To friend or not to friend, that is the question

As more people embrace Facebook and other social media websites for business purposes, the already fine line between what's professional and what's personal continues to blur.  It can be difficult to determine which work-related contacts to connect with and what content to share.  Here is some friendly advice:

 

Let your boss make the first move

According to a recent survey, nearly half of executives polled said they are uncomfortable getting Facebook friend requests from people they manage (well that makes sense).  Regardless of how much rapport you have in the office, your supervisor simply might not want to connect with employees on personal networking sites. Avoid awkwardness by waiting for your boss to reach out to you first.  If you choose to accept the friend request, make sure you don't post anything you wouldn't want him or her to see!

 

Protect your privacy and your professional image

Familiarize yourself with Facebook's privacy settings.  Facebook seems to change the parameters of your privacy with minimal notice.  At one point, I swore I was invisible to everyone but my friends, then out of the blue, I'm getting friend requests from practical strangers.  Remember: Unless you use this feature, every word or image you post can be seen by all of your Facebook friends. Do you really want coworkers and clients to view your vacation photos?  Adopt a better-safe-than-sorry approach by creating a separate "work" list and limiting the content you make accessible to those contacts.  You can even go a step further and customize your settings to block specific individuals from viewing certain sections of your profile, such as photos of you and your friends. 

 

Exercise good judgment

This common sense message bears repeating: Don't be your own worst enemy.  If you have a bad day, cool off before clicking.  Badmouthing your boss, a colleague, or a hiring manager through Facebook is a highly risky move that's come back to haunt many professionals. Similarly, if you're currently employed (and you want to remain so), think twice before writing status updates about your search for a newq job.  In addition, avoid becoming a fan of potentially controversial people or products, or taking online quizzes (for which there are no privacy controls) that could be deemed unprofessional. 

 

Consistently monitor your online reputation

Managing your so-called "digital footprint" requires more than merely monitoring what you post.  Check your Facebook account regularly to keep tabs on the information others are broadcasting about you. You'll want to act quickly if someone makes an inappropriate comment on your Facebook wall ("Steve, are you still working for that boneheaded boss?") or identifies you in an embarrassing photo.  You can easily delete comments posted on your wall and untag yourself from pictures by clicking "Remove Tag" under the image.  You also might contact the person to express your displeasure and politely request that he or she keep your professional reputation in mind in the future.  While Facebook enables savvy professionals and job seekers to build key connections, there are also many pitfalls to sidestep.  By taking the tips highlighted above, you can be sure that Facebook helps, not hinders, your career.

Where does the money come from that private equity (venture capital, growth equity and buyout) firms invest?  It might indirectly come from you.  Key constituents include the likes of government employees, employees of large corporations, trade organizations (e.g. teachers) and wealthy families.

Wealthy Families / Foundations

The original investors in venture capital firms were wealthy families.  The Phipps family was behind Bessemer.  The Rockefeller family was behind Venrock.  These wealthy families often invest out of vehicles like family offices or foundations.  From those roots, many wealthy families have played impactful roles in backing some of the best names in private equity.  As the asset class has became more known and attractive, the sources of capital grew to include more institutional sources.  But, behind every institution are regular people.

Endowments

One of the most aggressive investors in venture capital has historically been school endowments.  When you make that annual class gift to your college, if you designate it for the endowment, some of your gift just might be put into various venture capital and buyout firms.  Typically, universities are charged to protect your endowment gift, so they invest it, and use the returns generated from the investment to fund various school initiatives.  Major universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, etc. have been big proponents of investing some of that endowment principal into private equity firms.

Pension Funds

Another prominent investor in venture capital has been corporate and public pension plans.  Pension plans (of the defined contribution variety) are just another type of retirement plan used by state governments, labor/trade unions, and large corporations.  As you work at a company or state government and thereby accrue pension benefits, the company or organization funds a pension account based on actuarial models tied to its potential pension payout obligations.  A portion of these funds are often allocated to the private equity asset class.  Major states investing in this asset class include New York, New Jersey, California, Oregon, etc.  Major corporations like AT&T, General Motors, etc. have also been active investors.

Fund of Funds

Many foundations, endowments, and pension funds lack the capacity or resources to evaluate and monitor different private equity firms.  Hence, the fund of funds industry has sprung up to pool capital from these sources into funds and then invest on their behalf.  Unlike the other sources of capital, fund of funds have to raise their capital from third party sources, just like the firms that they invest in.

So, if you follow the money through, your child’s college financial aid package or your pension plan – might be tied to a couple engineers working on some project in Silicon Valley or tied to the big buyout you read about in the Wall Street Journal.

 

 

This is a different perspective on household finances.  We always look at how much we make per hour, year, project, etc.  But do you know how much profit you're making per hour?

Hourly Wage

From the day anyone starts working, we're quickly educated on the concept of an hourly wage. Whether we start at minimum wage or otherwise, we're conditioned to the idea of compensation being denominated in the time interval of hours.  Even as many folks transition to being paid on a salaried basis, it's not hard to calculate what you effectively make per hour. For example, if Bob's after-tax bi-weekly paycheck is $1,500 and Bob works 50 hours per week, then he makes $15.00 per hour.  This example presumes Bob has no other sources of income other than his paycheck.

Spending per Hour

The household metric that is often missing from the equation is the flipside: spending per hour. The most simple way to calculate this number is to take all of your expenses for a given period (say a month), mortgage/rent, credit card charges, car payments, ATM withdrawals, utilities, insurance, interest payments, tuition, healthcare, charitable giving, etc. and do the basic math to denominate that spending on an hourly basis presuming the same spending hours as working hours.  To use the same example, if Bob spends $3,000 per month and has the same 50 spending hours per week, then a little basic math says Bob spends $13.85 per hour.

Profit per Hour

That takes us to the most important metric: profit per hour.  Bob makes $15.00 per hour and spends $13.85 per hour which means he makes $1.15 per hour in profit.  The reason I prefer the hourly denomination of profit more than a month or year is that it's more practical for all of those little spending decisions we make every day.  Congratulations to Bob for being profitable!  Just knowing your hourly profit metric is an achievement in and of itself.  But, let's go on to a couple second order ideas for those interested.

First, you can say that spending hours and working hours are not the same in reality.  If Bob spent $13.85 every hour of every day (24 x 7), he would end up spending $10,000 per month instead of $3,000.  So, the key to making the math work is to limit your spending hours per week to the same as your working hours per week.  If you work 50 hours per week, pick the 50 hours per week where spending is allowed and fix them.  It might be 5 specific hours on each weekday and 12.5 hours on Saturday and Sunday.  Once that is selected, the question is how much can you spend per hour in those spending hours.

To determine how much you can spend in those spending hours, you have to determine how much you have already spent just by existing.  Take all of your fixed costs.  All those costs that you bear whether you ever take your cash or credit card out of your wallet.  This could be things like car payments, rent/mortgage, insurance, tuition, etc.  Let's say for a moment that of Bob's $13.85 per hour of spending, $10.00 per hour is fixed.  That means in those 50 spending hours per week, Bob can spend $3.85 per hour and still maintain his profit margin of $1.15 per hour.  Now all of Bob's discretionary spending decisions can be benchmarked against that $3.85 in hourly discretionary spend that he knows he is allowed.  That's a useful metric whether Bob is looking to get that bagel sandwich for breakfast or that fancy steak for dinner.

After a recent blog about resume tips, I realized there's so much more I could have included and this addendum will cover more areas but there's always more!

More things to Avoid

Before we get to writing content, let's start with more things to avoid when writing your resume.

• Microsoft templates, skip them.  Make your resume pop.  Lose the built-in template everyone else has and come up with something unique.
• Stretching the truth.  You can be called on your bluff. Write what you know instead.
• Attempting One Size Fits All.  Whenever you try to develop a one-size-fits-all resume to send to all employers and recruiters, you almost always end up with something that will end up in the recycle bin.  Recruiters and Employers want you to write a resume specifically for us. We expect you to clearly show how and why you fit the position in a specific organization.
• Going on Too Long or Cutting Things Too Short.  Despite what you may read or hear, there are no rules governing the length of your resume. The one page or two page rule does not exist.  Understand my frame of reference, I deal mainly with Technical Professionals and Executives.  We need details.  The point here is, don't cut your resume short just to keep it under two pages.  Give us all the details necessary while balancing length versus readability.  You don't want to write a novel either.  This also goes back to the point above with writing customized resumes for every job you apply for. 

Quantify Achievements

I can spot bull excrement at 100 yards, just like the rest of the intelligent world.  Statements with quantifiable achievements aren't just easier to read, they make for stronger points.  

For example: Instead of this:I am a talented and popular writer dedicated to writing good documents fast.

Try this:Wrote upwards of eight articles per day and can attract an audience of over 30,000 unique visitors.

Which of these sounds like the better deal to you? Showcase what you can bring to your prospective company.

Keep It Simple

Expect your resume to be skimmed.  Make it as easy as possible for us to see why you are so special.  We tend to read lists and skip over paragraphs. So, when it comes down to a choice between the two, keep the most important information in a bulleted list.  You can scan a list much quicker than a paragraph, this way we will take away more raw information from your neatly listed resume, helping you stand out. 

Keep this in perspective.  Too often I find resumes that are basically a bulleted resume.  Everything is in bullets.  Including boring details that read like job responsibilities.  I don't care about that!  I want to know what make you different, list your accomplishments, not your responsibilities. 

Something else to keep in mind and this goes back to writing a customized resume for every job... you must have pertinent information on the first page of your resume.  You must catch the readers eye with the first page if you have multiple pages.  Otherwise, all the great details will not be read if your initial page is full of fluff.

It's like watching the news and they say red wine is good for your heart and suddenly you switch to a red wine diet.  Common sense rules apply here too!

Include key terms

Increasingly, resumes are entered into systems that scan them for key terms applicable to the job. This is especially true of resumes submitted in soft copy, whether to a recruiting site or directly to a prospective employer. These systems weed out any that don't contain the right trigger words. Employers don't mind if this costs them a few good candidates, since they still have more than they can talk to, but it doesn't have to affect you. Make sure the key terms are in your resume somewhere - and that they're spelled right, especially if they're technojargon or product names that a spell-checker can't check

When you send Perito Eleven your resume, it's read by recruiters, not machines.  It's more important for us to able to see key terms on a skim.  Believe it or not, I actually prefer to work with candidates that will pick up the phone and call!  Let me know you exist so we can get down to business!

Edit Ruthlessly

Keep everything important both on the first page and up high. Don't give us a chance to skip your most important selling points.  Take a very hard line on clutter.  If there's anything that detracts from exactly why you'd be perfect for the job, remove it. 

Are you on Twitter? Thirty-two million other folks are, but most of them aren't using it to search for work. A recent poll revealed that only 8% of respondents have used Twitter to help with a job search. Don't let this valuable medium go unmined as you look for your next opportunity. Dan Schawbel, author of "Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success," has tips to help you use Twitter to raise your professional profile and fast-forward your job search.

Create your personal brand

Instead of just jumping in, Schawbel says, "Before using any social network, create a single, unified social-media strategy, so that your brand remains consistent throughout each network that you join, including Twitter." He recommends using the same professional picture/avatar and user name, a consistent bio, and a personal brand statement that explains what you do and who your audience is.

Tweak your Twitter homepage

Take advantage of all of Twitter's tools to make sure your Twitter homepage looks professional. Says Schawbel, "Just like your other social network profiles, your Twitter profile should be completely filled out. This includes your full name, location, a biography, and -- the single most important element -- a single link to a site of your choosing. I recommend directing people to a blog, your LinkedIn profile, or a site that you feel best represents you. If you really want to take your brand to the next level, then a custom Twitter background, which you can make using twitterimage.com or twitterbacks.com, is required."

Build your audience

Don't think you know anyone on Twitter? Think again. "A percentage of your friends, family, and previous coworkers are already on Twitter," he reveals. "You can easily import contacts from most Web-mail programs or find people using Twitter's search engine and invite your network onto Twitter with an email invitation. Then, use Twitter search to locate people in your industry, follow them, and interact with them through a series of tweets and 'retweets' over time."

Start tweeting

Not sure what to tweet about? Tweet what you know, says Schawbel. "The more you tweet about what you know, the more you'll become the go-to person on that topic in the Twitterverse. The key to building an audience is to remain interesting to your current followers so that they retweet your messages and more people discover and follow you. And, again, by constantly following more people, namely the influencers in your industry, and pushing out relevant tweets, your audience will grow rapidly."

Not sure what to tweet about?

Tweet what you know, says Schawbel. "The more you tweet about what you know, the more you'll become the go-to person on that topic in the Twitterverse. The key to building an audience is to remain interesting to your current followers so that they retweet your messages and more people discover and follow you. And, again, by constantly following more people, namely the influencers in your industry, and pushing out relevant tweets, your audience will grow rapidly."

Let folks know you're looking

There are a few ways to alert followers that you're in the market for a new job. "First, revise your Twitter profile to call attention to the type of job you're looking for. Second, customize your Twitter background and add in text that talks about where you're headed in your career. Finally, you can send a tweet after you've built your follower count, which states your expertise and the type of job you're looking for," he advises. To get a job you may have to help others find them, too.

There are a few ways to alert followers that you're in the market for a new job. "First, revise your Twitter profile to call attention to the type of job you're looking for. Second, customize your Twitter background and add in text that talks about where you're headed in your career. Finally, you can send a tweet after you've built your follower count, which states your expertise and the type of job you're looking for," he advises. To get a job you may have to help others find them, too.

Adds Boston-based Schawbel, "If you discover a job lead on Twitter and it's not related to what you want to do, passing it on is an effective way to network."