Why your online Activities May be Hurting your Job Search

In the early days when the Facebook userbase were mainly milenials, I would often update my status to reveal what I was upto from the important (job interviews, work functions) to the mundane (what I was eating for dinner). As the medium started to become more popular with generation x's and baby boomers, and my network began to grow to include older relatives and colleagues, I began to tone down the amount of information I shared but would occasionally share my plans for Friday nights. My typical Friday posts were often funny depictions of my love for alcohol, so I'd share something like "TGIF- Totally single so tonight I'm going to be spending the night alone with a bottle of Grey Goose Vodka" or "I'm going to dance and get wasted with my girls tonight", you know, typical single girl living a life of debuchery posts.

It all stopped the day my pastor sent me a friend request. You see, I was a very active member of  the local chapter of my church and held several leadership positions. I wasn't comfortable with my pastor seeing my 'cheeky' posts that often included updates about spending the weekend in nothing but my underwear with a bottle of red wine for company because I did not want him giving me sermons on how I had to comport myself to reflect my faith to the world. I wasn't going to start posting scriptures either because it just wasn't my style so I just stopped sharing updates all together and became a lurker, checking out what others were sharing.

Even if your pastor/boss/cleric or anyone you hold in high esteem doesn't follow your online activities, you still have to be careful with your online activities. This because the internet never forgets and whatever you do on the internet stays there forever and even if you delete  it,  chances are that it may still exist on other computers, websites, search engines or someone with a fast finger screen grabbed it.

To project your personal brand, it is important that you are careful with the information you put online. Too many people are losing their jobs and elected positions because they aired what they believed where their personal opinions with friends on social media. Recent instances of high profile people losing their jobs as a result of their social media activities include a mayor, a director, a  police officer and  Hamilton's Brandon Victor Dixon who was initially  praised for speaking to Vice President Elect - Mike Pence's until his credibility on speaking on important social issues was questioned when one of his tweets from 4 years ago was dug up.

As a career professional, it is important that you keep your online activities as professional as possible. This is because 60% of employers use social network to research job candidates. Hiring managers will pass up a candidate based on the information found about them online. Top of the list why a hiring manager will eliminate an otherwise qualified job candidate includes posting provocative or inappropriate photographs or information,  information about candidates drinking or drug use, discriminatory comments related to race, religion, gender and bad mouthing previous employers or colleagues. Poor communication  is also very big no no to a recruiter.

You may think that you can prevent a recruiter from seeing your social activities by keeping your social media accounts private but keeping your profile private can be counter-productive as 41% recruiters report that they are unlikely to hire someone if they are unable to find information about them online and employers who use social media in their hiring process admitted to sending such cadidates friend requests anyway.

Here are some important points to guide you on making the best out of your online activities

- Be consistent: use a consistent username across all your social networks or even message boards and online communities you belong to, this is helpful in establishing your digital footprint and strengthens your personal brand

- Join online forums/groups that are pertinent to your industry and make intelligent/well researched cotributions

- Limit the amount of personal information you post online, seemingly harmless information about your interests or family can be used by hackers for identity theft or by stalkers or criminals to know your whereabouts (Kim Kardashian can tell you a something about this).

- Steer away from engaging in unnecesary arguments/fights, you may just be having an argument with a troll, who has far less consequences to suffer in the event that the post becomes public

Remember the rule of thumb is not to post or engage in activities online that you would not say or do in public.

How to Comeback from a Poor First Showing

A personal poor first impression incident happened early on in my career as an entry level e-business banking officer. Part of  my job scope at the time, included going to client locations to pitch our electronic banking applications to a group of often high ranking officials. It was a pretty standard routine, I would start off by delivering a  power point presentation to highlight the product features, follow it with a Q&A session after which I would launch the application and proceed with a live demo to emphasize how user friendly the products were.

I delivered these presentations so often that it got to a point when I could do my presentations without having to look at the slides and could predict the questions that would be asked  and answer them preemptively. I had also learnt from doing so many sales pitches that almost every audience had a 'problem person' and could spot them almost immediately I stepped into the meeting room. A 'problem person' in this instance refers to that one person that pretends to have more important things to do than being bogged with 'your' sales pitch, they usually spend most of the meeting fiddling with their phone/tab  and would only spring into action during the time for questions to ask questions with the sole purpose of throwing you off.

Over the course of doing these pitches, I had learned that to manage the 'problem person', I needed to pay them more attention than necessary and answer their questions as politely as possible no matter  how mundane or meaningless the questions were. The trick was to identify  them for what they were (distractions), navigate their obstacle courses as effortlessly as possible, stay on focus and never lose my cool or let them get on my nerves.

On one occasion, I was tasked with making a pitch for an important prospect of the bank and before heading to the  meeting my manager informed me of how big the prospects account was and the decision as to whether they would start banking with us rested on the product I was going to talk to them about. So I was already a bag of nerves heading into the clients office and it didn't help matters when I spotted the problem person the moment he walked in as I was setting up. He sized me up and said to my hearing that he would have preferred someone 'more senior' than I was  to handle the presentation.

After doing what I believed was an impeccable presentation and fielding all his questions, it was time for a live demo and from that moment, everything seemed to go south. I couldn't gain access to the application, and after several failed attempts, I excused myself from the meeting to put a call through to our support team, who were able to resolve the issue after what seemed  like the longest 5 minutes of my life. I returned to the meeting  flustered, apologized for the glitch and proceeded with the demo all the while trying my best to ignore the problem guy smirking behind me as I struggled to regain my composure. After logging into the application, I attempted to simulate a payment process but got logged out, I tried to downplay the glitch by re-signing in and demonstrating another product feature but got signed out again. At that point I was forced to admit to the group that there was a system malfunction which I would have to log in with our developers and rescheduled the demo. Thankfully, they were quite sympathetic to my plight and agreed to have the demo at a later date.

As I was packing up my equipment, problem guy walked up to me with a huge grin on his face scoffed and said "You know you don't get a second chance to make a first impression right?"

It took everything within me not to snap at him. I just smiled and continued with my bags, thanked the room for their time and walked away. I would save the frustration brought on by the humiliating experience for the support team back at the office.

One of the most popular quotes in business is  'you don't get a second chance to make a first impression', You are expected to put your best foot forward the first time because  first impressions set the precedence for how the relationship that follows will go. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D argues that people will form an impression based on your gender, age and race when they see you for the first time. The impression is hinged on your appearance and how attractive they judge you to be. This means that your appearance is the most  important part of creating a good impression.

In the course of your career, it is important to create good first impressions but what happens if you blow your chance at making a good first impression? You do not have to bury your head in shame and give in to the false notion that by missing that one chance of putting up a good showing it is over for you. You can recoup by doing the following;


Do not apologize if the gaffe was no fault of yours as apologizing is an admittance of wrong doing on your part. You should instead work towards offering a plausible explanation for why there was a gaffe. But if you must apologize, be graceful about it, make your apology short and straight to the point, try not to grovel or avoid eye contact, crack a smile if you can manage one.

It's okay ask for a second chance, there's no harm in asking for 5 minutes to gather your thoughts and sort out whatever it is that is unnerving you. You can take a quick break to the restroom, pop , take several deep breaths, some mints in your mouth, look yourself in the mirror and give yourself a pep-talk. If like me your failure to launch was caused by something outside of your control, place a call to whoever is responsible and find out if it can be rectified immediately or if you need more time.

Walk out with your shoulders square and with your head held high; no matter how badly you think your performance was, when you leave the room/meeting/interview leave with your dignity in tact. This is because the more confidence you convey, the more other people will react to you.

Make a killer second impression: If you were lucky to get a second chance, make the most of the opportunity by preparing for it with the precision of an Olympian training towards winning a gold medal. Ensure that you dot your i's and cross your t's and to dwell on your past poor showing, even if it is brought up by your audience, politely steer the conversation away and leave it were it belongs which is in the past.

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Dear Career Sensei - I Hate my Boss

Dear Career Sensei,

My boss is lazy, rude, crass and vindictive and I really hate him.

He makes what would have been an otherwise great job stressful and even though I am actively searching for another job, I'm starting to think that it's best I quit now because I fear that I may soon be forced to react to his  mood swings and constant condescension by lashing out at him and saying what I really feel about him which could lead to me  losing my job on the grounds of insubordination.

Please help because I am at my wits end.

JR



Dear JR,

You are not alone. According to a staffbay.com survey of 15,000 job seekers, a whopping 87.2% admitted they were in the job market because they did not trust or they hated their bosses.

I can tell you a thing or two about having to work with a "horrible boss" because I too have  lived through it. You see when I was a junior executive, I had a boss that I was sure hated me because it seemed like she was always picking on me and never seemed to appreciate all the effort and hard work I put  into my job.

Like you, I decided to get out of the organization as I was sure that I was never going to grow within the organization as long as I was her direct report. After applying for several jobs with nary a new job in sight, I decided to look inwards and transfer to a different division with the company. As part of the inter-departmental move, I had to explain to our director why I wanted to move and after beating about the bush, I opened up to him that my boss and I were not really getting along and that it had started to affect my performance negatively.

I would share with you what he told  me back then as with the passage of time and acquired experiences, his advice has held tried, trusted and true. He stated of all the reasons for changing jobs, the relationship you have with your boss or colleagues while important, should not be top of the list. This is because you are not in control of the way people would  behave towards you and what if you change jobs and meet with people with worse off personalities? Are you going to continue to change jobs until you find a job with people with the right kind of personality?

He told me not to focus on my boss's behaviour as there was little I could do to change it but to instead work on managing my own emotions. He asked me not to take her attitude towards me personally as her behaviour could be linked to much larger issues such as stress and advised  me to observe and learn why she seemed to treat me poorly for possible triggers and patterns and for me to develop my own strategies for handling her perceived bad temper.

Once I realized not to take her outbursts personally, I started to see things in a different light. I noticed that she was usually at her worst behaviour just before the company's monthly performance meetings and started to empathize with her knowing that those meetings could be brutal.
While I was of the opinion that she was specifically picking on me, I would eventually find out after having a chat with her that she was harder on me than the rest of my colleagues because she expected much more from me as I had worked with her longest.

I also devised coping mechanisms for staying calm whenever she would lose her cool by excusing myself from the office whenever I felt like reacting to her outbursts. I would normally take a walk out of the office to a quiet corner, whip out my phone and go through the pictures of my then baby son. I also learned to become proactive in my dealings with her, I made sure my reports were on time and as error free as conceivable.

Today, several jobs and multiple bosses after; some of who turned out to be worse than she was,  I can categorically tell you that the 'horrible boss' you know is better than the 'great boss' you don't know and instead of leaving a job you rightly admitted is a great job because of your poor relationship with your boss, try working towards having a mutually respectful relationship, it may surprise you how instrumental this person may become in your career trajectory.

All the best!

Please send your questions for publication to dearcareersensei@gmail.com

Overcoming Working Mom Guilt

Working mom guilt, yes there's such a thing and if you are a mother who has a career or work outside your home, you probably know a thing or two about this phenomenon. Working mom guilt is not to be confused with just plain good old mom guilt which is the kind the shame mothers feel for issues they face in the process of raising their children such as making a choice of not exclusively breastfeeding your baby to giving in and letting your child eat candy before dinner. Working mom guilt is another kettle of fish entirely, as it is exclusive to mothers who work to support the family income and in doing so are not spending time with their children as much as they would want to.

As a mother of two young children myself, I can tell you a thing or two about the pain I felt when I had to go back to work for the first time after having a baby and how jealous I would get every time my son would light up when my sister (his caregiver at the time) walked into the room. Working mom guilt is a recurring topic on several of the mommy boards I belong to and any thread on the topic garners hundreds of comments from mothers sharing how much they cry alongside their babies/preschoolers when they have to leave for work or how sad it makes them that their children have become more attached to their nannies, daddies, grandparents or even daycare teachers.

I don't think mothers would ever overcome this type of guilt but I've dug up a few facts  that ought to lift your spirits up whenever the working mom guilt starts to creep in:


You are doing it for the kids: According to research at Cornell and Denmark, children of women who worked between 10-19 hours over the first four years of their child's life will have a GPA that is 2.6% higher on average than children of stay at home moms.
Findings from a Harvard Business School study determined that sons who were raised by working mothers were more likely to help around the home and spend time looking after their own children.

You are doing it for your daughter(s): The same Harvard Business School study revealed that daughters of working mothers grow up to have more successful careers, have higher earning power and take on supervisory roles than their peers.

You are doing it for your mental health: A Gallup survey reported that stay at home moms report more sadness, anger, and depression than working mothers.
A study by the Journal of Family Psychology found that working moms are healthier and happier than mothers who stay at home when their children are babies and preschoolers.
Working moms tend to be

You are doing it for your family: The most obvious perk of being a working mom is the extra coins you bring to the family's finances. Your contribution goes into giving your children a better standard of living and would take some stress of your significant others wallet thereby leading to a healthier, happier and more comfortable family.

So the next time you start to feel guilty about going to work remember that you are doing it not just for yourself but for your child's future succeesses.