Students on the Blog: Good Start to a Virtual Team

by James Skay, Jr.
Global Indirect Marketing Intern, SAP

Working on a virtual team boils down to trust. It’s trusting that your team finds you competent and dependable, and that when you’re on a virtual team “working from home,” you really are working from home. It’s no small task to establish trust, but once you do, working for a virtual team is just as good as an in-person gig, if not better.

When you join a virtual team, you first need to demonstrate your responsiveness and resourcefulness. They go hand-in-hand when a manager or coworker makes a request and you’re not really sure what they mean, or how to handle it. As opposed to an in-person dynamic, you can’t just pop by their office to clarify, and you really only get two or, at most, three clarifying emails before your team relegates you to the B-squad. Whenever someone makes a request, really think it through and put all of your questions in ONE email. Before you send that email, make sure you’ve checked the network and corporate portal to see if you can find the answer on your own. Also, try and accomplish these resource tasks quickly, to demonstrate the simple fact that you are on your computer, working hard.

There’s a strategy to your Facebook persona and Twitter handle, and establishing your online presence at work requires the right tone and timing, especially when you never see your co-workers. I was surprised by the sheer amount of emoticons my team uses, but when you don’t know someone’s sense of humor, they’re a necessary evil. Whatever you do, don’t be sarcastic in writing (even if you do put a smiley face after that zinger J). 

In the beginning of your virtual tenure, try to show who you are with some pictures or little stories, but only when the team leads the way. If everyone is having a serious email discussion, and you show a picture of your cat Muffins rolling on floor in her favorite spot of sunshine, there will be eyebrows raised. However, if your manager or VP sends pictures of their kids’ Halloween costumes, send yours right back. Take part in the sociability, but in the beginning, play it conservative until you’ve established some professional credibility.

Once your responsiveness, resourcefulness and amazing personality are shining through, then you can really start to make your mark. Remember that clarity in writing will be a, if not the, differentiating factor for your success in a virtual team. Amidst the hundreds of emails sent each week, make sure all of yours are clear, well written and polite. It may seem like a small thing, but nothing ruins credibility faster than misspellings, poor grammar or just poor writing. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s not texting either.

If you follow these points, a foundation of trust will be set down. Professionally valuable and politically necessary, trust is a distinguishing factor in any world, virtual included.

Lead with a Story: Energizing the Team [ARR]

Following up an Environment for Winning is Energizing the Team which has useful and motivational stories about how to:

• Inspire and Motivate
• Build Courage
• Help Others Find Passion for Their Work
• Appeal to Emotion and
• The Element of Surprise

Let’s focus on the last two chapters as these are two elements that you can incorporate into your own stories.

Appeal to Emotion

Emotion plays a huge role in decision making. Sometimes reason and logic won’t help you influence people nearly as much as an emotional appeal, and nothing delivers emotional appeal better than a story.

Energizing the Team

Not just any emotion will do though. The emotion and the context must be relevant to your audience and to your objective in telling the story in the first place.

What’s in it for your audience? How will this advance your listeners’ goals, their careers, and their interests? If your audience doesn’t naturally care about your idea, figure out what it does care about and associate your idea with it.

A powerful and underutilized emotion in business is empathy. If you want to influence someone’s decision, find out whom that decision will affect and generate empathy through a story. But, empathy requires work. You need a personal knowledge of the subject of your empathy. Another great source for empathy is verbatim consumer research and qualitative research summaries.

The Element of Surprise

Grab your audience’s attention with a surprise at the beginning. What’s unusual or unexpected about your story? Open with it.

Does your story involve a noteworthy event? Lead with it.

Use unexpected candor.

Memories aren’t formed instantly like a photograph. Memory consolidation happens over a period of time after an event. Surprises trigger the release of adrenaline. Therefore, a surprise at the end of the story helps the audience remember it better.

No natural surprise at the end of your story? Create one. Hold back a key piece of information in your story until the very end, like the name of the person or company the story is about.

The next time you have an eye-opening ah-ha moment, write a story about it. These surprises lessons are the most impactful moments in business.

Maximize Your Job Search Using Tools You Have In Your "Back Pocket"

Rachel Josephson, Associate Director, Career Advising- Zicklin Graduate Career Management Center

So you want a job--seems easy enough, right? You are in school developing your knowledge, you have past work experience and maybe even have an idea of what it is you want to do when you finish this degree, but you are stuck trying to figure out what that job looks like. Or, maybe you have come to school with only a superficial idea of where you are headed next, and you are simply happy to be in school rather than dealing with a bad job or a bad economy.

Well believe it or not, a job search is a complicated process! Gone are the days of simply applying to a job posted on a job board and waiting to be called. In fact, there is a lot of work that goes into finding the right fit before you even apply. Until you know what you are really looking for based on having defined your interests, skills, values and personality, you may be knocking up against a brick wall.

Enter the Zicklin Career Link Document Library Resource Tools. How many times have you browsed through all the resources the GCMC has posted for you? Well, there is no time like the present! We at the GCMC have spent time evaluating the various online tools and compiled a select group that we feel will assist you in self-assessment, industry and company research, the job application preparation and much more!

Zicklin graduate students and alumni have access to all of these resources for free at any time. For more details, log into your Zicklin CareerLink for details here. If you're an alum and do not have your login or password to Zicklin CareerLink, contact the GCMC at 646-312-1330.

Don’t wait any longer, get online and use them today to help you with all aspects of your career development!

Vault.com

Vault.com provides in-depth intelligence on what it's really like to work in an industry, company or profession—and how to position yourself to land that job. Throughout Vault.com, you will find comprehensive information, including:

Rankings and profiles Get the inside scoop with in-depth profiles and rankings for top employers, universities and internship programs, which combine the inside perspective of anonymous reviews from active employees, students and interns with expert context from Vault's editors.

Ratings & Reviews Exclusive ratings and reviews from the people that matter most—the employees, students and interns—themselves.

Industry & profession overviews Find out what it’s really like to work within a specific industry or profession including salary information, experience needed, skills, and education and training requirements. Find full, in-depth profiles on industries and professions including industry outlook, job requirements, tips to entry and more.

Jobs & Internships Search thousands of new jobs posted daily, apply to jobs, save jobs to your profile, sign up for job alerts and join a resume database where you may be found by top employers and recruiters.

Career articles, blogs, and videos Find career advice to help guide you through your job search, stay ahead of the competition and land the job you want.

Resume & Interview Tips Get sample resume and cover letter templates, sample interview questions and expert career advice.

Industry, Career & Employer Guides More than 100 titles of award-winning career guides, including interview strategies, job-search tips, and full-length profiles of leading companies.

Go to the Zicklin CareerLink Document Library in Zicklin CareerLink, click on Resources: Vault and follow the directions.

Wetfeet.com

Wetfeet provides comprehensive information from an insider’s perspective on what it’s like to work in a particular company, specific industry or professional role. Through guidebooks, articles, blogs and personalized answers to questions from company professionals, Wetfeet provides users with a complete selection of tools to help prepare for a successful job search.

Go to the Zicklin CareerLink Document Library in Zicklin CareerLink, click on Resources: Wetfeet and follow the directions.

GoinGlobal.com

GoinGlobal is an online resource which helps students fast-track their job or internship search, both at home and abroad. They are a market leader in career and employment reports, with career guides for more than 90 locations throughout the world. Their constantly-updated database features topics such as: hiring trends, work permit and visa regulations, certification data by industry, professional and social networking groups, resume & CV guidelines, interview and cultural advice. Additionally, GoinGobal offers a job search engine, with more than 16 million internship and job postings, and it provides major employer profiles for more than 190 countries.

Go to the Zicklin CareerLink Document Library in Zicklin CareerLink, click on Webinars: GoinGlobal to learn how to use the site and Resources: GoinGlobal to directly use the site.

Evisors.com

Evisors provides monthly webinars on industry-specific topics presented by high-level industry professionals. This serves as research/educational material for students trying to learn more about their industries of interest while exploring diverse professional opportunities.

Evisors also offers the purchase of “credits” for students to use in one-on-one coaching sessions. These sessions give students the chance to hear from industry professionals about the best way to leverage their skills in an interview and the most relevant topics to address when conducting networking sessions. Through these conversations, students can gain “insider” knowledge in order to make themselves more competitive candidates and increase their chances for being selected/hired into their desired positions.

Go to the Zicklin CareerLink Document Library in Zicklin CareerLink, click on Resources: Evisors and follow the directions.

Glassdoor.com

Glassdoor is a jobs and career community that offers the world an inside look at jobs and companies. Their "employee generated content" – anonymous salaries, company reviews, interview questions, and more – is all posted by employees, job seekers and sometimes the companies themselves.

In addition, using Glassdoor's JobScope technology, job seekers have a new way to browse job listings and get instant, in-depth details for any job listing. JobScope takes job seekers beyond the information provided in a typical job description by seamlessly integrating salaries and reviews posted by employees, as well uncovering any Inside Connections they may have through their friends on Facebook.

Go to the Zicklin CareerLink Document Library in Zicklin CareerLink, click on Resources: Glassdoor.com and follow the directions.

 __________________________________________________________

 

Associate Director, Career Advising

Rachel joined the GCMC in Summer 2012 to head up our Career Advising Team. With over ten years of experience in higher education as Assistant Director Career Services at Pace University, Rachel brings a wealth of knowledge, skills, and expertise in counseling students on career development. Her primary work has been advising students individually and in workshop settings on developing and refining their professional skills in order to effectively launch themselves into the world of work post-graduation.  Rachel also created and implemented a career development and job search strategies course. Rachel holds an MA and EdM from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, in Psychological Counseling and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Lead with a Story: Keep it Real; Stylistic Elements

Annie's Reading Room

Hi Everyone!

Sorry for the lapse in Annie’s Reading Room. As you probably know all too well, the semester got a little crazy there!

So to recap, the last post reviewed the importance of stories, how to envision success, and went over the basic structure of the story.

The next seven chapters fall under the heading of Create an Environment for Winning, with stories that specifically touch on:

●     Defining the culture

●     Establishing values

●     Encouraging collaboration and building relationships

●     Valuing diversity and inclusion

●     Setting policy without rules

Keep it Real; Stylistic Elements

And the final two chapters are about Keeping it Real and Stylistic Elements. Let’s break down those last two chapters.

Keep it Real

Concrete ideas are more memorable than abstract ones. Take your abstract idea and explain it with a concrete story about a single example. Storytelling is an inherently concrete activity.

For example, many consumer product goods companies have had success by turning a profile of their target customer into an actual person with a name and biography.

Avoid technical jargon your audience might not understand.

Make the facts, numbers or events relevant to your audience -- something they can relate to in their everyday lives.

Be brutally open and honest about difficult subjects. Avoid waffling or weasel words typical of corporate management speak today.

Stylistic elements

Great beginnings. Start your stories with one of the following three devices:

A surprise, a mystery or a challenge -- introduce a relatable character facing a difficult challenge.

Writing style. Write the way you speak:

●     Use short sentences (15 to 17 words)

●     Use small words (15 percent fewer words over two syllables)

●     Use active voice (15 percent or fewer passive voice sentences)

●     Get to the verb quickly (place the verb at at the beginning of the sentences)

●     Omit needless words. Most stories should be 250 to 750 words, or two to four minutes when told orally.

●     Find the automatic spell-check setting in your email and word-processing programs. Turn them on and leave them on.

●     Find the grammar checker in your word-processing software. Use it on every document before you publish it.

●     Set the grammar checker to automatically run the readability scores. In Microsoft Word, click on the pull-down menu Tools, then click on Spelling the Grammar tab, then the Options button. Check the boxes in front of both the “Check grammar with spelling” line and the “Show readability statistics” line.

●     Target a reading grade level of 8 to 10. If your document is higher that that, rewrite it and check it again.

Literary devices. Include dialogue, use real names of characters, repeat words or phrases, don’t announce or apologize in advance of the story -- just tell it.