How to get a job where you meet people like Jay-Z & Lenny Kravitz

This summer I connected with some amazing professionals who were willing to share their wisdom. Each profile will feature how their first job out of college led to their amazing careers today (that they love, by the way), as well as their advice to help you do the same. 

First Job Profile: Chris McDonald, Senior Producer of The Tavis Smiley Show

 1) What was your first job out of college and how did you get it? 

My first job out of college was a production assistant for the CNN nightly news series "The World Today." I had interned with CNN and after I graduated I just went in and asked for a job. Luckily we had built such rapport during my internship they were gracious enough to employ me as a Production Assistant. 

2) What was the most important thing you learned from your first job? 

I took a lot away from my first job, but one bit of experience remains, and it's a doctrine I continue to live by.

CNN is a big company, so if you work there you deal with a great number of people. I worked out of the Los Angeles Bureau, so the big anchors were always coming through town. Since I was always eager to learn, I pretty much became the designated P.A. for all the big anchors, including Wolf Blitzer, Connie Chung, Lou Dobbs, Soledad O'Brien and more. 

Some anchors their producers have egos, and these people tend to make their power known by stepping on the people below them. In my case, it was me. 

Like many large organizations, the hierarchy was very evident and I found myself getting stepped on. I bottled up how awful it felt and vowed to never be that way to anyone working under me.

Yet for every egomaniac, there's a producer who remembers where they came from and is always open to offer help and advice. 

The funny thing is when I left CNN and got a job with some leverage and power, I was in a position to help an old producer at CNN with a huge favor. She was one of the 'good' producers, so I stuck my neck out for her and gave her her solid.  

I learned to be gracious to everyone you work with in business, and treat them equally no matter the position, because your paths will cross again someday and the tables will be turned. 

 

Chris with Lenny Kravitz

3) What did you do to leverage your first job to help you get where you are today? 

When you come out of college, there is an edge you have above the older working crowd - you're used to burning the midnight oil with term papers and reading hordes of books.

Thus, you have bounds of energy that the average adult no longer possesses. If you're ambitious, take advantage of that! It is a skill that has legs for miles!

I realized that very early on in the beginnings of my work years, and I applied myself in any way I could. Fortunately for me, I worked for a company with my facets to it - CNN had an entertainment unit, a news unit, a sports unit, a business unit and CNN Espanol. 

I went out of my way to work overtime and offer my production assistance to all those departments, and they complied. In doing so, I learned a lot! 

More importantly, I developed trustworthy working relationships with the Los Angeles CNN bureau across the board. Moreover, they started noticing my tenacity and allowed me to work beyond my title. 

Although I eventually earned the title of researcher, my job tasks extended beyond that by writing news reels, associate producing, producing and even conducting interviews on the red carpet and backstage at movie premieres and award shows. 

This enabled me to color my resume so much more than I could have if I simply stuck to the parameters of my job title. 

4) What advice do you have for a recent graduate who is struggling to find their first job after college? 

I always give the same advice that was given to me: you're young and you have the whole world ahead of you! Life is indeed short, but it's the most abused statement about our mortality. You actually have time! You're new to the job force, so your canvas is very large and blank!

You may begin painting a pretty portrait over here, but if you splotch it up, scribble it away and move further down your large blank canvas and start fresh. A lot of people, including myself, expect to come out of college and get that dream job right away. There is a TINY percentage of people that happens to. The rest of us have to work extra hard for several years to get there. 

And that's a rough notion to stomach, because even the most humble of students come out of college with a sense of entitlement - why wouldn't you? You just paid so much for good schooling; your newly acquired knowledge is fresh; you're up-to-date with the latest technology and the person you'll be working for has never heard of it. Frustrating, right? 

But let me tell you... in any industry there is absolutely no knowledge like years of experience and hard work. Take your time, work hard, and your time will eventually come.

Don't get discouraged either when it doesn't happen in three years when you're 25. That's called a quarter-life crises. You still have lots of time ahead of you. You'll get there. I promise. 

Thank you Chris for some of the BEST advice in this series so far! You can check out the Tavis Smiley show on PBS! :)

FIRST JOB out of college: how to find one, get one, change one, and learn from one (and not lose yourself in the process)

Subscribe to the FIRST JOB summer series here to get each new post the second it goes live, as well as exclusive tips/links just for subscribers! =)


It’s officially summertime for college students, and for all the graduates of the class of 2012, it’s time to get that first “real” job.

When I first embarked on this process when I graduated with my B.A. the summer of 2009, I was hit with a tidal wave of emotions, all stemming from this one question: What the heck am I going to do with my life now?

To cope, I read stacks and stacks of books on how to find a job. I went on dozens of informational interviews. I scanned online job boards late into the night. I sent my resume out into (what felt like) the black hole of online job applications.

And I had never felt more insecure and horrible in my life.

Before I go on, I think it’s important to mention that this is a first-world problem. My husband and I will semi-jokingly quip to each other “first world problem” when the other is complaining about something going wrong in the apartment or with our cars, like last week when our wireless internet wasn’t working. It’s a first-world problem. It’s a problem that, in many ways, we are lucky to have. It’s a problem that, when compared to so many other problems in the world, is just not that big of a deal.

If we didn't live in the country that we did, with open-access to education, a diverse economy, and the ability to choose what we want to do, how to spend our time, and where to share our talents, we wouldn't have this problem of figuring out what we want to do with our lives. We are lucky to have this problem. 

But with that being said, if you live in a “first-world”, first-world problems are still real problems. They are still your problems. And it’s okay to go after solving them. It’s just vital to always maintain perspective so that you do not dwell in the depths of hopelessness when in reality there is so much to be thankful for.

However, when you’re in the depths of self-doubt, it’s hard to be thankful.

Our generation was told we could do anything we wanted, be anything we wanted, and that if we graduated college we would get a high-paying job.

So we proudly walked down that aisle in the cardboard-square hat. We listened to a triumphant and hopeful graduation speaker. And then we walked back down that aisle with our shiny new diploma, ready to shine all our great potential and make a difference and a contribution in the real world.

And then we trip and fall flat on our faces, scraping our limbs on the concrete.

While I mean this metaphorically, this actually happened to me last week while walking from my car to my apartment on the last day of my job at the community college (I’m now a full time author, blogger (hooray!), speaker, and consultant). I stepped awkwardly on the concrete path leading up to my apartment door, and WHAM, before I knew it I was on the ground, with all my office supplies strewn across the path. 

I  laughed at myself at the time and felt so thankful no one was around to see. But – it made me think about how I felt three years ago when I first was looking for that job.

How I felt like I was constantly falling on my face. And how I worried that everyone would see. 

When we can’t find a job or are in a job we don’t like, we feel inadequate, like we aren’t contributing what we actually have to offer the world. And often, it makes us feel embarrassed and sad and alone. 

When I was looking for my first job three years ago, I found comfort in a lot of books that defined this general feeling of awfulness and insecurity as the “Quarterlife Crisis.” Essentially the books said that in our 20’s we struggle to find our identity, and in this new post-graduate stage of life, we tie our identity closely to our job, which causes stress when we can't seem to find the "right" job. 

And while these books coined the phrase, created the awareness, helped post-grads understand they are not alone, and comforted us that by no means does our job define who we are - I still needed to pay the rent. I still needed a job. I still felt lost. And I didn't really know what else to do.  

So this summer (along with the other content I’ve mentioned such as transfer student and professional success stories) I am going to be doing a series on finding, getting, changing, and learning from your first job out of college.

Highlights: 

• What you do vs. who you are
• Why starting from the bottom is vital to getting to the top
• What do you do if you hate your current job?
• When do you just take any job vs holding out for your "dream" job?
• Secrets of current successful professionals on how they got their dream jobs (hint: their dream job is almost never their first job)
• How to turn a first job you dislike into a dream job
• How to organize your job search process 
• How to find a professional mentor
• When to take unpaid internships
• When to choose grad school
• How to do informational interviews at companies where you want to work
• Why most jobs aren't filled online & how to use the internet to get them
• Why people hire their friends and how to make more friends
• How to know if working from home/being an entrepreneur is for you
• Reviews on some of the best job-hunt and post-grad books
• How to change your job

And as your first FIRST JOB tip for today - start reading anything you can about finding a job. We read and study for classes every semester. And yet we often forget to use those skills to read and learn about many areas of our lives. Turn your first job search into a class for yourself, and dedicate the time and effort necessary to get an "A." To start, I hope you'll keep up with this series :) 

The series will be peppered throughout the blog this summer, so if you want to be sure not to miss one, you can subscribe specifically to the FIRST JOB summer series here. 

You can also join me live Monday, May 14 at 9pm ET for YouTern's #InternPro Twitter chat! The theme: "I'm graduating…now what?!"