5 Tips that are NEEDED in preparing for your first job out of college

Finding your next job starts days, weeks, months and even years before you quit your current job

1) Have an updated resume

Make your resume look good, please use the outline above so that you don't get owned. You should always be updating your resume and linked-in account (that requires that you are doing things that builds your resume and linked-in account, instead of using Facebook to look at cat videos, use it to learn about opportunities). Don't know what to say about yourself? This is where the magic of Linked-in steps in. Lets say that you are trying to put down your experience and do not know what to say; simply just search your current position and look through what people have already said about themselves. It is like a monkey see monkey ideology but think of it as a monkey see monkey do better. Take the best parts of what you find, add in your own zest and WABAMO you got a hot profile. LET ME SEE YOUR RESUME'S AND LINKED-IN ACCOUNTS. I would love to go over them and offer some advice. 
2)If you are in college talk to a college counselor
College counselors are paid to make sure you get paid after college. You are their job. Don't go into a meeting with one and say, "I have no idea what to do with my life, tell me what I should do." That is a very lazy way and sure, you will get some help but you are not exploiting the opportunity to the fullest. Instead try to bring a sense of urgency and a plan of what you want to do. Do some homework. This does three things for you 1) tells the counselor that you need business 2)saves you a lot of time 3)you are able to get the most out of the counselor. You do not need to have the next 30 years of your life planned out, but start with having your day planned out, then your week, month, year and so on. Ask them for suggestions to improve your current path instead of having them give you a life plan to live out. It is your life, so take charge.  
3) Getting as much education as possible does not cut it anymore; in today's world get as much experience as possible. 
Education is no longer required to be just within the walls of an university. Go out there and learn about everything your job requires. If a potential requires you to know how to code, then go to codeacademy.com and spend 5 hours mastering the basics. If you need to learn spanish then watch disney movies on Youtube in spanish until you can sing along to the songs. Yes you need to get into a good university and get good grades, but that alone will not set you apart. Extend your education through your own passionate learning. Then apply, apply, apply everything that you are learning every where you go. Give advice, write blogs, ask questions, JOIN MANY DIFFERENT CLUBS. 
4) The "N" word....Network
This is by far the most important one of them all. Every day go out of your way to meet 5 new people. It is easy. MAKE SURE YOU WRITE DOWN THEIR NAMES, ADD THEM ON FB, TWITTER, LINKED-IN. You will forget them if you don't. Share with them your life's passions and goals and listen to theirs. Make them a brand champion in your self brand and have them be excited about what you are doing and offer your services to help them out. As you help them, they will help you. Need more tips about networking? Ask me your questions in the comments below. 
5)Don't be afraid to ask questions
My favorite question to ask is, "What more do I need to do to become qualified to work at company X?" If you ask that question to yourself, friends, family, job recruiters, and even strangers on a daily basis you will get a wealth of knowledge poured out. Take time to come up with 3-5 really good questions that you can ask to anyone that will increase your value. Asking questions shows that you are willing to change and listen to others. That humility will alone set you apart. Ask and ye shall receive, know and it shall be open unto you. (anyone know where that scripture is? comment below)

The take away- Get your life so that you have some kind of base, then build your dream like upon that foundation. 

Adding humanities majors to your team will add HUGE value

I'll keep the intro short. Everything and everyone has a stereotype attached to them, we have to look past the status quo and focus on the individual if we don't want to miss the boat. Ideologies comes and go and so do our presumptions on people. My goal today is to change your mindset to show you how much value hiring an Humanities major can bring to your team.

B- is math is not always > an A in english

Who ever said getting an B- in a hard science is better than getting an A in humanities has no idea what it takes to get an A in an upper level class. The critic most likely had to take some humanities GE class and hated it. Yeah I hated mine too, but the same argument could be made for the GE math requirement. GE's only get your feet wet and a whole lot of information that is not really applicable to life but as we transcend into the upper level classes, this is where the real value comes from. Don't get me wrong doing calculus is hard, i've taken the class, but with a math class you practice problems going into a test. Imagine having you whole grade based off of three essay questions. Professors in humanities don't hold your hand and do practice problems, but rather they focus on unlocking the mind to challenge and question the social norms and require you to produce. In math you have a final answer, it is a safety net. There is always a right answer and with that comes the warm blanket of reassurance from working around the problem until it is solved. Once you come off conquerer you move onto the next problem to "plug and chug" you way through life. Crunching numbers does give a sense of accomplishment and a lot of good comes out of it, but it is a very conservative approach. For Humanities there is passion because there is no such thing as a 100% right answer in writing, but only a defendable one. The best trait that comes from writing is that it is impossible to BS your way through anything in humanities. Sure, there is an occasional paper that can be busted out on a whim but you can't tell me that writing for upper level class can be a cake walk. 

Each Professor has a different grading style; Versatility 

Now there is a fine line behind being a brown nosing snob and playing the field to your advantage. The beginning stages of listening to the voice of the customer starts but changing writing styles to the professor. Think of a paper like a product; it has information( features) that add benefits to the consumer(those who read it). Each Professor has a different PHD from each other; for example I have had professors who's focus was on urbanism, cinematography, African American studies, satire (yeah you can get a PHD in that) and even early American Christian history for women. All PHD means is that they are as segmented as it gets on their studies and know a certain topic very, very, very well. It is a classic joke that the first paper is always failed because nobody knows the teacher's writing style, but as the semester goes on the students are able to adjust their writing style so that they can get the A. It doesn't cut it being a stubborn writer. University level writing skills require versatilely and the ability to listen to the consumers (professors) effectively to have them "buy into your idea". 

Humanities majors know how to research and apply segmentation,

Primary and secondary research are vital resources for any humanities major, we live and die off of that. No student can make it far without sticking his or her nose into books and painfully collect information. I call this "panning for gold," A person who is looking for a place to prospect has to find a plot of land (subject matter) and a lot of times has to move from spot to spot until they find the ideal spot. After that they have to sift through rocks, mud, water, fish and who knows what in order to find those golden flakes, and an occasional nugget. The golden flakes are added up over time and as they are placed together real value comes out. I would say that a good 95% of all research doesn't not get into any paper. For each and every paper there is a vernacular that has to not only be mastered but must be used as a tool to create new ideas to cater to an audience. Each and every paper calls for the student to do hours of archive building. For example one possible subject matter for a paper would be how Hurricane Katrina hurricane changed an aspect of New Orleans. Sounds easy right? For that class I wrote about Hurricane Katrina was exploited by Lil Wayne in his album Tha Cater III. Sounds cool right? Well talking about a rapper or a music an album wont last 10 pages. This is where I had to collect mountains of data about musical theory in general, then for specifically New Orleans and even then for a target group the lower-class African American's musical history in New Orleans... just for my intro paragraph. It is a classic segmentation exercise that is commonly used in business.  

Now go hire a humanities major. 

Agree or disagree? Comment below your thoughts

Peace

Top 5 Monday morning songs to get you through anything.

If only Monday morning were like that

Huge shout out to all of you guys and gals who have been reading my blog. I will hit 1,000 views after this post, well unless this post is a epic flop. It means a lot when I see that my viewers like, share and comment on my posts because each and every time it happens, it is like giving me a major high five (who doesn't love those?).

Back to business,

Monday mornings are sometimes more like Monday mournings. Coming off a weekend of failed attempts to do homework, upcoming deadlines,looking forward to things that we are really excited about and even the approaching unknown can bring lot of anxiety that magically appears only on Mondays. As we depart from the mystical land of the weekend back to reality we need to come out of the gate swinging and not let the doubts of Monday morning even think about coming into our lives. No'body got time for that! Lets turn that arise and grind to be an arise and shine; we all could use a little shake up wake up and what I found out is that music can give us that much needed boost. Below are my favorite songs to get my inner fire going, let the fire spread! Listen to them and lets go take over the world this week. What are your favorite Monday Mash ups? Comment below ----->  Here is the playlist on Youtube 

"Over My Head" The Fray

"The Fighter" Gym Class Heroes 

"Safe and Sound" Capital Cities 

"Good life" One republic

"Float On" Modest Mouse

What I've learned from my first business case study

Don't tread on my bro

What I learned from my first business strategy case project is that bachelor's degrees can only bring you so far. It is about how badly you want it. Give me passion or give me death. 

Work hard enough to earn respect 
This is where everything begins. How much do you want it? Do you want it more than you can breathe? Are you willing to sacrifice grades, friends, employment, entertainment, sleep, eating and spending time with love ones so you can get done what is required? In a never ending world of improvement, it is a requirement to be a Peter B. Kyne's Go Getter if you want to amount to anything. If you set the tone in work ethic, it doesn't matter if you have a degree in scuba diving, your team will look to you as a leader. Now, there is a fine line, let your actions speak for yourself and don't boast about how awesome you are... use Facebook for that. Instead, lose all your fear about how under-qualified you are and do what you can do. If you can research, research the pants off the project, if you make cookies- make the best dad-gum cookies known to this world. If you can organize and plan effective meetings then gosh darn it make sure you take control of it. The worst thing, absolute worst thing you can do is to wait around and be told what to do. I hate those people. Literally hate them. Those people are still in a diaper high school mindset.

Be humble enough to ask for help and even more importantly embrace criticism:
In each and every case, you do not come up with the right idea in the first five minutes. I would say about 94% of the ideas that your team comes up with will be wrong. Being wrong is the worst. After all those hours of preparation and refining your ideas, some team member just shuts it down. haha Sometimes you just want to go "shut them down" if you know what I mean. The American experience is about compromise. You have to be able to adjust and open your mind to deeper prospectives. So this area is my favorite, asking for people's criticism because this helps you gain a better connection with the person you are asking help with. Don't get me wrong, they will have to prove me wrong but when they do they feel like a Boss and you get the much needed help. The worst thing that can happen here is that they are not 100% honest with you and cripple you. Since you are a go getter, that should not bother you at all

Finding your competitive angle means digging deep:
There are some base traits that everyone has such as hard worker, high level of detail, passion but there are some that make your different diversity in the team means playing to your strengths, delegating your weaknesses, exploiting opportunities and eliminating your threats. It might take you a couple of weeks, projects, and even months to fully understand what you bring to the table, but once you find that niche exploit the heck out of it.  

The difference between quantitative and qualitative data: 
haha just go to this website. It helped me out and it will help you out. 
http://www.regentsprep.org/regents/math/algebra/AD1/qualquant.htm

The take home message. 
Humanities majors can make it in the business world. It is all about how much you want it. I don't care if you are a tuba major, if you want it enough you will force yourself above and beyond anywhere close to where you have been before. 
HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT IT?????????

What are your top 5 ways to get fired up? Comment below?

Game changing poem "The Calf- Path" by Sam Foss

The Calf-Path

Sam Foss

I.
     
One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should;
  
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.

Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead.


II.

But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day,
By a lone dog that passed that way;

And then a wise bell-wether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,

And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell-wethers always do.

And from that day, o’er hill and glade.
Through those old woods a path was made.
     
     
III.
     
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about,

And uttered words of righteous wrath,
Because ‘twas such a crooked path;

But still they followed—do not laugh—
The first migrations of that calf,

And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
     
     
IV.
     
This forest path became a lane,
that bent and turned and turned again;

This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load

Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.

And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
     
     
V.
     
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;

And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare.

And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;

And men two centuries and a half,
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
     
     
VI.
   
Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed the zigzag calf about

And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.

A Hundred thousand men were led,
By one calf near three centuries dead.

They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;

For thus such reverence is lent,
To well established precedent.
     

VII.

A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;

For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,

And work away from sun to sun,
To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,

And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.

They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move.

But how the wise old wood gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf.

Ah, many things this tale might teach—
But I am not ordained to preach.

Somedays we get our trash kicked.

Somedays we get our trash kicked. For some it happens on a daily basis, for others it comes from time to time. We just feel a little off and we have no idea where that shinning drive of yesterday is today. That flat out emotion of being lost in narcissistic questioning clouds our minds and we are forced to spend every moment self addressing ways to escape this anxiety in order to transcend towards the light, even if that means we need to put up a fight. 

Okay Listen to this now -> Bleed it out by Linkin Park

There is something special about this song that just gets me fired up. I'm going to be a little more personal than usual for a moment right now, I got owned today. I am part of a strategy club at my university and we do case studies for companies to gain experience and get connections. Just found out my team did not even make the first cut after hours of slaving away. I am pretty sure I am the only non-business major dumb enough to be in this group haha but I am on a mission and sometimes we need to do hard things. Each and every case, I have to comprehend a new rhetoric and understand a lot of complex ideologies very quickly. I do have a competitive attitude, an obsession with my work and in delivering quality, but the problem is so does everyone else. My competition not only has more background and experience than I do but they are gunning for every job that I am. I feel out gunned, out matched and out smarted every single day. But ----> I DON'T CARE.... I LOVE IT! I really do. Let me tell you why.

If I try to be like them, I will fail; I wont get the job. Simply said I am under qualified to follow the calf path (click on the link to get the context). I HAVE TO INNOVATE AND BE DIFFERENT. I HAVE TO. Think about that for a few minutes. Are you following the calf path? Are you striving to just follow the crowd or do you want to create your own path. Failure is a harsh teacher, but she is still a teacher so before you pack your bags up and go home, keep going. Use what you learned from today to change your game plan for tomorrow. Never stop learning and use it to improve. Measure your improvements and never give up. This feeling can be utilized so that you pray a little harder, do a little more, be a little better, and achieve more.

GO GET IT! <--------- (you want to see this) 

Using Twitter to get more out of the books your are already reading

An important caveat
I by no means can be called anything close to a +Twitter  ninja, but, thanks to +Erik Deckers, +Kyle Lacy and a lot of work. I can tell you a few things in how to master blue bird. 

Imagine a magical world where while you are reading a book, a question about what the author is saying comes into your head and you wish that you could sit down and pick apart the author's brain for just a moment. Dream no more, Twitter is that magical world.

My view's of twitter before I made the change;
Honestly, I only used Twitter to look at my sister in laws' tweets and retweets to get a little laugh, get +ESPN  updates and learn what is new with famous celebrates while I am procrastinating my life away.

A New Network
If you are a go getter, hard worker, and have a dog-like innovation drive, chances are you are reading books, lots and lots of books. I know I am. Each book that you read is emotionally tying you to the author and is qualifying the grounds of short conversation between you and them; meaning that each and every author of a book your have read is a new person to follow, be followed by and interact with on twitter.

Help them help you by you helping them help you. 
Behind books and blogs there are hours of blood, sweat and tears that goes into every word.  The author has invested a lot of emotion behind their complex ideas and they LOVE it when they are told that their hard work had made a difference in a reader's life. Authors love to be followed, tweeted to/about and know that their hours slaving over each and every idea in their book actually made a difference in somebody. Plus the conversation between you and them expands both of your brands. There is a fine line however, be educated in your answers and do not waste their time. Be sincere in reaching out and don't try to bs something just to get your link posted on another site. 

Authors are mentors 
Chances are that the author did not stop exploring the book's subject matter once the book is completed. There a volumes of tweets, blogs and articles that they write to enhance your knowledge of the subject. You can further your connection by keeping current on what they are up to as well. Just remember you are trying to help each other, don't be annoying. 

The take away message 
To sum up what has been talked about, I want to reiterate there are so many opportunities that are needed to be exploited from a very innovative learning world. Challenge the status quo in learning and connecting. 

Comment below about how you are changing the game through social media...