I Shouldn't Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know (4 page)

And then one day while I was reading the edit of one of our self-help articles, a line really grabbed my attention. It said, “Don’t believe everything you think.” The point was this: we don’t always see clearly what’s right for us, no matter how smart and self-aware we are.

Why
can’t
we see? It’s sometimes because we’ve been led astray from our natural instincts. Though I have a risk-taking gene, twelve years of Catholic education and some second-guessing had tamped down those instincts. The idea of running
Cosmo
at first scared the pants off me. It was only when I was thrust into it that I saw that the job really suited me.

Of course, parents can play a big role in shaping the way you view your future. When researching my thriller
The Sixes
, I interviewed Dr. Jill Murray, a terrific psychotherapist from Los Angeles. Dr. Murray had paid her own way through undergraduate school since her parents didn’t believe she needed college the way her three brothers did. One day when she was an adult, her mother mentioned to her that she’d had an intriguing dream that one of her children, one with big hands, would become a doctor. Murray and her mother spent time that day trying to analyze the dream but were puzzled because none of her brothers had big hands. Years later, when Murray was about to go to the podium to receive her doctoral degree, she suddenly remembered her mother’s dream and looked down at her hands.
She
was one with the big hands. At the time of the dream she had been so locked into her parents’ sense of her that she had never considered herself to be the doctor candidate.

So how do you make certain you’re not thinking all wrong about your destiny? You need to always challenge your thinking,
especially
anything you’re especially adamant about. (Be wary of thoughts like, “I would never be a. . . .”) Ask yourself why you’re so sure and what the alternative would be like. Don’t be afraid to ask, “What if . . . ?”

Encourage friends to challenge your thinking, too. We published research in
Cosmo
showing that our friends are often better judges than we are of whether our romantic relationships will last. I think they can also sometimes see our career identity more clearly than we do. Take a friend out for a drink and ask, “What do you see me doing?” or “If I were going to change careers, what do you think I should choose next?” or “Is there something you think I’m good at that I might not see?”

Consider, too, how you
feel.
“So many young women treat life as a constant status update,” says Jane Buckingham, CEO of the consumer research and trend-spotting company Trendera, whom I hired my first day at
Cosmo.
“They’re thinking about how their lives look instead of how their lives feel.”

Determine the viability.
It’s fabulous when you can follow a career path you love, but is the one that’s emerging for you going to pay off financially? Do you have the right instincts and skills for it—or could you get them? Is there a need—and potentially a continued need—for what you have in mind?

“You have to consider what the world wants from you,” says Alexa Hirschfeld, cofounder of Paperless Post, “not what you want from the world.”

Be open to tall dark strangers.
If you’re going to find what you’re truly lusting for, you have to be open to the sexy stranger who comes out of nowhere. Maybe you majored in economics and totally saw yourself in that field, but one night you attend a political rally and you feel totally charged by the experience. Be open. Ask questions. There’s nothing wrong with being seduced if you love what you see.

What if you still don’t know what you want? Then “follow the river” for a while. That’s a great phrase I heard from the comedian Amy Schumer. I met Schumer when she was first performing in New York. Since then I’ve watched her become a finalist on
Last Comic Standing
, appear on shows such as
Ellen
,
Conan
, and
Curb Your Enthusiasm
, and get her own TV show. “I always knew I wanted to entertain people
somehow
,” she says. “When I was little, I had all these characters I created, but I never had a big endgame or pictured how that goal of entertaining would take shape. I really followed the river. As opportunities appeared, I went after them and saw where they took me. For a while that even meant acting in theater until I started doing stand-up.”

So jump in—and see if the river takes you someplace magical.

{
Ballsy Strategies for Finding a Job
}

W
ouldn’t it be nice if once you decided for sure what you wanted to do professionally, you could just go out and
do
it? But life doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to go out and “find” a job first. That can seem like the most daunting challenge in the world—whether you’re just starting out or ready to take your career up a level or two. Don’t freak. There are ways to make the process less of a mind-numbing challenge.

The Search

Let me start with a little story. After I’d been at
Glamour
magazine for about five years, working during the last years as a feature writer, I realized I was overdue to make a change. The next logical step in my career was for me to be an associate editor—or, if I was lucky, a senior editor—but I sensed that it was not going to happen at
Glamour
. Not only were there no openings on the horizon, but I had trapped myself into a top-ten-college-winner-turned-sometimes-boisterous-and-mischievous-staff-writer persona (I’d once been called into the managing editor’s office and told there was “too much frivolity” in my area). Finally, after a certain amount of dragging of feet, I took a Monday off from work, determined to spend the entire day job hunting. Early in the morning I sat down at my home desk with a new ringed notebook. On each page I listed a particular magazine that I’d been keeping my eye on and any contacts I had there. Then I started making calls.

One of the magazines I’d listed was
Family Weekly
, a Sunday newspaper supplement (similar to
Parade
) that reached almost 30 million people. It wasn’t a very classy publication, but I thought that it might be easier to snag a senior editor job at a place that clearly wasn’t on everyone’s radar. The offices happened to be on the same floor as a magazine I sometimes wrote freelance pieces for, so I called my editor there and asked if she knew anyone I could talk to.

It turned out that her boss was newly married to the editor in chief of
Family Weekly
(they’d actually met on the floor!), and she had her boss call me a short time later. The boss was more than happy to help because, it turned out,
Family Weekly
needed a senior editor. The very next day I met with the editor, Art Cooper (who later went on to fabulously reinvent
GQ
). The interview couldn’t have gone better. On Wednesday, Art called and offered me the job, and the next day I resigned from
Glamour
. I’d snagged not only the title I wanted but also a chance to reinvent myself as a mature career girl.

I can’t tell you how amused my two cubby mates were about my news. When I’d taken the Monday off, I’d confided my plan to them. “Jeez,” one of them said to me, “this all happened because of a
notebook
?”

Well, it wasn’t so much the notebook that did it; it was the fact that out of desperation, I’d created a system to work with. And that’s what you need for a job search.

Terri Wein, cofounder of Weil & Wein, a fantastic company that specializes in executive coaching and career optimization, suggests that rather than relying on a notebook, you should work with two spreadsheets on your computer; you use one to list all the companies you’re aware of in the field or fields you’re interested in and the other to list every single contact you have.

If you’ve already worked in some capacity or done any internships, your contacts are everybody you’ve met in your work plus all your personal contacts. If you haven’t been employed yet, you still have plenty of contacts. “Take out your college yearbook,” says Wein. “Who sat next to you in class? Who do you know that’s gone into the field you’re interested in? You don’t have to know them well to put them on the list.” You’d also include any contacts your parents have, friends of your parents, people you met on family vacations, even kids you knew in summer camp.

Then join LinkedIn, the professional networking site. Wein says LinkedIn is an enormous asset for anyone doing a job search. Connect with all of your contacts who are on LinkedIn and discover which of them—and
their
connections—are in an area you want to work in.

“Now you need to reach out and reintroduce yourself,” says Wein. “Most people don’t have the time to meet in person so ask for a ten-minute phone conversation. Be specific. Tell them you’re looking and would appreciate any help they can give. Could they introduce you to a key person in their own organization?” You can also request they make an introduction to one of their LinkedIn connections.

During this time, you also need to work your spreadsheet of companies. Perhaps you’re interested in the health care field, though at this point you’re still exploring and haven’t yet decided which
area
of health care. So divide your spreadsheet into sections covering different areas—hospitals could be one, medical devices another, health-information services or health-focused websites yet another.

Every day you should also be checking job boards to track positions as they open up. In addition to the job boards on company websites, use public job boards such as Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn, and any specialty sites. There’s also your alumni website, etc. When a job pops up that seems promising, you should turn to LinkedIn again.

“Let’s say you are interested in the health field and there’s a job at WebMD that sounds really appealing to you,” says Wein. “It’s not only a job in health care that you’re looking for but the Internet, which also appeals to you. Use LinkedIn to find out if anyone in your entire network—or those in
their
networks—knows anyone at WebMD. If you find someone who does, ask him to help you get your résumé on the top of the pile. Ask that person to make an e-mail introduction and to send your résumé to the appropriate manager.”

Using contacts is really the best way to expedite a job search. If you simply send in your résumé via the company website, you’ll be mixed in with possibly hundreds of candidates. If you must resort to this, at least leave a phone message with HR saying that you’ve forwarded your résumé and you’d love to interview for the job. That may lead to the person on the other end at least sorting yours out from the pack.

During your job search, you must also be networking as much as possible, attending events, talk, lectures, and conferences where you’ll meet people you can add to your contact list. Wein says it’s important to have a very brief “elevator pitch” to use when you meet someone who might be able to help you. Start with a two-line summary of your background, and then say what you’re looking for, being as specific as possible. It could go something like this: “I just graduated with a degree in economics, and I worked at a hospital for my past two summers. I’d love a job at a health-related website. I know you once worked for WebMD, and I’d really welcome a personal introduction.”

Don’t be shy about asking for help from everyone and enlisting anyone you can in your efforts. That’s how a former assistant of mine ended up landing an interview with me and ultimately the job. One of the top people in HR at my company had called a house inspector to report that his house had been hit by lightning. When the secretary picked up the phone, she realized from the caller ID that the person was phoning from a big magazine company. After she’d taken the message, she told my colleague, “My son’s girlfriend is looking for a job in magazines—do you have any advice?” He agreed to meet with her and sent her résumé on to me.

Your Résumé

There are plenty of books and articles available on how to write a résumé, and you should turn to them for a full set of guidelines. But don’t get so caught up in a formula that your résumé sounds wooden, unconnected to a human being. I love résumés that seem to have personality to them, that showcase something really interesting or even unusual that the person has done. I saw a résumé lately of a varsity athlete who had written a thesis on Oscar Wilde, which couldn’t help but grab my attention. (I’m in a creative field, of course, and the rules are different here.)

Though it’s nice when a résumé shows a diversity of experience, you don’t want it to seem all over the map. When I’m looking at résumés for people applying for positions at magazines, I want to see that the choices they’ve made have been pointing them in that direction. This means playing up everything related to creating content and possibly eliminating activities that lead to a hodgepodge feel. If you are looking at several fields, you will need a résumé for each because you might want to add or drop certain activities (but, of course, never lie!).

Wein says that the biggest mistake women make with their résumés is playing down their achievements. “A man who has only had four years of high school French will think nothing of putting ‘fluent in French’ on his résumé,” she says, “whereas a woman who’s actually studied in France will make her language skills seem simply adequate. You need to be factual, but you don’t have to be modest.”

Depending on your field, you may also want to create a website to showcase your résumé and work so far. For instance, if you want to be a journalist, you’d feature “clips” of articles you wrote for your campus magazine.

Your Cover Letter

I really dig a great cover letter. In fact, it’s a cover letter or e-mail, far more than a résumé, that makes me decide if I want to meet a job candidate.

Here are the three things that, for me at least, make a letter impossible to ignore.

First, I love to see
passion.
Let me know that you’d love to work for me, and describe some of the things you admire most about both me and my company. In other words, seduce me.