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May 23, 2007 by Andrea Nierenberg

Congratulations Grads!

Walking down 5th Avenue today in Midtown, I was surrounded by a sea of blue of cap and gowns coming out of Radio City Music Hall.

Congratulations on graduating. But now that you have your degree, the true education begins.

Guy Kawasaki
has a great blog post where he quotes Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist:

The Nine Biggest Myths of The Workplace

  1. You’ll be happier if you have a job you like.

    The correlation between your happiness and your job is overrated.
    The most important factors, by far, are your optimism levels and your
    personal relationships. If you are a pessimist, a great job can’t
    overcome that. (Think of the jerks at the top.) And if you have great
    friends and family, you can probably be happy even if you hate your job
    (imagine a garbage collector who’s in love).

  2. Job-hopping will hurt you.

    Job hopping is one of the best ways to maintain passion and personal
    growth in your careers. And here’s some good news for hoppers: Most
    people will have eight jobs between the time they are eighteen and
    thirty. This means most young workers are job hopping. So hiring
    managers have no choice but to hire job hoppers. Ride this wave and try
    a lot of jobs out yourself.

  3. The glass ceiling still exists.

    The glass ceiling is over, not because people crashed through, but
    because people are not looking up. Life above the glass ceiling is
    100-hour weeks, working for someone else, and no time for friends and
    family. And it’s not only women who are saying no to the ladder up: Men
    are as well. People want to customize success for themselves, not climb
    someone else rungs. So if no one is climbing to the top, the glass
    ceiling isn’t keeping anyone down.

  4. Office politics is about backstabbing.

    The people who are most effective at office politics are people who
    are genuinely nice. Office politics is about helping people to get what
    they want. This means you have to take the time to figure out what
    someone cares about, and then think about how you can help him or her
    to get it. You need to always have your ears open for when you can
    help. If you do this, you don’t have to strong arm people or manipulate
    them. Your authentic caring will inspire people to help you when you
    need it.

  5. Do good work, and you’ll do fine.

    For one thing, no one knows what the heck you’re doing in your cube
    if you’re not telling them. So when you do good work, let people know.
    It is not crazy to toot your own horn–it’s crazy to think someone will
    do it for you. Also, if you do good work but you’re a jerk, people will
    judge your work to be sub par. So you could say that good work really
    only matters if your co-workers enjoy hearing about it from you.

  6. You need a good resume.

    Only ten percent of jobs come from sending a blind resume. Most
    people get jobs by leveraging their network. Once you have a
    connection, the person looks at your resume to make sure there are no
    red flags. So you need a competent resume and an excellent network.
    This means you should stop stressing about which verb to use on the
    second line of your third job. Go talk to someone instead.

  7. People with good networks are good at networking.

    Just be nice, take genuine interest in the people you meet, and keep
    in touch with people you like. This will create a group of people who
    are invested in helping you because they know you and appreciate you.
    Use LinkedIn to leverage those peoples’ networks, and you just got
    yourself a very strong network by simply hanging out with the people
    you like.

  8. Work hard and good things will come.

    Everyone can put in a seventy-hour week. It doesn’t mean you’re
    doing good work. So here’s an idea: Make sure you’re not the hardest
    worker. Take a long lunch. Get all your work done early. Grand thinking
    requires space, flexibility and time. So let people see you staring at
    the wall. They’ll know you’re a person with big ideas and taking time
    to think makes you more valuable.

  9. Create the shiny brand of you!

    There is no magic formula to having a great career except to be you.
    Really you. Know who you are and have the humility to understand that
    self-knowledge is a never-ending journey. Figure out how to do what you
    love, and you’ll be great at it. Offer your true, good-natured self to
    other people and you’ll have a great network. Those who stand out as
    leaders have a notable authenticity that enables them to make genuinely
    meaningful connections with a wide range of people. Authenticity is a
    tool for changing the world by doing good.

—Dan Koifman

Filed Under: General

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Tom C says

    May 30, 2007 at 10:24 am

    Andrea and Dan,
    I like your new way to approach blog postings: sharing the work. Making sure there are regular postings can sometimes be too much for one person.
    Tom C.

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