unpaid interns, you and the school facilitating this practice by offering credit are giving students the short end of the stick.

Companies say the students are picking up valuable experience, but how many unpaid internships are really worth a damn?  Maybe if they were learning transferable, in high demand/short supply skills, but filing, photocopying, cold calling, getting coffee, answering client gopher requests, and answering phones do not fit into that category.  Those are the things your well paid executive assistant would rather not do and so they get passed off to the free slave...er...student labor.

If you're going to help a student hone their PHP coding skills, then I'd have a different opinion--but funny enough, internships in computer science, where real skills are used and developed, are paid!  It often seems to be the least interesting, most commoditized work that is most often unpaid.

The "getting free experience" argument doesn't hold water. It isn't free for the student when they have to use college credits to justify the fact that they weren't being paid. They're paying thousands of dollars for those college credits. The system that demands that they receive credit if they're working for free, designed to prevent actual slave labor, actually hurts the student. If the experience itself was actually worth it for its own sake, a student would be better off just getting the job on their resume and not having to pay all that money for the credit. In fact, if I were the student, it would be a better economic deal for me to offer to write a check to the company for my own minimum wage salary, because it will probably be cheaper than paying the school for the credit.

The bottom line is that if someone is work of any value to you, you should compensate them for it, even if its just minimum wage. If your organization can't afford the hundred bucks or so a week for 15-20 hours of work because it isn't worth it, then how good is this experience that the student gets?  Plus, if your company can't afford $6 an hour labor, perhaps your business isn't economically viable--and that goes for startups, too.  If it isn't a no-brainer to get that work done for six bucks an hour, I find it hard to believe that work will impress anyone when it's on a resume. 

Companies make out like bandits with this practice. Not only do they get free labor, but they have no incentive to invest in the education of the student. If they don't stick around or don't like the work, who cares? Doesn't cost them anything! Give them an incentive to make sure the student is doing meaningful work.

You know who benefits pretty well from this practice, too? The school! Imagine if for every degree earned with 120 credits, 3 of those credits were earned by completing an internship. That represents a 2.5% reduction in the cost of faculty normally paid to teach them something useful in exchange for those 3 credits. Schools that allow 2 "for credit" internships are cutting their faculty overhead by 5%!

Two of the most common unpaid internships are in private client/high net worth asset management, and marketing/pr. Here are some alternatives for students to getting ripped off at unpaid internships in these fields:

Private client/high net worth asset management:

Lots of folks make a lot of money being entrusted to individuals' savings. Those people bring big trusted networks and financial expertice to the table--two things students completely lack and will lack for quite a while. A great marketing intern could have a big impact on a marketing campaign, but a private client intern isn't going anywhere near portfolios, so they basically get relegated to cold calling and "interacting with clients" (answering phones and being a gopher). Try getting a big investment banking internship with this on your resume.

Instead, open up a fake portfolio on Yahoo! Finance Or Google Finance, or a trading game site like UpDown. If you don't know what stocks to pick, just pick things you either know or that you might be interested in following (food companies, fashion, autos, Apple). Track the hell out of it. Download your daily gains and losses per stock to Excel. Enter the performance for the indexes--the S&P 500, the Dow, etc. Crunch the numbers. Open up a blog on blogspot or similar service with a fun domain name like TickerU or BullMarketMajor or something and write about your portfolio and the market EVERY DAY. Read and comment on the blogs of experienced investors like TraderMike, Howard Lindzon, and Information Arbitrage. Interview your favorite stock bloggers on your blog, even by email. If you do this a whole semester, you will not have wasted paying for the credits to be at a crappy internship. Instead, you could have taken another accounting, financial modeling, stats, or programming class and gained a lot better experience watching and interacting with the market everyday. Plus, you will have put your name out there as an innovative, ambitious self starter, making it much more likely you'll get hired for a better internship.

Marketing/PR:

If you're going to volunteer to market anything, market yourself. Actually you're already an expert on a certain kind of marketing and you may not realize it. Youth marketing, both offline and online (especially on social networks), is a huge lucrative business. Brands and agencies are always looking for people who are up on the latest trends and who have keen insight into what works and what doesn't.

Every single student who has an interest in marketing and public relations should be blogging about how they get approached by marketing campaigns, brands they love, and trends they see.  How about taking a poll at your school to find out what the top brands are and what people's associations with those brands are.  You should use Twitter, too...   You can use it to update your Facebook status messages, but moreover, you can use it to follow the updates of very high level marketing and PR folks. 

If I was hiring someone to help create a digital presence and brand for myself, I'd want to see them be able to do it for themselves first.  Learning how to do that by attending conferences (you can often go free as a student by volunteering), workshops, informational interviews could be a better learning experience than an unpaid internship.

If you're a college student (or anyone else) and you're worried about what you're going to do with your career, you should check out the site my company is working on, Path 101.  Sign up for our e-mail list and we'll keep you posted on what we're doing to help you figure all this career stuff out.

Hi folks...    I'm competing in the Donors Choose Blogger Challenge.  Basically, each blogger selects a set of educational projects they'd like to encourage donations to.  These are individual teachers and the projects are usually just a couple hundred bucks--like buying supplies, visual aids, etc. 

Check out the projects I've selected.  If half my blog readers give ten bucks each, we could easily fulfill all of these projects!

But most of all, I want to raise more than TechCrunch does.  Why?  Because by reading this blog, you're just a better person.  :)

Seth posted a great networking post that I could have written myself...    In fact, I pretty much did write all that in my failed attempt to write a book for college freshmen.  However, he's written it a lot more concisely worded (I tend to be overly verbose, if you haven't noticed) and tailored it to the VC world.

I'll add a few notes directly to his, and then I'd like to include a snippet from the book I was writing about what exactly you want to get accomplished when you sit down and have a networking meeting or call--the information you want to walk out with.

One thing I would add on to #5 and #6 is using Pubsub.  If you meet someone that you'd like to go the extra mile with in terms of staying in touch, create a Pubsub feed via RSS that includes their name, the name of their company, and their industry... perhaps even a competitor or two.  This way, you get relevent news that you can share with them up to the minute and comment on.  That will keep you current enough to be interesting.  There's nothing worse than sending stale articles to people in an effort to try and impress them.  (Well, I suppose there are lots of worse things, but its just an expression...)   

Ok, so here's what I wrote about what you should be talking about in a networking call or meeting, and its written to be relevent across industries. 

You might think that questions like "What do you do?" are too obvious and the kind of thing that you should have figured out before the interview, but to be honest, I don't think that outsiders really know what a firm does until someone inside explains it to them.  Now, obviously, you don't want to come to us and say, "What is Union Square Ventures?", but perhaps you could still ask stuff like, "So I researched about what your investment strategy was and I see that you invest in IT-enabled services, but can you give me a little more detail on what kinds of companies fit into that catagory as you define it?  How did you come to the conclusion that was the best place to invest?"

Ok, so its much wordier, but that's essentially the "What do you do?" question.  You just can't ask "What do you do" because you're supposed to have researched this beforehand.  Truth is, its really hard to research exactly what someone does unless you're a very experienced person in their industry, and since we're talking about networking as a younger person starting out, I don't think some improved verson of "What do you do?" is such a bad thing.

Ok, so here's the passage from my book that didn't go anywhere...

"Ok, so no coming out and asking for a job upfront. We’re just doing research at this point, right? So, what do we actually want to know from these people? The four most relevant questions a student can ask networking contacts are:

1. What do you do? The Old Standby. It’s the easiest question to ask and get answered. The key here is that when someone tells you that they are an astrophysicist, you need to make sure you know what that means. Some follow up questions to make sure you have the answers to make sure you understand exactly what someone is doing include:

a. Who do you do that for? (Are they self employed, work for the government, a firm, etc.?)

b. Why would they want that done? Why does it help them? (Of course, don’t ask if the answer is obvious. If someone is a firefighter, don’t ask why the city wants fires put out, lest you come off like a pyromaniac.)

c. Does everyone who does what you do work for the same type of company that you do? (Some lawyers work for law firms, others work for corporations, and because of that, their jobs are somewhat, but not entirely different.)

We’re not interested in only what someone does for a career. Remember that we said our idea of success involves your whole life, and that who you are isn’t simply defined by what you get paid to do for a living. What does your contact do outside of work? Do they have a family, a hobby, or are they involved with a charity or volunteer work? It is important to get a sense of the whole person that you are talking to, not just one facet of their lives.

2. How did you get into that? This question will give you answers about their past, but may uncover some helpful clues that you could use for your future. How they got into what they are doing now basically outlines the steps you might need to take should you be interested in pursuing the field that they are in now. It is also important to understand whether or not they actually planned on getting where they got into, or whether they pretty much fell into it. What seems to happen a lot is that the actual job they do is unexpected, but it often stems from poking around in some related area. This is why the message behind this book is not to start planning, but just to start poking.

3. Where do you think it will lead you? Obviously, no one can predict the future, but most people at least have an idea of where they would like their jobs to lead, or at least whether or not they want it to lead somewhere else. Is this the last stop on the line, or just one of many?

4. Now that you have a sense of the present, past, and future of this person’s self navigation, you need to measure how genuine it is. Maybe this person is at a place in their life that is the exact opposite of where they actually want or intended to be. It is important for you to ask how ideal their situation is and what, if anything, they would change about it, besides the pay, of course.

5. Possibly the most important thing you can ask every contact you speak with is for a recommendation to speak with someone else. This will ensure that your network grows. Whether the recommendation comes from your indication of interest in a particular field, or just your contact’s idea of what you find interesting, trying to get each contact to lead to a new one is a great way to build up your network and increase your chances of coming across something great. Just ask the person if they know of anyone that they think you would be interested in talking to. Keep it open-ended.

Keep in mind that networking is a two way street as well. What you tell them is just as important as what they tell you. By telling people about your interests and your search to find out what it is that you want to do, you accomplish several things. First, you impress people that you are an ambitious, motivated person who is trying to be thoughtful about the direction they set themselves out in. Having people think well of you isn’t such a bad thing, of course. Second, it gets the word out about your interest. Every person you talk to then becomes a scout for you. In the back of their mind is now an alarm set to go off when an opportunity for you comes their way, and the more people you talk to, the wider you cast a net that might catch something that might prove interesting to you.

At this point, for the average freshmen, networking should be all about asking a ton of questions. Yet again, this requires us to throw away antiquated ideas about what’s cool and what isn’t. Remember how, in high school, two minutes before class ended, you’d get all annoyed about that one kid that had to ask just one more question. Well now, asking questions are a sign of intelligence. Smart people ask questions—they know what they don’t know. You’re at college to learn—not just in the classroom, but in every facet of your life. You should be out meeting new and different kinds of people, asking them about where they came from, what they want for themselves, what they value and who they want to be. When you are at the gym, you should ask people to show you new ways to fend off that freshman 15. When you walk by an open door in your dorm and someone has a great inflatable couch, ask them where they got it. Learning off of other people is a great skill to have, and all it takes is a little effort.

So how does this work? Do you just call up everyone in your newly created contact list and rattle off five questions? No, definitely not. First off, unlike a telemarketer, you want to have some consideration for trying not to catch the person at a bad time. Contacting the person beforehand to schedule a second conversation is the best way to go. In general, e-mail is a great icebreaker if you have their e-mail address. I find that when people drop me an e-mail, I can answer it on my own time, and an e-mail will never inconvenience anyone. With a phone call, you never know what they might already be up to when they pick up the phone. Everyone is different, though. You should try and judge it based on your knowledge of the person. Drop someone a call or e-mail just to see if they might be willing to answer a few questions about their career and when it might be convenient for them to talk. Never send anyone questions. You want to actually speak with these people, because that forms a better connection. When you have a good conversation with someone, as we said before, it builds a real relationship. When you e-mail questions, it becomes more of a one-way relationship about what they can get you.

Setting up a time to talk in the future also gives the person an opportunity to get mentally prepared for what they might talk to you about. Even if you don’t give them the questions beforehand, knowing that they will speak with you about what they do will probably cause them to do a little thinking about it beforehand.

Meet Ethan.

Ethan has a blog.   He does some graphic design work.

I found him because he's attending the Future of Online Advertising Conference and registered for their little social networking app.

Did I mention that he's a 17 year old high school student?

If you teach or work in the career services world, this is exactly what you need to be teaching... how students can create a professional digital presence for themselves and be ambitious enough to go to conferences, connect with people, network, etc.

Or are you too busy running job fairs?   

Soon, the best jobs will be gotten through digital backchannel conversations by people who maintain their professional thoughts in a searchable and consumable manner.

If you're working in career services are you spending more time with students on their resumes or teaching them ways to get jobs without them?

I run this great program for NYC-area students interested in finance called SEMI.  We even started a blog this year.  It gives students the opportunity to get matched up with a professional from the New York Society of Security Analysts, learn about different areas of finance, and also potentially win a sizable scholarship.

One of the goals for improvement in the program next year is to improve the mentor's experience.  Our mentors are very dedicated, but sometimes they feel out of touch with the broader program, or they're not exactly sure what they're suppossed to be telling the students.

I'm looking for feedback on mentoring experiences.  What has worked, what hasn't?  Are the programs you're involved with very structured or do the mentoring pairs work independently?

Also, is anyone who is reading this a member of NYSSA, or knows a NYSSA member who would make a great mentor for students interested in finance? 

Matt Sanchez of VideoEgg came and spoke this morning to the SEMI program--a group of young college students interested in finance and business that I run.

He said something that stuck with me... that there are two types of knowledge:  experiential knowledge and intuitive knowledge, and that entreprenuers are successful when they have the latter.  Basically, those who can only see and understand something if they've seen it before are going to struggle in a startup, whereas those who can hypothesis and logic out systems of behavior that are completely new will achieve much. 

I think often times, people take a very passive approach to intuition--imagining that you either have it or you don't, but I don't think that's true.  "Gut feelings" often come quicker to some people than others, but a lot of times, putting in some solid effort into thinking from the other side of the table or in someone else's shoes has the same effect.  Sometimes, you get good enough at that where it seems to come automatically, but that takes time.   A good "gut feeling" can come from a well thought out attept to figure out what you would do if you were someone else.   Intuition isn't a gift of luck... it is the result of mental training... a mode of thought.

...other times you need to hit them over the head with a brick.

I run a mentoring program and attendence at some of our breakfasts was lagging because many of the students were afraid of their i-banking internship peers getting more hours in the office than them.  So I sent them this note:

STUDENTS, PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO READ AND CONSIDER THIS…

I’ve spoken to a number of students who are experiencing some issues attending breakfasts because of work conflicts or just the requirements of their job’s hours. 

I understand this.  When you joined SEMI back in January, you probably figured that one breakfast a week that ended at 8:30/9 would be easy to attend.  Then you got to your internships and not only did you feel the pressure of competition from other interns, but you feel like the offer is looming over you and you don’t want to risk anything. 

This is an interesting thought exercise in the psychology of market behavior.  Students think that the way to get an offer is to outwork their peers on the job…  to beat them out in terms of hours spent.  To not miss any gatherings, getogethers, or meetings.  So, every student does the same thing… works ridiculous hours an attends everything.  Because they’re all acting the same way, their ability to actually differentiate from their peers is minimal, and the cost of this minimal differentation is great…  lots of hours, lots of stress.

Is there a better approach?  What about if you said to your supervisor at your i-banking firm, “I have the opportunity to go to Blackstone’s offices and meet with some key people there.  I really feel like making some of these contacts might make me more valuable to the firm and I’d be happy to make up the hours another day.”   

First off, there’s no doubt that you would be more valuable to the firm in my mind.  Second, now you’ve seperated yourself from the pack.  You’ve presented yourself as a go-getter looking to add value to the firm in several different ways, not just through hours. 

But is there risk?  Will you be the only one not going to a meeting?  Showing up at 9:30 one day?  Will that look bad?  Will you lose your offer?

Maybe if you skipped out to go to Great Adventure or because you were hungover… but if you approached your manager and told them exactly what you were doing. absolutely not.  Plus, the worst that could happen is that they say no.

Actually, that’s not true.  That’s not the worst that could happen.  The worst that could happen is that they say no and they’re not happy in your taking interest in talking to other firms and making professional connections… and that you still actually go to work for these people who are so closed minded and unreasonable

You should really be aiming to work in an environment where you have supervisors that take an active interest in your professional development and see the benefit of the networking connections that a visit to Blackstone would bring in.  If they don’t, do you really want to work for them anyway?  Now is the time when you should be aiming high, being a little idealistic, and taking these types of “risks” (even though I don’t think this is very risky.)  Behaving just like everyone else and trying to be the last one out of the office is something you do when you’re at a place 20 years and you’re trying to protect your reputation or your pension.  Its not something you do now at this age.  It strikes me that so many of you want to work in investing, where people get paid for taking risk and only for taking risk, yet many students I speak with are so paralyzed by fear that they don’t want to step an inch out of like at their precious internships. 

You’re too young and have too much potential to start conceding these types of quality of life issues.  I’ve always strived to work for employers who understood that the more well rounded and balanced I was, the more valuable I was to the firm…. and they saw me as more valuable to the firm than the firm being valuable to me.  I was the capital… I was the product, and they took an active interest in my development and well being…and happiness, too.  That’s why I had a unique career path that was different than the strict paths many of you are hanging on for dear life to.

And then people ask me how to get into private equity.  You want to know how to get into private equity?  Take an hour off from your internship tomorrow.  Come to Blackstone (in business attire) tomorrow morning, and make great friends with [one of the hosts of our breakfast].  Stay in touch with her… try to angle your way into a lunch.  Impress the hell out of her so you can score some inroads to a fall internship or a chance to recruit at Blackstone, the #1 Buyout firm in the

US

But, no, I’ll still probably only see 10 of you there tomorrow and you’ll sacrifice the rest of the summer, killing yourself when you didn’t really need to, to get a position you probably had in the bag anyway without tomorrow morning’s extra hour or two.  Then, when you’re 25, you’ll be totally burnt out and you’ll meet me at a SEMI reunion and ask me about getting into private equity or venture capital again.  Trust me, its very frustrating to watch when students don’t realize that real success means blazing your own trail on your own terms.

That’s all I have to say.  I hope to see more than 8 of you tomorrow.

Charlie

Got this note from my high school's listserv of alumni in business...

"I am seeking information about entry into financial analysts programs and other areas of the finance market.  I am a recent college graduate and would appreciate any insight on how to get my resume to the right people.  Thank you for your time."

Here's my response:

     I think the best way to get the information and help you are looking for is to start with what you know and what you've done.  "information about entry into financial analysts programs and other areas of the finance market." is a book's worth (or several books worth) of information.  I think most professionals are more willing to help those who show ambition in some way... who give as much as they ask for.

     So, perhaps something along the lines of, "I graduated from X and took part in x activity in college, where I developed in interest in X part of the finance market.  I was reading X the other day and it said that there were going to be more opportunities in X part of the market versus X.  I would like to know if this is a generally accepted view of the market and would be very excited to speak with a professional about this who works in that area."

   So what does this approach accomplish?

1)  It shows you've been doing your homework and have a track record of taking an active interest in the subject.  Otherwise, you will give people the impression (which I'm sure is incorrect) that you haven't done anything in finance before and you're just realizing that you're graduating college in a month and need a job.  Obviously your interest in finance stems from somewhere... tell people about that in a way that reflects your own unique perspective and ambition.
2)  It doesn't mention anything about jobs.  Not every contact will be good for a job and not everyone wants to be made to feel like their time is only worthwhile if they can get you a job.  You should be focused on building relationships with people who know you and are impressed with you.  Jobs will flow from that whether or not you ever ask one one explicitly.
3) It leaves open the possibility that someone might respond to this even if they can't offer you a job, but they might be able to give you some useful insight.
4) It encourages more people to participate with less.  Instead of asking for one person to write a novel, the more you ask specific questions about certain areas, the more people you'll get to respond with "Yeah, that makes sense b/c X... check out this other resource for more information."

I've been thinking lately about how to get the students I mentor to really dive head first into their interests.  Schools don't really teach students the degree to which they need to fully research and follow a topic enough to form opinions, discover opportunities, etc.  In other words...  how to throw gas on the fire in their bellies.   Here's a 12 step list that I think can be helpful to fill out and follow:

We'll use digital media as an example.

1. Define.  We're talking television, radio, music, movies, etc. and all of the screens and speakers it can wind up on.
2. Follow the money.  Creative people are paid to produce by publishers who pay distributors to send the content to consumers, who either pay directly for it or are subsidized by advertisers.  (Oversimplified and changing of course, but its a start...)
3. Stakeholders.  Who's involved?  Creatives, consumers, publishers, advertisers, distributors (channels, stations), big media, new media, investors, analysts, researchers, academics, the government.
4. Mainstream media.  Read the newspaper.  Watch the news.  Read books on this topic.  What's your digitial media reading list look like for MSM?
5. User generated content.  Read blogs: Paid Content, Rebuilding Media, etc.  Message boards, listservs.  Make a list of the places you can get insider and alternative info.
6. Participate.  Comment.  E-mail.  Share your thoughts with smart people and listen to them.  Go to conferences and speaking engagements.
7. Record. Keep a blog about following digital media, what you're learning and what you think about it.
8. Network.  Join LinkedIn.  Write a bio.  Invite people you know and search it.  Do some informational interviews and stay in touch with the people willing to share time with you.  Keep these people in a PDA, Outlook, wherever you keep contacts and a calendar to remind yourself how often you want to talk to people.
9. Visit.  Don't just sit at your computer.  Try to visit some companies in the space or other repositories of knowledge on the topic in person.
10. Associate.  Join a professional society or social networking group related to digital media.  (Like nextNY of course!)
11. Know the issues.  Look into DRM, privacy, the disaggregation and reaggregation of content.  New business models and Exploding TV.
12. Experience.  Seek out a job or project in this space.  Use Indeed!

And now, a brief commercial break.  I just want to take some time to promote my career Q&A site for college students, Find My Path (www.findmypath.com).  Over the holidays, I'm really going to ramp up promotion now that I've got a little buildup of content to hit the ground running with.  I'll be mass mailing to lots of career counseling professionals and talking about it wherever I can. 

I would appreciate it if you could help spread the word.  College students have lots of career questions, and those that don't would benefit from hearing the questions being asked by their peers.  This is a great forum to get questions answered and I'm very proud of it.  Please pass this site on to teachers, students, anyone you can think of. 

Thanks,

Charlie

I'm in the newspaper!  (I'm not sure if that link will always work, but the article is written by Patricia Kitchen and its in today's Newsday.)

The article is about young people and their careers.  Here's my part:

"New York, especially, can be a breeding ground for a who's-in-the-lead mentality, says Charlie O'Donnell, 24, an analyst in a New York City private equity group. A graduate of Fordham University, he's set up a young alumni mentoring program there for students and finds that some are "very focused on getting a job as opposed to getting the best job for them," which would call for slowing down and doing some self-assessment.

Young people also can "pay too much attention to what they perceive as the pace around them. Others get jobs and move up and it's easy to feel like you're falling behind."

While he's no advocate of staying stuck in a going-nowhere situation, he does say there's value to finding some kind of fulfillment in the job you're in for as long as you're there. He addresses such career issues on his Web site www.findmypath.com."

Ok, how cool is that?!  The story behind it is funny.  I e-mailed her months and months ago when I was trying to generate interest in my book, and she literally just called me last Monday for this article.  She even featured the Find My Path site!  haha... wooooo   I'm going to get to work on advertising the site more now that its been featured in a major newspaper.  wooooooo