The Devil Wore Talbots

During my recent vacation, I found myself watching a lot of movies on the gazillion movie channels in our condo.  One of them that I watched almost the whole way through was “The Devil Wears Prada.”  I really enjoyed the book as an escapist read, and the movie fits the bill as well.  If you’ve seen my LinkedInprofile, you’ll see that I refer to my first job as my own Devil Wears Prada experience, except without all the fabulous clothes.  I haven’t explained exactly why that is, until now. 

I often tell people that I am very satisfied with my life as it is right now, and as such, cannot imagine having any regrets about things I’ve done in the past, because those actions might now have let me to the place where I am now.   That said, I do wonder what would have happened if I gave more thought to the job search out of college.  The recruiters who came to campus were interested in business majors.  The only companies who would interview a pleasant History major like myself were retail, and that wasn’t of interest to me.  I had no job when I graduate college, so I took a summer job with Hampton Jitney, working in the reservations office and as a “coach attendant”.  Seriously, I could fill an entire blog with anecdotes about the regular folks and celebrities who made my summer more entertaining than most, but that’s not really why we’re here.  I worked there through the summer, had a blast, and decided I would stay at my family’s house there through the fall into winter.  The Jitney folks were kind enough to extend my job, and not do a summer layoff on me, but Mother IT was not accepting of that idea.  No, I had to put on my Brooks Brothers business suit my dad bought me the year before and head to the big city and look for a “real job.”

Not at lot of preparation or research went into this.  It was the 80’s and employment agencies weren’t exactly clamoring for more college graduates to have to place in jobs.  When it came down to it, I settled on two job choices - a scheduler at a “fashion” (boy, do I use that term loosely) house and a sales assistant role at a magazine company.  Since big dream was to work at an ad agency (just like in “thirtysomething”!), that latter one seemed close, so hello sales assistant job at Diamandis Communicaitons Inc.

DCI was a company spun off off Ziff Davis and CBS magazines.  It was headed by Peter Diamandis, a great entrepreneur, who just before I joined agreed to sell DCI to Hachette Publications for beaucoups bucks.  The company was in transition, but I wasn’t nearly savvy enough to realize that.  When I started, I was one of two assistants to 25 sales reps and about 5 senior managers.  We had a direct manager, Dave, who I got along with really well at the interview. I thought, this is great, I’m going to have a super mentor, and work hard and move up through the ranks.  In reality, I lasted 7 months.

There were a couple of things that made the job challenging.  First, the whole first assistant, second assistant thing so memorably portrayed in the movie.  There was no such structure, but V, the other assistant, saw a green kid just out of school and decided to put it into place.  Dave, our manager, was mentally checked out and would resign 3 weeks after I started, so I didn’t know otherwise.  Audrey, his replacement, was a nut job who was fired 2 months after starting, hitting <ctrl><alt><del> on her computer on the way out before security got her.  So we were kind of on our own.  I certainly accepted the fact that V was there longer, and I could learn things about the organization from her, but taking management direction from someone who had not even graduated high school was not something I was going to do.  But she acted just like Emily in the movie, delegating her tasks to me, and enjoying having someone to boss around.  When B., the VP in charge of the division called, V. jumped, running after her with steno pad in hand to listen to her every need and then dump them on me.  A girl who never drank coffee before was challenged, even in the pre-Starbucks days, by having to get the right language down to order B’s coffee, just like in the book/movie. 

B was a character in herself.  Reeking of Calvin Klein’s Eternity and swathed in the latest Hermes scarves, neatly tucked into her shoulder padded epaulets (it was the 80s, remember?), she would inspire terror in all who worked in the division.  But not me.  Even though I was taught to fear her, I never could.  I spent a week working directly for her when her executive admin was promoted into a new job and grew to respect her.  She was a woman of power in a male-heavy company, not an easy thing to do.  She was fair, and someone who I learned a lot from.  My Miranda, if you will, and I began to up the wardrobe ante and dress like her.  I stopped going to the Limited and frequented Talbots and Lord & Taylor.  Oh, I look back on pictures now and see how ridiculous I looked in those shoulder pads and scarves, but you could see a look in my eyes that said I was going to go places.  Ah, youth.  I think she respected me as well.  She put up with my endless questioning about how I could progress with the company, and even came to my going-away party at a dingy bar in the theater district, to the shock of my co-workers there.

I have to say, if it wasn’t for the IT head of the division, a guy named Andy Kehoe, I never would have made it out of there, nor found myself in the career path that I am in today.  Andy found me an old IBM PC so I didn’t have to use the IBM selectric to write sales letters to clients.  He encouraged me to read the DOS manual and the “bird book” to understand how PCs worked so I could have a new skill.  He taught me how to mix a perfect dry martini.  He was more of a mentor and support system than anyone in that place, and for all he did for me, I am eternally grateful.  No idea where he is today, or I would tell him myself. 

Watching that movie, I could see in Andy the me of 20 years ago.  It’s amazing how much of those 7 months came to mind when seeing it.  Good grief it was 20 years ago this fall that I took that job.  I certainly dreamed I would be in a better job, with a better life, and it’s happened, a combination of hard work and luck.  Just don’t expect me to put “second assistant” on a resume, LinkedIn or otherwise. 

 

The only Spock in my life is Mister

So, what’s the deal with Spock?  It seemed like a good idea months ago when I got the invite.  I corrected some information that was in there (hey, how did they get that info, anyhow?) and invited a friend or two to join.  About 3 weeks ago, I got another invite.  Hmmm, thought I was in there already.  Whatever.  I go back in and correct some more incorrect, ill-gotten info, and see they now have a friend adder where, much like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, they go through your email accounts to find other friends on the service.  I do this for LinkedIn, since Gmail’s connection to Spock was down (a blessing, as I would soon find out) and it apparently sent Spock connections requests to every single person in my LinkedIn network.  That’s over 200.  And if it had done it in Gmail, it would be to over 1,000 people.

The annoying thing is that the connection request happened so quickly, it barely confirmed or even said, “Are you sure?”  It just pulled the trigger and sent out all that bac’n.  At least it’s holiday time, so the perplexed contacts on my LinkedIn list got to wish me a Merry Christmas while they yelled at me for inviting them to the mess that is Spock. 

I also figured out that I am there as my work email and as my gmail, with no way to connect the two.  I never signed up as my work email but since Spock apparently trolls around gathering info on people and putting them in there, even if they don’t want to be, that will happen.  Unlike sites like Zoominfo, you can’t correct that, combine multiple listings, or even opt-out.  I don’t know what purpose Spock is supposed to serve, but other than giving me a rant to put in a blog entry or a worst practice case study for social networking, I don’t know what it is. 

 

Here we go again…Ipso Facto Plaxo!

That may sound like an incantation from “Wicked”, but no, sadly, it isn’t.  It’s yet another site to for me to practice my social network skills on.  I had signed up for Plaxo a while back when it was simply a place to keep addresses updated.  Then = simple, understandable purpose.  Now, it’s trying to be LinkedIn or Facebook or who knows what.  I tried to ignore it, but then I started getting connection requests coming in and I thought that I better check in (especially with someone named “Wiley” sent me a connection request.)  I claim somewhere to be a master of all things social networking - how can Plaxo elude me the way Twitter has? I clicked on the link to accept all of these, and it took me to a screen where the notice “that connection request has already been handled” came up.  Funny then that I cannot find these people in my connection list.  Did they try and connect and suddenly decide, nah, Ellen’s not my Plaxo type?  Did they fall into a Plaxo void?  No idea. 

I started with a whopping four connections (the usual Wiley suspects, my brother in law, and a friend from town.)  All of a sudden, I have 5 connect requests in my mailbox.  Why did Plaxo suddenly hit the radar screen for these folks?  I sent a note to the person who requested the most recent connection, who said he inadvertently requested connection with all his LinkedIn contacts.  That’s one way to build your network here, so I tried it and found a whopping 45 people on Plaxo connected to me already through LinkedIn.  So I intentionally sent connections to them.

So….now I’m connected, what should I be doing next?  This isn’t the most intuitive site.  I see a “Pulse Stream”  but so far only Jeff Pulver and Chris Webb have anything going in there.  Any suggestions from people who might have a better masterly of Plaxo than I of what to do next?  How to use this site for good, and not the evil that comes from time wasting?

 

LinkedIn Q&A

I recently posted my first question on LinkedIn.  Many articles about LinkedIn tell you that one of the best ways to raise your profile is to ask and answer questions.  Since the question at hand was about our proposed “LinkedIn For Dummies”, where better to post it than LinkedIn?

What did I learn?  Like any advice, the flavors range from so-so to pretty darn good.  For the most part, all the answers, public and private, had some degree of helpfulness.  The best answer was the one that had some common sense advice as well as some hints I had not thought about.  I’m putting it into this post as I thought it was worth sharing.  I must credit Eric Mariacher as the author of these.  I also included my gut checks after each item…

1st advice “Grow your network while you don’t need it” - absolutely right on target.  Like old school networking, the most important thing is to have your network ready to go when you need it. 

2nd advice “know why you want to network” - another good piece of advice.  For me, it’s about personal and professional visibility.  I want to be able to build traffic to my blog, to get my name out there as a social networker, and when appropriate, to help increase visibility of my companies products.  Check. 

3rd advice “get recommendations from current and past colleagues posted on your profile” - I did this after reading the list, somewhat hesitantly.  It was a little like asking for a prom date, or worse a “am i hot or not” ranking.  I only asked about 5 colleagues past and present, to minimize the possibility of rejection.  It was then very pleasing when I got two recommendations right off the bat.  This is something I will do, sparingly and thoughtfully, and will also work on giving more recommendations to others. 

4th advice “make heavy use of the Q&A feature (on LinkedIn) or post on forums” - Been there!  Done that!  Although you can see how this is easily abused.  The temptation is to post a lot of questions and give in a lot of answers, but you have to be very thoughtful about this to avoid overkill and irrelevancy. 

5th advice “never use standard boiler plate templates” when inviting people to connect -  I am totally guilty of this.  Wonder why I have a full page of unrequited invites.  I’ve resolved to stop this bad habit now. 

6th advice/fact “The more connections you have, the more time you must spend” - I haven’t found the logic behind this one, but I’m working on it. 

7th advice “join yahoo networking groups. You will learn a lot” - It’s quite silly that the best LinkedIn networking sites are not on LinkedIn.  I think LinkedIn is missing a huge opportunity here by sending this traffic to other sites.  As well, they are asking these groups to stop using the LinkedIn name, and are gaining the ire of members in these groups. 

8th advice “Read other 2 cents advices” - gotta work on this one more

9th advice “Do not forget other ways of networking” - Right on target.  None of these sites can be the basket for all of your eggs.  There are plenty of other sites worth your networking time.  As well, never forget the old school networking - conferences, seminars and other face time opportunities. 

 

LinkedIn: Why bother?

I received the following email recently from a friend of mine:

 ”I use Linked In, but not much…I don’t really know how to use it properly. I am looking for a new job (my current one is on a fast-track to bankruptcy) and I want to be able to network with Linked In, but I need someone who knows their way around it to show me the most efficient way to use it. Are you that person?”

Unfortunately, I am not that person. Try as I may, I just cannot find a way to be effective on that site. I’ve pimped out my page a bit, but since I am not in the market for a new job, I don’t put that much into it.  I suppose I could ask people to recommend me, but that smacks of desperation and reminds me of eating alone in my college cafeteria or being home on Saturday night - the shame and horror!

Does anyone have any suggestions I can give to my friend? He has to be somewhat careful about pimping out his profile, because his CEO is in his network, and would notice if all of a sudden his entry looked like a resume. My first word of advice to him was to get on Facebook. But he really wants to try and make some inroads on LinkedIn. Past that - dunno?

Also, check out the following Business Week article from Jeff Pulver, past Wiley author, on Facebook trumping LinkedIn.