ThinkTalk Interviews: Kevin Heffernan, Broken Lizard Member and The Slammin Salmon Director

By Zack on November 30, 2009

I love Super Troopers. I mean L-O-V-E, love. I think I watch it multiple times per year. I have it on my iPhone and have been known to take in a select scene or two in a cab, on the metro or in a moment of downtime. So, needless to say, when we got the chance to interview Broken Lizard member, actor and, now, director Kevin Heffernan, I was pretty excited.

You may know him as Farva, Lars or Landfill, depending on your Broken Lizard film of choice, but what you may not know is that Kevin recently got his first taste on the other side of the camera with the crew's newest film, The Slammin Salmon. Another hilarious entry in the BL catalog, 'Salmon tells the story of one night in the wacky restaurant of a former Heavyweight champ, played brilliantly by Michael Clarke Duncan. And, of course, the rest of the Broken Lizard gang is along for the ride as well.

Kevin gave some great advice for aspiring actors and directors, discussing the early days as a comedy troupe at Colgate, and trying to score gigs in New York City. Kevin also discusses how he made the transition to director and how it has shaped his perception of what it means to be an actor. But there's much much more as well, so check out our interview with Kevin Heffernan.

Happy Turkey Day

By Zack on November 25, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving Springfield, there will be no blog post. But enjoy this lovely holiday cooking advice from the gang at The Awl:

How To: Cranberry Sauce for Thanksgiving from The Awl on Vimeo.

The Curious Case of Melissa Meyer or: How 4 Years + $200,000 = 1-Way Ticket Home

By Zack on November 24, 2009

A friend and former colleague passed along an article from this weekend's Washington Post about a recent college grad who simply cannot find a job. Melissa Meyer graduated from George Washington University in May and thought she was starting her career off the right way. Unfortunately things didn't work out as she planned:

She graduated magna cum laude from the GW Business School in May, applied for 30 jobs at some of the nation's best-known companies, and it went nowhere. After visiting the campus career center and redesigning her resume, she applied for 10 more jobs. Still nothing. The lease on her Foggy Bottom apartment expired in June. There was no place to go but home, with a collection of rejection letters and a haunting sense of betrayal. For 23 years, she had advanced down America's path to success -- perfect grades, a $200,000 college degree, a folder overstuffed with business cards -- only to have it dead-end back where she started.

"What was the point?" she asks.

For Melissa, that question is the legacy of the recession as she rises one Tuesday morning in early fall and begins her day with the same routine that defined her adolescence. She rummages through the refrigerator, eats leftovers from a dinner party her parents threw the night before and then retreats upstairs to prepare for a fill-in shift at the same job she held throughout high school. After changing into cowboy boots and a skirt, she borrows her parents' car and drives three minutes to work at Rockin Rudy's, a record store with a peace sign hanging at the entrance.

Is Melissa's story an outlier or part of a larger trend? I'm sure it's conceivable that she has just had a run of really really bad luck, just simply applying to the wrong positions or missing out on opportunities through some random breeze of fate. But I tend to side with The Awl's Chris Lehmann who sees a wider trend:

But what's surpassingly odd about Post reporter Eli Saslow's blowout portrait of Meyer's job travails is that Meyers' downward spiral in the labor market leaves us with much the same moral that the grubbier news bubbling up from the low-wage, low-skill sectors of the economy does: Even high-achieving candidates like Meyer are being groomed for positions that simply aren't there. Not only was she stiffed by a sexy New Economy Seattle firm that had instituted a hiring freeze and (what seems infinitely more ominous) shuttered the employee wine bar; she's also put through the demoralizing, bewildering ordeal of putting in for jobs she has no formal training to qualify for.

And that's the key I think. The colleges and universities don't seem to be addressing the changing landscape of the career market. Now, for what it's worth, I'm only relying on anecdotal evidence for this. I'm not sitting in these classes, so I'm not sure how they're handling it. I am in grad school, but everyone already has a job (the program is largely for working professionals) and those without jobs at least have paying internships. The professors may occasionally address the idea that jobs are shrinking or becoming obsolete, but it just isn't that relevant to our situation. But this isn't the case with undergraduates. It's supremely relevant to undergraduates. So how come Melissa can't find a job?

Melissa seems like a smart young woman, as her education and experience attest. Simple bad luck cannot account for her lack of success in the job market. The article - and my own inner logic - leaves me with a sinking feeling that this is not an outlier; that there was a failure of fundamentals. Melissa's education prepared her for a market that no longer exists, and she is having trouble adjusting. And, without getting too wonky or economics-y on you, our economy isn't growing at the rate it needs to to lift up unemployment. So these jobs aren't coming back anytime soon. And it appears that we will see more and more cases like young Melissa Meyer's.

The burden, then, falls to colleges and universities to adapt. For $200,000 these schools need to convince students and parents that they will prepare students for a multitude of careers with sufficient backup plans for a changing job market. In the meantime, one can only hope that all grads who can't find jobs have the same economic and social safety net that have allowed Melissa to keep such a positive outlook on her future.

"Hoovervilles: 1932 Do-Nothing Economics" courtesy Tony the Misfit via Flickr Creative Commons

The Career Ramifications of Self-Presentation Skills

By Zack on November 23, 2009

On today's Inside Higher Ed "Views" blog, Swarthmore College history professor Timothy Burke laments the problem of prepping students with Self-Presentation skills. Going beyond just public speaking, Burke thinks today's students (beyond just Swarthmore) are not properly prepared for speaking and presenting themselves in the professional world:

To be honest, I think some of our students become worse at self-presentation and speaking skills in their time here. Some adapt too strongly to the narrow particularity of academic conversation. Other students get too used to political or social engagement with a community that politely indulges most of their demands or arguments or has a fairly strong consensus culture, never really experiencing serious disagreement or plurality of opinion. I've occasionally suggested, semi-seriously, that I feel like we train some students as the speaking and presentation equivalents of baby seals on the ice, waiting to get clubbed

I think this is a generic problem at a lot of colleges and universities, mind you. The only distinctive aspect of it I see at Swarthmore is the intense value that students and faculty put on being mutually supportive and not seeming to want to show up other students with showy or critical comments. (This is not to say that we completely lack students who are flamboyantly talkative, but I feel as if there's a bit more reluctance here to stand apart.) In a lot of ways, this is a good part of the culture of the college, but it hobbles students a bit when the time comes closer to graduation, when they have to present themselves as confident, capable individuals whom someone should fund, admit or hire.

[...]

Presenting knowledge or arguments effectively involves putting together a lot of different sub-skills on the fly. You have to understand the context in which you're presenting, you have to be able to very quickly read the organizational sociology of that context. You need to be able to quickly pick up cues about the psychology and habitus of your audience and adjust when it's not what you planned for. You have to know when what you're arguing for is impossible or implausible, and whether there's something else to ask for, when you're setting the stage for a long-term objective or just making a temporary response to a situation that won't repeat itself, when to yield and when to hold firm.

I can attest to the importance of self-presentation in the real-world. While I'm a particularly unique case (I mean, you've obviously seen what I do for a living), presentation still extends beyond the on-camera work that I do. I host live Q & A's or town halls, or even at just networking events, I've found that it's important to be able to deliver a concise and direct message, and to be able to adapt that message depending on the reactions you are receiving.

While Burke does a great job of explaining both why these skills are important and the challenges of teaching these in an academic setting, he doesn't necessarily address how to move forward with this. Is this something students should be pushing for with their professors, faculty and administration? Should faculty take it upon themselves to work self-presentation skills into class-time?

I'm afraid I don't have much of an answer either. But my simple advice would be one of two things. First, challenge your professors and administration to take note of this issue, as it is as fundamental to a successful career as the theory and practice of what you study. Second, if that isn't an option or doesn't lead to changes, pursue it on your own. Public speaking classes can usually be found in most cities, and probably near your University as well, even if it is in a smaller/rural area. A fellow grad student recently began taking a course on his own time to brush up on his presentation skills, and he has been more than happy with the results.

How you present yourself, converse and debate has too many practical uses in your career to avoid. Be it in a pre-job interview, negotiating salary or a raise, presenting new ideas or strategies to co-workers or clients, or whatever your career may include, the ability to present both yourself and your thoughts is an important skill. If you don't think you're learning that skill in the self-contained atmosphere of the classroom, you owe it to your future self to take a step to change that.

"Visual Tools for Public Speaking" courtesy jonny goldstein via Flickr Creative Commons

Upcoming Guest: Up in the Air Director Jason Reitman

By Zack on November 20, 2009

So I recently got to see an advance screening of director Jason Reitman's new film Up in the Air. If you've ever watched the Director's Cut, you should have a pretty good idea of how into movies I am (I'm not doing this for the money, kids ... well, at least not only for the money). And personally, I think Jason Reitman is doing some of the best work out there at this current moment.

Up in the Air tells the story of a corporate downsizing expert who loves life on the road ... until life gets complicated and his travel is threatened. The film stars George Clooney and Vera Farmiga (and Zach Galifanakis, and Jason Bateman and Anna Kendrick and ...!) both of whom I just completely dig. I'm not sure there is anyone out there I enjoy watching more the George Clooney and I've been smitten with Ms. Farmiga since The Departed.

Anyway, the reason I got to see the film is because next Wednesday we will be interviewing Reitman here at the ThinkTalk studios. If you aren't familiar with his work, check your pulse, because you may not be of this world. He first made waves with the hilarious (pseudo) satire Thank You For Smoking and was a hit last year with the funny, smart and endearing Juno.

Reitman is certainly one of the most talented directors working today, and on top of that he has some great genes. His father, Ivan Reitman is a longtime producer and director responsible for the greatest films of my youth: Stripes, Ghostbusters, Kindergarten Cop ... most of which were before any of you were born, but are classics nonetheless (except Kindergarten Cop; that was a joke).

Our interview with Jason Reitman will be Wednesday, November 25th, so be sure to check him out and get your questions in before the interview. Reitman is a talented director, with excellent work and experience behind him. I'm sure we're going to have a great interview. I know I'm certainly excited and you should be too. Check out the trailer for Up in the Air below.

Research Gets Social

By Zack on November 19, 2009

An interesting article on TechCrunch yesterday highlights Mendeley, a social network that styles itself as the "Last.FM of research."

Mendeley offers a secure online database for scientists, academics and researchers to store their research papers in the cloud, making it easier to share those documents with their peers but there's an important social element too (if that's the right word). The system helps researchers find and connect to like-minded academics in similar fields to foster collaboration. It does this by looking at and extracting relevant meta-data from the millions of research papers stored in its database, similar to way that Last.fm scrobbles tracks, hence the reference to the music discovery service.

I signed up for an account and browsed around a little bit. It seems like a pretty useful resource for Graduate Students. In your profile there is space to put a resume (they call it CV, cause they're Brits), career info, and any awards or grants you've received. When you set up an account, you add a discipline and it lists some popular scholars in that field (though it is a bit broad right now).

I searched around the Public Catalog too and was able to find some useful papers. You can add publications to your library, which functions like an inbox for your research. After a brief browsing, it seems Mendeley could be a great tool for organizing research papers, thesis or dissertations. I'm not sure how useful it would be for an undergrad, but an Graduate Student should be able to find it helpful.

Employers Looking For Employees With Soft Skills

By Zack on November 18, 2009

This is certainly interesting. A new survey by the Institute for Corporate Productivity found that what employers are really looking for are the "soft skills." (Via Heather Huhman)

The study found that, overall, 76 percent of study respondents have identified soft skills such as listening skills, persuasion and teamwork that lead to successful organizational performance. Among large and high market performing companies, the numbers climb. Eighty-three percent of companies with 10,000 or more employees said they identify soft skills, compared to 72 percent of firms with 100-999 workers and 65 percent of those with fewer than 100 employees. Also, 85 percent of high-performing organizations ID soft skills, whereas 70 percent of lower performers reported doing so.

Clearly communication skills are important and definitely fall into the "soft skills" category. One way to brush up on your communication skills is through blogging. Now, I'm not one who advocates that every tom, Dick and Susie blog just for the sake of blogging. There are enough voices out there, so don't write just to write. It's important to have a message or theme and stick to it. And certainly don't go getting so personal that you could harm your career options in the long run.

But, like I said, it can help mold some of your of soft skills. And, according to Miriam Salpeter at Keppie Careers it can help your hard skills, too. Miriam talks about a client who was transitioning careers. The hiring manager hired the candidate and informed the new employee that the organization was largely convinced by the impressive writing on her blog.

So, if you do it well, and for the right reasons, you can use a blog as a showcase for some of your talents. And in the process it can help increase your skills and your ability to land a job.

"I'm blogging this" courtesy Foxtongue via Flickr Creative Commons

ThinkTalk Interviews: John Hillcoat, Director of The Road

By Zack on November 17, 2009

In a not-too-distant future an unknown occurrence has eliminated almost all life from Earth. As a man and his young son attempt to make their way south they encounter harsh terrain, bandits, hunger and cannibals. Through it all, the man must encourage his son to continue the journey and maintain hope.

Sound pleasant? This is Australian director John Hillcoat's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road. John joined us in studio recently to discuss this adaptation as well as his career in general. (Watch the trailer for The Road here)

Among other things we discussed the challenges of adapting a book by the famous author, specifically one dealing with such a difficult and non-commercial topic. John also shared some insight into his unique directing style, which involves creating a solid outline and production plan for his crew that establishes the style and tone of the film and uses visuals like photos to help set the mood. We also talked about the importance of networking and connections in the film industry, as John was able to parlay his early work directing videos and collaborating with musician Nick Cave into a successful career in directing, marked by his breakout with 2005's The Proposition.

Overall, I was personally impressed and enjoyed The Road. I was equally impressed with John's ability to adapt such a difficult topic, and it will be interesting to see if the popularity of the book can carry over to the film adaptation - something that is certainly not a given with this type of story line. To see the entire interview, check out John's show page. To get you started, here's the first part of our interview:

On Career Experts and Job Search Advice: Sorting Through the Rubbish

By Zack on November 16, 2009

Expertise and advice are tricky propositions. As we've moved to a more mature and open-access web there are increasing channels to locate self-proclaimed expertise and even more opportunities to discover advice on a number of topics. One of those topics, of course, is Career Advice.

If you have questions - about resumes, job interviews, work place ethics, standing out in a crowded job market - you will have no problem finding an answer online. The number of self-styled career experts could not be counted with even the most advanced abacus, so how can you be sure that the information you receive is trust-worthy, usable and most importantly, lead you to the career your looking for? The short answer is, you can't.

Studies have shown over and over again that the so-called "Expertise" of critics and pundits is largely bunk. Take for instance, today's post by Jonah Lehrer at Frontal Cortex. Lehrer points to a Wall Street Journal article on the unreliability of wine critics. A study in California found:

The judges' wine ratings typically varied by ±4 points on a standard ratings scale running from 80 to 100. A wine rated 91 on one tasting would often be rated an 87 or 95 on the next. Some of the judges did much worse, and only about one in 10 regularly rated the same wine within a range of ±2 points.

Mr. Hodgson also found that the judges whose ratings were most consistent in any given year landed in the middle of the pack in other years, suggesting that their consistent performance that year had simply been due to chance.

Lehrer's voiced some displeasure with wine critics before, but to their credit (as Lehrer even admits) it's a very difficult task, as wine can be quite complicated and the critics has the reliance only of his or her tongue. But Lehrer goes on to discuss a few other studies on "experts."

Look, for instance, at mutual fund managers. They take absurdly huge fees from our retirement savings, but the vast majority of mutual funds in any given year will underperform the S&P 500 and other passive benchmarks. (Between 1982 and 2003, there have only been three years in which more than 50 percent of mutual funds beat the market.) Even those funds that do manage to outperform the market rarely do so for long. Their models work haphazardly; their success is inconsistent.

Or look at political experts. In the early 1980s, Philip Tetlock at UC Berkeley picked two hundred and eighty-four people who made their living "commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends" and began asking them to make predictions about future events. He had a long list of pertinent questions. Would George Bush be re-elected? Would there be a peaceful end to apartheid in South Africa? Would Quebec secede from Canada? Would the dot-com bubble burst? In each case, the pundits were asked to rate the probability of several possible outcomes. Tetlock then interrogated the pundits about their thought process, so that he could better understand how they made up their minds. By the end of the study, Tetlock had quantified 82,361 different predictions.

After Tetlock tallied up the data, the predictive failures of the pundits became obvious. Although they were paid for their keen insights into world affairs, they tended to perform worse than random chance. Most of Tetlock's questions had three possible answers; the pundits, on average, selected the right answer less than 33 percent of the time. In other words, a dart-throwing chimp would have beaten the vast majority of professionals. Tetlock also found that the most famous pundits in Tetlock's study tended to be the least accurate, consistently churning out overblown and overconfident forecasts. Eminence was a handicap.

Now, this isn't to say that you can't find useful information, and that anyone who describes themselves as an expert is full of it. To be sure, there is some very good and very useful career information on the internet. But how do you separate the jewels from the junk. What makes someone's advice worth considering? Here's where ThinkTalk comes in.

What we try to do is provide advice from people who have succeeded at the highest levels of their careers. These aren't people whose job is to give career advice. (And if you think long and hard about that, it's a strange proposition. An entire career field exists around careers. I don't want anyone to think I'm taking shots at career consultants or any bloggers and journalists who write about career advice. I'm not. There are some very good one. But there are also some that rehash the same useless tripe over and over again. And then there are those who's qualifications hardly lend credence to their self-identity as a career guru.)

On the other hand, someone who has succeeded in your specific career field can almost certainly be relied on for useful advice. Why? Because they have walked to walk. They have used that advice and parlayed it into success. Do you want to be a successful financial journalist? It's hard to follow the example and advice of Andrew Ross Sorkin and not succeed. Would you like to direct movies in and out of Hollywood? Oscar-winner Danny Boyle is a pretty good example of how to steer your career decisions.

I'm not saying ThinkTalk should be the end-all-be-all of career advice. Far from it. It's just one resource in a very large market of career resources. But we also have the confidence in our product that we are bringing highly successful individuals whose advice can be counted on as a source for career success. And their aren't many corollaries for what we're doing. Sure, you can dig out some advice from profiles and interviews here and there, but our entire program is dedicated to that one topic.

What I'm preaching here isn't for you to ignore the career advice you find elsewhere. What I;m preaching is for you to use a little information education and discretion when you come across information online. Before you take the career advice to heart, make sure you check the source.

Landing That Dream Interview

By Zack on November 13, 2009

Google is a Fortune top 5 company to work for, and by many accounts, is a company that will put your career on the fast path to success. But a recent article in Business Insider pulls back the curtain on Google's interview process, and let's you in on just how difficult landing a job with the company can be.

Everyone says your GPA doesn't matter when you're finding a job- those people obviously never applied to Google. My 3.6 suddenly seemed inferior. Google also wanted to know if I had received any job offers. They wanted to know who was recruiting me and how far along I was in my job search. Talk about salt on an open wound to a college senior. Sad and dejected, I ticked off the "No" [no one wants me] and â"Yes" [I'm still unemployed] boxes. I should have realized then that this was shaping up to be a grueling interview process, but I was too excited to pay much notice.

It get's worse for this candidate. It's certainly an interesting story, and worth reading to see just how bad a nightmare interview can be. So remember, it's one thing to set your sites high, but be prepared for a little disappointment if a company you worship doesn't end up providing the type of experience you were expecting. And don't forget, it can be a long road to finding you first job. If an interview doesn't go as plan, don't sweat it. There'll be more opportunities out there.