Month: March 2020

Now might be a good time to request info interviews!

A lot of us have mandatory (or highly recommended) work from home mandates, out of deference to public health guidance. Our business travel and attendance at conferences and other external meetings have been canceled. Some of us might be really busy with childcare b/c of our kids who are at home from school. But some others might have some slack in their schedules and might be climbing the walls for social interaction; there are only so many hours of streaming video we can endure from Netflix before we get antsy.

So… given all these factors, this might represent a good opportunity to request an informational interview via phone or video chat! Take this time to explore other careers that you’ve always been interested in. This might also be a good time to sign up for virtual career coaching because you’ll have time to invest in all of the different exercises.

Here are a few quick tips on requesting an informational interview — we’ll have a couple of other guest bloggers write more guidance in detail, but here’s some basic advice. A lot of it is common sense, but you’d be pretty surprised at how often people do NOT follow these pointers:

  • Conduct thorough research on the organization and the individual before you approach them. Identify the right person/department within the organization to speak with.
  • Make a clear and compelling case as to why you’d like to speak to them. How exactly does your background or interest relate to what they do?
  • Especially if this person is very senior, ask if you can speak to one of their colleagues, if they don’t have time to spare.
  • Give a flavor of the questions that you plan to ask them. Prepare questions in advance of your informational interview. Assure them that they’re not wasting their time in speaking with you.
  • Be clear about how much time you’re asking for from them, e.g., 15-20 minutes.
  • If you don’t get a response, follow up in a month. Persistence can pay off.

An early-career person just sent me a message cold via LinkedIn requesting a brief informational interview. It was a very thoughtful message in 2-3 paragraphs — he had clearly done research on my background and my employer, and made a compelling case for a conversation. I was happy to oblige. Also, in deference to the 100+ people who have granted me informational interviews, I’m happy to pay it forward, time allowing. The rule of thumb is that people are busy. Show them that you’ve done the work to show that you respect their time.

On the flip side, it drives me crazy when I get a LinkedIn message from someone whom I don’t know, asking for an informational interview, but it’s clear that they are just trying to find anyone to speak with who works at my organization. I’m not even in the department they’re really interested in. They also may not have done much research on my organization to understand what we do. It’s just scattershot. I think some career coaches would say to take a scattershot approach to requests for informational interviews –the theory is you increase your odds of getting an informational interview if you just randomly send out requests. I disagree with this spray-and-pray methodology — if you’re not doing the work to send out thoughtful, well-researched requests, it can be harmful and backfire on you because it shows you’re thoughtless and sloppy. Don’t do it. It’s a different story if you put in the work and send out 100 thoughtful requests, vs 100 random requests with no thought!

Power and Practice of the Patient Pivot: Strategically Move toward Your Desired Social Impact Role

As part of my transition from technology into philanthropy / social impact, I enrolled full-time in a public policy graduate program with a nonprofit management concentration. My classes piqued my interest in working in philanthropy, but also helped me to realize how hard it would be to pivot into that field. People ask me all the time about how to get into philanthropy, and in summary: it’s hard and very competitive, especially to get into a mid-level position!

After many years, after a long succession of pivots, I now work for a grant maker. Here’s my career path in brief:

strategy consulting
-> Silicon Valley tech
-> inner-city and campus ministry
-> master’s in public policy
-> policy research, strategic planning, evaluation at think tanks
-> evaluation, strategy, and grant making in philanthropy consulting
-> community partnerships and social impact for tech company
-> (current) evaluation and strategy for a tech company / grant maker

It’s been a long journey into philanthropy (and of course, the journey hasn’t ended yet!). I can’t pat myself on the back for making it all happen – many transitions were due to the grace of God: a chance encounter with a kind person at a conference (whose next-door neighbor happened to work at a place where I was applying for a position); an old college friend (who isn’t in the social impact field) who introduced me to someone she met in Asia, which resulted in me pitching and getting a job; and meeting someone at a church (that I had never attended) who happened to be exactly the right person to help me partner with her nonprofit on my master’s thesis and research (I was visiting that city and leaving the next day, and had been wondering, how on earth I’d meet someone at this particular org to ask to partner on my thesis!?).

Of course, many opportunities arose from following conventional wisdom. I did my due diligence: in two years, I conducted 70+ informational interviews to understand the social impact landscape, what type of graduate program to apply for, and which school to attend. I went to presentations and connected with the speakers, one of whom introduced me to a researcher at a think tank, who ended up offering me a summer internship. I alerted my network when I was looking for job opportunities (my professor connected me to my think tank job out of graduate school). A classmate from grad school referred me to my 3rd role at a think tank. It’s also helpful that I had tech industry experience prior to my transition to social impact, which has helped me obtain social impact roles at tech companies.

But also critical to this journey is being strategically patient with slow pivots.

I’m not a patient person, but after a series of mis-steps, I learned the hard way to wait. Early in my career, I was very impetuous and if I didn’t like my job, I’d just switch. The tech industry is forgiving of this, especially for younger people in a boom economy, but I realize that I jumped around too quickly because I would jump “out of the frying pan, into the fire.” I’d think, “I don’t like this job!” and then take the next thing that came along, with better pay and a better title, without understanding what it was that I was looking for, how this next position would advance my career (and to what end), and why I disliked my job(s) at the time. When you’re in a tough situation where you’re disliking your job, it’s tempting to snatch the first thing that comes along. However, I came to realize if you don’t bide your time and carefully consider options, the relief from making an uninformed switch is only temporary, and then you may soon be seeking another position. I’ve learned to develop a stronger tolerance and often swallow my pride (usually regarding feeling under-compensated, under-titled, and under-appreciated). Now I advise folks to stick it out till the right next move comes along, as long as the current situation isn’t abusive or unethical (or seriously detrimental to mental health).

Also, more than a decade ago, my career mentor encouraged me to create a 20-year strategic plan for my career, and while my life hasn’t quite followed that trajectory (surprisingly some parts have), that exercise taught me to think strategically about my pivots. I realized how one job can serve as a stepping stone to the next, so even if a job isn’t the exact desired role, as long as I could see it leading to and being aligned with my career goals, it was worth exploring. I also realized that we might think, “I’ll just work in this role for 2 years and then pivot elsewhere,” but usually we can’t predict the timing (could be quicker or usually slower than expected) and have to be patient in that vein. Also, being a foreign national taught me patience: I was limited in terms of which employers I could work for based on who would sponsor me for an H-1B visa (tip: nonprofit research orgs / think tanks / universities have no quotas on H-1B visas!), and eventually who would sponsor me for a green card. The road to US citizenship was also a very long one for me.

Finally, if you’re mid-career and looking to transition into social impact, there can be this seeming urgency to work in the exact org or role that you want right now! But a huge consideration is whether you’d have to take a drastic pay cut and start at entry level in order to do so. Depending on how far advanced you are in your career, I don’t think it’s worth it. I’d recommend doing a series of pivots instead so that you don’t have to “start over”, but it requires a lot of foresight, strategic planning, education, and patience.  Volunteer for different orgs so that you get social impact experience outside of work. Serve on their board of directors. Take online courses for additional exposure. Read a lot to get a deeper understanding of the issue area you’re passionate about. Job shadow. Do informational interviews. See how your current role and skillset translates into a role at a social impact org; even if you don’t enjoy your current role / skillset, it could be worth investing a few (even possibly many) more years by pivoting into a similar role at a social impact org, and then pivoting within that org into other roles that you do want.

This is the wrong time to transition into a CSR career (corporate social responsibility)

We haven’t had a recession for 10 years and we are overdue. While the jittery stock market from last week may not indicate we are entering a full-blown recession currently, it’s probably in the not-too-distant future.

As a result, I would be wary about taking a corporate social responsibility role at a company right now.

In times of recession, it is normal for most companies to pull back on “nonessential” spending and cut cost, which may include parts of their CSR, especially if CSR is not part of their core revenue strategy. Even if they maintain essential parts of their CSR department, you always have to worry about the “last-in-first-out” phenomenon which occurs during layoffs. When I worked in college recruiting, our tech company went through a downturn and had a layoff eight months after I was hired, and my position was eliminated, especially since it was in a cost center (HR in this case, not CSR) and not a business unit, which generates revenue. My layoff was totally predictable.

If you have a fairly stable job right now and are trying to break into CSR, here are a few questions I’d consider if I had a CSR job offer:

  • How large and financially stable / profitable is the company? A smaller company may have more pressure to generate revenue and as such, its CSR function may be more vulnerable to economic shifts.
  • Is this role a “nice-to-have” or “need-to-have” within the company’s CSR department? In other words, can the CSR department function without this role?
  • Is this a new role or an established role that has been around for some time?
  • If the role were eliminated, how transferable are your skills to other roles and departments/business units within the company?
  • How long has the CSR function existed at the company? How did it fare during the last recession? Did they lay people off?
  • How committed is the company to CSR? (Hard to gauge since all companies are going to say that they value CSR)

A Silver Lining

So one possible silver lining about a recession is if a company is truly committed to its role as a corporate citizen, it might actually increase its CSR activity to accommodate increasing needs in the community. (In the last recession, many foundations increased their giving, for example, to offset declines in individual charitable giving.) For example, a company might increase and redirect its charitable giving to supporting individuals and families struggling with unemployment. Or it might increase employee engagement around volunteering or giving. In that case, there could be a potential increase in CSR activity and job security.