I'm still new to
mentoring and I have a lot to learn. I give well-meaning advice to
students that I wish that I had been told at their age, but my
advice-giving skills need some refinement. I laughed this week as my
poor advice-giving accidentally set a student up to fail. I hope that
she isn't reading this because I don't mean to put her on the spot,
but I will use her as an example. To her credit, she was the only student to follow up from that conference.
Student networking
takes a different form than professional networking. Most
professional networking is to meet new colleagues, share ideas, and
learn how we can help each other in our respective positions.
Students are mostly concerned with gaining experience through
internships and entry-level jobs. Most don't have business cards but
are instead are told to come armed with short “elevator” speeches
and resumes in hand, which may or may not be good advice depending on
the situation.
Most students
collect business cards. I collected a drawer full as a student and
even more as a professional. No one told me that a business card
collection is mostly useless. Business cards offer short-term ways of
communicating and are only worth anything if the recipient then
initiates communication. Whenever I meet students at a business card
exchange, I always advise them to follow up.
Yesterday, I
received an email from a student who I met at the career prep
conference that I helped with on Saturday. Her email contained the
short message, “This email is just a follow-up to you per your
suggestion.” I had to chuckle at my own failings for giving her
incomplete advice. Her follow-up email to me was essentially useless.
I hadn't properly conveyed why she should contact me to follow up.
First, there was the
issue of identification. I met many students over those the
conference's two days and I could not remember her just by her name.
It would have been helpful for her to give me a short reminder of who
she is, what she's studying, and a brief synopsis of what we
discussed. Some people can instantly match name, face, and
conversation. I am not one of those people unless a meeting was
particularly memorable.
Second, there was
the issue of her motivation for contacting me. Her email did not tell
me what she wanted from me. Did I tell her something that she wanted
to clarify or follow up on? Did she want to continue our conversation
or start a new conversation? Did she want career advice? Did she want
a job? Did she want to establish a relationship? I had no way of
knowing without asking.
She responded that
she would like to send me her resume. I am surprised that students in
their teens and early 20s are still being given the advice that a
traditional, static resume is the go-to resource in business
settings. She is a sophomore, which puts her likely graduation date
two and a half years away. She hadn't mentioned or asked about
internships or part-time work as a student, so I assumed that her
goal is post-graduation employment. Her current resume would be two
and a half years out of date by the time I looked it again. Not that
I would look at it again. I do not keep a database of resumes and
therefore any resume that I receive is immediately thrown away or
deleted (sorry students who have handed me resumes in the past, but
it's true).
I responded that
rather than send me her resume, she could connect with me on
LinkedIn. I noted that she does not have a LinkedIn profile. Surely
her generation is very familiar with social media. LinkedIn is a
living resume, one that she can update over the years. If I was
interested in potentially hiring her in the future, LinkedIn is my
database of resumes.
Even that was
incomplete advice on my part. It's not enough to simply connect with
me on LinkedIn and never contact me again. Establishing a
relationship would be the best advice that I can give her, regardless
of her age and goals. I don't know her from any other engineering
student. What makes her an individual apart from the rest? Who is
she, what are her passions, what can I teach her, and can I help her
along her journey? These are the questions I really care about, not
getting her a job.
There are so many
ways to establish this kind of relationship: follow-up conversational
emails, follow-up meetings, follow-up phone calls, an informational
interview, and interaction via social media such as LinkedIn,
Twitter, or this blog. If I get to know a student over the years, I'm
much more likely to help him/her over any other student who I met
once a while ago.
Students: please
follow up, but don't worry solely about getting a job or widely
sending out your resume. Focus on your formation. Contemplate your
direction and goals. Think about how you can learn from professions,
not how they can help get you a job. Form relationships first and
foremost. Everything else will come.
