What Color Is Your Parachute? (46 page)

What are your most repetitive tasks?

The system I use every day to manage my professional life starts off in Google reader (a feed reader), where I soak in everything that is going on in my industry, including technology, trends, and ideas. I then take the blog posts or news articles and if some are noteworthy, I’ll bookmark them on
Delicious.com
, tweet them, and maybe turn a few into a blog post. Each day, I skim through about five hundred feeds, organize them, share a selection of them, and use them for upcoming presentations, blog posts, or other materials. This way I stay relevant, remain influential and credible, and am able to grow my own brand.

Do you supervise anyone?

At EMC, I have no direct reports and my manager is the director of public relations. Outside of EMC, I have a team of writers and editors, including editors for both blogs and the magazine, and several columnists and freelance writers who write articles on occasion. I typically have at least one intern working with me at a given time.

How long have you been in this job?

I’ve been working as a social media specialist at EMC for two years, but I have been with the company in other roles, including product marketing and web support, since I graduated from college. Outside of work, I’ve been in the personal branding world since March 2007.

What do you like about your job?

For my EMC job, I was recruited based on the expertise I demonstrated outside of the company. Within the six months between March and August of 2007, I had launched a blog, an online TV show, a magazine, and an award dedicated to the concept of personal branding.
Fast Company
wrote about my efforts and through that visibility I was recruited internally by an EMC vice president to create the first social media position. Instead of being told what to do, I’m able to create my own projects and be trusted, based on my credibility, to have free rein. I also like working with a variety of people, both inside and outside of EMC, who have different perspectives on social media and branding.

What don’t you like about your job?

One of the biggest challenges for me is that I’m a natural-born entrepreneur and when you work at large companies (EMC has 40,000 people worldwide), you have to go through an approval process for almost every project. Also, I like creating products and websites from scratch and then marketing them. When you work at a large company, you’re only permitted to handle one part of the operation because the rest is covered by other employees.

What do you see happening in this field in the next five to ten years?

This field will be more centralized within every organization, regardless of size and industry. Social media requires a lot of labor, strategy, commitment, and support. Companies in the next few years will have to get engaged online if they want to compete, so this field is going to grow rapidly and there will be a lot of opportunities for people. It will evolve in the future as technology rapidly changes and there are new methods of communication to choose from.

What is your ultimate career goal?

I want to create an online university around personal branding, write more books, and have complete career freedom. I’m not looking to make millions of dollars like most professionals my age hope for. Instead, I’m positioning myself so that I can make money doing what I love, while having the flexibility and enjoyment of working whenever I want.

What advice would you give a young person who wanted to go into your field?

Any job that seems cool is very competitive and you can’t even apply for the best jobs in the world. In order to counter this, you should invest your time in building a blog around your passion. If you build your blog around your passion, it will enable you to work hard enough to become the expert that companies will crave. By leveraging a blog and other social networks, you can gain enough visibility to be recruited for the job you want. The reason why this happens is because your personal brand will filter out all the jobs you don’t want and attract the ones you do want. This wasn’t possible five years ago, but now anyone who is committed enough to their career can accomplish it.

Other interests

My work is my life and I’m building my personal brand around a community that supports it. I enjoy running social events, writing, running, Boston nightlife, tennis, all kinds of music, and sports cars.

Additional comments

When I was in college, I disregarded networking because I was an introvert and uncomfortable with those types of situations. The result was an eight-month job hunt! The most valuable lesson I’ve learned throughout my life is to network before you need it. Most people network when they need a job so they are beggars. Instead, think about networking as life and try and meet the right people who can help you grow.

I would also consider working for a brand-name company when you graduate from college because people are familiar with it and it will make you a more attractive candidate in the future. I had eight internships during college, such as one with Reebok. Even though I didn’t gain much experience at Reebok, during all of my interviews, the hiring manager always asked me about it over the lesser-known firms I had worked for.

Dan can be reached at
[email protected]
.

SOLAR ENERGY SALES COORDINATOR

Name:
Evan Sarkisian        
Age:
24

Job Title:
Sales operations coordinator

Field(s):
Alternative energy / sales / administration

Employer:
REC Solar, Inc.

Degree(s):
BA, philosophy (minor in general business), Santa Clara University

Training:
Training comes in stages. As you take on more responsibilities you receive more training. I’ve taken training courses both in person and online.

Cost:
Not sure. The more work-related the skill training is, the more likely my employer will pay for it. When I want to study something that probably won’t directly impact my work performance, then I usually just go out and do it myself.

Salary:
Starting: $34,000–$39,000; three to six years’ experience: $40,000–$55,000+ (from
Payscale.com
)

What do you do?

I support the sales team’s operational functions, ensuring quality and efficiency between our sales team and our implementation team. This includes contract administration, database management, and workflow process updates

What are your most repetitive tasks?

Contract review, project entry (Oracle Database), and creation of change orders (which are legal documents to change equipment or pricing structure for jobs).

Do you supervise anyone?

No, but I have trained people.

How long have you been at this job?

1½ years.

How did you get into this work?

I was a member of the Santa Clara University Solar Decathlon team where I gained experience with the solar industry and working in teams. When I graduated I only applied to solar companies because I knew it was the right industry for me.

What do you like about your work?

The people I work with are intelligent, honest, and hardworking. It is a pleasure to learn from them and help them bring solar energy to the mainstream. I also enjoy being the focal point where our sales team meets our implementation team. It is a dynamic and challenging role, especially as this industry and company experience impressive growth; there is a lot of change over time.

What don’t you like about your job?

Paperwork! But that’s probably a pretty common complaint.

What are the main challenges in this industry?

Driving costs down and allocating resources to where they are needed most. As we grow it is hard to predict which areas of our business are going to be bottlenecks, and sometimes our only option is to work reactively to get resources to where they need to be (e.g., engineering or interconnection).

What do you see happening in this field in the next 5 to 10 years?

It is really hard to predict because our industry is so young and, like all energy, heavily dependent on government policy. My feeling is that we are poised for a lot of growth and we will see solar become cost-competitive in more areas around the world. This will drastically change the competitive landscape and the opportunities for work will increase.

Have you used social networking in a job search?

Yes, my school has a social networking site where you can find alumni in different industries. I contacted a few people who were from my school but they were in companies that needed engineers, which I am not.

Did you have an internship in school? If so, was it helpful to your employment?

The Solar Decathlon was similar to an internship. It was an international competition between twenty university teams to build an 800-square-foot solar-powered home. I was a member of the Communications Team for Santa Clara University’s entry into the competition. It was definitely helpful. In interviews, I was able to describe the skills I have that could help the companies I was interviewing with, and I also demonstrated my interest in the industry.

What is your ultimate career goal?

I don’t have a specific goal so much as a guiding principle. I want to apply my skills to their fullest extent in the pursuit of a low-carbon economy. I see the skills I have and look for opportunities, short- and long-term, where I can continue to apply and develop them in more deep and meaningful ways.

What advice would you give a young adult who wants to work in your field?

First, don’t be afraid to open up to people you meet or already know about your interest in solar and finding a job in the field. For me, the best opportunities came during conversations with friends and family when I was talking about my job search. In fact, I got in contact with REC Solar because I complained to a friend about an interview with another solar company and how rude they were. My friend said she knew someone at REC. After that I was on my way to landing this job. Next, I also recommend getting involved in anything applicable to the industry on your own time. A lot of it can be fun, like volunteering on a solar project or making solar the topic of a research paper.

Outside your job, what are your other interests or hobbies?

Improvisation comedy, playing drums, continuing my education, and video games.

Evan can be reached at
[email protected]
.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

A career strategist since 1979,
CAROL CHRISTEN
has provided life/work planning and job-search skill training to individuals and groups, specializing in working with teenagers using the internationally renowned techniques found in
What Color Is Your Parachute?
From her research for the latest edition of this book, Carol has become convinced that to achieve career maturity and good grades, the career-search process for teens must start earlier; since it takes about a decade for young adults to go from clueless to well employed, why not start the process at fifteen? She continually asks the question, “Is there a downside to planning?” Carol lives with her husband on a small farm on California’s Central Coast, where they raise colorful flowers and colorful chickens that lay lots of colorful eggs. You can contact her through her website,
www.carolchristen.com
.