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Applying Student Affairs Skills, Part 3: Crisis Management

Applying Student Affairs Skills, Part 3: Crisis Management

by | Jul 1, 2011 | Career Skills, Higher Education, interviews, Job Search, Student Affairs, transferable skills

Understanding how skills you have gained in Student Affairs will benefit you in any position is critical if you plan to advance in your career. I serve on the steering committee for AthFest, a non-profit organization that plans the local music and arts festival each summer, the Athens GA Half-Marathon in the Fall, and year-round art and music education events for local children. The festival was last week and I put many of the skills I gained working in Student Affairs to good use.

Candidates will often be asked to give examples of times when they planned a program, dealt with a difficult person or situation, or responded to a crisis. This week, I will give some examples from my recent experiences during AthFest. I will do my best to explain them in a loose P-A-R (Problem-Action-Resolution) style, to emulate the way that candidates should use in their interviews.

Part 3: Crisis Management

One of my favorite questions to ask Residence Life candidates is related to crisis management. Sure, Residence Life is a “generalist” role in many ways, but if we specialize in anything, it’s crisis management. The ability to respond quickly and calmly to potentially dangerous situations and ensure the safety of students and staff supersedes everything else. This was a running theme throughout my career. I dealt with suicidal students, guns in the residence halls, a riot, drug dealers, sexual assaults, suicide attempts and completed suicides, power outages, bats in the residence halls, and multiple facility issues. I was trained by the Red Cross in Emergency Shelter Operations and for a while, I was responsible for oversight of Residence Life’s Emergency Plan and related training for all the professional staff and RAs. As a result, handling crises comes as a second nature to me.

Good thing, too, because emergencies come on their own schedule, and they don’t usually announce themselves ahead of time. This was the case last Friday, when lightning struck a column on the corner of the Trappeze Pub on Washington Street, and rained bricks onto the street and three people below: the manager of the pub, a man on the patio of the neighboring pub, and one of our business vendors.

People were screaming and running away through the rain, and I heard one lady yell to me “You’ve gotta call the festival! You’ve gotta call it!’ She kept running away, but like most people who handle emergencies, I ran toward the commotion. First, I went to the volunteer area to see if other staff knew what had happened, because it wasn’t clear where the lightning had struck. Someone said they heard it had struck Trappeze, so I rushed back, to find gawkers looking up at loose bricks that might fall at any minute, and scavengers (some adult, some children, some drunk, and some just curious) collecting the bricks. I went in and asked Aaron, the Trappeze manager, if he was aware of the situation (he looked confused, which I later learned from him was the result of him being one of the people bricks rained on. We laughed about that, and he asked why I hadn’t noticed the cement dust in his hair.)  I then told him I would like to barricade the area off, and would try to keep scavengers from stealing bricks. He agreed it was a good idea and thanked me. I went out, got one volunteer to stand in the area and shoo people away, and two others to help me get barricades.

We returned, and I ordered onlookers away, telling them the area was unsafe, and worked with staff and police to secure the area and later, to get signs posted. I made two newspapers, talked to a nice reporter from the Red and Black, and as is common when talking to student reporters, got slightly misquoted, but not badly enough to ask for a retraction. Then I spent the next three hours talking to the bar owner, the people hit by bricks, Athfest central staff and the Police.

Student Affairs Skills Used:

  • The ability to remain calm and move quickly into assessing the situation and taking action to ensure safety of people and security of the area first.
  • Thinking on my feet about who should know about a situation, and reporting the details to proper authorities.
  • Following up about the safety of those involved.
  • Answering questions when approached by the media and referring them to the proper persons.
  • Having a sense of humor after the fact, and appreciating that the situation could have been worse, but that the response was the best one available at the time.
  • Looking forward, I plan to ask the steering committee to debrief the incident and to consider writing up an emergency plan (which I will offer to coordinate.)

Questions for Your Consideration

  • Do you have a good example of a time when you handled a crisis?
  • What did you do to respond?
  • How was the problem resolved?
  • What questions are important to ask yourself, when deciding how to respond to a crisis?
Difficult People and Difficult Situations: Applying Transferable Skills From Student Affairs

Difficult People and Difficult Situations: Applying Transferable Skills From Student Affairs

by | Jun 30, 2011 | Career Skills, Higher Education, Job Search, Student Affairs, transferable skills

Applying transferable skills you have gained in Student Affairs will benefit you in any position as you advance in your career. I serve on the steering committee for AthFest, a non-profit organization that plans the local music and arts festival each summer, the Athens GA Half-Marathon in the Fall, and year-round art and music education events for local children. The festival was last week and I applied many of the skills I gained working in Student Affairs.

Candidates are often asked to give examples of times when they planned a program, dealt with a difficult person or situation, or responded to a crisis. This week, I will give some examples from my recent experiences during AthFest. I will do my best to explain them in a loose P-A-R (Problem-Action-Resolution) style, to emulate the way that candidates should approach describing their transferable skills in their interviews.

Part 2: Dealing with Difficult People and Situations

It probably won’t surprise anyone that I encountered the most difficult situations (and the most difficult people) during artist and vendor arrival and departure. The first area I addressed in planning the artist market was to introduce barricade passes for all artists, vendors, and staff, and to explain the rules, and have all of these people fill out a brief web form saying they understood and would comply with the rules before sending them the passes. Barricade duty was a major logjam in the past. This year, it wasn’t, and things went very smoothly. I borrowed this idea from the Welcome Week Committee at Penn State, which started doing something similar a few years back to help sort out traffic and help filter it to the appropriate zones and residence halls. I knew everyone wouldn’t follow instructions but that many would. The result: smooth move-in and move out for all but a few vendors. (The difficult people were the ones that didn’t follow instructions.) Here are a couple of situations I dealt with and how the problems were resolved.

People Parking in the Wrong Area

There are a few universal truths to any parking equation. First, parking is always limited to an amount below the expectation of the people parking. Second, for most event planners, it’s also beyond our control, so we get put in the awkward position of apologizing for how things are, because we can’t apologize to the person complaining for how unrealistic their expectations are, and even if we could, they would find it insulting.

Some problems I dealt with during the festival:

  1. People parking in someone else’s spot while unloading. In these cases, it wasn’t that there wasn’t another place for the other person to park. On several occasions, people parked in the assigned booth space of another artist. Imagine the complaints you’d get during arrival if some student went into their room and found someone had parked their VW Beetle on one side of the room while setting up the other side (invariably the one with the bigger closet, or nearer to the window.) Just like I would do when I was in Residence Life, I gently pointed out the issue and asked the offender to move as soon as possible, and the offended party to be patient as the problem was really just a result of congestion, and not of intentional ill-will or a desire to take over their territory.
  2. People blocking the main entry and fire lane, and abandoning their cars, thereby causing a logjam of angry people. For the most part, people had the barricade passes in their windows and were easy to find, so I found them and asked them to move, or enlisted other staff to help do so. The result: no major delays in loading and unloading, once inside the festival area.

People confused about or unhappy with their booth assignment

Anyone who ever worked in Residence Life can tell you that the most stressful and time-consuming situations that happen on arrival day have to do with assignments. This is also true for festivals. Some examples:

  1. People being confused about their assignment. I dealt with several artists who couldn’t find their spaces, or who moved into the wrong space. Some of these were accidents, due to people misreading the painted and chalked-in lines on the pavement. In these cases, I offered the parties involved the option to trade spots or to have assistance moving their tent, displays and art to the correct location.
  2. People unhappy about their assignment. One artist was upset about another accidentally taking her spot, and even more unhappy that the other artist’s spot was by the porta-potties. Her answer? Pick another spot altogether, and express frustration at our intern. I was called in to speak with her and offered her help to move to either of the assigned spots. She asked why she couldn’t move to the third spot, and I told her that I wasn’t bringing an uninvolved third party into the scenario. She unhappily accepted help moving, and expressed her frustrations toward me. I explained that I had offered her help, and that if she was unhappy with the options I could give her, I would happily refund her money and help her pack up and leave. This is one of the great differences from Residence Life, where I would have had to refer difficult people like her to my supervisor. How nice would it have been if I’d been able to tell every student who tried to game the system over my 15 years in Residence Life that I’d help them pack and give them a refund for the pleasure of not having to deal with bad behavior and insults? The artist relented and later I apologized anyway, and gave her some free beer tickets, and we were copacetic. You can’t do that in Residence Life, either. (But wouldn’t it be great?)

Some Take-Aways

  1. Most people will try to follow directions if you give them ahead of time and make it convenient and easy. The barricade passes were the best example of this. Almost every artist and vendor had theirs and passed through smoothly. Those who didn’t were apologetic. This was a nice change from previous years, when artists and vendors got in frequent arguments with the barricade worker. We didn’t have a single incident like that this year.
  2. No matter how much you plan ahead of time and explain something, there will be difficult people who ignore it, don’t understand what to do, or simply decide to do their own thing. You can’t control what other people do, only how you respond. Those who ignored directions were the  cause of most of the issues we experienced. Most of these situations were resolved easily and quickly once I explained them. Those that weren’t were resolved later with beer tickets and apologies for the inconvenience (not for the issue itself.)
  3. It’s nice when you can resolve a difficult situation at the lowest possible level of an organization. Remember this during fall arrival and give your student staff and entry-level professionals some latitude. You’ll probably be pleased with the results.

Questions for Your Consideration

  • Do you have any good examples of times you dealt with difficult people or situations?
  • What did you do to resolve these issues?
  • What were the results? How was the issue was resolved?
  • How do you relate your transferable skills when applying for new positions?

Summer Career Coaching Special

by | Jun 20, 2011 | Coaching, Higher Education, Interview Tips, Job Search, job search tools, Student Affairs

Job-on-Calendar-150x150Are you still looking for a job in higher education? If so, my summer coaching special may be for you!

I’ve been having a few issues with getting my sales page done for the summer coaching special, but wanted to let people know the details. Sales pages can come later. The important thing is the offer.

Here it is:

For $50 month for 3 months and the balance $150 within 6 months? ($300 total), here’s what you will get:

  • 4 sessions of 45 minutes to an hour (4 coaching hours) over 3 months-by end of September
  • Unlimited brief e-mails and phone coaching/catch-ups of 20 minutes or less for 6 months. (until the new year)
  • Membership in the online group and all activities there, to do on your own, and work out your strategy. I will be participating in the discussions.
  • Free admission to select job-search webinars and teleseminars for 3 months.
  • Ability to renew at the same rate for 3 more months if you don’t have a job.
  • Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied for any reason, as long as you have actively engaged in coaching and activities.

If this sounds okay to you, I can invoice you via PayPal for $50/month for the next 3 months. You would need to pay the PayPal service fees. Or you could send me a check.

Either way, I am hoping there will be interest. I am equipped and ready to take a maximum of 20 job-seekers at any time, so respond now if you are interested. I will have a waiting list, if necessary, but if you need help now, that probably won’t do it for you. So don’t wait!

If all this sounds good, e-mail me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com and I will get you online access to the course and an invitation to the course e-mail list.

I have already had several  inquiries without even advertising, so I expect this group to fill quickly. Don’t let that discourage you, but also don’t sit on your hands.

Let’s get you a job this fall. Act now.

Salary Negotiation and Poker: Start With the Hand You’re Dealt: Unique Value Propositions

Salary Negotiation and Poker: Start With the Hand You’re Dealt: Unique Value Propositions

by | Jun 13, 2011 | Interview Tips, Job Search, Negotiation

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Salary negotiation is a really hard process, and one of the top concerns of job-seekers in any industry. It’s the “poker round” of the hiring process, where both sides try to set aside their enthusiasm for working together and think in their own best interest, cards closely held to their vest, and wait for the other to either show their hand or fold. It can be gut-wrenching and nerve-wracking, because nobody ever wants to leave money on a poker table.

Before I go any further with this analogy, I want to say a couple of things. First, I am a lousy poker player and in many ways, a lousy negotiator, because I’m not motivated by money. I’m usually motivated by fear of losing money, and a desire to win. And I struggle with both, and can be frustrating to play poker with, as a result. I am usually the one to fold early, and I have a lousy poker face. Other players can usually tell when I have a winning hand, and they will fold early rather than fork over a lot of money. So take my advice about poker and about negotiation at your own risk! I usually end up leaving money on the table, or having others walk away out of sheer frustration.

But come along for a moment, and let’s break this down, using the poker game analogy, because I think many people can relate to it.

When you are dealt a hand in poker, you know what it is, and depending on whether you are playing stud, or draw, you either know your hand outright, or you can make a couple of trade-outs for fresh cards, to see if you can find a hand worth playing.

If you are playing stud poker, you know your hand from the get-go, and can make your bets based on that hand and your perceptions of the moves others around the table are playing, and whether they are betting, calling or holding.

If you are playing draw poker, you may place an initial bet, based on your gut feeling about being able to cobble something together worth doing, and then raise, call or fold, again based on the moves that other players make in response.

In the salary negotiation process, you also have to start with the hand you are dealt. It starts with your Unique Value Proposition. This is the where you describe your knowledge, skills and experience in ways that show your potential fit into a position. The keys to putting together this UVP (also referred to in the business world as a Unique Selling Proposition or USP) is that you have to explain who you are, what you can bring to the table, and why you are the best person to do so.

Let’s put a formula to negotiation, using your Unique Value Proposition:

  • First, describe who you are, in terms of current education, skills and experience.
  • Second, differentiate your education, skills and experience from other candidates.
  • Third, describe, in terms as concrete as possible, the value that you will add to the employer’s bottom line, that others cannot. (i.e., how you will solve their problems.)
  • Fourth, be ready to fold and walk away when the stakes get too high.

As I mentioned before, I am a lousy negotiator and this does affect my bottom line. I’m going to be spending more time in the near term explaining the Unique Value Proposition for this site and for my coaching programs, trainings and consulting services.

In the process, you’ll see content on this site, and the nature of the free and paid programs that go with it, change. I’m doing this for two reasons: so you can clearly see the value offered, and so that I can tweak the business model so that it results in sustainable business. In short, because being a good coach and a lousy businessman isn’t sustainable, and I really want to win, for the sake of my family and all they’ve sacrificed over the last couple of years to help me build my sites and my business.

It’s basic economics in action. Let’s return to what I learned in ECON 201 when I was actually listening to Dr. Benjamin’s lectures in Sirrine Hall my sophomore year at Clemson, when I wasn’t sleeping off the night before, or checking out the cute sorority girls who wouldn’t really even tell me the time of day.

Transactional business is driven by the concept of marginal utility. The success of any business model hinges on the perceptions of price in relation to utility of the product or service. In business transactions, people (including employers) don’t pay for experience. They don’t pay for history or content. They pay for value.

When utility (perceived value) outweighs price (i.e., risk), people will pay more (by upping their ante.) When price (risk) outweighs utility (perceived value), it’s easy to fold and walk away.

Key questions to consider in preparing for negotiation:

  • How are you presenting your value?
  • How are you contrasting your unique value against other options (other candidates, or starting over with a search.) This might also be seen as overcoming objections to price.
  • How comfortable are you in protecting your unique value, by folding (walking away)?

Once you get these points down, you’ll be ready to not only play, but to win.

So are you going to up the ante, call, or fold?

Hate my analogy? Love it? Tell me in the comments!

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QR Codes: Like Poop on Your Résumé

QR Codes: Like Poop on Your Résumé

by | Jun 10, 2011 | Job Search, job search tools, Resumes and CVs

This week, I’ve been putting out articles on Interview Ecology, and exploring the risks and benefits of introducing the “new and shiny” into the process. We’ve considered whether bringing a iPad into an interview is akin to bringing an invasive species into an eco-system.

This ecosystem approach relies heavily on the idea that anything that distracts or disrupts may destroy the delicate balance of a search process, and bring up dissonance in respect to person-environment fit, resulting in a candidate not getting a particular position.

Which forces me to bring up a particular pet peeve of mine: the all-the-sudden popular and ugly-as-sin QR code. I hate them, because like many fads, most people rushing to use them don’t understand how to make sure they add value to the experience. In general, I feel that most people might as well take a poop on their résumé as put one of these on it, because adding a QR code without adding something of value to the “interview ecosystem” is well…just a load of crap.

I’m already anticipating the response from candidates and tech geeks who think these things are cutting edge and allow a new layer of interactivity that wasn’t possible before. Well, I call bullshit. Scanning these blotches into a smartphone just allows lazy people to avoid typing a URL into their browser, as if the 20 seconds of time spent doing so will add up, like all the partial pennies Richard Pryor dumped into his bank account in Superman III, and will result in the résumé screener having a richer, more exciting , and complete view of the candidate.

Bullshit. Bullshit. BULLSHIT.

The same can be achieved by pointing someone toward a regular URL or hyperlink. QR codes only add new functionality to a paper résumé, which you probably aren’t viewing anyway. And anyone with half a salt lick of sense in their head can run a long URL into an URL shortener. So if space on the résumé is your major concern, that’s no argument, either.

Now, I will admit upfront to being a résumé geek and a purist. I don’t believe all the hogwash people throw around about résumés going away. Advances in technology and social media are just changing how they are delivered. And nothing takes away from the basic truths at play:

  • Your résumé needs to be targeted toward your industry, level of experience, and the level of position you are seeking.
  • It needs to be scannable (visually scannable)
  • There has to be a sense of logical and visual flow that draws a reader in, and keeps them reading and scanning. And…here’s the big one…
  • It needs to be attractive and not full of distracting bullshit.

I had a client recently work with me on his CV and he had a QR code on it, at top right. I asked him why it was there. He replied that he wanted to show himself as cutting edge and tech savvy. So I asked him where the QR Code goes, and what value was added by putting it on there. And…wait for it…it went to an online pdf copy of his CV!

We talked a bit and I told him I didn’t see the point of having it there, if it only went to his CV. He was really tied to keeping it there, so we came to a compromise position. He had also been updating his LinkedIn profile, which had some great recommendations on it, and some other links to relevant information. So we decided to point it there, because doing so added some value to the equation. The result: the QR code went from being poop on his résumé to being rich compost instead.

My criticism of his strategy should not be equated with a critique his level of technical savvy or his readiness for the type of job he was applying for, and I’ve told him as much. In fact, I think he’s a great candidate, or I wouldn’t be working with him. I don’t work with clients I don’t believe in, because that’s not fair to people on either side.

Ultimately, I’m grateful for the perspectives his situation has given me, and what it allows me to share with you.

Here are the big take-aways:

  • New technology is great, and showing comfort with it is just fine. But using tech badly could actually hurt your candidacy. Make sure that your use of technology is appropriate and that there is a clear point to using it (like adding interactivity or pointing to recommendations or portfolio work.)
  • If using a new way of doing things distracts from your design, content or flow, you really need to weigh the risks of using it against the value added. And if you can’t do this on your own…
  • It pays to talk this sort of stuff out with a trusted friend, advisor, or career coach.

What do you think? Tell me in the comments.

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Tech, Toys and the Risks and Benefits of Introducing "New and Shiny" Into a Job Search Ecosystem

by | Jun 7, 2011 | Interview Tips, Job Search

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Showing yourself to be technologically savvy and forward-facing are incredibly important in today’s job market, so it’s no surprise that job-seekers find themselves exploring the best ways to highlight their tech skills and comfort with technology. But there are potential downsides to bringing along “new and shiny” as you enter into a search process. This week, as we continue our exploration into interview ecology, we’ll explore the risks and benefits of introducing different variables into the job-search ecosystem and hopefully, help you make some intelligent choices about how you integrate these different variables into your search strategy.

The Risks of Bringing “New and Shiny” into a Search Process

I recently traded tweets with a job-seeker who was worried about whether bringing his iPad to an interview might seem pretentious to the interviewers. We had a great and wide-ranging exchange about the pros and cons of doing so, and this conversation kind of converged with another recent one with a client and my interests in person-environment theory and the environment, and resulted in this series of posts.

The Delicate Ecosystem of the Everyday Interview

Let’s return to some basics of this proposed “interview ecology” framework:

  • If the hiring process is considered as an ecosystem, what are the naturally occurring parts of that system? Some possibilities:
  • New variables, before entering into the ecosystem, are assumed to be neutral, and to pose no inherent impact on the environment.
  • Once a new variable is introduced into an ecosystem, whether it is beneficial or invasive/destructive is determined by the nature of its interactions with the natural environment, and the impacts on other aspects of the ecosystem (people, places, resources)
  • Variables that create harmony, or synergy and are seen as potentially compatible with sustainable growth and balance are deemed to be beneficial.
  • Variables that create anxiety or dissonance are seen as incompatible and said to be invasive or destructive.

The Impact of New Variables

Since conversation is the primary form of interaction in an interview, the impacts of new variables on the quality and sustainability of the conversation, and in the formation of assumptions about person-environment fit that derive from that conversation, need to be our main concern and point of discussion in an interview ecology model.

Ultimately, decisions about whether to bring a iPad (or any new tech) into an interview should be weighed against the possibility that it might upset the ecosystem of the interview and distract from the conversation.

Risks to consider:

  • Being seen as inattentive (if your attention to the tech causes the interviewers to think you are bored, then you could come across as elitist or pompous, and this will kill your interview)
  • Being seen as a someone who might not relate with the students you’ll be serving (if you are a “have” and your students are more likely to be “have nots,” will you be seen as an outsider?)
  • Being seen as more interested in technology than people (i.e., your interests aren’t a good match for their needs)

Perceived benefits:

  • An ability to take notes without using paper. (Seems pretty basic when you put it that way, doesn’t it?)
  • Being seen as innovative and comfortable with technology (The assumption being that you will bring innovation and a tech-friendly sensibility to the position and department.)
  • Showing your interest in sustainability (Giving the impression that you will wisely steward resources and consider the impacts of your actions on the work environment.)
  • Creating an impression that you are forward-looking and oriented toward progress and development. (Showing that you have a drive to achieve through innovation.)

Weighing the Benefits Against the Risks

Benefit Risk
Being seen as innovative Being seen as inattentive or bored
Showing an interest in sustainability
Being seen as uninterested in the people or environment that in the system, only interested in resources
Showing an interest in progress Showing a lack of interest in people or the realities of the particular organizational culture

Other Options

So to mitigate any of these risks and the potentially negative impressions that might come with them, what are some other options?

  • Leave the iPad behind (no distractions)
  • Bring the iPad but don’t use it (not as distracting, in relation to attention on your part, and still sends out techie signals, but could still be interpreted in ways that imply inability to relate or interest in other things.)
  • Bring the iPad but only use it for the Q & A portion of the interview (your questions would be there) or any presentation you need to do, and/or for you to use during breaks.

So it really does come down to mitigation of risks and the benefits against the potential costs. In this case, would the benefits (taking notes and seeming tech-friendly and interested in sustainability–which might not be directly related to the job–and the risks all come down to “fit,” with the downside being that you don’t get the job because of a distraction unrelated to your qualifications and how you presented them.

Given this perspective, what do you think you would do?

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