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