Tips for Student Designers and the Small Businesses Who Love Them: OrangeSlyce Life

It’s that time again.  Time to buy all of your textbooks, start getting up early, and prepare yourself to actually do well this semester.  But let’s be honest, after about oh I don’t know say the first week the newness and excitement of a fresh semester wears off and keeping up with our assignments is a slippery slope.  So what can we do to make Dean’s List this semester?  Well, this is what I’m doing:

1.)   Write Everything Down!  I know I’m a broken record if you read my blog “College Got you Stressed? Five Tips to Help You Relax” but seriously this does help.  I detest having to open the PDF of the course syllabus, scan through the various sections and finally (after five minutes) find what’s due the next day.  If you write down all of the assignments in a planner, you can simply flip to a page and see what’s due in seconds.  It really is a beautiful thing!

2.)   Highlight Your Text Book!  I’m going to tell you what no professor ever will: taking notes is a waste of time, paper, and effort; all you really need to do is highlight important information.   Highlighting is so much more practical because then you don’t have to worry about losing your notes or finding them on your computer if you type them.  Give it a try, I promise you’ll never go back to note taking again.

3.)   Go to Class!  I know you hear this ALL the time, but do you actually listen to it is the real question?  Probably not.  I know how it is, when no one is making you (Ahem, your mother) and in a lecture when there really aren’t a lot of consequences if you do skip, temptation to ditch is high.  My advice?  Take classes with friends (or better yet make a friend in your class).  In my own experience, I am much more likely to attend a class if I have a buddy to suffer through with…I mean learn with!

4.)   Don’t Over Do it!  Last semester I enrolled in a whopping 21 credits!  I know; I have no idea what I was thinking, but regardless learn from my mistake.  If you are taking a class that seems unnecessary and is extra drop it!  If there is no immediate value from taking the class then don’t bother.  Why solicit the extra stress?

5.)   Take Breaks!  You know how nutritionists preach everything in moderation?  Well the same rule applies to school.  Make sure you’re studying and doing your assignments but also plan time away from the books and away from work to do things for fun.  Ultimately, if you are working hard and doing all that you can for your classes your grades will reflect that.  So go ahead, take a break.

What do you do to succeed in school?  Let me know.  Leave me a comment

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Part of freelance work is flexibility and being able to negotiate the price you charge your client will broaden your opportunities.  However, when going into a price or salary negotiation, it is important to know about what you’re negotiating so you don’t get taken advantage of.

Do your market research
Finding out what the going rate for similar work or jobs should be your first task.  Using the salary wizard at Salary.com, I was able to find the median salary for a junior web designer in Phoenix, AZ was $48,000.  Another research tip is to find other artists and designers and ask what they charge.  Ask how flexible they can be on price.  Get an idea of where you can fit in the market.

Negotiating tactics
Negotiation is an art itself.  Good negotiators are hard to come by so even if all you learn is how to haggle, you’ll have come away from this post with something.

Price is nothing more than a mind trick in most cases.  This is articulated by the phenomenon known as the Anchoring Effect.  I definitely recommend reading the article in depth, but to summarize, whoever names the first price is in the driver’s seat.  No matter how much you negotiate, the first price quoted is the price both parties will subconsciously use to determine who got the better end of the bargain.

Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You To Be Rich, has excellent posts on how to negotiate – everything from negotiating bank fees, car insurance, cell phones and most importantly – salary.

And to completely round out your negotiating skills, learn from the masters of the art, the ultimate hagglers – rickshaw drivers.

Improve your skills
Using the market research you’ve collected and the negotiating skills you’ve learned, you can increase your income, but there’s nothing like a quality education that will boost your earnings potential.  Having a degree or certification is a key bargaining tool that you can use during your negotiation process and no amount of jedi mind tricks will have the same effect as a degree.

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Yesterday, we posted a tidy little piece on networking.  That piece was, of course, only scraping the surface of what we hope will eventually become a networking guide from which every member of the OrangeSlyce community can benefit.   Today, we’re talking about the aspect of networking that stops the painfully shy dead in their tracks: introducing yourself.

We called this post networking for introverts for one big reason: introducing yourself is obviously a much more daunting task for the painfully shy.  But, as we said yesterday, it’s a step that even the painfully shy can easily overcome with a little work and a lot of willpower.  If you find your palms getting clammy and your throat swelling up every time you’re at a mixer, here are a few handy tips you can follow to overcome yourself.

1) Think of other people as friends

One thing that makes it hard to break the ice is that you don’t know how well you’ll be received by the other person.  People tend to be very tribal by instinct, and it can be hard to just walk up to a person from an unfamiliar “tribe” (this, by the way, is also why you sometimes find yourself occasionally hating on groups of people you don’t even know when you’re out in public).  When it comes to approaching these people, you worry (on some level) that your encroachment won’t be well-received, that the other person will be annoyed by your presence (or worse).  If you start worrying about this, ask yourself: why?  Are you ever deeply bothered by a person introducing themselves to you?  Of course not; the other person will almost certainly enjoy the company.

Remember that networking is mutually beneficial.  Just about any person that’s worth networking with will at least spare you a smile and a business card if you introduce themselves to you–they have nothing to gain by not being friendly and everything to lose.  Because of this, the people you want to network with are, to borrow a phrase, just friends you haven’t met.  Don’t be afraid to go meet them.

2) Realize that a lot of the other people in the room are just as nervous as you are

This study by Lauren Bryant at Indiana University suggests that about 40% of adults feel shy.  Keep in mind the fact that surveys almost always under-report undesirable qualities (in other words: some people are too shy to admit that they’re shy) and it’s feasible that around half of the adult population is shy.  Chances are there are that a lot of the people you might network in are in the exact same boat that you are.  Wouldn’t you like it if someone kind walked up to you and took the first step?  Imagine how endearing that would be to you when you’re trying to work up the nerve to introduce yourself, and then be that person for someone else in the room.

3) Have some open-ended questions prepared in advance

Another thing people often worry about when networking is making conversation.  “What happens” you wonder “if I introoduce myself and then we have nothing to talk about?  Awwwwkwaaaaaard!”  Fortunate ly, first impressions rarely require you to hold intimate conversations.  All you’re really trying to do is show the other person that you’re interested in getting to know them better (and not just using them as a means to an end–this is an important point that deserve its own post) and taking the steps necessary to do that.  As such, it’s important that you have a few questions to ask them.  These questions should not be yes or no; you want to bring the other person out of their shell a little bit.  Don’t just ask the person what she does, ask her how she got into it, ask her what she did before that. If you ask her if she likes doing what she does, follow that question up with “what do you love (or hate) about it?”

4) Smile!

Sorry, we know it’s cheesy, but a good smile is important.  Smiling is your way of telling someone from a rival “tribe” that you’re not a threat.  It’s also very hard not to smile back when somebody smiles at you, which is good, because it will be a lot easier for you to approach someone when they’re smiling too.  Stay professional, but be friendly (and, as we said yesterday, be yourself) and you’ll be well on your way to being the networker you want to be.

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One thing that we hate to hear people say is “I just don’t have the personality to be a good networker”  Perhaps it’s because we’ve had our own bouts with shyness, but it drives us crazy to see people resign themselves to failure without even trying to overcome their shortcomings.  We love every last person who’s kind enough to follow our writings, so consider this tough love: saying you can’t be a good networker is almost always an excuse people use because they’re too afraid and too lazy to try.  Here’s another harsh truth: no matter what job you hope to get or what business you’re trying to get off the ground, you’re not in good shape if you aren’t willing to network.  Fortunately, there’s one more truth: great networking is not about being the most outgoing guy or girl in the room.

In truth, great networking has surprisingly little to do with being extroverted.  Sure, it’s a lot harder to take the first step in networking (reaching out to a person and introducing yourself) if you’re naturally shy.  But, unless you’re suffering from a legitimate psychological condition, reaching out to a person is still a hurdle that can easily be cleared.  As with most things, great networking is not about how you star; it’s about how you finish.

We recently read an excellent post on networking by Amanda Collins over at The Grammar Doctors.  While the whole piece is worth your time, there was one part in particular that stuck out to us:

The likelihood that you’ll score a client or referral partner after attending anything once is pretty low. You need to continue making an appearance, connecting with people, and being consistent. Be patient. It may take a number of weeks or months to create relationships and generate sales.

Ultimately, networking is about that creation of relationships.  The first impression is important, but relationships aren’t built on the first impression nearly as much as the second and third and fourth impressions.  Because of that, great networking is about following up on that first impression.  It’s about showing the other person how ambitious you are, and how serious you are about business.  Perhaps more importantly, it’s about letting the other person get to know you, and trust you, and like you.  You don’t have to be extroverted to do any of these things.  Ultimately, all you should really have to be is yourself (unless you’re lazy or sociopathic).  In the coming weeks, we’ll be putting up a few posts that will help you build a network by introducing people to the great person you know you are.

In the meantime, if that ending was a little too sweet for you, please feel free to cleanse the palate with this stock footage of atomic bomb testings:

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Our product lives and dies by its user base.  We’ve told people this before, but what makes us love our job (and our product) is the great community of users that we get to help build.  If we’re going to be successful it will be because of the great students who signed up to get work done.  With that in mind, today we’d like to draw some attention to one of the students who makes the OrangeSlyce community great.

Our first ever Student Spotlight is shining on Elizabeth Rice, a multitalented student at Arizona State University whose interests include Design Management, Film and Media Analysis.  Elizabeth has received gushing praise from pretty much every business that she’s done work for, which made her an obvious choice for our spotlight.  Ms. Rice took some time out of her packed schedule to answer a few quick questions for us.  After we completed the formalities, here’s how our interview went:

OS:   Going to jump right in here: what got you into Design Management, Film and Media? 

ER: I’m a very visual person so naturally I ended up in ASU’s College of Design (now the Herberger Institute for the Arts and Design).   I started down the path of interior design but not having a clear idea of what I wanted to do in terms of a career lead me to taking more business classes so I ended up in Design Management, which essentially married the two. 

Film was something I explored as an extension of loving movies and having an interest in the film industry and my second minor in Media Analysis actually became an interest of mine after interning for a semester with a local magazine.

OS: Very cool.  How’d you become interested in OrangeSlyce?

ER: Twitter!  Believe it or not OrangeSlyce started following me on Twitter so I looked at your twitter profile, checked out your website, liked what I saw, and the rest is history.

OS: And that history has included a great run of freelance work.  What advice would you have for someone thinking about getting into freelancing?

ER: My advice:  go for it!  Freelance work or project work is a great change to test out a new field, make connections, build your resume and overall see what types of work is available and figure out what you enjoy doing.

OS: Excellent advice.  Let’s talk a little more about your freelancing career, though.  To this point, what’s your crowning achievement?  Why?

ER: Honestly, any professional goal that I can check off my career development list is a crowning achievement to me.  Every job/internship I’ve had has come with crowning achievement moments but the achievements that I feel have been particularly crown worthy are those when I was presented with a new and often difficult project and accomplished it with a high level of success.

OS: That’s good to hear, because our next question is “do you love what you do?”

ER: Of course!  I have to love what I do because that is ultimately what makes it more fulfilling but also what makes me more successful at my job.  If I hated what I was doing I would change gears and pursue my career goals elsewhere. 

OS: Here’s an open forum to address all of our users.  If you could pick one thing to tell our other freelancers, what would you tell them?

ER:  Can I tell them two things?

OS: For you, Elizabeth, anything

ER: Thanks!  Here’s what I’d tell them:

First, take on as many internships/freelance work as you can.  Nothing has been more rewarding to me than actually working in the industries I enjoy and am studying and nothing has given me better insight pertaining to my own career planning.  We all think we know exactly what we want but the truth is you really can’t know what you want until you explore all of your options.  That’s what’s great about OrangeSlyce it gives you a chance to see what’s out there career-wise. 

The second thing we’d tell them, is to weigh your options and narrow your scope.  This is basically an extension of the above but after completing an internship or freelance project, reflect on what you’ve learned, what you liked and didn’t like and then decide if that kind of work is something you enjoy and would like to pursue.  Also, know that it is perfectly okay if you decide that a career path isn’t right for you.

OS: We’re glad we let you have the two things.  Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions, Elizabeth!

ER: Thanks! It was a lot of fun!

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When am I ever going to need to know ____ when I get into the real world?”  We don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that virtually every student asks this question–at least silently–at some point during their studies.  The funny thing is that the question does not exactly lose its relevance in college.  With the exception of trade schools, very few college degree programs prepare a student directly for the job which that  student will eventually take after graduation.  In spite of this,  countlessentry-level jobs–many of which lack a single function that isn’t covered in the on-the-job training–require a college degree.

Why do employers make such a big deal out of college degrees?  The answer, to be brief, is information.  A person making a hiring decision faces the task of taking dozens (or, in the current economy, sometimes thousands) of applications and determining a best fit.  This job is made especially difficult when you consider that every single applicant has the ability to filter the  information that the employer gets (and the incentive to ensure that the employer gets a “positive” spin rather than an objective assesment of the applicant’s abilities).  Facing this insurmountable task, hiring managers do the most sensible thing possible: they play the averages.  Your college degree might not be in making widgets, but a person reveiewing your application knows that–holding everything else equal–a person with a college degree is more likely to be trainable, hard-working, and capable of working within the system than a person without a degree.  Given this, a hiring manager has an incentive to ALWAYS prefer a person with a college degree over a non-degree holder (provided their qualifications are otherwise similar).  Thus, your degree is valuable not merely because of what it taught you but because of the “signal” that it sends to employers

The problem is that this incentive structure has spiraled out of control faster than a political debate between Megatron and Optimus Prime In response to this action by employers, job-seekers are given an increasingly large incentive to attend (and graduate college) until, eventually, the value of a diploma’s “signal” is minimal.  When hiring managers are faced with a large pool of applicants who ALL have college degrees, they must look elsewhere for information.

The easiest source of distinguishing information for employers to use is employment history.  Even for an entry-level job–and even with work having nothing to do with the job or even the industry–work experience tells an employer that an applicant is capable of completing tasks and (at minimum) of not doing something stupid enough to warrant termination.

The problem for college students, of course, is that it’s hard to juggle work and school.  In the current economy, it’s difficult to find any job, much less a job that can be balanced with a demanding schedule of classes and homework.  The most obvious solution, if we may be so bold, is freelance work.  Freelance work allows a student to accrue work experience (and a good number of references)  without committing to a work “schedule” that may conflict with classes (or studying for exams).  It’s important to remember that freelancing isn’t just for coders, either. Our believe in the product we market goes hand-in-hand with our belief that college students have a wide variety of skills to share with the market.  Students working on Liberal Arts degrees have finely tuned writing skills that are perfect for a small business looking for somebody to maintain a blog marketing the company.  Business students may not have completed their degrees, but by their junior year many of them have the rudimentary comfort level with accounting or finance principles necessary to provide meaningful help to a small business owner who needs basic help.  Social science students are trained to understand how to avoid biasing survey results; a skill that’s more than a little valuable for a small business looking to gather information about their consumers’ needs.  Even the computer skills that some college students may consider “basic” (proficiency in Excel and Word, for example) can be extremely valuable to a small business owner who has a great product but limited tech savvy.  By putting those skills to use, students can give themselves a meaningful edge when they enter the full-time job market.

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