CAREER SEMINAR

Wharton Alumni Career Management Presentation September 28. By Mitch Wienick, Kelleher Associates, Inc.

Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here with you in the new Huntsman Building on the Wharton Campus on a crisp, but sunny Fall day. Being here reminds me that if I had not been dating my wife to be in New York City 32 years ago I, too, would have been a Wharton Graduate. But alas, for love rather than money, I instead attended and graduated from New York University with my MBA. It's funny how situations like that change and affect your life.

Let me illustrate a bit further. I recently read a fascinating book called "The Tipping Point -- How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference" by Malcolm Gladwell which was published about two years ago.

In the book, Gladwell cites a classic 1974 study by sociologist Mark Granovetter, appropriately entitled, Getting A Job. While the study is almost 30 years old now, it's major points are still very relevant. Granovetter looked at several hundred professional and technical workers from the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts, interviewing them in some detail on their employment history.

He discovered that 56 % of those he talked to found their current job through a personal connection. Another 19 % used formal means -- pursuing newspaper job listings (this was, of course, before the advent of the internet and electronic job boards) and working with executive recruiters -- and roughly 10 % applied directly to an employer and obtained the job. This much is not very surprising; often, the best way to get in the door is through a personal contact.

But, curiously, Granovetter found that of those personal connections, the majority were weak ties. Of those who used a personal contact to find a job, only 17% saw that contact often -- as they would if the contact were a good friend -- and 55% saw their contact only occasionally. Strikingly, 28% saw the contact rarely. People weren't getting their jobs through their friends. They were getting them through their acquaintances.

Why is this? Granovetter argued persuasively that it is because when it comes to finding out about new jobs -- or for that matter, new information, or new ideas -- "weak ties" are always more important than strong ties. Your friends, after all, largely occupy the same world that you do. They might work with you, or live near you, and go to the same churches and synagogues, schools, or parties. How much, then, would they know that you wouldn't know? Your acquaintances, on the other hand, by definition, occupy a very different world than you. They are much more likely to know something you don't. To capture this apparent paradox, Granovetter coined a marvelous phrase: the strength of weak ties.

Acquaintances, in short, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have, the more powerful you are.

Most of us, I think, shy away from cultivating acquaintances. We have our circle of friends to whom we are usually quite devoted. Acquaintances we keep at arm's length. The reason we don't send birthday cards to people we don't really care a great deal about is that we don't want to feel obliged to have dinner with them or see a movie with them or visit them when they're sick.

For most of us, the purpose of making an acquaintance is to evaluate whether we want to turn that person into a friend; we don't have the time, the energy, or the interest to maintain meaningful contact with everyone. But, there are some people -- Gladwell calls them connectors -- who carefully document and track their acquaintances; that is, other people they may run into only once a year or once every few years, and they don't shy away from the obligations of this connection. The have mastered the "weak tie", a friendly yet casual social connection. And they are quite happy with a weak tie for a large part of their social circle (which doesn't mean, of course, that they don't have some strong ties, too).

Connectors are important for more than simply the number of people they know. Their importance is also a function of the kind of people they know.

Let me illustrate this through a popular parlor game called "Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon". The idea behind the game is to link any actor or actress, through the movies they've been in, to the actor Kevin Bacon in less than six steps. So, for example, O.J. Simpson (yes, he was a "paid" actor at one point) was in Naked Gun with Priscilla Presley who was in Ford Fairlane (honestly, that's the name of the movie) with Gilbert Gottfried, who was in Beverly Hills Cops II with Paul Reiser, who was in the movie Diner with Kevin Bacon. That's four steps. Mary Pickford, the silent screen star, was in Screen Snapshots with Clark Gable, who was in Combat America with Tony Romano who, thirty-five years later, was in Starting Over with Kevin Bacon. That's three steps.

Recently, a computer scientist (Brett Tjaden) at the University of Virginia actually sat down and figured out what the average Bacon number is for the 250,000 or so actors and actresses who have played in television films or major motion pictures and came up with 2.83 steps. Anyone who has ever acted professionally, in other words, can be linked to Bacon in an average of under three steps.

That sounds impressive, except that the same computer scientist went back and performed a more heroic calculation, figuring out what the average degree of connectedness was for everyone who ever acted in Hollywood. For example, how many steps does it take on average to link everyone in Hollywood to Robert DeNiro or Shirley Temple or Adam Sandler (how's that for an odd trio)?

He found that when he listed all Hollywood actors in order of their connectedness, Bacon ranked only 669th. Martin Sheen, by contrast, can be connected to every other actor in 2.64 steps, which puts him almost 650 places higher than Bacon. Elliott Gould can be connected slightly more quickly, in 2.63 steps.

Among the top 15 were people like Robert Mitchum, Donald Sutherland, Shelly Winters, and Burgess Meredith. The best connected actor of all time -- any body want to guess? Rod Steiger! Why is Kevin Bacon so far behind these actors? One big factor is that Bacon is younger than most of the others and, as a result, has made fewer movies. But that explains only some of the difference. There are lots of people who have made lots of movies and aren't particularly well connected. John Wayne, for example, made an extraordinary 179 movies in a sixty-year career (think about that -- roughly three movies a year, that's incredible) and still ranks only 116th, at 2.71 steps. The problem is that half of John Wayne's movies were Westerns, meaning that he made the same kind of movie with the same kind of actors over and over again.

But lets look at Rod Steiger: he has made great movies like the Oscar -winning On The Waterfront and dreadful movies like Car Pool. He won an Oscar for his role in In The Heat Of The Night and also made "B" movies so bad they went straight to video. He's played Mussolini, Napoleon, Pontius Pilate, and Al Capone. He's been in 38 dramas, 12 crime films, 12 comedies, 11 thrillers, 8 action films, 7 westerns, 6 war movies, 4 documentaries, three horror flicks, two sci-fi films, and a musical, among others. Rod Steiger is the best connected actor in history at just over 2.0 steps because he has managed to move up and down and back and forth among all the different worlds and subcultures and niches and levels that the acting profession has to offer.

This is what Connectors are like. They are the Rod Steigers of everyday life. They are people whom all of us can reach in only a few steps because, for one reason or another, they manage to occupy many different worlds and subcultures and niches. In Rod Steiger's case, of course, his high connectedness was a function of his versatility as an actor and, likely, some degree of good luck.

But in the case of Connectors, their ability to span many different worlds is a function of something intrinsic to their personality -- some combination of curiosity, self confidence, sociability, and energy perhaps with a dash of circumstance thrown in. So what does this all have to do with Job Changers and changing jobs? People changing jobs, that is people in or soon to be in transition, may have been downsized, fired, or resigned. Those thinking about it do so for a variety of reasons -- they don't like their boss, they are bored by the job, their career has hit a wall, they don't like the city where they live or work (or both), they are unsatisfied by the career choices they've made, or they can't devote enough time to activities away from work which they care about or which stimulate them. There may be a half dozen additional reasons and combinations of several. And the people thinking about job change are certainly not among the few people we all know who, when they were 7 or 8 years old, had a clear picture of what they wanted to do and never wavered from that goal and are, at least to our eyes, perfectly content.

High quality Career Management firms generally do eight things when they start to work with clients in transition or soon to be in transition, or seriously thinking about it.

First, if a client is feeling hurt or wounded because of a surprise termination, which may have been handled badly by the employer, sadly a common occurrence, or a major downsizing, the initial sessions are designed to soften the blow, get the client through the stages of shock and anger, and move them to a state of acceptance where they are looking ahead to their future and what they want to do next from a career standpoint. While this is happening the professionals in the career transition firm can also be working with the client to negotiate a fair and reasonable severance package and give the client valuable information about what the norms and standards are in terms of severance benefits and structure (including career transition outplacement counseling) that the client can use with a former employer. I should add editorially that the best career transition firms, although they are paid by the former employer in many cases, should be working on behalf of the client, not the employer.

Second, a high quality Career Management firm will help you develop a rationale. A rationale is simply a believable statement, rooted in the truth, about what happened in your last employment situation. It provides a network contact, executive recruiter, or hiring manager with a polished explanation of why you left your last position and allows you to bridge the conversation to your future -- what you want to do, where, and for whom. While this seems like a basic step, it requires a high degree of care and thoughtfulness in composition and a series of rehearsals to insure a smooth and articulate delivery.

Third, a high quality Career Management firm will do psychological assessment to determine personality type and help develop what we call a motivated objective. A motivated objective is what you really want to do coupled with enough skill and experience with which to sell yourself. Some of the tools used are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which provides an accurate picture of a person's personality type and the Life Styles Inventory or LSI which identifies the underlying thoughts and motivations that guide an individual's behavior.

Fourth, after the psychological assessment is completed and a motivated objective is identified, a high quality Career Management firm works with its clients to ensure they have excellent, really A+, resumes. Your career objective and personal profile are the most important part of your resume since they should highlight what you want to do, what you've done in the past that supports what you want to do, and what contributions, implicitly or explicitly, you can make to a new employer. Notably, just as the marketplace for products in the U.S. is extremely competitive, the marketplace for jobs is equally so. As a consequence, your resume has to be "A+" quality to stand out and garner attention. You would be shocked and amazed to see the resumes and other correspondence we review before someone becomes a client; paper that won't get 5 seconds from a recruiter or prospective employer.

Fifth, once a very good first draft of your resume is completed, a high quality Career Management firm will help you identify references -- usually people you've worked for, your peers, and your subordinates, all of whom have seen you at your best on the job. You will share your resume with your references, soliciting their comments and thoughts, many of which you will incorporate into the next draft.

Sixth, at Kelleher Associates, we strongly encourage our clients to put together a Personal Board of Directors. While you will also share your resume with this group and solicit their comments and thoughts, the purpose of this Board differs from that of your references. As I just mentioned, your references have seen you in a favorable light on the job. Your Personal Board of Directors, which can include your spouse and your career coach, is comprised of people you trust, are experienced, have good judgment, are creative, may have a strong contact network, and know you well. Among other things, the purpose of a Personal Board of Directors is to act as a sounding board on your career campaign, help you out of an occasional dark mood by affirming your genuine worth as a human being, give you strategic rather than tactical advice, and provide introductions to other key people.

Seventh, a high quality Career Management firm will work with you on developing an "elevator speech". The "elevator speech" is a succinct summary of your current situation, your chosen target markets, and your objective. You need to be able to communicate this information to a perfect stranger (and better yet, a valuable networking contact), perhaps one you meet on an elevator, in a way that elicits the support of that individual for your job campaign.

And eighth, in tandem with the client, a high quality Career Management firm will create a personal marketing plan, the most important element of which is their contact development or networking campaign. More on this in a few moments.

These eight steps should all happen through some intensive sessions between the client and the Career Management firm over the first 4-6 weeks of the engagement. As Gloria mentioned when she introduced me, after almost thirty years as a line executive, I became a partner at Kelleher Associates, a small but very high quality Career Management firm located in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The key principals of the firm have worked with thousands of executives who were either in transition or thinking very seriously about changing their job.

When we work with people in transition, or those really intent on making a change on their own terms, we follow the eight steps I outlined above. But, in addition, as a brief endorsement of our firm, I'd like to mention that unlike others in our business, we work with our clients with on a 1:1 basis, not in groups on a sort of mass production basis; and all of our principals have thirty or more years of experience, and experience in a number of industries -- for example, I've personally been in Consumer Products, Telecommunications, Staffing, Search, Technical Outsourcing, and Private Equity investing.

The eight steps I mentioned earlier may sound pretty simple to some of you who may be convinced you can easily do it yourself. And perhaps some of you can. But we find that having a consultant, or coach, or advisor -- whatever you want to call a career focused professional -- who guides you through the process (or sometimes pulls you through it), asks you questions you weren't able to ask yourself, let alone answer; and works with you to develop your personal marketing plan is often invaluable.

As I mentioned earlier, I want to spend my last few minutes on the Personal Marketing Plan.

Broadly speaking, your Personal Marketing Plan combines your career objectives, a set of customized marketing strategies, with a timetable for action. The key elements of the Personal Marketing Plan are your resume which can be equated to an executive summary, your current situation (or rationale), an evaluation of the business environment in your chosen target markets, and your objective (all of which can be summarized in an "elevator speech"), strategies (which include a clear expression of your 4 P's), action programs, anticipated results, and contingency plans.

Some of you may be wondering what I mean by the 4 P's, which is a standard marketing concept. They include product, positioning, price, and place (with place and distribution used interchangeably). In terms of a personal marketing plan:

You are the product. It's critical to understand who you are -- your beliefs, values, behaviors, personality, and management style -- in order to communicate them to someone else and determine whether you will be a strong fit for certain positions.

Positioning, as it pertains to your job search, is simply how you want to be viewed by networking contacts, executive recruiters, hiring managers, and other people you meet, relative to your competition, And in this case your competition consists of other executives who are looking for the same or similar jobs. Positioning focuses on the perceptions others have of you and how well your characteristics (such as experience, skills, and capabilities) match up with the needs of a prospective employer.

Price in the context of your Personal Marketing Plan means the total compensation and benefit package you're seeking in your next position. Your price must be set with consistency between your previous compensation, your current positioning, and what your target market is willing to pay. Inputs to the pricing decision can include base salary, bonus, stock options, restricted stock, retirement and pension benefits, health benefits, life insurance, severance, and even change of control provisions.

As it relates to your Personal Marketing Plan, place (or distribution) means those venues, organizations, associations, suppliers, customers, consultants, professional service providers, intermediaries such as executive recruiters and venture capitalists, and other personal contacts you successfully use to develop and increase your career network which will lead to the job you want. Perhaps more than any other variable, successful development, utilization, and maintenance of your "distribution network" will spell the difference between success and failure in your search. What this means is that people looking at a career change need to become Connectors to some degree, and they need to connect with Connectors.

Of course, what we often find with executives who become our clients is quite the contrary. Most of them are usually the polar opposites of Connectors. They've been in one industry or in one function for a considerable amount of time. They only have (or think they have) a small circle of business contacts -- that is, their superiors, subordinates, and peers -- within their companies. And many of them have only been able to get things done through the power of their position rather than demonstrating an ability to motivate the action of others through persuasion, and rarely if ever for personal reasons.

So what do we end up doing? Well, again, it doesn't seem like gene splicing, for example, but sometimes, on a individual basis, it can be just as amazing. We work with our clients on thinking through and mapping out what is usually a much bigger network than they thought they had. We encourage them to make contact and concentrate on the finer points of how to do so productively and engagingly. And most of all, we talk about the power of the networking effect and how they can take advantage of it, moving out of their circle of comfort; dealing with friends, neighbors, and relatives; and contacting and communicating with acquaintances, particularly targeting other Connectors who can bring them into contact with entirely new circles of people and, ultimately, potential employers and hiring executives.

I'd like to end my remarks with the following brief thought. While few of us can be Rod Steigers in our careers, all of you can develop a Personal Marketing Plan with the help of a professional and personal discipline. Are you a Product? When you are seeking a career position you certainly are. Are you a Product Manager? Everyone can be, and in transition must be. Can you develop a Personal Marketing Plan? You can; and if you want to dramatically improve your chances of success, you must.

Thank you for your time and attention. I hope this talk was helpful as you start or continue to actively manage your career.