No Place For Ninjas At Work

AP Photo/Junji Kurokawa

When I was a child, every Saturday afternoon, my sister and I would turn on Channel 5 in New York and watch the latest kung-fu movie, complete with bad dubbing and well choreographed fight scenes.  Then we would proceed to become ninjas, complete with black mask, and beat the tar out of each other until our parents came home from the grocery store and punished us for destroying out home.  I’m not sure why they would get so mad; that’s what ninjas do.  I can’t get the image out of my head of Storm Shadow from the GI-Joe cartoon, complete with his traditional ninja garb.  Now, apparently, we can add a business suit to the mix.

I guess we have never outgrown our desire to be a ninja, because suddenly, the word ninja has crept into our job search.  According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, some 800 current or former ninjas have public profiles on LinkedIn.  No longer can we just inform people that we are a social media specialist…and don’t use guru, that’s so passé.  Today, ninja is the term that means specialized skills.  Again, we can simply call them specialists, but what do I know.  A ninja sounds cooler.  Look next to you; Jack from accounting – the one playing Solitaire on his computer – yes, he is actually an accounting ninja.  Bet you didn’t know it from just looking at him.  He’s not wearing a mask.  He doesn’t carry a cool sword, but almost as simultaneously as he missed that the Jack of Spades should be placed on the Queen of Hearts, he did the company’s entire payroll. It took him mere seconds.  Ninja!

Anyone can be a ninja.  I would change my title to Communications Ninja if the business cards saying I was a Communications Manager had not already been printed.  I have a black belt in press pitching.  Decided you need a change, just take the last part of your title out and replace it with ninja.  Unemployed – become a job search ninja and sneak up on a new career.  And yes, there are those who label themselves job search ninjas and yes, if you haven’t realized it by now, the idea of using the word ninja on a professional site, in your career search, or <gasp> on your resume frightens me.  We are still in the middle of an economic crisis that is only starting to show signs of life again.  If you think you can get a job calling yourself an investing ninja assassin, an actual title LinkedIn data scientist Monica Rogati linked to and discussed in a San Francisco Chronicle article, I have some stocks in Lehman Brothers I would like to sell you.

A ninja, as I said earlier, is something we pretended to be when we were children.  It’s time to grow up.  We are in a business world now.  It’s time to act like professionals.  Let’s not bring LinkedIn into the Myspace age, where everyone is 15 and has ninja themed profile pages.  In a world that strives for professionalism, the use of such a childish phrase as ninja may sound cool (it’s not that cool – Vanilla Ice made a song called “Ninja Rap” once…yes…Vanilla Ice), but it devalues the job search and the very careers so many people have worked hard to obtain.

This is just my opinion.  Someone else at Vault may disagree.  The readers may disagree.  Let me know what you think.  Am I over analyzing?  Am I being a buzzkill?  Am I correct?  Or is there a better word to describe experts in their field?  What’s the next best job title – maybe my little nephew can grow up to be a public relations cowboy!

How to Get Back to Work After YEARS of Downtime

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

With so many laid-off lawyers and jobless JDs flooding the legal market, there would seem to be little room for an attorney who’s been out of the workforce for years. Lawyers who set aside their careers–whether to raise a family or for other reasons–and are now looking to reestablish themselves face a very tight job market, a pool of much younger talent and, if they haven’t kept on top of developments in their field, a steep re-learning curve. The prospect can be daunting.

Yet, as is clear from a story in this Sunday’s Washington Post, opportunities do exist. (hat tip: ABA Journal) The Post piece, despite its television for women flavor (“The Return: A stay-at-home mom attempts to go back to work after nearly two decades. Can she revive her career?”), offers some real hope to onetime lawyers looking to return to practice. [Spoiler alert: our heroine, Amy Beckett, does eventually land a job.]

Among the takeaways from Beckett’s story that might help in your own search:

Don’t be afraid to volunteer or take on contract work while you look for something more permanent. Unpaid or part-time work can help you build a network and maybe even do something worthwhile. (“For years, I had resisted signing up and volunteering somewhere because lack of salary means lack of prestige,” Beckett said. “In this case, I feel it’s an investment, and it’s a project that I identify with. I love to pull weeds and be in the dirt and be in gardens. This may point me in a good direction.”) Beckett eventually obtained an interview at the employment law firm where she was offered a job because of contract work she’d done for one of the firm’s tenants.

Expect to have bad days. Notwithstanding self-boosting daily affirmations (“I keep thinking, ‘I’m an appealing person, I’m smart, I’m good to talk to, I would be good at this!’”), you’re going to get rejected, feel discouraged and lose confidence (“I’ve failed at everything I tried. I failed at my first job here. I got fired and was told I was incompetent. I’m hanging onto the shreds of my professional identity with this contract work, which is unsatisfying.”). The key is not to let it overwhelm you: “Tarbox [Beckett’s husband] had seen Beckett low before. ’Fortunately, she was dogged enough that she would pick herself off, dust herself off and try again,’ he said.”

In the end, Beckett’s air of confidence and self-assurance apparently “made a strong impression” on the hiring partners at Passman & Kaplan, as did her intelligent questions during the interview, and she was offered a position. As Suzanne Bianchi, a UCLA sociology professor, told the Post, “You’ve got to convince somebody to take a chance on you, and you have to have the self-confidence that you can do that.”

–Posted by Vera Djordjevich, Vault’s Law Blog

MBADiversity’s Hiring Event Hits New York This Weekend

Event Alert! MBADiversity, a global MBA prep program is hosting its New York City Forum this weekend. What’s on offer? Chance at meeting one-on-one with recruiters at the recruiter fair, hearing first person accounts from alumni and a financial aid and scholarship workshop.

If you’re not in the New York area, don’t worry because Vault’s Education Editor Carolyn Wise will be on site to talk to attending recruiters, alumni and students and bring you insider info! So stay tuned for her updates and key thoughts from the event. For those of you who’d like to attend, the details are below:

What: The MBADiversity 2010 NY City Forum

When: Saturday, March 27, 2010; 12:00-5:00p.m.

Where: Grand Hyatt, 109 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017

Registration Info: Free, if you’d like to attend the networking lunch, it is $19.95.

Agenda: Introductions/Networking Luncheon, an information session about the graduate school application process featuring an Admissions Panel and an Alumni Panel; an information session about the MBADiversity Fellows Program and Global Immersion Module (GIM) Program; a Financial Aid and Scholarships Workshop; and finally the Recruiter Fair.

For information on which recruiters will be there and other FAQs, visit the MBADiversity blog. For our perspective on the event as well as insider quotes, stay tuned next week on Admit One as well as @VaultMBA!

And remember, the keys to a successful graduate school application as well as a job are few, yet essential: Pitch yourself, Add brand value to your experience and wow them! And of course, network, network, network!

Job Search Lesson from Journalism – Get Your Facts Straight

I consider unemployment to be the biggest life-changing experience since I discovered Netflix on my Xbox 360, but there are also a lot of lessons you learn in previous careers that could be helpful in your job search today.

Even though I switched careers from journalism to public relations, I have learned that the most basic lesson of good journalism should be adhered to in a job search.  Always Get Your Facts Straight.  You must always have enough background information to understand your story before you write it.

I learned the hard way how much this applies to the job search.  I was going nowhere once I became unemployed.  The millions of emails I had sent out were met with more silence than a Jimmy Fallon joke.  There was immediate anger, both warranted and unwarranted – “How could I not get a PR position at a Bronx college when I was the managing editor of a newspaper in the Bronx and had written the entire Bronx Almanac?”  “How can I not even get an interview with Baruch College when I graduated from the school?”  And then after I had all but given up hope, calls started coming in.

I received an interview for a PR position at Mercy College.  I felt I was prepared.  I had several copies of my resume, writing samples and examples of press hits I had garnered during my time at The New York Public Library and a book to read on my long journey to Dobbs Ferry.  I knew I had the job before I got there.  I was questioning how I was going to make this trip each day, would I have to buckle down and get a car, and what it would be like to move closer to the school.  I had another interview the next day – How would I choose between companies?  “Sorry, you can’t have all this…I’m working at Mercy.”

I got to the school an hour early.  I made small talk with my “new co-workers” and I was finally called into the office where the first question asked was – “What do you know about Mercy College?”  I knew everything about Mercy College, but fear suddenly crept in to the point where I said, “I’ve covered so many schools for the paper, I think I might be mixing them up in my head.”  NOOOOOOO!!!!   I nailed every other part of the interview and then apologized about my earlier stumble before leaving, because I really thought reminding someone of my failure would help me in the decision-making process.  “That Jon, he knows nothing about us, but he came in an hour early.”

Lesson learned.  I started creating cheat sheets with both the most important and most interesting information about the company I was applying for.  The more I read my cheat sheet the more I remembered and the better prepared for the interview I was.  It helped when I discovered that NYIT had an amazing lacrosse team.  When I interviewed for a Global Relations position at the school, I rattled off facts and then added, “You have an amazing lacrosse team,” and quickly shifted the interview to my work experience, mentioning how I used to write about lacrosse.  The interview was a breeze and I picked up a second interview.  I didn’t get the job, but at least I didn’t disrespect the interviewer.

“What do you know about our company” is the easiest question they could ask.  It’s like an open-book test.  Information is on the company’s website; it’s available in a simple Google News search; and (cheap plug alert), a more in-depth peek is available in Vault’s company profiles.  The Internet does the work for you.  It’s up to you to do the research and prepare.  Get your facts straight.  With the resources at your fingertips, if you walk in and don’t know anything about the company you are applying to, you fail before you even started.

How to Position Your Career Accomplishments for Job Search Success

Experienced managers and executives typically have a range of roles and accomplishments to draw from. Recently I coached a senior sales executive who had achieved major sales milestones but also managed sales teams and also designed and implemented sales processes. Is she an individual contributor, a manager or an innovator/ leader? Clearly, she’s all three but what she chooses to highlight is going to determine how prospective employers envision her at their companies and therefore determine the roles she’ll be offered. Because she hasn’t positioned herself proactively, she has recently been relegated to a string of individual contributor roles and hasn’t felt challenged or rewarded accordingly.

Here’s how to position your career accomplishments for your job search:

Use the very top of your resume as your positioning statement. If you want to be an individual contributor, highlight your sales results (or other bottom line metric). If you want to be a manager, highlight number of direct reports, size of teams, and budget overseen. If you want to be an executive, growth and profitability are key metrics, as are examples of innovation or visionary thinking.

Frame your networking pitch around the position you want. Give examples that correlate with the role you wish to play – use the resume highlights from above as your guide. If a target company is focused on your individual contributions and you want to manage or lead, then you need to shift the conversation or you need to realize that their target role does not match your needs and move on.

Positioning is very much for the employed, not just for jobseekers. To proactively manage your career – get assigned the plum projects, get promoted to roles you want, get compensated according to your value – you need to position yourself at your target level. There are no one-size-fits-all career paths. Even similar job functions will have different paths at different companies. So you need to understand how it works where you are and navigate accordingly.

–Posted by Caroline Ceniza-Levine, Insider Career Advice From SixFigureStart

Caroline Ceniza-Levine is a career expert, writer, speaker and co-founder of SixFigureStart (http://www.sixfigurestart.com), a career coaching firm comprised of former Fortune 500 recruiters. Caroline is a co-author (along with Donald Trump, Jack Canfield and others) of the upcoming “How the Fierce Handle Fear: Secrets to Succeeding in Challenging Times” due out March 2010; Bascom Hill Books. Formerly in corporate HR and retained search, Caroline most recently headed University Relations for Time Inc and has also recruited for Accenture, Citibank, Disney ABC, and others.  Caroline is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Professional Development at Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs, a life coach (www.thinkasinc.com) and a columnist for CNBC.com, Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com, Vault.com, Wetfeet.com and TheGlassHammer.com.