Back when I was an undergrad, I spent several summers working in restaurants. Though I loved to cook for others, after a long day I couldn’t stand the thought of cooking for myself.

Many of us find ourselves in the same situation if our jobs involve social media. With all this talk about the in and outs of the medium, combined with the endless supply of chatter about “echo chamber” – it’s not surprising we find ourselves with a queasy feeling when logging onto facebook or twitter.

The funny thing about my experiences in restaurants however, was that it kept me incredibly attuned to the details and subtleties in the food when I visited other restaurants. I could pick up on whether the chef had his entire heart in the meal or if the sous-chef was having a bad day. Every detail of the experience was heightened – just by refusing to cook for myself.

Many of us believe that because we are professionals in the social media space, we have to be active there both at work and at home. We think that somehow being uber-connected 24/7 will help us do our jobs better. The reality however is that it won’t.

Like any good thing; too much social media can numb us to the subtleties of the medium and kill our ability to enjoy what we do. Because we’re so close into it all the time, my advice is next time you feel like you’re about to burn out – embrace it!

Take the hint your instincts are giving you and let yourself unplug for a while.

I’m not talking about not checking email or locking your laptop in the closet. I’m talking about taking a break from needing to be completely inside the dialogue for every conversation. Even if you think you have to stay involved in the conversation to maintain your sense of status; realize that taking a step back and listening can perhaps be the best thing you can do for yourself.

Remember – we can’t always be cooks in the same kitchen but that doesn’t mean we can’t all take time to enjoy the meal.

Commentary on the shift that occurs in your handling of innovation from what’s possible to what’s probable.

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Referenced Links:

• Tennessean Article – Twittering During Graduation (Jared Featured/Quoted)
  
• WSJ Article – Job Earning Prospects When Graduating During A Reccession
• Vanderbilt Commencement Flickr Set

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What is it going to take to blaze a path to a MBA-level job in new media marketing?

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Realizing that I have yet to include my personal portfolio site on my business cards, we interrupt the relevant content for a bit of shameless self-promotion.

To all the great people who I met and am meeting at BarCamp Nashville: here is that personal portfolio site I mentioned.

http://portfolio.jareddegnan.com

Thanks!

Technorati Tags: Bar Camp Nashville, Jared Degnan, Portfolio

It’s safe to say that there isn’t a single one of my MBA cohorts at Owen that expect an easy road this year when it comes to landing full-time offers. In fact, most of us agree its going to take us pulling out all the stops to really get things going in our job hunt.

Though I typically reserve these types of posts for people more dedicated to career management than I – see Susan Strayer or Jason Alba – here are my personal picks for the three best ways to use new media tools in your job hunt.

• Indeed.com: Indeed brings the power of aggregation and RSS feeds to the job search process. This comes in handy when you’re trying to sift through the jungle of job search sites and company job listings for something very specific – like a job ripe for a newly minted MBA.My advice is find out the job titles you want to go after and input them in a search string, along with any geographic preferences. Once it runs, save the RSS feed that it outputs in your RSS reader. This way, you can actively deploy your resume as soon as new jobs are posted and increase your chance of getting that first interview.

• LinkedIn: Research is really one of the top make-it or break-it factors in that first interviews. That being said, no site enables you to get degree of detail on companies and your potential interviewers like LinkedIn does.Jason Alba is probably the foremost authority on LinkedIn and when I met him at a presentation at Owen a week or so ago, he pointed out that a LinkedIn profile, if managed correctly, can also really help marketing, business development and general management MBAs position themselves for the hundreds of recruiters that use it to source potential candidates.

• Professional Portfolio Sites: For marketing MBAs as well as any other MBA that has some sort of tangible deliverable they might be able to show off, having a place to put it is potentially huge. In fact, I have spent a ton of time combing through my work and getting permission from my previous employers.Using mine as an example (http://portfolio.jareddegnan.com) you can see how it might work.Now, I have to admit that this is my own tactic and I am still working on how to best deploy it but you can see for yourself how it might be able to help create a better picture of what you’re capable of.

Job searches can be one of the most stressful aspects of an MBA experience. Using these new media tools are just a few ways I have found that can help you make the best of your time and maximize your opportunities.

If you have more that you want to suggest – let’s get a list started on the comments section!

Technorati Tags: indeed.com, Jason Alba, LinkedIn, MBA, OwenBloggers, Personal Portfolio Sites, job search, Susan Strayer, Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management

First off, I will admit that this post does have an ulterior motive. However, it is a point I have been meaning to make on the blog for some time, so bear with me.

For the last four to five months, I have been knee-deep in work related to finding something substantive to do over the summer. Today, I am finally getting a chance to get in front of a company where I think can align all of things I am good at, with a position where I can make an impact.

As with any interview for an MBA Internship, the fact that I am coming from a non-core school is a sizable hurdle. Normally, the advantage in such evaluations goes to the students from the business schools from which the company already is aquatinted. However, I hopefully have something else up my sleeve that will give me a competitive edge equal to any other; new media.

Though not my main selling point for this particular position, my work in new media illustrates how strategic analysis intersects with creativity and technical competency. In interviews, I like to say that I can bring more to the table than just the ability to crunch spreadsheets and create SWOT analyses; that I also have the technical and creative background to bridge that work with just about any type of cross-functional implementation team.

It occurs to me that this revelation is not only my selling point, but the selling point of many of those traditional marketers fascinated by the world of interactive media, blogs and social networking sites. Its not just about being the marketer who can visualize solutions in the “cool new medium,” its about being able to apply analytic solutions to a rapidly-evolving playground of consumer choice.

Technorati Tags: Marketing Diner, MBA, new media interviews

Staring out my window at another beautiful Tennessee morning, I am reminded that I still have a long way to go before I can call the first year of my MBA a wrap. When I started out in August, I did have some realization of how much of an impact being here would have on my brand, as a professional, but I never thought I would still be reinventing that brand five weeks before the end of classes.

I guess you can call the last month or so an “existential personal branding crisis;” a series of events, decisions and perspectives that have made me question my own brand and how effective it really is. This was, in part, thanks to my struggle to fit my interest in new media into a competitive edge in my MBA internship search. It was also a function of my neurotic, over-caffinated ambition but then again, that’s really not new to most people that know me.

Here’s the crux of the issue: When you’re dealing with brands that have to be competitive in new media, you are always balancing professionalism with personalities.

Take, for example, a recent attempt we tried out at OwenBloggers.com to get students engaged with the mission of the site. His name is Little Ralphie Owen and originally, he was going to serve as the snarky voice of the student body, saying all of the things we wanted to, but never fit within the professional context of our blogs. Instead of drawing swarms of MBA students to the site, what ended up happening was Little Ralphie just didn’t fit within the context of the brand.

You can put the same thing into the context of competing for a job opportunity. For most of the interviews that I’ve been on, the conversations go really well but I was still trying to fit my passion for new media marketing into brands that weren’t set up for it. So, that’s really why I’ve spent the last week or so working over my vision for my own brand and how it’s going to get me to the finish line.

The epilogue of Little Ralphie is that in the failure of the experiment, we were able to more clearly develop the framework of the brand. In other words; by creating a brand that didn’t fit, we found new clarity around what it was we were trying to accomplish. More importantly, with OwenBloggers and my own professional life, the reinvention of the brands because of a failure has made the new brands even stronger.

The lesson is to examine failed brands closely because it is in their failures that you can find the key to better, more effective brands.

Technorati Tags: OwenBloggers, personal brand, reinventing brands

Last week, when I participated in an ooVoo Day chat with Dave Delaney, I realized I can no longer run away from the fate that meets so many men my age; I came to the conclusion that I am a massive geek. {insert pause for gratuitous comments from my friends}

What’s even worse is that I think I’ve figured out that I want to make a career out of it. Yes, I still want to do the whole “real world” marketing thing but I think part and parcel of that endeavor is figuring out how I can bring my skills to the new media marketing table in a meaningful way.

It’s one thing to write a blog like this or even try to manage a blogging consortium like MetroBlogs or even {shameless plug in 3…2…1} OwenBloggers. It’s a hobby horse of an entirely different color, however, to make it the focus of your career.Though it is an uphill battle, I think there are two important truths I’ve uncovered:

1) There are plenty of aspiring Jaffe, Chapman and even Delaney wannabe’s out there but the main differentiator will be understanding where these channels fit into a more traditional marketing model.

2) More importantly, the budding illuminati that chose to venture down this path need to be ready to be brilliant project managers as well, able to sell professional audiences on the virtues of an emerging medium.

Either way this experiment goes, just like 20-Something Marketing, I am sure it will be a ride worth taking…or at least amusing for all of you.

Technorati Tags: Chapman, Delaney, Jaffe, MBA, New Marketing MBA, Social Media MBA

For some reason, I keep on coming across new ways companies are trying to recruit new employees. The other day I posted an interesting tidbit on recruiting in Second Life where interviews can occur without even the slightest hint of what the prospective employee really looks like.

Today, I am going exactly the opposite route with a new site called VideoJobShop. Companies like Accenture, Ernst & Young, Sodexho and over 100 more are now posting video mini-features to the site in hopes of gaining an edge in recruiting. The site , in turn, also has a way for prospective employees to create their own videos and post it as a “video resume” in response to an open position.

Some of the videos are bit bland but once in a while, you do get one where you get the feeling that a recruiting manager out there really does know their audience. Take this one from, of all places, Enst & Young:

Obviously, this is a great way to show off your creativity. On the downside, this is a nightmare scenario for all of you that cringed at your Talbott-produced LComm videos. For my part, if I were to ever create one of these video resumes, it would probably include a musical number and a bloopers real of the nice folks at the CMC.

What do you guys think – Would you ever post a video resume to something like this and if so, what would you do to make yourself stand out?

Reposted From My OwenBloggers Blog

Technorati Tags: interviewing over the internet, video resume, VideoJobShop.com

In the midst of interviewing for MBA Internships, I was just pointed to an interesting new way to use Second Life…as a way to recruit employees.

You have to think that Second Life, the popular virtual world would attract a certain type of recruit but according to the UK’s Guardian, it’s working. Over 2,000 people reportedly showed up for a UK-centric virtual job fair where applicants enjoyed the ability to interview via text chat without regard to race, ethnicity or appearance.

Keep in mind this is the same virtual world where you find new users flying around completely sans-clothing.

Still though, I like this idea for first interviews. Many occur over the phone, anyway, so what better way to pre-screen for skills and comprehension than with an avatar that may or may not look nothing like the applicant?

The challenge I find with this is that ultimately appearance does play a huge role in communicating whether or not you are qualified for the job. Recruiters that are interested in using this have to decide if its a novelty or if the cost savings of conducting interviews this way will outweigh the time they will spend weeding out applicants that…let’s just say may not fit the culture of your company.

Let’s settle this with a BRANDstorming poll:

Technorati Tags: BRANDstorming, Marketing Diner, Second Life, Second Life Recruiting