It was a picture-perfect day two weeks ago for Tufts' Commencement! Perfect weather! Perfect timing! Perfect Goodbyes! Always a memorable time of happiness and thanks, certainly tears of joy and separation, and always a bit of fear balanced by the excitement of the unknowns for both those graduates who have jobs and more so for those who have not yet landed that perfect mix of work, location and compensation.
Overall, my own seniors did very well in finding jobs this spring, which is always personally rewarding for me since I regard it as an important responsibility of any professor to take some portion of their time to kick open doors to potential employers and be available for mentoring.Case in point on my long drive to Vermont Wednesday night, I spent 30 minutes coaching one of my fraternity brothers on how to negotiate the salary offer he had just received that afternoon. As I am writing this post, I just received a note from him that the new offer was 50% improved, and that he signed the deal. There's a simple coaching tactic of how to do this which works most of the time, but when you're 21 years old and have never done it before or are confused about the benefit package or the opportunity to ask for a signing bonus, then the process is daunting.
That process of finding enough job opportunities to make the math work and then working through multiple rounds of interviews with different companies all at the same time is exactly the same as what it takes to plan and execute any complex marketing campaign! Only in this case, the product-that freshly minted graduate-is much more important than a piece of software, a new car or quite frankly anything else! "The Marketing of Me" then becomes Job #1.
True success is about creating an exacting campaign process, using the correct marketing tools at exactly the right time, keeping score of the metrics and the timelines while making sure that the overall campaign mix of tactics and the resulting math will work. Done correctly, "The Marketing of Me" always works in most markets and most economic cycles and certainly right now an exacting marketing process is all that more critical when there's a layer of uncertainty and some companies are holding back on hiring as a result. Having said that, I personally believe that this is a great time to be looking for a job whether you are a recent graduate, a Millennial or a Gen X looking for a new career.
The reality is that most universities do only a fair job in educating their juniors and seniors as to the actual job hunting process and overweight their focus on writing worthless resumes, which no one ever reads or how to do casual networking. Tufts, because of our size and the diversity of our 11 different colleges is much better than most, and for me, it's provided me with a great opportunity to experiment with campaign tactics in developing "The Marketing of Me" as a free ebook. You can download it here and then connect with me if you have questions.
Have a great Friday morning selling today squeezing in those last few deals on the last day of the month!
I'm off doing the same thing starting with an 8:00 AM sales call in a few minutes. Enjoy the day!
Here's our free how-to ebooks for a few ideas:
"Writing the Winning Sales Plan"
"Writing the Winning Business Plan"
"Writing the Winning Marketing Plan"
We outline ideas on structure, models, process funnels, productivity tools and how to recruit, hire and onboard the best people. We're real salesguys who continue to play and coach the game every day.
Connect with me any time at jack@derbymanagement.com or text me at 617-504-4222 and let's discuss.
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