Not too long ago the nuts and bolts of a job search were pretty simple: browse some job postings, find one you like, and send a cover letter along with a well-crafted resume. It might not work every time but sooner or later that process would most likely land you a job.

Not any more. The landscape is more competitive than ever and many desirable jobs are filled before they’re advertised.  

The new nuts and bolts of a job search are quite different and not something that can be completed in few days or even weeks. To be successful you need a combination of abilities and experiences that are cultivated over time. Employers want to see that you can:

• Perform
• Execute
• Speak professionally; express thoughts and ideas
• Network
• Work effectively in teams
• Handle challenges to your way of thinking
• Hustle

You might be saying, “those aren’t revolutionary” and you’d be right. The difference is that these abilities are no longer enough to win you the job; now, you need them just to compete. 

At Wofford, we’re already teaching the new nuts and bolts. Our students are put through their academic paces by our outstanding faculty and develop an incredible capacity to think critically, analyze situations, and apply knowledge to solve problems.

The Space provides additional programs and a platform for students to demonstrate their abilities. Last week students in our Impact and Launch programs showed that they’ve got the new nuts and bolts down cold. Ten students/teams competed in the finals of our Impact and Launch Competition where they pitched (speak professionally) their projects and businesses (work effectively in teams, execute) to a panel of seasoned professionals and entrepreneurs (handle challenges to their way of thinking, network) in front of a BIG audience (perform). And these are robust projects and companies. They’ve been in development for quite some time and have required tenacity and (hustle) to get to this point.

Our Impact and Launch programs are just two of the ways we provide The Space for students to develop professionally. We show students how to develop and implement a career search strategy versus a job hunt. We have concentrated programs like The Sophomore Experience and The Institute where students can learn and practice the new nuts and bolts. We provide The Space to Consult where students demonstrate their advanced analytical thinking, problem solving and project management skills to executives in real-world situations.

Our Impact and Launch students aren’t the only examples of Wofford’s professional development philosophy at work. Every day, someone on my team hears from another graduating senior about a terrific job he landed. Or from a student who got the internship she wanted. We hear about acceptance to graduate schools. And sometimes we hear about failures. We recently worked with a student who didn’t get into dental school. Instead of giving up, he came to The Space, hustled to create a Plan B, networked to get an interview and then worked incredibly hard on his presentations skills. The end result? He got an outstanding job with a great company.

What do you think about the new job search nuts and bolts? I’d like to know your thoughts about what it takes to successfully land a job these days.

Erin, Jennifer, Jeremy, Scott, Courtney, Lisa, Teak and Kelly in The Space, post-Launch.

Three (of the Many) Lessons an A-Team Can Teach

Ten days ago my team pulled off a stunner. For the last couple of years, students in the Success Initiative would display projects completed during the semester on a predetermined Tuesday that was appropriately named “Deliverable Day”. The event ran during lunchtime, and a number of students and faculty would walk by the exhibits and get student-provided summaries of each project. It was a great way to display the student’s hard work but it was pedestrian.

This year things were different. Very different. Courtney, Director of The Space (at the time the Success Initiative Director) wanted to go big. Her reason? “We demand students execute big, impactful projects so we need a big and impactful platform for them to showcase their work.” There’s a huge difference between “display” and “showcase” and she wanted students to understand that difference. Her idea: Create an event so spectacular that it will cause the students to up their game to the point where guests are stunned (it worked).

About that same time we started to work on a new brand position for all of our programs. We’d grown from two to seven and there were more on the horizon. On top of that, we’d begun to see imitators pop up and we wanted to put distance between traditional professional development and our brand of professional development. We are WAY different than everyone else, and we needed a brand that matched our culture. On top of that, the silo-ed program structure we’d initially developed didn’t serve our purpose anymore. We need an umbrella brand, one that would resonate with our target market of 16-22 year-olds. Given this age group’s demographics, we need the brand to be inclusive, simple, transparent and current.

Since the rebranding was happening simultaneously with the planning of our showcase event, Courtney suggested that we expand the showcase event. She recommended we bundle it with the brand re-launch because the timing of doing them together just made sense. Thus the Launch Party was born.

Lesson 1: A-Team members look to maximize the team’s impact, not their own visibility. Courtney could have easily kept the event focused on her program which would have put her squarely in the spotlight. Instead, she focused on what was best for the entire group.

Jennifer, Director of The Space (formerly director of Career Services) quickly added to the concept. “Why don’t we take other aspects of all our programs and create an interactive portion of the night where guests can experience a piece of what we do first hand? Portions of The Institute, The Sophomore Experience, Consulting, and Entrepreneurship.”

Lesson 2: A-Team members quickly add value and stay focused on the mission. Jennifer zeroed in on a portion of what makes our programs so unique and effective. She quickly realized that if we had 400+ guests in our space and did not let them experience our programs first hand, we would have missed a big opportunity.

Very soon after the first conversation we brought the entire team in on the concept and started the planning, designing and execution of The Launch Party. MullenHallstead was brought in to manage the event (they are fantastic), and we were off.

Jeremy, Kelly, Lisa, and Erin each played the critical roles of experts in their particular areas and, at one point or another, were the most important player on the team. Think of a baseball team. Some people may think that the right fielder is less important or talented than the shortstop. Of course, baseball fans know that’s not the case at all. True, the right fielder will probably have fewer balls hit to him in a game, but when he steps up to the plate to bat, he’s the most important player on the team at that particular moment. Great baseball players also know this and could care less about individual attention or stats… as long as the team wins.

Lesson 3: A-Team members don’t worry about individual statistics, they just want the team to shine and are willing to play any role to help the team win.

Fast forward to the event itself and you see the results an A-Team produces (you can check out video highlights and photos of the event). Everything went off without a hitch. It was truly a stellar evening by all accounts. Our 400-plus guests were surprised and delighted. Our students showcased their 47 Impact and entrepreneurial projects with professionalism rarely, if ever, witnessed in higher education. And they set a new standard with respect to future events within The Space. You see, each one of them is part of the A-Team too. Because without their ideas, passion and ability to execute, The Launch Party would have never happened.

On Monday, our team took time out to get away from the office and enjoy a nice celebratory lunch and afternoon coffee. It was a way to recharge and thank each other for putting the interests of the students, our guests and our team ahead of our own (and even ahead of our sleep!). I’m extremely proud of what our team, our entire team – including all of our students – accomplished Saturday night. We pulled off something special, and we realized that it never would have happened without every. single. one of us.

Audi’s Super Bowl spot

Super Bowl commercials are huge. To some people they’re more important than the game itself. And at a cost of up to $4 million for a 30-second spot, the stakes are high. So it’s no wonder companies put their all into creating the most memorable, impactful commercial in the history of their organization. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

But why do they wait for the Big Day to pull out all the stops and create something stunning? Why not do that all the time? I’m not talking about spending $4 million on every commercial (that’s air time, not development), but I am talking about putting your entire creative heart and soul into each and every thing you do.

If you’re waiting for the Big Day to stand out and shine then you are missing a million opportunities in between those Big Days (they only come every once in while, right?).

Whether it’s a small creative project, the company Christmas party or a $4 million ad spot, make it amazing! Make those who see it smile… make their hearts skip a beat… make them want more… and then do it all over again the next time. And the next.

Delight your audience and they will take delight in you.

When I turned 40 my metabolism decided to take a break. “Hey, I’ve been working my tail off to keep you from developing a muffin top and I’m tired. So, from now on I’m taking it easy!” Boy … he wasn’t kidding.

The days of late night ice cream not having any affect on my waistline were over. For a while I tried to beat Mr. Metabolism. My weapon of choice? The diet! It actually worked for short period of time. I’d drop a few pounds and feel a lot better. But lo and behold my appetite would get the best of me and soon the weight would find its way back home … to my stomach.

It wasn’t until I decided to make a lifestyle change that I was able to permanently settle in on a consistent weight that I was happy with. That lifestyle change involved scrapping my diet for sensible eating and consistent exercise, selling my car and commuting the six miles to work by bicycle. Once I changed my lifestyle it became just that, a lifestyle. No longer could I yo-yo back and forth between dieting and non-dieting. No longer could I pretend to be fit when my behavior showed otherwise.

Leadership is very similar. You can’t be a situational leader and be effective. Leadership is not a task but rather a lifestyle that needs to be lived 24 hours a day. Whether it’s communication, transparency, or taking a stand, it must be part of who you are.

Mr. Metabolism knows when you cheat. And he sticks it to you when you do. He knows when you’re not living a fit lifestyle and it’s impossible to fool him.

Your people have the same instincts as Mr. Metabolism. They’re smart. If you think you’re fooling them you’re dead wrong. They know when you’re treating leadership like a task for personal gain. “Come on in, sit down, let me demonstrate my leadership on you!” And like Mr. Metabolism, your people will stick it to you. Only instead of excess weight you’ll be saddled with a low-morale team that wishes you’d change your lifestyle.

Photo taken by Axion23 via Flickr Creative Commons

If I had a nickel for every time I saw a ‘smart’ person fail miserably I’d be rich. In my 20 years in business and four years in higher education, I’ve seen countless numbers of intelligent people fall far short of their life goals, be it personal or professional. As a society we have become obsessed with test scores, grades, and perceived intelligence when measuring the probability of success. It’s almost single-mindedness… “Boy, is she smart!”

Don’t get me wrong, being smart is important, absolutely important, but on its own it’s just not enough.

So why do some people seem to thrive when others of like background just survive?  I believe it’s because some people rely solely on intelligence and others understand that intelligence is only part of the equation. It’s like having an incredible engine in your car with no transmission. With no way to deliver power to the wheels, you’re destined to rev loudly and draw lots of attention but never go anywhere.

Here are some thoughts on what you need to do to get to where you want to go. Apply these ideas and you’ll be on your way. Don’t and, well… idle away.

Work ethic

Be willing to outwork everyone. I don’t mean put in face time just to be seen around the office. I mean really outwork the others (and that probably means starting early and finishing late, at the office or elsewhere). Do you stop before your final output is excellent? Do you tell yourself it’s “good enough”? Don’t call it done until it’s excellent.

Fill your holes

We all have weaknesses. Don’t dwell on them. Focus on your strengths. But recognize where your holes are and fill them with great team members. Recruit people with complementary strengths and create a platform where they can best use their talents to succeed. It’s a win for all involved.

Learn to be an expert communicator

Writing and speaking are the obvious ones. But go deeper. Become an expert at non-verbal communication. Your posture, facial expressions, and body movement communicate for you even when you don’t say a word. And don’t forget the all-important THANK YOU NOTE!

Execute, execute, execute

Ideas and conversations are great. But they are worthless if not acted on. If you spew brilliance but never actually do anything you’ll go nowhere (remember the car with a great engine and no transmission?).

Be resilient

You’re going to get knocked down more than a few times. When that happens, get up, take inventory of what went wrong, make adjustments, and give it another go. It’s cliché but quitters never win and winners never quit.

Lose the arrogance

This is a big one for me. I can’t stand arrogance. Arrogant people quickly find themselves surrounded by other arrogant people (not a party I want to attend). And sure, there are arrogant people who do quite well but no one likes them. Be humble and throngs of people will help you succeed.

Photo by Tine Bohler via Flickr Creative Commons

There’s no doubt that today’s job market is daunting. But as with any challenging situation, it seems less daunting to those who create and execute a strategy. From my perspective the best strategy treats searching for a career like farming.

My wife grew up on an apple farm in North Carolina, and I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years about farm life. Interestingly, relatively little time on a percentage basis is spent on the harvest. Sure, the harvest is the ultimate goal, but a lot of work needs to take place before the fruit can be picked. The ground has to be prepared, seeds have to be planted, and the future bounty must be watered and fertilized. Those are not tasks to be taken lightly. Get one step wrong and your crop simply won’t grow.

The other piece of farming that often gets overlooked is the help that others provide – the farm hands. Family, friends, suppliers, and workers all play a vital role in creating the conditions that may lead to a bountiful harvest. A farmer just can’t do it all alone. Great farmers know this and treat those around them like partners, not property.

And notice I said may lead to a bountiful harvest. No matter how well you plan, prepare, and execute, external forces may prevent success. Weather is hard to predict, especially on a micro or local basis. Drought or freezing conditions can erase a lot of hard work. In short, there’s no guarantee that executing a well-designed plan will lead to success. But not planning will most likely lead to failure.

How to career search like a farmer:

Prepare the Ground – Get a rich education, be it liberal arts or a technical degree. Know your field and continually find ways to learn and improve.

Plant the Seeds – Develop your personal story told through your elevator speech, LinkedIn profile, resume, and internships.

Recruit Farm Hands – Create a network of mentors, family, friends, and professional contacts and manage it constantly. Ignore your network and it will ignore you.

Water and Fertilize – Nurture you network via phone calls, emails, face-to-face meetings, and thank-you notes. Neglect your network and it will die.

Reap a Bountiful Harvest – After months of hard work, your crop will be ready to harvest in the form of a job offer. One job offer is a good harvest but set your sights on a bountiful harvest… multiple job offers.

I’m tired of hearing all the doom and gloom about higher education… especially the liberal arts. You can’t pick up a paper nowadays without someone questioning whether a college degree is worth the price.

We’re in an incredibly complex world with complex problems. It seems like that would beg for more – not less – education. But not just any education, one that teaches you how to think, really think, and solve complex problems. At the same time, your education needs to provide you with practical, hands on, relevant learning that you can draw on in life after college.

You see, learning “things” isn’t enough. Learning “things” requires those “things” to be a part of your job if your education is to be valuable in doing your job. But in this complex world, we don’t always know what those “things” are in advance. The ever-changing global landscape creates new problems daily and the ones who will be prepared to solve those problems are the ones who can think creatively and are constantly training their minds to adapt.

Corporate America gets it. Executive education is booming because businesses realize if they are to be competitive their people need to learn continually. And they need to learn in a space that provides a blend of academics and reality.

Wofford gets it too. The Mungo Center bridges the theoretical and the practical by teaching relevant topics that complement students’ academic foundation. Our consulting, entrepreneurship, and Success Initiative programs leverage design thinking, leadership, negotiation skills, professional speaking, and a myriad of other hands-on experiences to prepare students for life outside the classroom.

The Mungo Center team has experienced the real world on a global scale, and we bring our experiences to students. Although it’s more accurate to say we place our students in those experiences. It’s this type of creativity in program development that higher education needs if it is going to fulfill its promise of preparing young people for the future.

So, I’m going to step out on a limb here and proclaim, Yes! A college degree IS worth the price.

Just make sure you get your degree from a school that understands the need to balance the theoretical and the practical.

I played baseball from the time I was 5 until I was 22. I was an okay player with a decent arm, pretty good speed, and a mediocre bat. At 5’8” I was neither the biggest nor the strongest on the team. Line drives and ground balls came off my bat far more often than long fly balls, so I was never much of a home-run threat.

But where I played college ball (Law Field right here at Wofford), the outfield fences were close to home plate… I mean really close. Some major league ballparks have fences as far as 430 feet from the plate. At Wofford, the sign that hung on the chain-link fence in left field read 308. It was more like 295. That made for some interesting games.

So how’d I do with a 308-foot left field line? I hit 8 home runs in 39 games my senior year… all but one of them at Law Field. Most were pop-ups over the left field fence that caused me to grin embarrassingly as I rounded first, knowing my teammates were going to give me some good-natured ribbing at home plate.

I like to surround myself with people who like the challenge of playing in BIG ballparks. There’s something special about a person who says, “give me a big challenge, a big obstacle.” Those people thrive in challenging situations and have learned how to win, even in less-than-friendly environments. They have the drive, tenacity, and initiative to overcome big obstacles. Uncertainly doesn’t faze them, and they dive into ambiguous situations with energy and excitement. And failure? Sure, there’s always that chance but who wants to take the easy way out day after day? Besides, winning by taking the easy way isn’t very exciting and rarely leads to great, innovative outcomes because there’s not much value in overcoming small obstacles. Anyone can do that.

Move the outfield fence to just behind the infield and anyone can hit a home run. But few people are interested in seeing you do it.

Nowadays, I still swing for the fences but I make sure I’m on a BIG field. If I find I’m not, my team and I pick up our gloves and head for a stadium with major league dimensions in search of a bigger challenge.

It’s a lot more fun that way. And when one of us hits a home run it’s a big deal. There’s no embarrassed grin as we circle the bases. Just all of us at home plate, high-fiving and fist-bumping each other like crazy.

“His antics were never embraced by coaches and management, but they could be tolerated when Terrell Owens was near the top of NFL leaderboards in receptions, yards and touchdowns. As a potential fifth option on a middling team, he wasn’t worth the headache.” – USA Today

A number of leaders, including Larry Bossidy, the famed retired CEO of AlliedSignal, evaluate team members on two dimensions: performance standards and organizational values. Outstanding teammates exceed performance standards and live the organization’s values simultaneously. They are the “A” players that you can’t live without. Not only do they technically do their job well, they also exemplify what the organization stands for. That may include communicating transparently, adhering to a ‘customer first’ approach, supporting the team relentlessly, or making a difference by taking ownership.

A teammate who occasionally slips on technical performance but always exemplifies organizational values will be given the benefit of the doubt. She may need more training or need to change roles in order to be successful, but she will at least be given an opportunity.

But the guy who doesn’t appreciate the team and openly displays a disregard for organizational culture treads on thin ice. As long as he performs at the top of his game he’ll be tolerated. But once he slips he’s gone. Because without putting up big numbers he’s useless to the team. And you won’t find his teammates rallying around him to try and save him. They’ll turn their back on him… and rightly so.

Ask yourself… are you living your organization’s values? Are you sure you know what they are? If not, ask. Our values are embodied in our Guiding Principles and posted clearly for everyone to see.

T.O. was a performer at one time. No doubt about that. But he couldn’t care less about organizational values and even less about making others around him better.

The end result? He just wasn’t worth the headache.

I recently met with Peter Barth, managing director at The Iron Yard. Peter is an incredibly successful entrepreneur who helps other entrepreneurs become successful. Along the way, he finds and invests in companies that have tremendous potential. And he’s really good at it.

If fact, he’s so good at it you’d think he has a built-in sixth sense to sniff out the magical gene that makes a company thrive. As it turns out, he’s not really that focused on the company’s product. When I asked him what he looks for in a company, his reply was surprisingly simple.

“That’s easy. I look to see if the people are coachable. If they are super-defensive and can’t take coaching then they are not going to be successful.”

So what about the product? Is that important?

He told me, “Sure it is, but a great product won’t go anywhere without coachability. In fact, I try to throw out a harsh criticism in the beginning to see how they will react.”

The current generation has grown up in an environment of “trophies for all” and sometimes has a tough time accepting criticism. This is a fatal flaw, especially early in your career. We all need to learn how to take coaching and use it to improve.

Here are a few ideas about using coaching to your advantage:

1. Get a notebook and make it your coaching log.
2. Listen intently to your coach’s comments and take notes.
3. Objectively look at the advice and ask if it is information you can use and apply (let’s face it: not all criticism is constructive).
4. Actively work the good suggestions into your project or daily routine.
5. Go back to your notes and write down the adjustments you’ve made and record improvements.

Finally, write your coach a thank you note. You want to encourage feedback. It’s a great way to learn.