by Caroline Leach | Mar 15, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning, Social Media
What are the questions – asked and unasked – you’ll encounter in an interview for a corporate communications job? Here are mine.
Can you write? This really means, “can you think?” As acclaimed historian David McCullough said, “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That is why it’s so hard.”
Good writing is the price of admission to corporate comms. That’s why I’m often surprised by the number of people in the field who aren’t strong writers.
How do you become a good writer? Read voraciously. Write frequently. Edit liberally.
Are you smart? While you don’t have to be Mensa material, you need to have common sense. You need to possess a pragmatic, practical intelligence to navigate our VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – world.
How do you solve problems? This is where I ask people to tell me about a train wreck. A project gone wrong. A major mess-up.
I want to see what early-warning indicators they observe. How they take accountability. How they turn things around. And how they analyze and fix the root cause so it won’t happen again.
Essentially, can they figure it out?
Do you have grit? Psychologist Angela Duckworth says grit is the key to success.
What is grit? It’s “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals . . . having stamina . . . and living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
It’s never giving up. And according to Duckworth, it’s more important than talent or IQ.
This is why I’m looking for candidates with passion and dedication. People with a relentless commitment to making something happen, whatever it takes.
Will you thrive in this culture? Every company has a distinct culture, or the way work gets done. Is it formal or informal? More structured or less structured? Conservative or innovative?
I ask candidates to tell me about the environment they most enjoy working in. Then I’ll ask why and for a few examples. As they speak, I picture how they might interact at a meeting or with various leaders at the company.
Are you savvy? This isn’t a question I’ll ask directly, but I’ll listen for signs that someone knows how to navigate an organization. That they know how to articulate their point of view appropriately, at the same time that they’ll listen to and consider their colleagues’ points of view. That they know how to resolve conflicts with professionalism and poise.
Will you add a diverse perspective and skill set to our team? The more diverse the team, the more effective it will be. Research bears this out.
I’m looking for people with a different take, a fresh perspective or a novel twist on doing things. This is part of always striving to improve and get better.
How flexible and agile are you? Can you quickly see when change is needed? And if so, can you pivot? Do you remain calm and unruffled when the best-laid plans need to be scrapped or redirected?
Are you social? A communicator has to be active in at least a few social media platforms. This is no longer optional. It’s a requirement.
When I’m preparing to interview a candidate, I start with a Google search and the person’s LinkedIn profile. Then I see what they’re tweeting. And how they’re communicating visually with pictures, videos, infographics and more.
Great story: A candidate flying in for an interview with my team tweeted about the great DIRECTV service on his flight, complete with a screenshot. We hired him.
Bad story: A candidate who tweeted “nailed it” after an interview. A fellow USC Annenberg alum shared this on a career panel we were on last year. That tweet ended the person’s candidacy.
What kind of a leader are you? In one word, how would your team describe your leadership style?
Here I’m inspired by my DIRECTV colleague Jen Jaffe who leads talent development. We were recently on a leadership panel at our company’s Young Professionals Network. She asked her team for input on her leadership style, so I did the same.
It’s an instant 360 feedback activity. Try it with your colleagues sometime.
How much upside career potential do you have? As candidates tell me about themselves, I’m listening through the filter of our leadership competencies.
Are they a strategic thinker? Someone who can innovate? Lead change? Deliver results? Build talent and teamwork? Establish productive relationships? Act with integrity? And build a deep understanding of corporate communications, our business and our industry?
What are you looking for in your next career gig? Life is too short to work in a job where you aren’t learning, contributing and making progress toward your most important goals.
That’s why I’m eager to learn what the candidate wants to get out of the job. It has to be a great fit for the company and the candidate as we work together to transform TV and entertain the future.
And lastly, one of my favorite bloggers, Penelope Trunk, offers a great course on reaching your goals by blogging. She advises people in each post to “write and write until something surprises you.”
My aha moment was seeing the relationship between heading off a train wreck and acting with grit. The Little Engine That Could did exactly that.
And it’s what each of us needs to do every day. Because we’re all capable of far more than we think we are.
by Caroline Leach | Mar 2, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning, Social Media, Work/Life
Photography was never my strong suit.
Yet we live in a visual world. And as a “word” person, I need to keep learning about visual ways to communicate.
Enter Instagram.
Setting goals. My reason for being on Instagram is to develop my photography skills and the eye for the visual. I began with beautiful scenery, and my next area of focus is people.
My audience is a mashup of personal and professional contacts. I’m not strictly focused on a business-related goal. Yet.
That said, great resources for using the platform for business to “share your brand’s point of view” can be found right on the Instagram site.
Getting started. A James Dean quote inspired me one weekend while I was out and about. “Dream as if you will live forever. Live as if you will die today,” caught my eye. It was so powerful and timeless that I wanted to share it. And thus began my Instagram posts a year ago this month.
Set your goals and then just start. Learn and adjust as you go. Explore your passions as they evolve. Connect with interesting people and brands. “Like” and comment on others’ posts. Have fun with the experience.
After all, isn’t that what life is all about?
Finding people and organizations to follow. Starting with my employer, I’m proud to follow @DIRECTV, @DTVBlimp and @DIRECTVCareers.
Working in entertainment, I enjoy following major events like the @GoldenGlobes and @TheAcademy. Plus favorite TV shows @DowntonAbbey, @TheGoodWife and @BetterCallSaul. And an amazing documentary about “ordinary women doing extraordinary things,” @EmpowermentDocu.
Then there’s the mashup of work colleagues, community friends and family members. You never know where inspiration is going to strike.
Creating compelling content. Instagram is my online, real-time photography class. I keep an eye out for compelling images in the everyday world. I practice taking different shots from different angles, with different lighting. I experiment with the fun filters available on Instagram. I try cropping images in different ways.
On the topic of photos, I take a counter-intuitive approach to bio photos across social media platforms. Most of the great advice about building social media profiles says you should use the same photo across all platforms to build your personal brand.
However, I use different photos for different reasons. My LinkedIn profile has the professional bio shot provided by my employer. This matches my employer’s corporate bio for me.
My Twitter profile has a bio shot that I had done independently. And since I’m not tweeting in an official capacity for my employer, a professional photo not associated with my employer made better sense to me.
My Instagram profile has the same photo as my Facebook profile. Since my purpose for being on Instagram is more informal, I felt something with a more casual feel would work better.
Fitting it into daily life. Wherever I go, I’m on the lookout for visually appealing images. The blue trees above were from the @DIRECTV holiday celebration event at our Southern California headquarters. As I was heading home, I was struck by the colorful vibrancy our amazing Corporate Events team led by Kerin Lau had created. A quick snap of a picture and a comment mentioning DIRECTV was all it took to capture and share the moment.
And many of my pictures are taken while I’m out exercising. So I’m taking steps for my health and my Fitbit at the same time as I’m creating content. The added benefit is I find I’m more attuned to and aware of my surroundings. This creates more mindfulness in my life in general, plus deep gratitude for the natural beauty of our planet. All good things for a healthy and productive life.
Finding adjunct uses. Everything interconnects, I shared in How to Be Social.
This blog requires a variety of images, so the photos I snap for Instagram also become part of my personal photo library. There’s no copyright to worry about or payment for the images, since I’m the photographer.
And over the holidays visiting family in New England, I followed my nephews and niece in Instagram (and somewhat surprisingly, they followed me back). And I helped my mom set up an account, so she can follow us and feel more connected to our lives across the country.
My teen daughter and son are great coaches. They help me through the “how do I . . .?” moments. And I heed their advice to post no more than two images on any given day. That keeps the quality up and hopefully means followers look forward to seeing more, rather than wishing to see fewer, posts.
What are your best Instagram tips?
by Caroline Leach | Feb 28, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Learning, Social Media
1,030 tweets ago, I joined Twitter.
It was April 2012, the same month we launched a social collaboration platform at my employer.
In addition to a leadership blog I started on the platform to figure out what I was doing, it seemed like the right time to join Twitter too.
It wasn’t until just over a year ago that I really engaged with it, though. Dorie Clark inspired me with her Forbes article on how to dramatically increase your Twitter following.
Setting goals. One of the challenging things about Twitter is figuring out why you’re there and what you want to accomplish. At first I couldn’t articulate any clear goals, other than trying it out.
Then I realized with my voracious reading habit, it could be a way to share great content, without becoming a near spammer by emailing too many articles to friends and colleagues.
My goal became to share content related to my professional interests – corporate communications, change, leadership, human resources and corporate social responsibility.
And it’s an opportunity to promote my employer, with an emphasis on community involvement @DIRECTVSchools and talent development @DIRECTVCareers.
As always, it’s important to disclose my affiliation and be clear that opinions expressed are mine. And I follow the light, bright and polite mantra from How to Be Social.
Getting started. After opening your account comes setting up a 160-character bio. This is a chance to be interesting and use #hashtags, @mentions and links. Upload a photo. And update the bio from time to time as you and your interests evolve. Work Smarter with Twitter and HootSuite by Alexandra Samuel is a great Harvard Business Review e-book to jumpstart involvement.
Finding people and organizations to follow. Just like being social in LinkedIn, you can connect with your existing contacts to invite people you already now. Every time you meet someone new, see if they’re on Twitter and follow them. If there’s someone you want to know more about, follow them. I also follow the media outlets in my News Rituals of a Communicator.
Following people back. Early in my career, I read John Maxwell‘s book, Becoming a Person of Influence. What stuck with me was his premise that people are open to influence from those who are open to influence from them. John Maxwell was one of the first people I followed on Twitter. And I was gleefully surprised when he (or whoever manages his account) followed me back.
That influenced my thinking about who I’ll follow back. I’ll follow back people and organizations who seem professional and legitimate. Accounts that offer Twitter followers for sale or have inappropriate content? No thanks; not interested.
Tweeting compelling content. My daily news ritual as a communicator also allows me to find tweetable content to share. There’s @WSJ and @nytimes. And @latimes since I’m in Southern California. Also love @HarvardBiz, @TheAtlantic and @PsychToday. As often as possible, I look up the reporter’s Twitter handle and add it to the retweet.
Lots of favorite people – @AmyJCuddy, @AdamMGrant, @LVanderkam, @PenelopeTrunk, @MartyNemko, @brainpicker and too many more to list.
Being visual. Tweets with images get 150% more interaction than those without, so include a photo or video with as many tweets as possible. @TheAtlantic now includes an images with nearly every tweet. This is highly engaging, with an Instagram feel. Perhaps that’s one reason why Instagram seems to be neck and neck with Twitter with the number of users.
Reciprocating. Retweet great content that fits with your area of interest. Give it your personal spin by tapping “quote tweet,” and adding a few personal words, followed by “RT” and the original tweet. (If that puts the tweet over 140 characters, you can do an MT – modified tweet – by making minor changes such as “&” for “and” or deleting extraneous words like “that” to save characters).
If I like a tweet that isn’t fully relevant to my subject areas, from one of our local schools for example, I’ll favorite it rather than retweet it.
Growing followers. According to Dorie Clark, the more often you tweet, the more followers you’ll attract. At a minimum, I tweet at least once a day. Three to five tweets are better, spaced throughout the day. And try a message to new followers to say thanks and engage on a topic of interest.
Fitting it into daily life. Plan a tweet first thing in the morning, at mid day and at the end of the day. If you’re the super organized type, create an editorial calendar. Research says the best times to tweet are Mondays through Thursdays between 9 am and 3 pm. Of course, you have to factor in your own geographic location, who you’re trying to engage with and where they’re located.
Finding adjunct uses. There many ways to use Twitter beyond connecting with people on the platform–
- Researching people I’ll soon be meeting
- Assessing a job candidate I’m about to interview
- Vetting a speaker I’m considering for a leadership conference
- Getting quick, authoritative info in real-time a crisis situation (the 2013 LAX shooting being one example)
- Engaging with compelling content and colleagues at conferences, by sharing valuable sound bites and images. Speaking in larger venues highlighted for me the importance of preparing your speech to be shared via social media in short, tweetable statements.
What are your best Twitter tips?
by Caroline Leach | Feb 21, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Social Media
The place to start your professional presence in social media is LinkedIn.
With nearly 300 million professionals and two new members per second, it’s where to be in the work world.
Reciprocity is a key principle of social media. Think of others. What interests them? What inspires them? How can you highlight and promote their efforts?
Be a strategic giver, in the spirit that Wharton professor Adam Grant wrote about in his bestseller Give and Take.
Setting goals. On any social media platform, start by defining your goals. Why are you there? What do you want to accomplish? Two big reasons are because LinkedIn is becoming your resume and to build your professional network.
Getting started. Assuming you already have an account, refresh your profile (make sure you’ve turned off the profile notification updates to your network). Include a professional photo. Upload samples of your best work.
Get Work Smarter with LinkedIn by Alexandra Samuel. This Harvard Business Review e-book gets you started with a great profile and easy ways to update your professional portfolio and expand your network over time.
Connecting with people. To start, you can connect with your existing contacts to invite people you already know. Every time you meet someone new – whether inside or outside of your company – send them a connection request. Be sure to personalize it. Don’t send the default request. Write a short note about why you want to connect. Use it as an opportunity to differentiate yourself and brighten someone’s day.
Assessing connection requests. Generally I’ll connect with people I know. And with people at my company, even if I haven’t met them yet. If I don’t know someone and their industry or role looks relevant, I might accept the request. If a request is from someone completely unknown to me, I don’t accept it. Unless they have taken the time to personalize the request and explain why they would like to connect with me.
Growing your presence. Add something new to your profile at least once a quarter, and ideally every month. Add a new project, a video or other work sample. List speaking engagements. New awards. Something you wrote. At least once a week, post a status update about a project or accomplishment. Share a pertinent article or blog post. Consider starting a LinkedIn blog to share your expertise.
Engaging with people. Beyond building your network, scroll through the home page a few times a week. Tuesdays are especially good. “Like” people’s postings. Comment on a few. Join a discussion group and be an active participant. Offer to write recommendations for people you can enthusiastically endorse.
Fitting it into your life. Schedule a few minutes each week to post a status update. If you’re the super organized type, create an editorial calendar. Research says the best times to post to LinkedIn are early in the week. Put the LinkedIn app on your smartphone so you can access it on the go. Waiting in line somewhere? Post a quick status update (on a professional topic, not the line).
Learning from luminaries. Want help with your LinkedIn profile? Check out speaker and author Donna Serdula. You can also learn all about LinkedIn from Eve Mayer, Lori Ruff and Viveka von Rosen.
Finding adjunct uses. Jumping on a call with people you haven’t met yet? Check out their LinkedIn profiles. See what looks interesting, and what you might have in common to quickly build rapport. One of my responsibilities is to design and deliver my company’s annual leadership meeting. LinkedIn is incredibly helpful once I’ve identified speakers of interest and I want to connect with them directly.
Engaging with customers. From time to time I hear from customers. I make those requests a priority and connect people to the right place within customer care. It may change someone’s mind for the better and generate goodwill.
Engaging with job candidates. People often contact me looking for the hiring manager for an online job posting. This is an opportunity to further our company’s employer brand, we entertain the future. I’ll use my internal network with our recruiters to direct the person to the right place. It’s all part of wanting candidates to have a great experience interacting with us and furthering our corporate reputation.
Engaging with recruiters. With the economy picking up, so has the volume of recruiter outreach. If a recruiter’s profile looks legitimate, I’ll review the job description and try to recommend at least a few good candidates. If there aren’t any people I can refer, I’ll connect the recruiter with a forum group I belong to of senior-level corporate communicators.
What are your best LinkedIn tips?
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