10 tips to out-hip the hipsters

By Neil Patrick

It’s time for us to fight fire with fire. To stop being blindsided by youth’s purported technological superiority.

One of the most persistent and damaging beliefs held by employers is that older people are out of touch with modern technology. Often enough all they mean by this is that we don’t waste too much of our valuable time posting selfies on Facebook and playing Angry Birds on our mobile phones.

This surrogate ‘measure’ of technological prowess is an Achilles' heel for the young though and here’s why.

Young people are not more sophisticated users of social media than older folk. They are just more familiar with the platforms. And waste more time on them. I know. I see what they tweet about. And it’s mostly vacuous narcissistic drivel.

The most famous book on social engagement was written in 1936, by Dale Carnegie and it was called, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Is it still relevant? You bet. And because of the rise of social media, I’d venture it is even more relevant today than when it was written.

Dale Carnegie 1888-1955 

If you think your career is just about being good at your job, you are operating in a vacuum. If no-one outside your immediate professional network knows anything about you, you are essentially invisible to the world. And that’s not a good place to be when for reasons beyond your control you are facing a career crisis.

Jobs are about getting stuff done. About influencing. About results. Social media can help you with all these things more than you’d ever believe.

But only if you know how to do it right.

And doing it right isn’t about copying the ‘yoof’.

Time and time again, I find that employers believe that older hires are not as good as younger ones because they believe we are out of touch with the digital world. There is some truth in this too. Older people often have concerns about privacy and this excessively constrains their online activity.

But because this transformation is so pivotal, we cannot run away from it. We have to embrace it and deal with the rough edges. Denial and avoidance are not an option if you want to remain employable in the 21st century.

The good news is that it’s actually not that hard to out-hip the hipsters… and here’s how you can do it.

So here are my top 10 hipster beating ideas for anyone over 40 (and many who are younger) to show that you are more hip than the hipsters and more importantly a good deal more employable.

Put your social media to work for you

Did you know that the average Twitter account has less than 200 followers? Build your Twitter following to over a thousand and straight away, you’ll be perceived differently. 

Make your public online presence mainly about the work you do

Hipsters love to talk about themselves. They can’t help but post selfies of themselves having fun. Don’t copy this. Use your social media to show you are a serious professional.

Spread across multiple platforms

Start at the centre and work out gradually. Don’t leap onto every social media platform at once. Start with the core and gradually expand from there. The core is Linkedin and Twitter. After you are established there, dependant on what you do, then you might want to expand to YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook. 

Get connected

Do not pester people to connect. Be nice to them and slowly but surely they will reciprocate. Share other people’s stuff. Comment constructively. Be nice to others and they will be nice to you. 

Make your voice heard

No-one loves bullies, show offs or big mouths. So don’t be one online. Be more interested in others than yourself and it will get you further and faster.

 
Build online goodwill

It’s funny, but online relationships are actually not much different to real world ones. Help others out and ask for nothing in return. Most will be so shocked and delighted they will remember you if not forever, then certainly for longer than if you ignored them 

Know your numbers

Look at who you consider to be your peers in your professional realm. And your role models. There’s your benchmark. If you have bigger numbers than they do, you are leading your race not struggling to catch up. 

Understand the digital landscape

You don’t need to be a coder or a web designer to do this. As platform algorithms become ever more sophisticated, they are learning how to reward good online behaviour and punish the bad. The meek really shall inherit the earth (provided they are not so meek no-one knows they exist).

Help people solve problems

Every day I am contacted by people many of whom I have never met or even communicated with before. They ask me to help them solve their business problems. I am not a charity yet I never ask them to pay anything for my advice. I place a greater value on their goodwill than I do on filling my pockets. Some would say this is foolish and unnecessarily altruistic. I say that goodwill is more valuable than mere money.

 
Be interesting

Yoof cannot help but try and show the world how beautiful, fun and affluent they are. And guess what, no-one cares*. Their social media role models are the rich and the famous. But yoof has not recognised that different rules apply to these people. For better or worse, fame changes the game.

People like and are interested in people who like and are interested in them. Not people who are mostly interested in themselves and trying to impress others.



The beauty of this strategy is that you’ll kill at least two birds with one stone. First you will learn a ton of stuff. Second, you will be able to prove that you are right up to date with the digital world and critically that you know how to use it to create real influence.

Hipsters watch out! You are about to be outsmarted by those you jeered at.

*A 2013 study of Facebook users found that posting photos of oneself correlates with lower levels of social support from and intimacy with Facebook friends (except for those marked as Close Friends). The lead author of the study said that "those who frequently post photographs on Facebook risk damaging real-life relationships."

Have you got the key skills for the information age?

By Neil Patrick

I’ve  been writing a great deal recently about the destruction of jobs by what is variously called, the third industrial revolution, knowledge economy or new machine age. This situation creates a whole new set of challenges for everyone who wants to earn a living in these tough times.

Most of us know it is happening. What's thin on the ground is information about what we can do about it.

We need new solutions and we need to take personal ownership of our own countermeasures.

This isn’t just my opinion. Multiple and diverse organisations are reporting the same thing:

Manpower states that despite the recession, 31% of employers struggle to find qualified workers because of “a talent mismatch between workers’ qualifications and the specific skill sets and combinations of skills employers want.”

The American Management Corporation says that employers want workers who can think critically, solve problems creatively, innovate, collaborate, and communicate.

The National Association of Manufacturers reports, “Today’s skill shortages are extremely broad and deep, cutting across industry sectors and impacting more than 80% of companies surveyed. This human capital performance gap threatens our nation’s ability to compete . . . [and] is emerging as our nation’s most critical business issue."

The National Academies claim that “The danger exists that Americans may not know enough about science, technology, or mathematics to contribute significantly to, or fully benefit from, the knowledge-based economy that is already taking shape around us.”

The New York Times reports that low-skilled workers are being laid off and "turned away at the factory door and increasingly joining the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed . . .” This issue results from a disparity between the skills that workers have and those that employers need.

So what can we do about it?

If the last time you sat in a classroom was at university or an employer’s course, the chances are high that your learning skills have significantly reduced. Of course we all acquire job specific skills at work, but what we don’t generally continue to develop in our jobs are the learning skills that are now critical for 21st century career survival.

If we accept that the pace of change in the world is accelerating, then it is logical to conclude that our ability to adapt to change must also be increasingly critical. And the key enabling mechanism for coping with change is learning.

What are the key learning skills for the 21st century workplace?

21st century skills are a set of abilities that everyone needs to develop in order to succeed in the information age. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has identified three key learning skill areas.

I call them the three Cs of thinking; critical thinking, creative thinking and collaborative thinking:

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following :

 

• understand the logical connections between ideas 
• identify, construct and evaluate arguments 
• detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning 
• solve problems systematically 
• identify the relevance and importance of ideas 
• reflect on the justification of one’s own beliefs and values 

After we leave education and start to exist in the world of our jobs, our critical thinking skills may easily become rusty. Other factors start to influence and direct our thought processes. The competitive environments we often experience encourage competitive reactions – the exact opposite of one of the other Cs – collaboration.

So good critical thinking skills not only break the force field of groupthink, they also encourage collaboration.



Creative Thinking

This is the process by which individuals come up with new ideas or new approaches to business. New ideas could result in new products, procedures or policies. They could also result in a new process that cuts costs or improves quality - for example, a bagless vacuum cleaner.

Fresh ideas give businesses a competitive advantage and help make their goods or services stand out in the market place.

We can make use of several different thinking techniques to improve our creativity:

• Lateral thinking or thinking outside the box. An example of this would be breaking down the steps taken to serve coffee in a café and asking 'why' at each step to see if a better process can be created. 
• Deliberate creativity uses thinking techniques to spark off new ideas. For example, putting on different thinking hats to tackle problems from different angles. 'White-hat' thinking looks at facts and 'black-hat' thinking looks at drawbacks. 
• Blue-sky thinking involves a group of people looking at an opportunity with fresh eyes. As many ideas as possible are generated in an ideas generation session where no ideas are rejected as silly. 

Collaborative thinking

There are generally accepted to be seven rules for all collaboration:

Look for common ground: find shared values, consider shared personal experiences, pay attention to and give feedback, be yourself and expect the same of others, be willing to accept differences in perception and opinions

Learn about others: consider their perspectives and needs, appeal to the highest motives, let others express themselves freely

Critique results, not people: do not waste time on personal hostility, make other people feel good, avoid criticism and put downs

Give and get respect: show respect for others' opinions, be considerate and friendly, put yourself in the other person's shoes, be responsive to emotions, speak with confidence but remain tactful

Proceed slowly: present one idea at a time, check for understanding and acceptance of each idea before moving on to the next. Speak in an organized and logical sequence.

Be explicit and clear: share your ideas and feelings, pay attention to nonverbal communication, speak clearly and make eye contact, select words that have meaning for your listeners

Remember the five "Cs" of communication: clarity, completeness, conciseness, concreteness, and correctness

It's not a co-incidence that the social web or internet 2.0 also functions with these principles at its core.



New Skills for New Jobs

These skills have always been important for personal development, but they are now absolutely critical in our information-based economy. When most workers held jobs in industry, the key skills were knowing a trade, following directions, getting along with others, working hard, and being professional - efficient, prompt, honest, and fair.

To hold information-age jobs though, people also need to think deeply about issues, solve problems creatively, work in teams, communicate clearly in many media, learn ever-changing technologies, and deal with a flood of information. The rapid changes in our world require us to be flexible, to take the initiative and lead when necessary, and to produce something new and useful.

But these thinking skills aren’t just relevant to our careers and jobs. They play a part in making the world a better and more just place for all of us. I think there’s a good argument that the absence of these thought processes within the management of the banking world was the biggest single factor in the financial collapse of 2008. If we ever needed an example of the terrible consequences of endemic groupthink, we need look no further.

So next time you are considering what skills you could acquire to enhance your career prospects, think outside the box and think about what you can do to improve your thinking skills. Not just for yourself but the world as well.

Why we all need to rethink our career plans right now

By Neil Patrick

We all need to think differently about our jobs and careers in the 21st century. This isn’t something which is ever talked about in the mainstream media. They are too busy reporting job losses and hunting down stories about new jobs being created. At best you’ll find tips about interviews or resume writing. None of this information deals with the fundamental shifts in society that we seeing today and which will become more and more dominant in the future. Worse, none of this really helps people who are desperately searching for jobs and trying to figure out why even if they have great qualifications, they still can’t find work…

What is REALLY going on?

Part of the reason for this tragic state of affairs is that the world is undergoing a radical transformation. It’s a change so great that nothing like it has happened for over two hundred years. It’s the endgame of a complex interplay between technology, energy sources, demographics, communications, globalisation and the biosphere.

Jeremy Rifkin’s latest book, “The Zero Marginal Cost Society” has set out an immensely insightful view of what’s really going on in the world today. And it has nothing to do with selfish businesses, greedy bankers or corrupt politicians.

As Rifkin says, “We are just beginning to glimpse the bare outlines of an emerging new economic system, the collaborative commons. This is the first new economic paradigm to emerge on the world scene since the advent of capitalism and socialism in the early 19th century. So it's a remarkable historical event. It has long-term implications for society”.

Technology will continue to make goods and services cheaper and cheaper until they are almost free

The trigger for this global change is something called “zero marginal cost”. Marginal costs are the costs of producing an extra unit of a good or service after your fixed costs are covered. All business people are familiar with marginal costs, most of the public isn't. And as I discussed here, marginal costs have been falling consistently for decades as technology progressively replaced expensive human labor and drove down the cost of production. I distinctly recall wanting a flat screen television about twelve years ago. I never bought one then, because they cost about £15,000. Today I could buy a bigger and much better TV for less than £1000.

Books used to be another thing I would spend a lot of money on. It wasn’t unusual for me to fork out £20, £30 or even more to buy a printed copy of a book that really interested me. Today I can download an electronic version usually for around £5. CDs would cost me £10-£15 each back then. Today, most CDs are about half that price and legal downloads even less.

Endlessly falling marginal cost means consumer goods and many services will continue to get cheaper and cheaper, heading ever closer to zero. Zero or near zero marginal cost is going to dramatically affect every single person in the world in the coming years in every aspect of their life.

A new economic paradigm is on its way right now

There's a paradox embedded in the heart of the capitalist market system that’s pretty much never discussed. This paradox has been responsible for the tremendous success of capitalism over the last two centuries. But here's the irony; the very success of this paradox is now leading to an end game and the new paradigm emerging is what Rifkin calls, “collaborative commons”.

In a traditional market, sellers are always constantly probing for new technologies that can increase their productivity, reduce their marginal costs so they can put out cheaper products and win over consumers and market share and beat out their competitors and bring some profit back to investors. So business people are always looking for ways to increase productivity and reduce their marginal cost.

But they simply never expected in their wildest dreams that there would be a technology revolution so powerful that it might reduce those margins of cost to near zero making goods and services essentially free, priceless and beyond the market exchange economy. That's now beginning to happen in the real world.

And the internet is at the heart of this transformation

The first inklings of this zero margin cost phenomenon was with the inception of the world wide web from 1990. Millions of consumers became prosumers with the advent of the Internet. Today, they produce and share their own videos, their own news blogs, their own entertainment and their own knowledge with each other. In these lateral networks, this is done at near zero marginal cost. It’s essentially free, completely bypassing the capitalist market.

This zero marginal cost phenomena wreaked havoc first on publishing businesses. Newspapers went out of business; they couldn't compete with near zero marginal costs. Magazines went out of business. Record companies went out of business.

But free stuff cannot easily be converted into stuff which earns us money

The strange thing about it is that at first a lot of industry watchers said this was a good thing. They argued that if we give out more and more information goods free and people are producing and sharing it free, these “freemiums” will stimulate people's appetite to want premiums and then upgrade this free goods and information by getting more customized information.

Musicians gave away their music free when they started to see this happen hoping that they would get a big loyal fan base and then their fans would be enticed to go to their concerts and pay the premium in order to be there in person. We saw a similar strategy with newspapers. The New York Times will give you ten free articles a month, hoping that you'll then upgrade to premiums and join their subscription service. It just didn't happen on any large scale.

This was very naïve by industry watchers. Sure, some people have moved from freemiums to premiums but when more and more information goods are out there nearly free shared with each other, music, film, arts, information and knowledge, the attention span and scarcity is not there to motivate people enough to want to pay for the premiums when they have so much available already for free.

What does this mean for jobs in the future?

All the while that this has been going on, jobs have become scarcer for more and more people. Even where human skills are required to deliver services, like healthcare, the ever increasing efficiency of the technology they use to provide care, means fewer and fewer people are needed.

The implications of the zero marginal cost society are huge. We all need to think differently about how we will earn a living in the coming years. There are several implications as I see it:

1. Even if we are working full time currently, it is almost certain that the number of people organisations require to do the type of work we do will continue to reduce. 
2. As traditional jobs continue to become scarcer, competition for the remaining jobs will continue to become fiercer. 
3. The loss of a job is likely to result in longer periods without work. The loss of income coupled with continuing outgoings, will continue to bankrupt many people. 

Placing our entire faith in our skills and qualifications that have enabled our careers until now, will therefore not guarantee our incomes in the future. We all need to plan for this eventuality and the start point for this planning is how we assess the personal assets that we have to deploy. And these may be very different assets to the ones which have enabled our careers up to now.

I believe that we can keep ahead of this tsunami of job destruction if we embrace three essential ideas about our careers in the internet age:

The importance of connectivity and personal networks. The internet facilitates the development of our personal networks. The largest numbers of opportunities will accrue to those who are the best connected people. This is why Linkedin and other social media is so important to all of us.

Collaborative approaches will yield greater returns than competitive ones. Building our opportunities will be less and less as a result of competition. More and more they will be the result of collaborations. People do business with people they like. And helping others out is the best way I know to develop the necessary goodwill for a relationship which has future value to both parties.

Personal intellectual capital and especially forms of creativity that cannot be easy replicated by technology will be the most resistant to erosion. We tend to think of intellectual capital as a very corporate thing. But every one of us has personal intellectual capital which is ours and ours alone. It might be great cooking recipes. Or a gift for oratory, or the ability to show great empathy. The list is endless. But more than ever before we need to clearly understand what our personal intellectual capital assets are. This will be the only way we can figure out how we can leverage our value and continue to earn money in a zero marginal cost society…

What do the best career coaches actually do?

By Neil Patrick

Do you need a career coach? How do you find the best career coach for your requirements?  

Career coaching is a new and high growth industry. There are over 300 coaches following me on Twitter alone. It’s arisen because as job search becomes ever more competitive and challenging, people are discovering the hard way that being really good at what you do is no longer enough to ensure that you have a successful career.

The best career coaches provide the insight and key skills that people need to reach their career ambitions. Whether that’s finding and getting hired into a new job, moving forward in an existing career, or making a complete change of direction mid-career.

But with so many coaches out there, how do you know what to look for to find the best coach for you?

Do you even need a career coach?

So I turned to my good friend Marcia LaReau, founder and President of Forward Motion US to try and find some answers to these questions. Marcia is exceptionally well qualified to deal with this subject. Since founding Forward Motion, Marcia has helped hundreds of people succeed in overcoming their career obstacles.

NP: Marcia, why do you think career coaching is needed at all?

ML: Thank you Neil. First I’d like to say that the definition of career coaching has changed dramatically with the economic situation. As we become a global, technology-driven economy, the very core attributes that are needed for businesses to succeed is changing. That in turn has changed career coaching.

Prior to the Great Recession we believed that we could define what we liked and enjoyed and pursue that as a career. At that time career coaches helped their clients identify what they liked and enjoyed and then helped them find a place where they could do those things, get paid a living wage and hopefully, grow their career. It was a long-term outlook.

Today this isn’t enough. It’s still important for a person to understand what they enjoy; however, businesses have been under a mandate to cut costs, increase profit margins and get everything out of their employees that they can. I don’t’ mean to infer that businesses are all being run by inhumane ogres. Many businesses are simply trying to survive. I also don’t mean to infer that there isn’t a fair amount of inordinate greed that causes companies to drive their employees past what is reasonable.

Let me get back to career coaching—the point here is that companies do not have the capacity to focus on the career growth of their employees (unless it is part of their succession plan and directly benefits the company). So today, everyone who wants to work is in charge of their career development and the direction they will pursue.

The scope of doing this is huge! People have to be aware of their core attributes from a business perspective. They have to position themselves both online and in the business community as a viable, credible resource in their areas of expertise. Then they have to understand the changes in their industry and how they can remain viable in a changing market. It’s a lot!

Today’s career coach is also a job coach and understands the hiring processes and the employment market. A career/job coach guides their clients to maneuver through the distractions to identify the employment goal and scope out an effective path to get there. In the process their client should (in my opinion) learn how to manage their career so they are proactive with regard to their future security.

Without a career coach, many people have become resigned to the idea that if they get a job that gives them a living wage, then they should be grateful and settle…even if they don’t like what they are doing for eight to 10 hours a day (or more), five to six days a week.

NP: Should someone use career coaching when they have a job, or is it really just for when they are facing unemployment?

ML: Businesses, industries are changing at record speed today. In my opinion, everyone should have a career coach and check in with him or her at least once a quarter and more often if there are signs that a business is losing its place in the market. Further, it is expected that everyone will change jobs every three to four years. It could be within a company, but not necessarily.

I believe every person who wants to work for more than five years should engage with a career coach as someone who is watching their industry and market and identifying potential disruptions that could cause an unwanted financial situation. In addition, the career coach should be looking for opportunities to grow potential earnings and help the client maintain their credibility in the industry and move their career in the direction that suits their long-term goals.

All the people that I talk to want to end their career strong. Today that is easier said than done!

NP: Does everyone need it, or are some job sectors more suited to it than others?

ML: Disruptive innovations such as Big Data and social media are changing the landscape of every job sector. So in my opinion, everyone should have a regular “career checkup” with a qualified career coach.

NP: If someone loses his or her job and money is consequently really tight, how can anyone justify spending money on coaching?

ML: How can they NOT justify it? One of the primary goals at Forward Motion is to reduce the time to employment. A good career coach should reduce the number of weeks of unemployment significantly.

Let’s say that a standard (non-executive) job search costs between $2K and $3,500. If a person makes, let’s say $52,000 a year. So the job search costs less than one month of salary. AND if the average job search is approximately six to eight months, and the job coach reduces that by four months, then the client is now $12,000 ahead because they spent $3K on a career coach.

Also, with a career coach, the chances a person will get a better job at a better salary, increases significantly.

NP: Tell me about the typical problems people come to you with?

ML: Their situations run the gamut of the imagination. Some people just have no idea how to go about the job search. They are bewildered and overwhelmed. Others have tried everything they can think of and used every available cost-free option they could find—nothing worked and the finally called me.

Some people are in industries that are failing or have already died and need to assess their transferrable skills and/or re-credential themselves and figure out how to get a new career path without having to start from scratch at as an entry-level employee.

And then there are the early-career millenials who see record-high unemployment numbers in their college friends. They don’t just want a job, but they want to do something that brings value and doesn’t just fill the pockets of corporate business owners and investors.

Finally, about 30% of my business includes executives, who many times have reached out to their network and come up empty. Executives, more than any other group, come to me earlier in their job search. They know they need help and that they aren’t an expert and they want someone who can advise them.

NP: And how does coaching help people overcome these problems?

ML: A good career coach knows the market and the current hiring practices. They can put together a customized program that will reduce the time to employment through a carefully designed, flexible search strategy.

A truly dynamic jobsearch strategy is anything but a shotgun approach where people apply for a ton of opportunities and hope something happens.

I believe that an effective program sets a foundation for the search by identifying the most viable employment opportunities where the jobseeker is found credible, and where they qualify for the jobs. Then they must create an airtight identity both online and through their application materials. That includes a stunningly polished and customizable cover letter and résumé. With the foundation in place, we apply for 5 jobs and find out how what happens. We then rework the materials and apply for five more jobs. Within two or three iterations, the client is getting calls for jobs that are a good fit.

NP: What can you tell me about your success rates?

ML: First, I don’t abandon clients. If they are diligent and conduct themselves in a professional manner, then we will work until they are hired. It’s harder in some industries than in others.

Nonetheless:

- 98% of Forward Motion clients get hired
- 76% of mid-career clients get hired in 68 days
- 96% of early-career clients get hired in 45 days

NP: If someone is considering career coaching, how should they go about finding the best coach for them?

ML: First, there should be a good fit from a relationship perspective. In other words, there should be open communication. A good career/job coach sometimes has to say things that are personal and private. The relationship should develop so that when comments are made, that are difficult to hear from the jobseekers perspective, the jobseeker knows it is being said with his or her best interest in mind. So the relationship must be candid and comfortable.

Second, the career coach should be someone who diligently wants to get place his or her client in a new job. This is tricky since the jobseeker brings in income for the career coach. There are some career coaches who want to sustain the relationship to earn more income. I am sorry to report this. I handle this by putting a cap on the cost of the jobsearch. So the jobseeker knows that expenses won’t get out of hand.

NP: What does it cost? And are there any things you’d caution people about?

ML: I try to provide my clients with choices around the costs. An early-career search may go as high as $2,500. A mid-career (non-executive) search may double that number although I haven’t had anyone do that. Executives are a different ballgame and it depends on how much he or she wants to do and how much I would do. So an executive search might be as little as $2500 and include no more than a stellar résumé, or it could be as high as $20K and include the total management of a jobsearch.

NP: Thanks Marcia.

ML: Thanks Neil.

I'd like to thank Marcia for the time she has taken to share these valuable insights. You can find out more about Forward Motion US and their resources and services here. Do please post any comments or questions below and we'll do our best to answer them.

How to get people to say ‘yes’ – the science of persuasion

By Neil Patrick

Whether you are applying for a job, pitching a sale, negotiating with a customer or even just going about your day to day work, how much is it worth to you to get more people to say ‘yes’?

There are scientifically proven methods that have a massive impact on this. Better still, they are simple, ethical and almost completely free.

The interesting thing is that these methods are especially relevant in the online world. Whether it’s how we engage with people on social media, how we set up a website, or what we say on our Linkedin profiles, the applications of this knowledge are endless and astonishingly powerful.

These tips are also short-cuts. Success is found by working smarter not harder. Knowing these principles you’ll find dozens of applications whatever kind of work you do.

If you want to know the 6 principles of persuasion so you can apply them, this simple and insightful explanation from an RSI Animate video will give you all you need to start to benefit straight away.

The video is presented by Dr. Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin, co-authors of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week International Bestseller “Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive”.

Totally recommended viewing!

Discover the rockstars' career secrets

By Neil Patrick

Here's a glimpse into the career secrets of today's real life rockstars...and they have value to every one of us.

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting up with Alex Hutchings, an astonishingly talented pro guitarist. Alex is an up and coming star, he writes and records music for the BBC, is a popular presenter of guitar instructional videos and performs regularly with some of the most famous and respected musicians in the world. We’d agreed to meet up to discuss the problems of the music industry and how pro musicians are responding to these challenges.

The term ‘rockstar’ has come to be used to describe people whose status almost effortlessly transcends that of their peers. The reality though is quite different. Real life rockstars have extraordinarily tough careers today and they have just as many if not more hurdles to overcome than the rest of us.

Just think about this:

Music is now expected to be available for free

The old music industry has almost disappeared as digital media has replaced the old physical media. Free or cheap file sharing mean that no-one expects to have to pay for music anymore. And consequently, the giant record labels of old have shriveled to emaciated versions of their previous selves. What’s the value of a product that almost no-one is willing to pay money for?

Sales of recorded music have dwindled, regardless of your talent

These days, having real talent, writing and recording music is simply not enough to secure you a guaranteed career. Bill Haley’s 1954 hit, Rock Around the Clock sold 25 million copies. In 2011, just thirteen titles sold more than one million copies. Ten years previously, in 2001, there were more than one hundred such titles.

You cannot expect to make much revenue, let alone profit, selling your music via the internet

Songs on iTunes sell for 99 cents. But the artist only gets around 10 cents, so to earn just $1000, you need to achieve 10,000 downloads. Even if you can shift a massive 100,000 downloads on iTunes, your cut is just $10,000. But that’s your gross revenue before you deduct all the expenses you incurred in making and promoting the music in the first place.

Pro musicians these days are more or less on their own

Along with the labels, the resources that pro musicians’ could draw upon to support the development of their careers have dried up too. Managers, A&R people, agents, publicists, promoters – they've mostly gone save for a handful who truly serve only a tiny global super elite of artists. Other ‘signed’ artists get minimal support by comparison.

But tours and gigs still make money don’t they?

For most pro musicians, the only way they can make any serious money directly from their music is to have big sold out shows. But without the old industry to help you get there, for new artists, it’s a long hard slog to achieve enough popularity for this to become even a possibility.

So to return to our discussion. Several interesting points emerged.

He follows his passion 

Alex is in love with music. He doesn’t play to become rich or famous. I suspect he’d still do it even if it cost him everything he has. His commitment is total. And to excel at anything, that’s what’s needed.

He realises the value of diversification

Alex earns money in many ways. He tours all over the world. He writes and records music for clients. He acts as an endorser, consultant and developer for equipment manufacturers, and he presents instructional videos. He even appears in ads for an insurance company! This diversified approach ensures that he has more than one source of income. If one part of it dries up for any reason, he’s not dead in the water.

He understands the importance of social media

Building a relationship with your fans is critical for performers, who may not always have new material to offer their fans. Alex uses Facebook to give his fans the opportunity to follow what he is doing and see and hear his latest work and other updates.

He’s modest, approachable and a great networker

In the new music industry, there’s not much room for prima donnas. Despite his talent, Alex is a very down to earth, open and all round nice guy. He also understands that relationships with other people in his business are vital. So he’s always finding new contacts and other top musicians he can he can collaborate with.

He retains a positive outlook whatever happens

He refuses to worry about things, despite the risks of any number of things going wrong on a day to day basis. He always believes things will turn out well. Some call it good Karma. I call it the power of positive thinking.

Whilst you might have a steady job and regular pay check, I think all of us need to take a lesson from Alex’s book. You might not work in the music industry, but I am convinced that the trends unfolding in today’s careers mean that we all need to learn from what real rockstars do to survive in such hostile conditions.

So next time you use the term ‘rockstar’, you might want to remind yourself, what it really means. And remember that these guys are working much harder and smarter than you probably ever give them credit for.

I’d like to thank Alex for his time and the insights he shared. And as a small thank you, here’s a clip from one of his performances, that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.

How to assess the risk and rewards of joining a start-up

By Neil Patrick

In my career, I have been a member of three start-up teams. Two were highly successful. One was not. How can you tell which is which before you join?

Last week I had an interesting meeting. I had a coffee with a new Linkedin friend. It was one of those getting to know you type of conversations.

It turned out that he’d been a casualty of a failed business start-up. He’d invested a lot of his time, energy, skills and money into a business which the management team had convinced themselves would make them all millionaires.

But due to a variety of reasons outside his control, the business foundered. He ended up with no job. Nothing. Not even a redundancy cheque.

His story got me thinking about how we decide to join a start-up. I’ve done it three times in my own career. And I learned something different each time.

Often we don’t take the necessary steps to actively control our careers. We just react to the opportunities as they come along and they flow over us in a somewhat unplanned fashion. And if we are not totally happy in our present role, the prospects of a start-up can be highly attractive. You’ll get out of an organisation you don’t like very much and have the opportunity to shape a new one that’s much more to your liking.

But when we leave a ‘safe’ job for a shiny new start-up, many people do it because it offers the prospect of a big pay-off in the future.

That’s a problem; we get dazzled by the prospect of that big payoff, rather than being focused on what has to be achieved hit the jackpot.

And realistically what are the prospects of surviving a start-up, let alone making the big time? That’s the really important thing you must understand before you jump ship. 

But to get back to my new connection’s story. I could see several aspects of it which have relevance to almost everyone:

If a start-up offer materializes when we are job hunting, it’s tempting to just grab it.

The events which led up to the eventual meltdown in this story were not the result a great business plan gone wrong, but rather a series of events which created the illusion of an opportunity. He had lost his job recently so was on the hunt for his next paycheck.

Then the opportunity with the start-up came along. My friend had seized it with enthusiasm, but did he do the necessary due diligence? I don’t know, but if he did, it was clearly insufficiently rigorous. I think it just happened to come along when he needed a job and it was the most accessible offer around.

We can get blinded by the temptations of massive payoffs so easily

The excitement of the prospect of a huge pay-off is an extra tempting proposition for most of us. But the job offer isn't the same thing at all. You should view it as the offer of a job which may evaporate faster than any you've had before. And leave you with nothing.

So you must be clear you are comfortable with this reality. Ask yourself questions, like ‘Will this improve my job satisfaction and my skills?’ Will it get me closer to where I really want to be five years from now? I say five years because that’s the typical horizon at which you should anticipate an exit from a start-up.

Start-up plans are always full of faulty assumptions

One thing I have learned is that unless the business plan is based on completely known assumptions from an identical business elsewhere, they will be wrong. Sometimes a little bit wrong, sometimes a million miles from anything even remotely accurate.

And the more innovative i.e. untried the business model is, the less reliable the business plan assumptions will be. So whilst I love start-ups, if you are joining one, my advice would be to make sure that you know how reliable the planning assumptions are.

It’s your future that is in jeopardy if someone else got these even a little bit wrong. One thing is for sure, no business plan survives its first real world contact without alteration.

Without the right people, a start-off is seriously disadvantaged from the off

You must pay close attention to the start-up team. If they have done it before, you can take some confidence that they know what they are doing. If not, you need to really decide whether they can be relied upon to achieve what’s required.

Often start-ups struggle to attract the best talent. They are forced to settle for who they can get. This is simply because since they have no track record, they are obliged to pick from the minority who are willing to take the risk. And unless the leadership team has a stellar record of success, these are rarely the best possible candidates.

If we are not true to ourselves, we can never do our best work

I know, I know. It’s that ‘p’ word again. Passion.

It’s become a cliché. We get asked it at interviews. What’s your passion? And we feel obliged to say something ridiculous, like, ‘My real passion is building SQL databases’. Really? 

Our true passion is what we feel compelled to do. It’s what we’d do even if no-one paid us to do it…ever.

In hindsight, only one of the three start-ups I took on really matched my passion at the time. The other two I took on because they appeared to be the best option available at the time. In hindsight therefore, two were a bad choice for me.

In the case of my friend, I am pretty certain that he wasn’t truly following his passion either.

Joining a start-up isn’t a guaranteed ticket to fabulous riches

There’s a difference to being a founder (and therefore owning a large slice of the equity) and an early joiner, in which case you will possibly be offered stock if you stick around long enough AND if the business flourishes. This isn’t to be sniffed at, but it probably won't get you into the millionaires club either.

Plus you should expect that the next five years of your life will be consumed by the business. Its needs will take precedence over you own. This is fine if it’s a commitment you are willing to make and you believe totally in the company mission and business plan and playing your part fully in ensuring it becomes a reality.

If not, you really shouldn't be there.

So how should you decide whether you should join a start-up?

This depends on you. What do you find most important? If you are looking to strike it really rich, you probably have a better shot at doing so by being a moderately successful co-founder (eg 30% of a £10m exit is £3m). As an early joiner, even with a bigger exit value, your payout will be much less (eg 0.5% of a £25m exit is £125k).

On the other hand, if you are merely looking to accelerate your career, then there’s much to be gained by finding a superstar team and joining it at the earliest possible opportunity. Whatever happens to the business in the coming years, you’ll learn lessons of huge value to your future career.

At the end of the day, the key is to know what is most important to you, have a clear appraisal of the business plan and team and be completely clear about why you are joining.

Now can I try that again please?

What no-one tells you about the true power of networking

By Neil Patrick

How and why personal networks actually work has not been widely discussed outside of academic theories. Much of the available research is also too old to reflect the critical impact of social media.

So this weekend I have been reviewing the research evidence to try and produce some insights which I hope are helpful.

Most of the material I found talks about the benefits and tactics of effective networking, but very few writers discuss exactly HOW and WHY it works from the perspective of growing our career opportunities.

Many of my own professional contacts misunderstand the value because they don’t grasp the mathematical and social forces that they can unleash. Yes that’s right, I said mathematical.

If you understand this aspect, I guarantee your thinking about networking will be transformed.

Networking is largely misunderstood

Most people think of networking as a heavy investment of their time and energy. And since we have too little of both usually, it gets deprioritised as a task. This is a mistake and it reflects a misunderstanding of what networking is, what is involved and how it creates value.

The critical thing to understand is the power and value of weak ties

A strong tie (or link) is someone who knows a lot about you and who you are in frequent contact with (say at least once a month). A weak tie is someone who doesn’t know you that well, but knows a little about you and has an interaction with you say every 6 months or so.

Most people think that only strong ties can be of value to them in their careers. After all, if someone is only vaguely aware of you, how much value can that relationship really have?

Big mistake.

Now the math bit

This is where it gets interesting. No-one can have a very large number of strong ties. Around 200-250 or so is probably the maximum. There are just not enough hours in the day to manage much more than that.

Weak ties however are a different matter. You can quite easily maintain thousands of these. And social media is a powerful tool that helps you do exactly that.

So unlike strong ties, with weak ties and social media, you can easily grow your network to many thousands.

Now of course, only a small fraction of these might be of benefit to you.

But because you are just one person and with a little effort, your weak ties can be grown steadily, the number of potential opportunities available to you expands in proportion with the growth of your network of weak ties.

And of course the most valuable of your weak ties may well mature into strong ties over time.

But that’s not all

I like to think of what I call the “snowball analogy” when I think about weak ties. Imagine you are standing at the top of snow covered hill. You pick up a handful of snow. This is your current network. The rest of the snow on the ground is all those people you are not yet connected with.

You compact the snow into a ball and place it on the ground. Now you start to push it down the slope. At first not much happens. The ball slowly gets a bit larger and as it does so, its circumference increases. This increased circumference means that with each full turn, the ball picks up much more snow.

Once the ball gets to a certain size and depending on the degree of the slope, it reaches a critical mass. At this point, the ball’s own weight propels it down the hill faster and faster with you doing absolutely nothing at all.

Now with each rotation, the ball is picking up many times more snow than the original handful you held in your hands.

Exactly the same thing happens with social media networks

Most of us have a core of strong ties that we rely upon for our professional network. But this is a huge error.

Strong ties might seem instinctively to be more valuable than weak ties. In some ways they are. But they have limitations too:

• Typically, they are a subset of the people you have encountered in your day to day life. This means they tend to be restricted to your own social and professional areas of activity. And that means they are not only limited, they also will have significant duplications of knowledge and contacts with yourself and each other.

• They carry a degree of obligation which can be counterproductive. For example, if your employer is looking to fill a new more senior position, would they attach much weight to a colleague’s opinion about you that they knew you had a friendship with?

• But most of all, they are finite as mentioned at the start of this post. There’s not too much space left in your life to add many more strong ties, unless they are really valuable to you.

And that’s the magic of understanding network mathematics.

If you devote a proportion of your networking efforts to continually expanding your number of weak ties, your network will grow increasingly quickly. And you'll need to invest much less time.

And whilst these may be weak ties that individually only deliver a small return for you, that return is more or less constant, whether your number of weak ties is 100 or 10,000.

So 1% of a hundred weak ties will not deliver many opportunities for you. But 1% of 10,000? Now that’s a very different matter…

How to find career opportunities

By Neil Patrick

My Dad was a caveman.

Not literally of course, but he thought like one. I’m not saying that he was stupid. Just that he had extreme risk aversion. And this characteristic dominated his outlook on everything.

It meant that he avoided almost anything that involved taking any personal risk. And over time, this escalated from simple risk aversion to chronic indecisiveness and procrastination.

His career only survived because for his generation, the world changed slowly AND he was in a very secure type of work (he was a college teacher). So he kept his job for decades and even prospered a little without having to take many real risks at all.

Why our brains trick us about risk

Over the weekend, I read a post on Tim Ferris’ blog, by Ben Casnocha an award-winning author and serial company-builder and Reid Hoffman, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of LinkedIn. Their piece was about how our brains react to the perception of risk and the effect this has on our career decisions.

Almost everything has changed since my father retired in the 1980’s. From big things like communications and the geo-political power map, to everyday things like how we buy things and how we network.

But for a moment, let’s roll the clock back to 15,000 years ago

You are out hunting for your lunch. There’s a rustling in the undergrowth around you. If it’s a hungry bear, you’re quite possibly going to die. If you retreat to avoid the risk, you’re almost certainly not going to starve.

You’ll probably find food easily elsewhere without the need to risk being eaten yourself.

This redundant logic is hard-wired into our brains: It’s more dangerous to miss the sign of a threat than to miss the sign of an opportunity.

The world has transformed massively since then, but our brains have not

The human brain has been shaped by millions of years of evolution to achieve a simple goal: stay alive long enough to reproduce and raise offspring. Consequently, we react more strongly to threats and unpleasantness than to opportunities and pleasures.

We all have a red alert buzzer in our brain for bad things, but no green alert for good things. Sticks get our attention and carrots do not, because dodging the sticks was what used to be critical to staying alive.

Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist explains this “negativity bias” thus:

“To keep our ancestors alive, we evolved a brain that routinely tricks us into making three mistakes: overestimating threats, underestimating opportunities, and underestimating resources.”

So being highly alert to risks is a good strategy for surviving dangerous environments, but not for thriving in today’s workplace. When risks aren’t life-threatening, you have to resist your brain’s predisposition to run from what are usually survivable dangers.

In fact, if you are not actively seeking and creating new opportunities you are actually exposing yourself to greater risks in the long term.

What are good risks for you to take?

Risk is highly personal. So what might be risky to someone else might not be risky for you. It’s also situational - what may be risky in one situation may not be if the circumstances are slightly different. But for almost everyone, a risk is worth taking when the possible upside outweighs the possible downside i.e. when the potential reward justifies the risk.

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively.” - Machiavelli

So the key to success is being able to accurately assess risk and reward, not seeking to avoid risk altogether.

Here are some career choices which are often unduly rejected as being too risky and the associated opportunities:

Jobs that may not pay well but offer great learning potential

People are inclined to focus on easily quantifiable elements - like how much they’re getting paid. Or the hours of work involved each week. But other “soft” assets -knowledge, connections, and experience are of increasing value in this digitally connected age.

The world is changing at faster rate than ever before and skills which were relevant and valuable ten or even five years ago can quickly become much less so, sometimes almost overnight. To compensate for this, we all have to recognise that we need to continually invest in the growth of our personal networks, skills and knowledge.

You may be young, or you may be making a change of direction. Either way, the opportunity to learn new skills can be more valuable in the long run than the opportunity to earn the most you can right now. Work with great learning but less remuneration involved may be too quickly dismissed as risky.

So do not under-value opportunities such as:

- Internships and Apprenticeships
- Sideways transfers or assignments
- High-level assistantships

Part-time work vs. full-time jobs

Some people dismiss part-time and contract work as being a poor substitute for full-time jobs. But in reality, doing contract work is a powerful way to grow the skills and relationships that can help you find and move into your next opportunity.

And there’s a rising use of contractors as firms seek to keep their investment in expensive full time staff to a minimum.

Typical areas where such work is plentiful include:

- Design work
- Writing
- Programming

Not understanding the ‘conversion funnel’

Success requires persistence. Just because someone doesn’t like what you have to offer, doesn’t mean no-one will. You just have to keep refining your proposition, building your network and knocking on more doors. Sales people and actors have learned through experience to appreciate this instinctively. Sometimes for them, 1 hit out of 100 attempts equates to a runaway success.

For those of us used to a more stable and secure working environment, a single rejection or negative comment can cause us to drop a good idea far too readily.

So be careful about:

- Assuming that a few rejections means your idea or offering is no good
- Building a plan which requires too high a ‘hit rate’ to be successful

- Interpreting a negative reaction as reason to abandon what you are planning instead of refining it

Choosing to work with someone with less experience but high commitment

Fast learners can easily compensate for their inexperience with enthusiasm and commitment. The flip side of inexperience is often hustle, energy, and a willingness to learn. For example:

- Taking a chance on a smart and enthusiastic person just out of college
- Partnering with someone mid-flight in a career who’s moving into a new industry and feeling re-energized by the challenges
- Recognising that a person with a different background can bring fresh and novel perspectives

Opportunities where dangers have been in the news

The more we hear about the downsides to something, the more likely we are to overestimate the probability that it will occur (this is why people tend to become more afraid of flying after news of a plane crash is splashed across the headlines).

If the media, or people in your industry, talk a lot about the riskiness of a certain job or career path, our brains absorb this information and use it to bias our judgements, sometimes unduly negatively.

Examples of this include:

- Starting a company
- Working in a high tech industry
- Joining a start-up business

Overseas opportunities

International career opportunities are sometimes rejected out of hand as too difficult or uncertain. Spending time in other countries feels risky in part because when you’re not a native, at first you may find it hard to feel comfortable with a different culture around you.

But the world is getting smaller every day. Your skills and experience may be abundant in your native land. And other countries are often crying out for the skills that you have yet to find a buyer for at home.

Don’t let unfamiliarity trick you into overestimating the risk. In the words of Tim Ferris, “Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.” Turn this fact to your advantage, by rising above the unreasonable fears of your competition.

Examples:

- Foreign assignments within your company
- Attending a conference or seminar in another country
- Volunteering overseas


In all these opportunities, the worst case scenario tends to be survivable. When the worst case of a given risk means possibly getting fired, losing some time or money, experiencing a little discomfort, it’s a risk you should not reject out of hand.

By contrast, if the worst-case scenario may lead to serious damage to your reputation, loss of all your personal assets, or something otherwise career-ending, don’t countenance that risk.

Ask yourself whether you can tolerate the worst case scenario? If the answer is yes, you know what to do next.

Why contractors are the future and the downsides of hiring a mercenary workforce

By David Hunt, PE

A friend of mine from when I worked at Ford Motor Company in Sandusky, Ohio and I talk about once a week. He, I, and a few others from the circle of friends I developed there stay in touch. A while ago, he and I simultaneously had an epiphany while chatting: this was the last place where we developed real friendships at work.

Do I stay in touch with a few people from subsequent employers? Yes, but they are few and far between, and – with one notable exception of a vendor representative – they are nowhere as close as these friendships.

I am reminded of my own youth, where my parents would often host dinner parties whose attendees were – almost exclusively – colleagues from my father’s or mother’s place of employment. People who attended celebrations were mostly people whom my parents or I had come to know through their workplaces. Their children were my friends. Looking back, I’d have to opine that the overwhelming majority of persons in my parents’ social circle were people from work.

In the last couple of decades, the workplace has become increasingly mercenary and the average tenure in a company has been shrinking (the average now, IIRC, is three years). In a recent article by Gary Swart on LinkedIn, The Future of Work and the follow-up piece The Future of Work Part II: 10 Tips For Professionals, he addresses the increased churn rate of the workplace today. Citing the fact that most people are now shifting jobs every few years, he claims this is driven by employees wanting to be freer and more mobile, among other reasons. Another essay, Half Of Us May Soon Be Freelancers: 6 Compelling Reasons Why, discusses the benefits of this trend, as does Why Everybody’s Going Freelance.

I would argue that this is reversing cause and effect. Since the 1980’s, companies have become freer and freer to downsize, fire, and otherwise shuffle people around. Driven in part by increased globalization, but also the spate of MBAs pursuing an extra fraction-of-a-percent profit margin, the idea of the old employment contract has been undermined, with employers – not employees – being the driving force. The disposable nature of people these days is forcing people to take a contractor’s mentality. More than a few networking contacts of mine foresaw this and became contractors ahead of the curve!

While I might be projecting here, my understanding of the ultimate end state of this trend is of a company with a skeletal core of people, reaching out to freelancers and contractors to form teams that swirl around a project or two like piranhas swarming a piece of juicy prey, then dispersing to the next location (i.e., company) where more prey is available.

The benefits, I do agree, are obvious. Lower head count, less benefits to fund, having specialists on board when a company needs them and not when they are not needed. But there is a price to such ephemeral groups…

Back at Ford Motor Company, one of the first projects I worked on was the launch of the 1996 Ford/Taurus headlight assembly line. Of the several projects I did on this line, one was looking at the allowable leak rate specification which was forcing the rejection of a substantial number of headlights. Where did this specification come from? Nobody at the plant knew. It was what it was, handed down from the hazy mists of long ago.

I quizzed our design group. The same story: nobody knew. Finally I found a grizzled veteran of the lighting design group. The leak rate specification was from sealed beam headlights from decades ago, passed down from lighting generation to lighting generation.

But our lights weren’t sealed anymore. Instead, they incorporated a filtered vent to allow the light to breathe – a totally different design philosophy. Given this insight we designed a series of experiments and widened the allowable leak rate substantially, reducing reject and scrap rates substantially without compromising field performance. If I had not had this insight of the origin of the specification, arguing for the testing I did would have been much more difficult. More importantly, without this insight and the subsequent testing, a step-change improvement in first-time-through and reduced scrap would not have been achieved.

Another project, while in climate control, involved cost-reducing a heat shield. Again, I had to dig and dig and dig to find out why the heat shield was there (beyond the obvious, first-order answer of protecting the plastic case underneath). And again, it was only a chance conversation with a longtime veteran in the design group that I found out why the heat shield was used: this heavy formed-fiberglass piece served solely as a carrier for the aluminum foil to reflect away the engine heat.

Armed with the actual function of the piece, I developed and successfully tested a concept that – had I not been laid off with almost 2,000 other people – I would have pushed through with the potential to save an estimated $750K per year.

What did these two things have in common? The value and knowledge of how things were developed, as contained in the memories of people who had longevity at the company – the company’s “tribal knowledge”.

More recently at Cabot Corporation, we had a retiree come in and work a couple of days a week. He had extensive and invaluable experience in the WHY of our systems. Often understanding why things are the way they are – something only truly available by having access to someone whose long-duration tenure gives them that knowledge – is critical before one starts making changes in more than a trial-and-error mode.

Sell-swords have their uses; many are indeed experts in their area of expertise and can be useful when a company is faced with a specific and extremely thorny problem. But a company consisting mostly of as-needed mercenaries is continually doing two things:

• Employing people who, while working, are worrying about where they’re going next when this gig ends – and having to spend time and mental energy searching for it instead of spending that mental energy on the project (or on other “trivial” things like their families). 
• Scrambling to find pieces of that “tribal knowledge” – the knowledge that vanished when the company dispersed their full-time staff slavering at the cost savings – and having to duplicate effort and rediscover all that information time and again. 

There is, possibly, a better term for this than sell-swords: pirates. Pirate crews swarmed to the leader who promised the most booty. Ultimately loyal only to themselves, they would often disperse the moment things got difficult; if they didn’t it was more from fear or inability to leave than any loyalty or inspiration.

When faced with official navies, usually pirates came out on the worse end. Why? Because formal militaries were organized, learned from experience, and had people who were dedicated and loyal to something more than the promise of, arrrr, treasure.

As companies descend into free-wheeling teams of self-focused, short-timer buccaneers, signing on for quick booty, what will they do when they face organized companies with long-term, loyal, committed employees inspired by something greater than their next paycheck or a fat bonus?

© 2013, David Hunt, PE

David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.

How winning The Apprentice can wreck your career

By Neil Patrick

Sometimes I like to watch a few episodes of The Apprentice. On the one hand it ruthlessly exposes the contestants' weaknesses and on the other, how people can be coerced into doing and saying the most unbelievable things just to win. Of course, that’s all part of what makes it such compelling viewing.

We all know it’s constructed and edited to ensure the over-eager and often delusional contestants usually come out looking rather foolish  – if they are lucky – and downright idiotic if they are not.

It’s great entertainment that has probably done more than any other programme in history to make business an attractive career choice for the young. But of course it isn't really just about business. It's also about how the young and aspirational can be manipulated to behave in entertaining ways under the pretext of a competition to prove who's the best business person. In that sense, it's pure genius.

They are dazzled so easily with the the promise of a becoming a business superstar if they can make it through and get hired. They will resort to the most astonishing behaviors in their desperation to win at any cost. They display so much bravado and naivete so frequently that I think it's quite possibly the best anti-ageism commercial out there.

But possibly the hidden value of The Apprentice is in what it reveals about people and life. These insights are perhaps much more instructive than some of the 'tasks' themselves.

All that glitters...Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

So I was interested to discover what had happened in the real life of the winner of the 2010 series, Stella English.

Stella was born and grew up in Thamesmead, a deprived area of South East London. She left school with no qualifications, but at the time of entering The Apprentice had become Head of Business Management on the trading floor of a Japanese investment bank.

Due to her consistent performance throughout the series and solid determination, she made it to the final of the show. She showed excellent leadership and organizational skills, and Lord Alan Sugar took the decision to hire her.

At the time, she commented she was looking forward to the future and was extremely happy. After winning, English worked at Sugar's computer company Viglen. But she quit the job within a year, in May 2011, saying that she was just a "glorified PA". She moved to go and work for another Sugar business, YouView.

Just five months later, in October 2011, she resigned from YouView claiming she had had almost no contact with Sugar in her role. In March 2013 English sued Sugar for constructive dismissal.

On 12 April 2013 it was announced that she had lost her case, with the tribunal judge John Warren saying that, "Ms English, instead of appreciating a job with enormous scope for advancement, had been more interested in a glamorous role, and travelling in private jets".

Having successfully defended himself against the constructive dismissal case, Sugar then sued English to recover some of the £35,000 of costs he’d incurred in mounting his defence.

At the court case, English revealed that her attempted business ventures - including a fashion label and events company - had fallen flat, resulting in her now having to survive on state benefits. Sugar did not win this subsequent case, and English said that she was keen to put the saga behind her.

"I haven’t slept for about six weeks… and trying to cope with the fact that I’m now an unemployed single mother. It’s a nightmare, it’s a living nightmare.”

“All I care about at the moment is my kids," she said. "I’ve got two small children there now. Dad is not at home, Mummy is crying they don’t know why. I think it’s just gone too far to get back together with my husband. I suppose at the time I needed the support but I’ve found myself completely alone”.

"The only way is up, that’s the good news, I don’t think it can get much worse. Well please God I hope it doesn’t.”

This is the often brutal reality of real business life versus the manipulated and stage-managed version of it we see presented on The Apprentice.

I’m not going to attempt to work out whether Sugar or English was at fault. I don’t know and I don’t have access to any of the facts. But there are several things that I think are instructive in this whole episode:

Don’t become dazzled by glorious prizes

Time and time again, people are seduced into thinking that a chance to win some glittering prize has to be worth going for. Not always. The odds are usually stacked against you and the costs of losing or even winning can be huge. How many good jobs have contestants on The Apprentice resigned from just to have a shot at winning the show? How much money have they spent on their wardrobes just so they look really polished in front of the cameras – four figures for sure, possibly five. Good investment? For most absolutely not. Risk and reward assessment seems to be a skill commonly absent from candidates for The Apprentice. 

Getting the job isn’t the end, it’s the beginning

I don’t know this, but I suspect that after winning the show, English found herself unable to progress things and make them happen at Viglen. It’s a tech company and she didn’t have a background in tech. She would feel out of her depth and was quite possibly even resented by her colleagues. All speculation granted, but the point is this. If you’re set up as a star and you cannot live up to your reputation, some people are going try and shoot you down. 

Never resort to the law to resolve differences if your opponent is richer than you.

I think that trying to sue Sugar was not the smartest thing English could have done. I know that the law should protect us all equally. But it doesn’t. The richer you are and the better lawyers you can afford, the better your results will be within the legal system. It shouldn’t be like this, but it is and we have to act accordingly. 

Your fame is always vulnerable if you are not in full control.

Fame is powerful and always ready to bite you, especially if you do something dumb that brings you crashing down. But even if you don’t make a monumental error, it can still bite you as Stella English discovered.

I wonder if Stella ever wishes she had her old job back?

I think I can guess the answer.

What do you think?

4 tips to get Twitter helping your career

By Neil Patrick

Until about one year ago, I thought that Twitter was the biggest waste of time ever invented.

Why on earth would I want to spend any of my valuable time, telling people that I’d just eaten a great dinner, or that I was worried about global warming, or that I was gutted because some wanna be pop star had just been kicked off Celebrity X-Factor Millionaire?

More importantly, why would anyone else be in the slightest bit interested?

Twitter was for the birds as far as I was concerned.

But I have had an epiphany. I am an absolute Twitter fan today. I have started to understand it a little and learned enough to begin to harness its immense power. It has become a cornerstone of my work and without it, I think my professional goals would be infinitely harder to achieve.

But every day, I talk with mature professionals and it’s clear that many of them are stuck more or less where I was a year or so ago.

They mostly don’t have a Twitter account and even if they do, they are really unsure about what to do with it.

So today I thought I’d share a few basic points I have learned which I hope will be useful to anyone looking to use Twitter to help develop their career.

So here goes:

1. If you want Twitter to support your career, you should stick to just one or two fields that relate to your career.

We are all multi-dimensional in our lives. I happen to tweet about careers and jobs and the economic crisis. Because that is one of my main professional interests and what I want to talk about with people.

But it’s certainly not everything that I am. I have plenty of other things in my life that I never talk about on 40pluscareerguru. Like my day to day business activities, my community support work and my love of military history and heavy metal music.

If I were to include those subjects in my Tweets, it would be really confusing for everyone. Who is this guy…what’s he really about?

Twitter recognises this issue and that’s why it allows us to have up to ten accounts. I happen to have another Twitter account called @Marshalstackman which is all guitars and heavy metal. I keep all my loud music stuff there. And I'm sure you don’t want to see or hear that. Right?

So ensure your Twitter profile and Tweets are consistent with each other and deal with your professional interests or some of them. If you have multiple interests, use multiple Twitter accounts.

2. Twitter has no instructions

This is a problem for many. It’s also a great opportunity. Twitter is there for you to use however you choose. There’s no single ‘proper’ or best practice model. It’s a powerful communication platform if you can get to grips with its unique and somewhat quirky characteristics. But this requires creativity and a plan. And the absence of such a plan is why you’ll see plenty of people using it clumsily.

Some approach it as a version of the SMS texting they do with their friends. This is one end of the spectrum and it’s legitimate, if you just want a bit of fun and engagement with a few people. But it’s not really an effective way to build your personal career standing amongst the people you want to increase your influence with.

At the other end of the spectrum are people that view Twitter as a mighty spam engine. They just endlessly send out link after link after link. And if they are not focussed on a single topic, these links about seemingly random things are of no value or interest to 99.99% of the people that get them in their Twitter stream.

Links themselves are I think a good thing provided they connect people with something of value and relevance to them. But if that is all you do, it all gets a bit tedious and one-sided. Who really wants to be endlessly talked at? Most of us had enough of that when we in school.

So the key here I think is balance. Try to strike a happy medium between talking to all and talking with people individually.



3. This is social media, so be erm… social

I still see plenty of Twitter accounts which are nothing more than endless spammy links promoting things I don’t need, don’t want and am not interested in. I never follow these people or organisations. Why would I?

Likewise, I am not keen on people who only send out their own tweets. If you are on Twitter and you have a following, you should in my opinion, support your followers and show your appreciation by retweeting them when you think they have said something interesting, relevant, amusing or whatever.

If I see people who are clearly engaging in conversations with others and they are courteous and friendly, I’m happy to follow them back. It doesn’t matter if they have 100,000 followers or just 10.

And when someone is kind enough to engage with me I will always try and engage back and help them if I can…even if it’s just with an acknowledgement or bit of light-hearted banter.

Just a quick aside…today, even with only around 7,000 followers on Twitter, I just cannot individually thank people every time they retweet me or favourite me. I wish I could. But there are now just too many. But I will try and answer every tweet to me that has a question or a comment in it.

So tip three is engage, support and be nice to people on Twitter and almost always they will be nice to you. This is much more useful to you than just endlessly talking at people instead of talking with them.


4. You need thousands of followers to have any kudos or influence.

Wrong. If you are clear about what your Twitter account is all about, you’ll steadily build a great network of people who are interested in the same things that you are. And this shared ground is essential if you are to have any chance of developing Twitter relationships and engagement.

If you use Kred and/or Klout to track your social influence, you'll notice that the size of your following is a relatively small factor in how they calculate your score. The amount and quality of your online engagement with individual people has a much bigger influence.

Like attracts like on social media. If you follow people randomly, you’ll get random people following you back. And that’s just a waste. You’ll have no basis of a shared interest or viewpoint that allows you to build meaningful relationships.

What’s better - to have 10,000 random people following you, or 500 who are all passionate about the same things you are?

So rule four is focus on connecting with the people who share your professional interests, background or outlook.

So there you have four simple fundamentals on how I think we should all set up the basics of our Twitter presence if we want to use it to help our careers. I realise this has only scratched the surface of this huge topic, so if anyone finds this helpful, or has additions or questions do please let me know and I’ll use these as the basis for my next post on this subject.

There’s much more to talk about on this so please share your thoughts!