Meg Busse, Director of the Non-Profit Career Transitions Program for Idealist explains why you need to know what you're talking about, make it catchy, scour the social networks, and at least try to make personal contact with people if you want a job in the non-profit sector. Also, she is awesome.

Jed Sundwall: So, what are you doing in D.C.?

Meg Busse: There’s a conference here, called the National Career Development Association. It’s people who counsel other folks on careers, college counselors, campus career counselors, outplacement folks. I’m doing a presentation about it.

And what is your official title at Idealist?

It's wonderfully non-profity, long and winded. It’s the Director of the Non-Profit Career Transitions Program for Idealist. And what’s it about is I work with my colleague, Steve, to connect folks to non-profit careers. I work mostly with first time job seekers. He works mostly with sector switchers and retiring professionals, so to sort of cover the age spectrum. We do really similar work, just with different modes of outreach. I work mostly with campuses and community college students and sort of youth leadership groups, I guess.

And then, he works mostly with a whole different range of things. Through outplacement folks, there’s a lot of Baby Boomer groups that are cropping up to help folks who are looking to switch sectors, so whether they’re retiring or mid-career and they’re looking to get out of corporate or retiring but still looking for an "encore career," I think is one of the terms being used for it, but they want to have some different kind of career, some different type of work that does some sort of good. There’s a big interest in that right now.

And so, you have been working on a book, right?

It’s done, pretty exciting. It’s all free and online. Most of the stuff I deal with is not grant funded. It’s funded because of our job listings. It’s $60.00 to post a job on Idealist. That’s how most of our work’s funded, but Steve and I are funded through a grant to create a free online resource. We chose to do it online so it’s accessible to a lot of folks, and not just a dusty old book that sits on a shelf, but it’s downloadable in PDF, online. The URL is Idealist.org/careerguide. There’re two different versions, one for first time job seekers, and one for sector switchers which has different information that’s relevant to each age group.

I wanted to talk to you about the chapter about using the Internet and social media tools. Can you talk about that?

Yes. One of the things that we spend our presentations talking about is networking. And one caveat is we’re, obviously, an organization that’s based on an online website. We’re online, but we encourage as many folks as possible who are looking for non-profit jobs to get offline. Getting back to your question, non-profits tend to be more small town mentality. It’s that I know somebody who can do this, or I know a person who would be great for, and it’s that word of mouth referral that’s really key.

And a lot of that happens with the face-to-face meetings, but in order to facilitate a lot of those, there’s some really great tools online that we are huge, huge fans of. All of the social networking sites, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, you’re using them for kind of being proactive and deliberate in how they’re used, so that your Linked In might be a little more professional. Your Facebook might be a little more personal in recognizing where the lines are between those two spaces.

It happens more in D.C., I think, than it does in Portland, but there’s so many awesome events you can sign onto. I actually don’t know what it’s like down where you are, but you sign up for different events and so that sort of builds the events’ momentum because the more people who sign up for the event, the more it’s on people’s Facebook pages. My colleague, Jake, I just saw that he signed up for a Progressive Happy Hour 3.0 that’s happening on the 22nd, in D.C. And so, joining each of these networks gives you the opportunity to get that face-to-face connection, which is how people get jobs. And then, even once you’re in the sector, it’s how work gets done. I know somebody who’s with this organization who’s doing this. Let’s share resources, let’s apply for a grant together, let’s figure out how to work together on a particular project.

Right, I spent some time unemployed, living in D.C., and the number of awesome educational events like speeches and seminars you can go to is just staggering. Back in my day when I was doing that stuff (2003!), there was no easy follow-up afterwards. You might get a card and then, you send some kind of awkward e-mail. Being able to use social networks to keep tabs on everybody is really beneficial these days. So, you’re advocating like a hybrid approach, you have to get face to face and meet people in the flesh?

Definitely.

But, social networks really help sort of drive that home or maintain those relationships.

They totally do. A face-to-face meeting is not a substitute for the online networking. It’s more a substitute for the let me spend all day working on resumes and just shoot them off into Cyberspace to people who’ve never met me and don’t have any connection to me. It’s not a way to get a job in any sector, especially the non-profit sector. They’re hiring you for the skills you bring, definitely, but so much of it is org fit. I was just talking about this with one of my colleagues. I definitely wasn’t hired because I know anything of the non-profit sector, even though my main responsibility in the first year was to write a book about getting a job in the non-profit sector.

I was hired because I got along really well with my manager in Portland, who’s, oddly enough, from Jersey, too. I had a great interview. It was just a great org fit, and I had a lot of transferable skills, writing, presenting. Those are the scope that are harder to teach. So, I can learn content, but having that personal connection is so important. And the other piece of the networking we try to talk about is strategic networking. So, the blanket theory’s good and sort of accidental networking is fantastic. There are pieces you can be strategic about, so using LinkedIn to search for folks who are within particular organizations you’re interested in or searching for folks who want information on doing interviews.

It’s information gaining, so by the time you are applying for your dream job or a position with a really cool organization you’ve been interested in for a while, you have enough information so that you can sell yourself and not just say I want this job because "I want to do good." You can move beyond the, well I kind of want to work in a non-profit, which is where most people start and it’s great, to saying something like when asked, “Well, why do you want this job?” because that’s a question you’re asked in almost every interview.

You can answer, “Well, I’m really excited about doing work for an educational organization that is based locally, but has a national impact on policy.” That’s a better answer than just, “I want to do good.” And it helps the non-profit know that you’re clear on why you want that job and it’s not just that you want any job. So, I feel like the online resources help with that immeasurably.

It’s funny you say that because I’ve gone back to where I went to grad school and talked to people about getting jobs. The best advice I can give anybody is to talk to people who are doing stuff that they’re interested in. It’s like a total no-brainer. It sounds like a no-brainer, but the fact is a lot of people haven’t figured out how to articulate what kind of good they want to do, which is essential because you have to figure out what you’re really interested in. Forgive me because I’m just kind of repeating what you’re saying, but then, once you know really what you want to be strategic about, then you can go out and scour these networks, like you said, search LinkedIn and find people that are doing stuff you’re interested in and start the conversations. It’s so much easier than it ever was before.

Exactly, but that piece of knowing what you’re passionate about and what you’re interested in, I mean, nobody goes to look for a job in the non-profit sector saying, “I kind of want to work in corporate.” You’re a teacher, lawyer, politician, whatever, and politician doesn’t work because that’s government, but the roles are more clear. Folks go into the job search knowing what roles they want or what company they want to work for. And you don’t get that, “I want to work in a non-profit sector,” as much, which I think is where that piece of narrowing down your passion and figuring out what it is you’re interested in.

Not only do you have to know what you’re passionate about, in order to articulate it clearly to somebody who’s interviewing you. It’s your best selling point to be able to say here is why I want the job, here is what I’ll be able to do in this position and here’s honestly why I’m going to stick around for long work weeks, probably less pay than I could make anywhere else. It’s that story piece that will get you the job.

This is slightly unrelated, have you heard of the book, “When Bad Presentations Happen To Good Causes?”

No.

It’s freaking awesome. So, there’s this guy, Andy Goodman. I am so infatuated with his stuff. I saw him at a presentation in San Francisco last week. He did sort of a lunchtime keynote. He worked with Al Gore on “The Inconvenient Truth,” and he does a lot of consulting. He only works with non-profits, and it’s consulting around presentations. He’s also got a publication called, I think, “When Bad Ads Happen To Good Causes.” But, it’s all around non-profits.

There’s a little clip from one of his presentations called “Bore No More” (link) And it’s about the way non-profits drone on and on and on about mission and here are the deliverables, rather than just telling their story. And that storytelling piece, so he’s hosting a whole series of slightly expensive workshops on storytelling, presentation and communications. So much of it comes down to figuring out, and I think this is both for non-profits and job seekers, figuring out what the heart of the story is, what is the story you’re trying to tell?

Non-profits aren’t going to hire you because you’ve got an impressive resume. They’re going to hire you because of that story you can tell about why you want to be there and why you’re going to stay with them. Organizations aren’t going to get money and folks to be passionate about the organization by talking about here are the quotas we met and here are the statistics. They’re going to get all of the funding and the folks who are excited about their work because individuals they help and the work they’re doing.

So, anyway, this goes back to slightly a technology piece, looking at how to tell your story more clearly and being able to hone down your job search in that way. And I think that talking to more people, informational interviews or whatever through strategic networking is a way of doing that. And the storytelling piece, also, and how to convey it online is another thing that is not really related to what we’re talking about, but is just fascinating these days with how online technology can convey those stories, with Power Points, web portals or social networking cause sites. And moving beyond here’s our mission, here’s our title, here’s a picture of a cute kid, and finding new ways to convey that information.

On that, do you have any good ways you can mention, any best practices or things to avoid that you guys have been able to outline?

I don’t know about stuff we’ve been able to outline. Some of the general best practices are going back to the beginning and not getting too caught up in words. I just had lunch with somebody who is working for an organization that supports Hispanics in D.C. to try to find jobs and try to create resources to strengthen the Hispanic community. She told me the name of her organization three times, unfortunately, and it’s like eight words long. Their mission statement is two paragraphs. It’s not an elevator pitch. It’s not something you can say quickly. And in an era of short attention spans, lots of networking and lots of meetings, it seems that figuring out a way to say the important pieces of what you do is pretty key to let a cause or mission or an organization gather momentum and get past the rounds, which, I guess, the ultimate ideal is that word of mouth. But, in order for it to be word of mouth, it has to be repeatable and not just something that is spewed off a page.

Right, it should pass the telephone game test or something like that. Pass it around and it doesn’t get completely distorted.

Exactly. There’s this guy who you are just going to get along famously with, aside from him having tons of really cool stuff to tell you about the tech stuff we’re doing. His name’s Scott Stadum and he’s living in Buenos Aires and working in our office. He’s in D.C. for a couple weeks working here. We were just talking about the idea of shared spaces and open space. He’s so on top of all of this. It’s sort of a wiki model, sort of looking at the strength of the community as being the strongest asset any organization has, and trying to figure out what that looks like for Idealist. It looks like a lot of different things, but one of the pieces is helping our users become our strongest advocates. So, utilizing the collective experience and expertise of all of these folks, who may not be the go-to leaders ostensibly, but who have these really important pieces they can contribute to our work, to our website, to strengthen the sector, to all of these different pieces we’re working to do. Going back to the way organizations can more clearly convey their mission and tell their story, it has to be useable and repeatable and able to be internalized by the users, the supporters, otherwise, it’s just a lot of words.

It’s interesting how the Internet really compels us to shorten our messages. It’s weird because on one hand, it allows anybody to tell very elaborate stories with very rich media and blah, blah, blah. But, for the most part, when people are poking around, especially interacting on social networking sites, everything has to come in really short bursts. You talk to anybody who’s familiar with search engine optimization, like the title of a page and the description of a page, there are little snippets or like a Twitter tweet. You’re really limited in the number of characters that you can use. It seems like learning how to distill yourself as a job seeker, what you offer in a very brief phrase is priceless. And more than that, it’s just necessary.

Definitely, and it takes that elevator pitch to a whole new level. It’s not a package deal, it’s not your elevator pitch, your resume and cover letter. It’s really that twitter of how you can, I think distill is a good word, distill yourself down to really bite-sized but catchy. And not in a sort of flash in the pan kind of way, but resonating and catchy, in a way that resonates with somebody who will be listening to you. Again, that works for the job seeker, or it’s important for the job seeker for the organization, for anybody who’s looking to have some sort of connection with the folks they’re talking to.

There’s a group that does surveys of folks who are leaving, undergrad, joining MBA programs. They’re looking for some sort of career that gives back to the common good or a career with meaning. It’s often ranking higher than salary. Folks’ ultimate choices may not reflect that. They may choose a higher salary over an organization that really does something they’re passionate about. There are all these factors, but student debt is a huge, huge obstacle to non-profit careers. It’s really exciting to see and that’s with students, folks who are switching sectors, leaving corporate and trying to find another way to live their life, making sure their work isn’t a separate entity and that it clashes with values. And folks who are retiring and realizing I’ve got 10, 20 years of work in me and I really want to do something that I can feel good about at the end of the day. I think all of these pieces are an exciting trend that’s gaining momentum, and so, connecting folks with these resources is pretty exciting.