The easiest instructions for how to start a blog

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There is a lot of information out there about how to start a blog — but don’t click that link. The following instructions are a lot easier and you’ll get the same result:

1. Ignore buzzwords.
RSS, SEO, AdSense, Technorati, Digg. If you have a buzz word buzzing in your head and you’re not sure if it belongs on the ignore list, assume it does.

2. Pick a topic — you can change it when you know what you’re doing.
This is like dating. Pick something that seems good, and if it isn’t, try again. Don’t get hung up on topic. As in dating, you’ll know when you’ve found one that’s the right fit. There are some obvious things, like pick a topic you have a lot to say about, pick something that interests you, pick something that will help your career. This is great advice, but you already know that if you look for a perfect match you’ll never actually go on a date.

3. Spend two seconds choosing software.
Ignore the fact that there are lots of choices. I will give you two: Blogger and TypePad. Pick one. It doesn’t matter which one. Click on the home page where it says open an account. Don’t worry about what you click during setup. It’s very hard to do damage that you can’t fix later. Finding good software to host your own blog used to be really complicated. But sites like Hosting Facts have taken everything you need to know about hosting your blog and put it all in one place.

4. Post something right now.
Don’t tell yourself you’ll do it tomorrow. Blogging is about courage to say something. Don’t worry about being stupid because trust me, no one is reading your blog. Post anything. You can nix bad posts later. For now just start writing.

5. Practice, practice, practice.
Post, post, post. Soon you’ll find the link button and make a link. Maybe you’ll find a category button and make a category. Maybe you won’t find those buttons for weeks. Don’t worry. You’re practicing. And if you happen to write something really good you can feature it later, when people are reading.

6. Ignore your lack of readers.
The hardest part is sitting down to post on a regular basis. Don’t distract yourself with blog promotion until you’re sure you can actually do the writing. If you can blog regularly for a month, you can be a blogger.

When you get to number six, and you’ve made it through a month, go back over this post, and click all the stuff I told you to ignore.

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How to turn an interview into a job

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Hiring managers don’t hire the most qualified person. They hire the person they want to work with the most. Whether this is fair is not up for discussion, because the philosophical and de facto practices of corporate hiring aren’t going to change any time soon. However, we can discuss how to get hired when being qualified is a small factor in the decision.

Too many people have had slews of interviews with no offers. To be sure, you need to work at getting interviews, but you also need to work hard at turning an interview into a job. The skills to turn an interview into a job have little to do with having the skills to do the job. People use resumes and phone screens to make sure someone has the skills to do the job. When you get to the interview, it’s usually about other things — such as the unquantifiable but all-important likeability factor.

Here are six steps between landing the interview and actually doing it that will help you get an offer.

1. Research the company. Comb through every section of the company’s site and memorize it as if you were cramming for a test. Unlike a test, though, you won’t have a chance to spout the six facts you learned about the company during the interview.

Rather, there will be a random, fleeting second when a relevant fact you gained from the site will be the perfect answer to something the interviewer says. To find the right comment for that fleeting moment, you’ll need wide knowledge and good judgment. The overall goal is to seem as though you are intimately aquainted with their area of business and you monitor the company independently of your desperate need for a job.

Favorite places to do reasearch about companies: TechCrunch (for startups), TechDirt (gossip for intellectuals), Fortune (to know what everyone else knows).

2. Get the right outfit. Corporate America has a uniform; wear it. People like to hire people who look like them, and clothing is the easiest way to make this impression. An interview is not the time to dress to express your true self. In fact, no one needs to know your true self at the office. You will fit in and work best with others by keeping eccentricities to a minimum. Each company has a variation on “the uniform,” so loiter near the office ahead of time and spy on its workers to get a sense of the corporate dress code.

3. Prepare stock answers. Most interview questions are standard, and surprisingly enough, have standard answers. Take the question, “Why did you want to leave your current job?” The correct answer incorporates phrases like, “I am looking for a company like this one,” and “Your company offers a unique opportunity that is a perfect fit for me.” Learn these answers before the interview and be prepared to deliver them with a special flair, so they don’t seem rehearsed.

There are three or four good books that list interview questions and how you should answer them. The one I have used successfully is, The Complete Q&A Job Interview Book, by Jeffrey B. Allen. Also, Perri Capell points out that your answers should always be on message — speaking to most important points you want to make about yourself.

4. Go to the gym. Taking charge of the first 15 seconds of an interview is critical. An interviewer will judge you first and most significantly on non-verbal cues, and having a great interview outfit alone may not be enough to make the best impression. This is because thin, good-looking people are more likely to get hired than overweight, less attractive people.

If you have scheduled the interview already, it’s probably too late to drop forty pounds. But go to the gym anyway. By using your chest and back muscles to life weights, you’ll stand up straighter in the interview – which shows poise and self-confidence. Also take a ride on the treadmill. The more energy you expend now the more relaxed you’ll be at the interview, and being calm will help you seem more confident.

5. Prepare to close the deal. Leave nothing open-ended when you walk out of the interview. This means saying at the end, “I would really like this job. Do you have any reservations about hiring me?” This is scary to say because the interviewer might have reservations you can’t overcome. But closers get the contracts, and you need to be a closer in interviews. Risk hearing any reservations about hiring you because it’s better to confront them and fail than to never try. You have nothing to lose.

When I tried this, the hiring manager told me her reservations (which were large). After I countered them one by one, she was so impressed that she offered me a job on the spot. But I also had done my homework. I knew what I wanted from a job and what were dealbreakers. And I had prepared extensively for the interview. Which leads me to my last point….

6. Practice, practice, practice. Maybe your friends will be helpful in a mock interview situation. Even if your friend does a terrible job pretending to be an interviewer, you get practice interviewing with someone who doesn’t know how to do their job. You can bet, though, that someone in the career counseling office of your college knows what they are doing in this regard. Career centers are evaluated based on the career success of their graduates, so most centers are happy to field your phone calls, no matter how long ago you graduated. Ask someone there to do a mock interview with you. The feedback you get will probably be very useful.

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How to save the world while sitting at your desk

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(A couple of weeks ago I posted a piece that did not fit in my upcoming book. That post was so well received that I decided to post another that didn’t make it into the book.)

We all want to save lives. The thing is that people get paid to save stock prices. We do not need to pay people to feel good about themselves. We need to pay people to say, “You have to come to the office on Sunday.”

During my startup days, I kept scheming to get around this conundrum by doing things like giving money to charity (or to friends who would qualify) or giving employees time off to see shrinks. But my biggest idea came while I was figuring out how to cut data entry costs.

We needed to organize a lot of data and the cost was astronomical. So astronomical that our venture capitalists were getting ready to force us to ditch that part of our business. Then our CFO suggested India. “Data entry is cheap and everyone speaks English,” he said.

I found a recruiter in India who gave me estimates for staffing costs. An experienced data entry person would cost less than $10 a day. “What about health insurance?” I asked. The recruiter said, “Oh, we do not do that here.” The recruiter heard my disappointed pause and said, “Okay. You can do that maybe for another fifty cents a day.”

I plugged Indian laborers into my cost analysis and even if I had added a few U.S. salaries for management, profitability for the data entry business was at 85%. Too high to be believable. Venture capitalists would say my assumptions were wrong. So I spent evenings that I should have been socializing with friends combing through the details of my friends’ business plans looking for costs I might have missed.

Then I read Marie Claire when the cause of the month was sex slaves. They go for $300 a piece in India. So I added to my cost of goods the purchase of twenty girls. I expanded square footage to include housing above the data entry rooms. I added money for a school next to the cafeteria and I increased staffing so that each day each data entry clerk could spend an hour teaching the girls. One-on-one tutoring. Art classes. The Internet. I put these costs in categories like office space and support staff. My profit margins were 65%, the venture capitalist sweet spot: high enough to quell resentment and low enough to quell questions.

Charts and graphs of the economics of India were the focus of our next board meeting. My partner brought up the India idea gingerly, focusing not on the girls but on the cost savings and the shrewd worldview of operations. The venture capitalists loved the idea. They were very familiar with this strategy; of course, it is their job to say that they are already very familiar with every idea.

Then three venture capitalists wrote names of their friends who had data entry companies in India that we could use. There would be no office space considerations. There would be no staffing considerations. I would not be saving the world. I would be calling rich friends of rich people so that the money stays with them. I would be ingratiating myself to all of them so that they give me money next time I need funding for a company. And I would be giving more money to charity to make myself feel better.

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Start looking for summer internships now

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Good internships are treasure troves no matter how old you are. They give you the opportunity to make a new start –figure out where you fit, switch your career path, or just find someone who cares enough to help you make good decisions.

That said, the big internship business comes from college students. Eighty-two percent of graduating seniors will have completed at least one internship, according to Mark Oldman, co-founder of Vault, a media company for career information, and author of Best 109 Internships. “In the United States an internship is no longer an optional benefit but an essential stepping stone for career success.”

The time to start looking for a summer internship is now. Some industries, like finance and journalism, typically have deadlines in the fall. Other industries have spring deadlines. But regardless of deadlines, the earlier you start the better an experience you are likely to have.

Brown University holds meetings in November to get students started on the internship process. “Internships are a really important part of career exploration so you should start as early as possible,” says Barbara Peoples, associate director in the Career Development Center at Brown University.

No matter what your age, an internship can help you to know as much about what you do like as what you don’t like. It’s very hard to tell which sort of job you’ll be happy in, and Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, says working summers in a few different industries is a good way figure it out. “Don’t ask people, “?Does your career make you happy?’ because most people will say yes. Instead, observe people in their work to see if you think they look happy.”

Oldman points out that the benefits of an internship extend way past college. “Increasingly recent college grads and even career changers of all ages are doing internships. They are a great way to ignite career interest. But they are also a low risk way to sample a new industry without committing yourself.”

No matter what age you are, you should follow the same advice for evaluating opportunities. Here is the list of characteristics that make for a good internship, according to Oldman:

Substantive work.
Mentoring opportunities.
Some sort of pay.
Chance for gaining permanent employment.
Good quality of life.

So, how do you get one of these plum internships? For everyone, the best source is, of course, your network. But in most cases, people have not been great at networking before they need an internship.

For college students, the next best resource is the campus career center. A career center measures its success by how many students actually get jobs, so they have a vested interest in making sure you get an internship since that makes you more likely to get a job when you graduate. Besides, one of the most important aspects of succeeding in a career is learning to ask for help, so get started now, when the stakes are not so high.

It might seem that you cannot go wrong in the internship department, but it is not without controversy. Many internships are unpaid — toeing the line of labor laws and sometimes even crossing it. And some internships pay, but not nearly as well as, say, a summer job in construction, or a job corralling ten-year-olds at overnight camp. For people who do not have parental funding or a nest egg of their own, subsidizing an unpaid internship is often out of the question.

But Peoples says that even if you are not doing unpaid labor in the field of your dreams, you can benefit from your summer work. You should “know what you are seeking from a summer experience. Even if you are working at a summer camp, think about goals like becoming a supervisor or working in a different area.” Peoples says that “everyone should have learning goals.” And in fact, the process of crafting goals for personal growth on the job might be the most important internship lesson of them all.

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7 ways to manage up

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Managing up is the best tactic for getting more interesting work, more responsibility, and more sane work hours, because your boss is the one who can give you this stuff.

Some people think managing up is brown nosing, but in fact, a lot of it is about humanizing the workplace. Managing up is about you caring for your boss, and the result will be your boss caring for you. Here are seven ways to make that happen:

Know what matters to your boss. If your boss is a numbers person, then quantify all your results. And know which numbers matter most to him. All numbers people have their pet line items. If your boss is a customer-is-first kind of guy, frame all your results in terms of benefits to customers. Let’s say, though, that you are working on a project that is impossible to frame in terms of the customer. Then ask yourself why you’re working on it for a customer-oriented boss. It probably isn’t a high priority for him, so it shouldn’t be a high priority for you.

Say no. Say yes to the things that matter most to your boss. Say no to everything else and your boss will appreciate that you are focused on her needs. Remember that your boss doesn’t always know everything you’ve got on your plate. So when she asks you to do something that you don’t have time to do, ask your boss about her priorities. Let her know that you want to make sure you finish what is most important, and this will probably mean saying no to the lesser projects.

Talk like your boss. If your boss likes daily e-mails, send them. If your boss wants a once-a-week summary, then do that. Convey information to your boss in the way she likes so that she’s more likely to retain it. Be aware of detail thresholds, too. Some people like a lot and some people like none. A good way to figure out what your boss wants is to watch how she communicates with you. She’s probably doing it the way she likes best.

Toot your own horn. Each time you do something that impacts the company, let your boss know. Leave a voicemail announcing a project went through. Send a congratulation e-mail to your team and copy your boss, which not only draws attention to your project success but also to your leadership skills. Whatever the mechanism, you need to let your boss know each time you achieve something she cares about.

Lunch with your boss. If all things are equal, your boss will cater to the person she likes the best. So go out to lunch and talk about what interests her. Connect with her by asking her for advice on something about work. If you are very different than your boss, work hard to find common ground in your conversations. Everyone has common ground if you hunt hard enough.

Seek new responsibilities. Find important holes in your department before your boss notices them. Take responsibility for filling those holes and your boss will appreciate not only your foresight, but also your ability to do more than your job. (The trick, of course, is to make sure you do not shirk your official job duties while taking on more.)

Be curious. Remember to make time to read and listen. Then ask good questions. You will make yourself more interesting to be around, and you will elicit fresh ideas from everyone around you. Your boss will feel like having you on the team improves everyone’s work, even his own, and that, after all, is your primary job in managing up.

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Don’t report sexual harassment (in most cases)

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Why I’m not deleting this post…
There were not laws to protect women in 2006. It was a scary, lonely time for women. We didn’t always have language to describe what was happening to us at work.
When you reported sexual harassment in 2006 you got fired. And there were no repercussions for the harasser because no one cared. In 2019, we are making progress in supporting victims, but we still have a long way to go. And we can’t know how far we’ve come unless we save evidence of what life was like before.

—Penelope, Aug. 2, 2019

******

Sexual harassment in American work life is pervasive — as much as 80 percent in some sectors. But most women don’t stand a chance of winning a lawsuit. So having a plan to deal with the problem is a good idea for all women.

When it comes to harassment, Georgia Gatsiou, chef at Beard Papa, says: “I would talk to him myself. I am aggressive like that.” You should probably take that approach as well. Most sexual harassment isn’t severe enough to hold up in court, and the law isn’t strong enough to protect you from most types of retaliation. So unless your safety is at risk, you’re usually best off handling the harasser yourself rather than reporting him to human resources.

To win a lawsuit, courts require proof that harassment was severe and pervasive in the work environment, according to Alisa Epstein of New York-based law firm Samuelson, Hause & Samuelson. And that employee handbook becomes important too. Gatsiou is typical of employee handbook readers: “It’s big. I’ve read a lot of things in that handbook. Maybe there’s something about harassment. I don’t know.” But when you report to human resources, you must follow your company’s policy precisely or you risk losing your ability to take the company to court.

After you’ve filed a report, human resources will protect the company, not you. Human resource executives talk about their concern for harassment. But, according to Jim Weliky of Boston-based law firm Messing, Rudavsky & Weliky, “most human resource departments don’t live up to their propaganda.”

The law is set up to encourage a company to take proscribed steps to protect itself from liability rather than to protect your emotional stability, or, for that matter, your career. Once you take action against a harasser, retaliation is your biggest problem.

“Very few retaliation cases we have were not triggered by reporting the problem to human resources,” says Weliky. “But not all retaliation is strong enough to make it to court.” Retaliation is usually subtle: fewer invitations to lunch, a cubicle that isolates you from office networks, and project assignments that are boring. That sort of retaliation effectively holds back your career without standing up in court.

Just because you don’t have a lawsuit doesn’t mean you need to put up with harassment or retaliation. It means you need to take things into your own hands. Your goal should be to stop the harassment without hurting your career. No small feat, but possible.

“This is a negotiable moment,” says Carol Frohlinger, attorney and author of Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success. “Before going to human resources, have a frank conversation with the person making you uncomfortable.

“Be clear on what behavior is harassing and that you don’t like it. As long as he doesn’t repeatedly refuse to negotiate like saying, ‘You’re so premenstrual’ and walking away,’ ” Frohlinger said, “you should negotiate things for yourself.”

As in any important negotiating session Frohlinger advises that you assess your “best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” or BATNA. Your BATNA is probably to leave the company. But you should let your opponent feel that your BATNA is to go to human resources. Because no matter how arrogant he is, he will not be happy about being dragged into a ‘he said-she said’ mess before the human resources department.

When you negotiate, aim high: If your harasser is your boss, ask for help to switch departments, and ask to go to a better department with a top manager. It’s in your harasser’s interest to help you. Or, if a co-worker is harassing you, make sure the co-worker appreciates that you handled things yourself. You save the co-worker a lot of problems by not reporting him.These are ways to decrease the chances of retribution while squelching the harassing behavior.

If the harasser will not negotiate with you, assess your power versus his. “Sexual harassment is more about the balance of power than what has been said,” advises Weliky.

When Kate, a high-powered New York City lawyer, was young and working with a managing director, she recalled an incident in which he asked her to “bring the papers by my hotel room, and don’t worry if I’m only wearing a towel.”

She thought the comment was ludicrous and told the whole office. “I could do that because I was on my way up in that firm, and he was doing poorly,” she said. “He didn’t have a lot of ways to make my life difficult. In fact, someone told his wife and she bawled him out in front of his co-workers.”

A great situation, but most of you cannot depend on your harasser’s wife for vigilante law enforcement. If the balance of power is not in your favor, and you get nowhere negotiating, find a new job and leave the offending company–in that order–because it’s always easier to find a job when you have a job, even if you hate the job you have.

There is plenty to do in this world that does not require you to work in companies that enable a boys’ club atmosphere. There are a lot of men who feel alienated in this atmosphere too.

Find those men and work with them. Then get a lot of power in your career and create a workplace culture you believe in.

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Knowing when to make your move

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Just because you’re adamant about making sure you have a personal life doesn't mean you can't be top in your field. Top is different today than it was even ten years ago. Top doesn't mean climbing a ladder to make the most money. Top means having influence in discussions that matter to you, and having interesting problems to solve.

How do you get that? One way is by making a move when you can't get any further on the path you're going. A good example of this is Billy Cunningham, medical professor at UCLA. He made a name for himself by documenting that upper-middle-class people of color in the United States were 37 percent more likely to have poor health than upper-middle-class whites, and by making revolutionary recommendations in front of Congress like dispensing medical information in church. His recommendations worked. But then he was faced with the question of what to do next.

“I thought about what is coming down the pipe where we might see the same disparities and can anticipate it and prevent those gaps from occurring. I also thought about what I could be the first to study. I started focusing on adherence to AIDS cocktails and then I realized I was late to the game because several others had started working on it before I did and they had laboratory expertise that I didn’t which would make it hard for me to compete.”

The topic he settled on was the AIDS vaccine. He was in a position to study ways to distribute it and to put himself in a position to be a key member of the community that launches the vaccine (when it is discovered) in South Africa, where the infection rate is as high as 50% in some populations.

Cunningham knows he wants to bring better medical treatement to minorities, but he knows the best way to make a difference is being the top in his field. He consciously plots to find a space that is open for him to rise to the top. You should be doing this too, in your career. This is how you have the most influence to ask important questions, seek meaningful answers, and make a difference in peoples’ lives.

Another good example of making a move is Alex Ohanian and Steve Huffman, who just sold their company, Reddit, to Conde Nast. When I interviewed them last February, they had received a buyout offer from Google, but they turned it down. At that point, Reddit was on an exciting and seemingly limitless path. Today, though, Reddit’s path as a stand alone company might be a dead end because Digg, their competitor, is now an industry standard, and Reddit is second fiddle. Taking the buyout offer now, from a premier publishing company with enthusiasm for building out Reddit, makes good sense for Ohanian and Huffman. After all, Ohanian told me, “We do this because it is fun and interesting.”

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