Career Advice for New Grads
As I sat in my office Sunday morning preparing for my next to last business trip before the Christmas holiday, I was wondering why some New York Times Crossword Puzzle devotees think it is cheating to look up answers themselves but have no remorse, not a scintilla of guilt, asking someone else do it for them.
I also was wondering why the United States Senator who brought a snowball into that august chamber during an early spring snow storm this year to prove there was no global warming, has been strangely silent about the unseasonably warm temperatures across most of America, including the warm Christmas Day forecast for his home state and the normally chilly northeast.
Then I had a flash of insight: the first is just weirdly strange and the second is just bizarrely political. So much for my random thoughts…
Sunday is a time of reflection — for the week just past, and the one upcoming. To be candid, there is usually a lot more focus on the upcoming since in a normal week, with a typically busy schedule, I also have to write three blog posts, a daunting task given that most of my submissions range from 450 to 710 words. Writing that many words is easy. Making it interesting, relevant and helpful is another matter.
Last night we had Christmas dinner with my youngest son, a first-year law student. Although it is very, very early in his law school journey, the conversation inevitably turned to the “what happens after surviving law school” question. Like many, he is not sure. The resolution is still in the distant future and there are many days and nights of angst, reading, writing and sweating over exams before he must cross that bridge. But, for some college seniors that deadline has arrived — winter commencement. For most seniors it is still five months away if they are lucky enough to get their diploma in the scorching sun or a stuffy, under air-conditioned field house. Those inconveniences aside, I want to take a moment to share some advice with those who have not a clue what they want to do with their lives post graduation. For the rest of you, read anyway. My five ideas apply to you as well.
- Just get a job. That you get a job is the important thing. It does not have to be in your field of study. It does not even have to be work that is particularly rewarding. The point here is to get that first (the hardest) job and build a record of experience. Put your head down and work hard is advice that many career counselors offer. Volunteer for jobs you feel you can do but nobody else wants. On the bad days, grind. Chances are tomorrow will be better. Your goal, to get in two years of experience and to learn what it means to be part of a team, or to be held accountable for something that is important to others. This experience, ordeal, will help enormously when you begin looking for that next job, one that you really want and, hopefully, pays so much better.
- Begin keeping a career journal. No, not a Dear Diary sort of exercise but a journal of your career (actually you will have hundreds of journals when all is said and done). Some of America’s most successful leaders said keeping a journal was one of the most helpful, rewarding parts of their weekly routine. Make entries about each job, your supervisor, title, compensation, and scope of responsibility. Along the way make daily or weekly entries about major accomplishments, setbacks and think critically about what you learned from these experiences. When you get a new job or a performance evaluation, include entries about those events as well. This type of thoughtful discipline will help you become the best executive/leader you are capable of being.
- Build a Professional Network. Trust me on this one, it is never too early to begin this career critical endeavor. This must become second nature in your professional life. But know this, building, cultivating and reaping rewards from networking takes time, a lot of effort and the discipline to set aside time each week to feed and weed — add people who you want to get to know, people who can add value, and pull those who were only interested in what a connection could produce for them. Networking is not about you. The more you help others, the more valuable your network will become for you.
- Be positive. That can be a challenge for most of us. As a former newspaper reporter who witnessed more carnage and mayhem on the crime beat, and reported on some creepy politicians, most of whom believed the concept of “the truth” included the phrase “self serving”, I sometimes find myself looking for, and pointing out, those things that seem to be wrong. And while that can be a useful skill in conducting due diligence for the clients, the happier life, I realize, can be found in looking for the new, the exciting, the innovative, and the creative, in ideas and people. I am a happier, more content, and I believe a more effective professional, when I let that side of who I am dominate. I am betting that you will, too.
- Avoid being a realist. As actor Will Smith is fond of saying, being realistic is a pathway to mediocrity. Be honest with yourself but not about what you can’t do but what you can accomplish with your life. Do not let the naysayers hold you back. If you believe in yourself, then make it real. Do not let life happen. Create yourself.
Four Considerations When Using Social Media For Personal Brand Management
VICTORIA, Texas — Social media is a marvelous, game-changing tool to enhance career brand management by individuals. It can also be a powerful weapon to shoot yourself in the foot, even for experienced career brand managers like me.
To be successful navigating your brand using the two major social media platforms — LinkedIn and Facebook —here are four concepts to consider:
- First you need a plan. Managing your brand is not that much different from running a business. Those with a good, well-thought out plan and who execute effectively typically succeed. In this context, your plan is aptly named Personal Career Vision Statement (PCVS). Professionally speaking, your PCVS should capture what you want to accomplish in your life, what work you want to do and where you want to end up both in the organizational hierarchy and geographically. This PCVS should serve as the foundation for your social media career branding strategy and should drive how you shape your image.
- Connect with people in your profession, specifically in your field of expertise. These include established thought leaders who you respect, colleagues at other health systems, and people who work for organizations you admire. Ignore those who are trying to sell you something that is unrelated or irrelevant to enhancing your brand — life insurance sales representatives or financial planners for example, since those connections are typically not related to your actual career and are usually made based on a personal, face-to-face relationship.
- Adding content to LinkedIn or a business oriented Facebook business page is important because it is the primary way you build value in your relationships with professional contacts in your profession. Your posts should always be consistent in terms of frequency and content, and disciplined with regard to the quality and focus of your content. Content is key to building value in your network of contacts and in establishing yourself in a way that connects with your PCVS.
Examples of personal and business Facebook pages:
Here is my personal Facebook page versus the business page for JohnGSelf + Partners
4. LinkedIn is not like a personal Facebook page so avoid these surprisingly frequent and common mistakes:
- Posting personal photos of family, friends or pets
- Using a great snapshot of your dog for your profile photo, a selfie behind the wheel of your car, or a beautiful sunset. The beautiful sunset photo in Maui may be acceptable if you are a professional photographer or if you are an executive contemplating an immediate retirement
- Posting anything political or overly religious. People obviously will not always agree on these issues, especially in a hot political season when these two touchy subjects are intertwined. In fact, you might want to be circumspect about posting extreme political information on your personal Facebook page since that is easily made viral with your name attached. Just this week I posted something I thought was completely innocent, a video story from the CBS Evening News, only to find myself in “an interesting but nasty exchange with someone who very much disagreed with the story content. The level of vitriol from a person I did not know, and who I did not really want to know, escalated so fast. I felt myself being dragged into a political debate which is a no-no. So, I quickly deleted the post and related comments. Lesson learned: even a story that you think is interesting and uplifting about our diversity can create all manner of unwanted silliness.
The Ethics of Providing Misleading References
Editor’s Note: John is traveling with candidates today. This is a post that originally appeared in December, 2010. Reference management is a key aspect of executive search and we felt it was worthy of republication.
One of my mother’s oft repeated lines, reflective of her status as a true Southern Lady, was, “If you can’t say anything good about a person, don’t say anything at all.” Hardly her original line but it is certainly a standard of conduct worthy of practice.
There is a variation to this standard in the recruiting industry. When giving a reference, recruiters would prefer that executives adopt this rule: If you can’t say any good about a former employee, don’t lie.
I know of cases where exasperated executives, so happy are they to be rid of a troublesome or poor performing hospital executive or manager, that they have given remarkably favorable references. Perhaps a sense of guilt led them to do what they thought was a good deed. “I didn’t want to hurt his career,” one CEO said. I guess that CEO did not think about the next CEO who would have to deal with his now departed employee’s problems.
We do that a lot in healthcare – say nice things to an unsuspecting future employer about a candidate. Truth is we need to stop this. Giving a good reference when the former employee’s performance has been less than stellar is not doing anyone any favors, especially to the person who was sacked.
Verifying the performance of a potential employee is one of the age-old struggles of talent acquisition. Recruiters are seeking good information to avoid a costly hiring mistake. Companies that erect Chinese Walls to protect themselves against a lawsuit for a bad reference do not help the process even though these “walls” rarely prevent an enterprising researcher or recruiter from trying to dig out the truth.
If you feel compelled to support a former employee who did not succeed in your organization, then find those traits that you liked and politely decline to answer each question regarding performance in which your response might be negative.
This might be equivalent to “damning by faint praise” but at least you have done the right thing.
Aw Come On, Be Realistic…
I have said it. Many times.
So have many school counselors, bosses, friends, even parents. Typically it was uttered as sage advice to dissuade a foolish act, to protect a loved one from crushing disappointment or, in my case, to steer an executive away from an ill-advised career choice that was sure to be a setback.
Be realistic.
It is a safe phrase to use. How could anyone go wrong using it when giving advice? Well, apparently it took an actor of extraordinary accomplishment and success, Will Smith, to set the record straight.
“Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity.”
To add some historical heft to his beliefs, Mr. Smith likes to trot out the Chinese social thinker and philosopher Confucius who wrote, “He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.”
I was on the fast road to writing off Mr. Smith’s spiel as just so much bunk, sort of the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking” wrapped in 21st century Hollywood glitz. It is easy after all to be a purveyor of secrets to success when you’ve got it made, like a gambler with a Royal Flush who feels he is the smartest person at the poker table. There is some skill involved but man oh man, luck is in the mix as well. But more than anything else, you have to have confidence and courage.
So, I thought, perhaps Mr. Smith, like so many positive thinkers before him, is on to something. He crystallized that for me when he said, “But you have to make it real.
“There is a redemptive power in making a choice, who are you going to be and how you are going to do it. Then you just have to decide.
“There is no reason to have a Plan B. It just distracts from your Plan A.”
In the end, those who succeed are not necessarily the people who are realistic. Mr. Smith’s rationale goes like this:
It was not realistic in the early 1880s to think you could walk into a room, flip a switch and turn on lights, to illuminate homes and businesses, indeed entire cities, but Thomas Edison, who was partially deaf and suffered as a child from hyperactivity, thought it was entirely possible.
It was not realistic in the early 1900s to think you could wrap aluminum around a steel frame and fly people across the ocean, but Orville and Wilbur Wright were not to be deterred. Their invention of three-axis control, which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively, was a major breakthrough that led to commercial flight.
History is, in fact, filled with examples where being unrealistic produced game changing inventions, game changing results. Just ask Broadway Joe Namath, the New York Jets quarterback who confidently predicted, to much ridicule and disbelief, that his underdog AFL team would defeat the powerful Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. They did, 16-7, but it just wasn’t realistic to believe that could happen.
The secret, Mr. Smith believes, is that “you must possess a desperate obsessive focus with all your fiber, your whole heart and every ounce of your creativity.” It also helps to fear not being successful, he added.
For those of us who interview candidates for leadership jobs or counsel executives in transition, there is an almost overwhelming tendency to be wise, circumspect and to play it safe. We can always summon up dozens of barriers (excuses) — competitive environment, established relationships, access to capital — to make the case for not taking such a risk but in doing so, are we doing someone a service, or an enormous disservice? Perhaps the wise advice would be to ask, Can you really make this real? Do you have the courage, the stamina, the heart and the creativity to sustain your plan?
“It is always too early to quit,” Dr. Peale once said. “Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”
The Rev. Mr. Peale, ordained as by Methodist-Episcopal Church, began his 52-year tenure as pastor of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City in 1932. It was the Rev. Peale’s positive outlook and his belief that all manner of things were possible that enabled him to oversee the church’s membership growth from 600 to more than 5,000. He became one of America’s most famous preachers.
Perhaps the phrase “being realistic” is similar to another overused phrase when trying to find a reason not to do something. But then “conventional wisdom” which, time has proven, is seldom right.
What Does Quality Care Have To Do With A CFO’s Career Strategy?
This is a blog post about career management for healthcare CFOs. Really it is. But to get to the point I want to make on career management I need to, once again, plow through the issues of improving quality of care, making care safer, reducing costs and enhancing patient satisfaction.
If you pay attention to the issue of patient safety and improved quality, you know that the agitated push and pull regarding recent studies concerning preventable deaths has escalated. In one post, a distinguished but defensive academic physician doubted the extent of the problem because, he said, these studies are too small, too anecdotal, and too flawed in their methodology. In other words, if you do not agree with the problem that is being presented, or you are concerned about the impact of these studies on the practice of medicine, you question the data. It is a timeless argument.
On one side, you have legions of quality of care and patient safety experts who say the problem is bigger than any of us want to imagine. On the other side, there is a theme in the writings of those who want to disagree with this belief — the doubters, definitely in the minority, who usually acknowledge that there is a problem but immediately question the validity (the data) of any study regarding the magnitude of the problem. Their rationale is almost always structured as: yes, we have a problem with quality and safety but it is doubtful that it is really that big a problem.
So, this brings me to the career management side of this post. I recently completed interviews with dozens of hospital CFOs. We focused on two issues:
- Whether mergers/consolidations will improve performance of healthcare organizations
- What the role of the CFO is in enhancing quality, safety and patient satisfaction while reducing costs
These were interesting conversations, but not for the obvious reasons.
On the first subject — health system consolidation — the overwhelming majority of CFOs laughed when asked whether mergers would help reduce costs, improve quality, enhance safety and make the patients happier. Here is a sample of their candid remarks:
- “Not in our lifetime,”
- “I cannot think of any healthcare merger that produced any of those benefits. It was usually the opposite.”
- ”This rush to consolidation is all a fad, smoke and mirrors — strategies we trot out every 10 to 15 years when we are not sure what to do with market changes or reform…”
- “Healthcare is a local enterprise. We went through this before and it did not work because larger systems never achieved all the financial synergies that were used to justify the deal to begin with.”
- “Higher corporate overhead at the system level will drive up costs, losses will follow and, in the end, we will pay consultants a boat load of money to unwind our mistakes, yet again.”
- “The theory is understandable but it is questionable whether these expanding systems have the wherewithal — the leadership experience or in some cases the political will in the face of opposition from their affiliates — to achieve the kind of results that would justify the effort.”
But here is the more important point: when the conversation shifted to quality of care, patient safety and improving patient satisfaction, these CFOs were “all in.” Every CFO I spoke with had something meaningful to say about the critical importance of their role in dealing with those issues. There was one health system financial CFO who offered the most poignant assessment:
“Our patients, their safety, their well-being after they go home — whether they got better or if they had to be readmitted — is deeply important to me and other members of our senior leadership team. Isn’t this why we all got into healthcare in the first place?
“My job is to help the caregivers, the clinicians and support staff, with strategies and tactics to achieve these important objectives. I can’t be the grinch who is only focused on saying ‘No.’ I have to find a way for us to be better clinically, in safety and with service. I cannot sit on the sideline and count beans and complain about expenses.”
How is this CFO different from his colleagues?
He has been a CFO, a COO and CEO. But more importantly, he has been a patient advocate for a critically ill sister. That proved to be an eye-opening, life and career changing moment.
“We think we know what goes on in our hospitals, but we don’t. It is appalling. I have always believed that America had the best healthcare in the world but when you see it from the patient’s perspective, when you see the breakdown in coordination, the medical errors, the problems with hospital infections, the near fatal misses, it shakes you to your very core. I had no idea of the hidden problems in the delivery of quality safe care that exists in most hospitals in America.
“As a CFO, my role in helping correct these problems is just as important as that of the Chief Medical Officer, Chief Nursing Officer or the quality department… I have asked to be more involved in this side of the business so I can be a better resource for my colleagues.”
For a CFO’s career brand, this point of view is a game changer.