Amber Portwood, who famously beat up her boyfriend on MTV’s Teen Mom and subsequently lost custody of her kid, is now dating a tattoo artist she met when he was interning at the tattoo parlor where she got inked. I didn’t really know that tattoo parlors needed interns – I’m going to guess that this was more of an apprenticeship, since the dude now works as a tattoo artist, rather than like a “answer the phone and factcheck all the tats” kind of internship. Also, he apparently was not responsible for the tattoo Amber got of her daughter Leah’s face (pictured, of course), so that’s something in the positive column for him.
Archive for the 'Interview' Category
Ever wondered how they pick the people who end up on reality shows? Phil Wallace, a recent USC business school graduate, independent sports consultant, and founder of AwardsPicks.com (also, full disclosure: he’s my cousin), made it through several audition rounds for the next season of The Apprentice. After doing several celebrity seasons, the show is returning to its regular-people format next year and will focus on people who have been affected by the recession. Phil sat down with STA and talked about his experience auditioning for the show.
- I heard about the show from a couple of people, and someone contacted me about auditioning. The Apprentice is totally my guilty pleasure TV – I watch the regular and celebrity editions, and I always thought I could do really well on the show. I spoke to a casting agent on the phone for ten or fifteen minutes – she asked about my work history and my salary history. She told me that I could either do a home video or an in-person interview next, so I decided to do the in-person tryout. It was at a hotel in L.A. near Universal. She told me she would put me on a VIP list so I wouldn’t have to stand in line. She also said that I was trying too hard to impress her and to remember it’s a recession-themed show, so you need a downtrodden story.
- LA was the fifth city they did auditions in. One of the other cities was Detroit, so I am pretty sure they wanted a laid-off autoworker. They also did New York, Atlanta, and Las Vegas.
- The application was pretty short, just one page. It asked for work and salary history, and a proudest accomplishment. There was also a part where they asked you to tell something embarrassing about yourself. It also asked why you thought you would make a good Apprentice.
- I got there at 7:30 AM, and auditions were supposed to start at nine. The line was down the street. I’d guess there were 400-500 people there. There were people who had camped out overnight or arrived early in the morning. Because I was on the list they moved me to the front of the line. I was with some people who arrived at 5 AM. There were a bunch of people in the VIP group from Pink Slip Mixers – they’re a networking group for people who just got laid off. Most of the people in my group were from Pink Slip Mixers.
- I was in a room with six other people. They had us fill out our applications in advance, so you handed the application to a casting agent, who then put you in a boardroom-type setting. The agent’s name was Gina. She sat on the other side of table from us, and asked, “Why are we in a recession?” Everyone started talking over each other. No one was moderating. It was a mess. Because our group was all from the VIP group, people who really wanted to be on the show, it was insane. Everyone recognized they needed to speak up and everyone realized they needed to shine, so it was bound to be just a giant shouting match.
- It was six of us guys and one woman. She has her own online talk show, and was able to take control of the room a couple of times. There were moments where one person talked and everyone listened and some where we [informally] split into smaller groups of three or four and just talked with the people near us. We naturally retreated a little bit and talked to people who were sitting close by, since we were all talking over each other. One guy decided to be “the questioner,” so he just started to ask questions. It actually really helped, because we were disorganized. The casting agent ignored us and read our applications the whole time.
- Most of the people were middle-aged. One guy was in his 30s and had been a franchisee for a fast-food chain and said he just got a job at McDonald’s. I don’t know if he meant managing another franchise or flipping burgers. He and I went back and forth a bit because he wanted to blame the recession on Bill Clinton and I wanted to blame it on Goldman Sachs.
- This went on for about 20 minutes. Then Gina stopped us and asked some people who they would fire and some who they would hire. The Clinton guy said he would fire me. She asked why, and he said “I didn’t like his points.” She asked which points, and he finally admitted he couldn’t remember. When it was my turn, I said I wouldn’t fire the other guy just because we disagreed politically. I was sort of trying to defend myself in case the casting agent actually thought there was legitimacy to the other guy wanting to fire me. I said I would fire a guy who was also named Phil because there couldn’t be two Phils on the show. In seriousness, though, I said that he was the guy who had a lot of experience – probably the most experience, he had been a VP of Operations somewhere – but didn’t speak up that much.
- Gina wrote some numbers on our applications and said she’d call within the week if we were chosen for an individual interview. I never got a call, so that was the end of that.
Career advisor Ellen Gordon Reeves is the author of Can I Wear My Nose Ring to the Interview?: A Crash Course to Finding, Landing, and Keeping Your First Real Job. The book is a helpful, funny, and not-at-all-condescending guide for people just out of college who are looking for their first grownup job. The questions in the book came from actual recent grads who consulted Reeves for help. If you want to ask her a question not covered in this interview, you can email her at caniwearmynosering@gmail.com. PLUS, we have four copies of her book to give away, so check back tomorrow for more info.
What do you think today’s college grads and people entering the workforce are the most afraid of? What do you think are their best assets?
I don’t know if they’re more afraid that they won’t get a job, or that because of the economy, that they’ll have to take a job they don’t want or stay in one they don’t like for longer than they’d like. I find that most young people are afraid of their lack of experience. But you’ve got to focus on what you do know and the skills and experience you do have, not what you don’t have. I want today’s grads to feel valuable, not vulnerable. We don’t expect you to have decades of professional experience; you can’t have that at your age, and we know that – that’s why we can hire you inexpensively. Don’t tell your mother I said this, but you’re cheap! Your assets? Recent grads are perceived as creative, tech savvy, flexible, adaptable, willing to work hard, energetic and full of stamina, and stereotypically bound by fewer family commitments than older employees with spouses and children. So if you can convince an employer that you’re smart and articulate, ready to take initiative but also to defer to authority, and that you can not only be a great assistant but do some of the thinking and work left in the void created by more senior people who have been laid off, you’re golden.
Are there certain universal questions/concerns that everyone has when they start their first job? Or do these things change with time and the economy?
When you start a new job any time, you’re understandably nervous because it’s new and you’ve got to adapt to and/or create a whole new routine. You want to please people and do a good job, but you feel infantilized because you don’t know anyone and don’t know how to do anything and are totally reliant on others at the beginning. You don’t know where the bathrooms are or how to use the Xerox machine. You don’t know how to order supplies or how to lock up if you’re the last one in the office. This can do a number on your self-confidence but don’t let it. Then there’s the high school cafeteria lunch dilemma. You don’t want to eat alone but you don’t know anyone and everyone is pairing up as if Noah’s Ark had just docked in front of the building. Wait and watch.
This year, younger people are worried that they are competing with older people in a tight job market. The threat of the guillotine hangs in the air. That’s why it’s so important to present yourself as professionally and with as much maturity as possible. In this economy, the pressure is on to be really good at what you do, to make yourself as indispensable as possible so you don’t get canned if there’s another round of layoffs.
If you could only give someone one piece of advice from your book, what would it be?
Liz Funk is the author of Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crisis of Overachieving Girls. Her book deals with the pressures many women and girls face to be ‘perfect’ at everything, often to their own personal detriment. She very kindly agreed to answer some questions from me about how this concept applies to the workplace.
STA: Do you think that, despite many laws and other concentrated efforts for gender equality, women are treated differently in the workplace?
LF: Absolutely. At each and every level, there are different standards and expectations for women. The most frequently echoed frustration that I heard from young women working on the job search and starting in their career track is not knowing what to do with their femininity, and trying to strike a balance between being cute and pretty and being competent. There is also a tendency to view women supervisors as mother figures, and we hold women in the office to a certain standard of niceness, and there’s a real trickle-down effect that compels many women at work to sugar-coat things.
STA: What particular goals, pressures, and ideas do women bring into the office?
LF: I personally feel that femininity is a great tool. As a whole, women are very intuitive and they’re natural negotiators. Powerful women aren’t always bulls the way powerful men frequently are, and I think women are better at meeting people where they’re at and finding common ground. Also, something that I’ve overwhelmingly noticed is that girls are much better at impressing others in workplace and having career common-sense, and I think they’re much less overentitled than guys (which is something that is scarcely brought-up in this “Gen Y overentitlement” media brouhaha).
STA: Where do you think this notion of “women must be perfect” come from?
Alexandra Levit is the author of “How’d You Score That Gig?,” a career advice book aimed at young people. In the book, she has you take a personality test that assesses where your strengths and passions lie (are you The Nurturer? The Investigator? The Adventurer?) and then gives helpful, concrete advice about potential ‘dream’ career paths and how to pursue them. She spoke with STA about following your dreams, why people get stuck in jobs they hate, and how to cope with unsupportive parents.
STA: When I took your personality test, I was a tie between two different ‘types.’ Which one should I go with?
AL: All of us have many different facets to our work personalities, so it’s not unusual that you would score highly in two passion profiles. I too, am a mixture of creator and networker, which suits the two arms of my career – author and marketing executive. The self-assessment quiz at the beginning of the book is really just meant to open your eyes to a variety of career possibilities that you might not have considered otherwise.
STA: Why is it that so many people compromise their dreams and end up in a job they don’t care about?
AL: People stay in unsatisfying jobs because they feel safe and because they’re afraid of making a bad decision. It’s the easier path, even if it compromises your happiness in the long run.
STA: What are some of the difficulties that come with switching industries mid-career? How can you resolve those difficulties?
Megan Hustad’s new book How to Be Useful does a great service to all job-seekers. A fan of “success literature” and self-help books, she goes through fifty years’ worth of job advice and pulls out the most useful parts. In addition to giving you tips you can actually use, Hustad analyzes the genre of career advice books and looks at what these books tell us about our lives, our culture, and the way we percieve ourselves as workers. She agreed (politely, of course) to answer a couple of questions from us. (She also agreed to donate some copies that we can give away to you guys, so stay tuned for an upcoming contest.)
STA: How long were you an assistant?
MH: I was an editorial assistant at Vintage Books (and the Knopf Group, more generally) for two plus years. No promotion prospects there, so I made a lateral move to another company, where I toiled as an “assistant editor” for another year plus before becoming full editor.
STA: What mistakes do you see assistants make?
MH: A lot of assistants know, deep down, that they’re the hamsters of the organization. By which I mean, management’s attitude is often “Well, if this one doesn’t work out, or dies — no worries. We’ll get another one and no one will know the difference.” Assistants are eminently replaceable. Say I walked off the Vintage job during my lunch hour — they could have filled my spot with someone equally capable, if not more so, by the end of the day.
The problem for assistants then becomes: How to deal with this cold, hard fact? When people are lined up around the block for your job? That’s where the big mistakes come in. It’s a mistake to try to gain advantage by making sure your superiors feel how unique and brilliant you are. Trying to dazzle the boss…just rarely works out well.
Alexander Kjerulf runs the website Positive Sharing and is the author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5: Learn How to Love Your Job, Create a Great Business, and Kick Butt at Work. He also has the best job title ever: Chief Happiness Officer. He kindly agreed to sit down and share some of his infinite wisdom with us.
STA: How does one get a job as a “Chief Happiness Officer”? What did you do before that?
AK: This is the kind of job you have to make for yourself. I used to be an IT entrepreneur and the co-founder of a very happy IT company here in Copenhagen.
In 2003 I sold the company, and decided to focus exclusively on making people happy at work. I now do presentations and workshops all over the world, teaching employees how to get a happy work life and managers and executives how to create great workplaces.
STA: What would you say is the #1 reason why workers are unhappy?
AK: Bad management. All studies confirm this. One study showed that 75% of employees who leave a job do so at least in part because of their manager.
Management has improved vastly in the last 20 years or so, but too many companies still promote the wrong people and still let bad management continue unopposed.
STA: I think I’d be happy if I quit my job. But since I can’t do that, what should I do in the meantime?
Continue reading ‘the sta interview: alexander kjerulf’
A lot of us have bosses who think they’re royalty. So what do you do when your boss really is royalty? The Sunday Telegraph has a revealing interview with Liverpool native (that’s “Scouser,” if you’re British) Angela Kelly, whose official title is Personal Assistant, Adviser and Curator to Her Majesty the Queen. Angela, who has spent several decades working for Queen Elizabeth II, considers the queen not only a good boss but a good friend. From the interview:
“I would never overstep the mark and I remain in awe of the Queen. But she has allowed me to become closer to her over the years. We [the royal dressers] are not treated like flunkies. It’s not like that. The Queen treats us with real respect.
“I don’t know why the Queen seems fond of me – because I don’t give her an easy time! I do think she values my opinion, but she is the one who is in control. She always makes the final decision.
“We are two typical women. We discuss clothes, make-up, jewellery. We say, ‘Would this piece of jewellery look nice with that outfit?’, and things like that.”
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