This photo is of an event that occurred not directly through one of the events scheduled on our trip, but rather as we were walking back from NBCUniversal to our hotel on the streets of New York. A couple of members of the group we were walking with excitedly noticed that Tim Gunn was standing a few feet away on the street, and was apparently interviewing people with a camera crew. As they walked over to see if they could be interviewed, the producer said that they could, but that they were currently interested in getting a few guys to do one as well. Being the only guy in the group at the time, I was urged to step up and did. I told the producer that first, I did not even really know who Tim Gunn was outside of seeing a few TV commercials with him on them, and second, if this interview was going to be about fashion as I assumed it would be then I would have very little value to add. I was told instead that Mr. Gunn had written a book recently about mentoring and effective teaching and guidance, and that these interviews were simply questions relating to those topics.
As he asked me about what I thought made a good mentor, and if I had experience with mentors in my life, I answered the questions as best as I could. But afterwards, I applied it to one of the lessons that we had learned on this trip. Although it may seem like all that matters at this stage is getting a job or getting an internship, so it is tempting to simply take the first decent offer you get, many of our speakers urged us to turn the tables on the job search and focus more on what organization is best for us. A large part of that comes from organizational culture, and a willingness to empower and invest in their employees, even at the lower levels and entry level positions that we will most likely start in. I thought about the importance of having a mentor, someone that cares about you and your career path and is there to help, and realized that this is exactly a criteria to judge organizations on – is the environment one where you could see a more experienced employee reaching out to help guide you, potentially as a mentor, or is it every man for themselves? I think if you can answer yes to the former, that qualifies that organization as one that is worth working at and potentially a good fit, and I think Tim Gunn would agree.
This trip allowed us to hear from some professionals with tremendous experience and insight at a number of prominent companies and organizations, and I think one of the biggest takeaways of their advice at the end of the day is to remember that chasing a job at one of the “big” name companies simply to work there may seem like a good idea during the application and search process, but its extremely important to think about your long-term career and how best to set you up for success beyond just your 20s. And finding a place with the right organizational culture, perhaps one where you could see yourself finding a mentor, is something that needs to be highly considered for the good of your long-term career.
-Daniel Abend