5 lessons Manti Te’o will teach the world, whatever truth emerges

Across every social media outlet on the web pictures are being uploaded every other second of gorking students, office workers and even celebrities, with their arm around a whole lot of fresh air, captioned with ‘my girlfriend’ and hashtagged ‘Teoing’.

For the uninitiated (which by now should include a couple of Tibetan monks and a single penguin somewhere in Antarctica) Manti Te’o is a highly tipped American college football player, likely to join the NFL from Notre Dame University in the upcoming draft. Here is the short version of the hottest story in America right now. He said he had a girlfriend he met at a football game. He said they went to Hawaii together. He said she had leukemia  He said she died in a car accident in September. He told his college that he got a call from her three months later. Now he says they never actually met. He says it was an online relationship. He says the woman he knew probably never existed. He says he was duped.  The press say he was in on it from the start and that he knew the woman never existed. They say he created a fake girlfriend.

At time of writing it seems extremely unclear what actually happened. Whatever comes out in the wash, there are lessons for us all as professionals and as people.

Accept that hoaxes happen, and that it could happen to you.

If you’ve seen the movie Catfish, you’ll know that a pretty smart guy can be dragged a long way into a fake relationship before it even occurs to him to go back to where he started and ask the most obvious questions. Is this person real? Is the voice on the phone the person in the pictures online? Accepting that there are hoaxers with all sorts of motivations out there and that you are as likely to encounter one as anyone else is key to avoiding them. If Te’o is on the level and he is a victim, then he has some serious questions to ask himself. Don’t wait until it’s too late to run through your sanity checklist, whether it’s at home or at work.

Tell the right people

Confirmation bias is a dangerous thing. Using anything convenient to reinforce your belief, at the expense of more obvious evidence to the contrary  is harder to do if you’ve got some input from some people you trust. If Teo’s version is true and he has just been fooled, then you have to ask why none of his friends smelled a rat. Most likely because he hid it from them.

If you’re going to lie, lie good. Better still – don’t lie at all.

Whether it’s business or personal, we all know that the moment we start to lie we lay the first strand of what is likely to become a tangled web. I have yet to encounter a moment in my career when lying would have been the most sensible strategy. We’ve all exaggerated a tiny bit; we’ve all overpromised slightly; we’ve spun something a bit more than was reasonable. We’re not angels, but there’s a long leap from this to creating and maintaining an absolute falsehood. Every kids fable you ever heard is true. Your nose gets longer and longer as it becomes harder and harder to keep a lid on your original lie. You end up lying about more things. You end up lying to more people, all to cover up the lie you should never have told in the first place. Nothing makes us look more foolish than being caught in a lie. It’s so embarrassing. Embarrassment is going to be served to Mr Te’o for breakfast, lunch and dinner from now until lord knows when.

 It’s never too soon to start handling the fall out.

The strongest piece of evidence suggesting that Te’o has been fooled, and is the innocent idiot that he claims to be, is that he went to Notre Dame himself to tell them about the call from the voice he had recognized as belonging to the girl who was supposedly dead. It’s strange he would do that. If he had made her up, why would he not just leave it alone and move on? But he still waited three weeks to talk to his employer and the people who were responsible for keeping him on the pitch and out of the tabloid press. This was a serious misjudgment. It’s never too soon to take your problem to the person whose job is to fix it for you. Talk to your PR department early, talk to your lawyer early. Equip the people you trust with the ability to help you as soon as you can. Get out in front of it if you can, whatever it is.


Beware the internet. Still.

Don’t get complacent about the net. We’ve all been desensitized by fifteen years exposure to the world wide web. It’s safe now. It’s policed now. Everyone is meeting safely on line these days. Business is secure online. You know better than this. Some simple precautions will protect you from the world’s largest single collection of scroungers, scammers, spammers and other digital ne’er-do-wells. Surfing the web without protecting yourself is akin to walking down the most dangerous street in your city at 2.00am towing all of your cash behind you on a trolley. In this case, the web will offer two lessons. Firstly, it’s easy to get scammed. Secondly, if you make a fool of yourself, there will be nowhere to hide. Your story will be everywhere, and open to everyone.

Nobody is safe. Not at work, not in their personal life. As the new adage goes, and Te’o should mark this well, the internet is the only place where geeks bully football players.  

Richard Spragg writes about a number of issues related to social media, marketing, engineering jobs. Find out more about Talascend, about electrical engineering, about civil engineering and about mechanical engineering jobs from Our Website.  

Richard Branson’s going to Mars. Can you manage when he’s gone?

Branson’s at it again. Now he wants to colonize Mars. Not content with his spaceport or his fleet of space shuttles, Sir Richard is eyeing the red planet with the intention of creating a Noah’s Ark of earthlings, ready and willing to create a new population.

I don’t concern myself with the eccentricities of Mr. Branson’s twilight years in business. I care nothing for the fact that his life resembles the plot of Moonraker a little more every day. Richard Branson can colonize Mars to his heart’s content as far as I’m concerned. If he raises three generations of clone-a-like men and women with his outlook on life, then Mars will be a very successful colony indeed.

When it comes to this guy, I only want to talk about one thing – management. Not ‘leadership’, that wonderful concept that’s allowed two-a-penny executives like me to stay out of the annoying details of actual work and just tour the world patting people on the back and quoting Sun Tzu; not ‘entrepreneurialism’ which translates to convincing people to take sizable risks and then enjoying the benefits that your luck and their money deliver. No. The key for the success of the 99%, or the 47% or whatever % figure you want to use for ‘normal’ is management. Branson’s always been a great manager; that’s why the Virgin brand is such a powerhouse and it’s why he gets his own planet to play with.

Bad management is everywhere, even where you have great leaders at the top. It’s their job to make sure you all do the right things, not that you do things right.

High level strategic decisions can be blamed for the death of a lot of previously successful businesses. Borders decided to limit choice and reduce investment in local loyalty initiatives.  Blockbuster inexplicably failed to perceive the threat that the digitization of their core market was going to hold. 

Some business suicides are committed in the board room. But most are not; most failing and struggling businesses are doing the right things, they’re just not doing them right.

It was bad management that led to the 2008 financial crisis, as employees in financial institutions made decisions and took risks that should have been seen, understood and stopped by the people responsible for connecting individual behavior to the big picture.

Bad management can be blamed for everything from congested airports to long lines at the coffee shop to celebrity cash crises – because MC Hammer and Mike Tyson never had CEOs or boardrooms. But they both had managers.

From bad communication to lack of trust, disengagement, indecision, laziness and pride to poor delegation, unclear targets, weak organization and low accountability – you are never more than two rooms from a bad manager. It’s time to stop talking about leadership and strategy when it’s not appropriate. It’s time to talk about getting things done, helping other people get things done and keeping things organized, well-planned and clearly reported. It’s time to dismiss the inflated job titles and flat organizational structures that have left us all feeling buddy-buddy with the chairman and looking upward at our next shiny business card. It’s time to stop going to round tables and having lunch with consultants. It’s time to get everything out on the table, understand it and make it work better. I will no longer be ashamed to be, above anything else, a manager. A manager of people and of projects. I will manage my budget, manage my staff and manage our workload.

My name is Richard Spragg and I am a manager.

Over the next two weeks, we’re going to talk about what good management is, and between us, we’re going to make me and some of my readers better at it. 

For a fun starting point, I offer these management advice quotes from top names in business and beyond, including Sir Richard. We have a lot to learn from these people, before they all saunter off into outer space.

Post your thoughts, or your favorite pearl of management wisdom in the comments box and share it with the world.

Do you have what it takes? Talascend can provide you with access to more job opportunities than any other provider in the sector.  Search our database of available jobs and register with us so our consultants can find the right potential opportunities for you.

The most important 10 seconds of your career - are you ready?

So you've got your resume together and it’s looking good. You've got your past experience laid out clearly, you have an appropriate level of detail about the things you've done. You've got your academic qualifications listed out in the right order and again, the right level of detail. You've got no gaps anywhere. No rambling personal statements. A couple of things you do outside work for conversation starters. It’s good. Well done. You’re not getting a job.

Talk to anyone who works in recruiting for a large employer and they’ll tell you about the stack of resumes they have to go through. A lot of people I know work for corporate recruiting departments; these are hard working and diligent people, but they’ve got 500 resumes to review in a day alongside all their other responsibilities. How long do you think they’re going to spend on each one? The average works out to be about 10 seconds. You have 10 seconds to find your way from the ‘for review’ pile into the ‘of interest’ pile. That’s the stack that gets a second sweep. If you want to get a job, you have to pass the ten second test. There are no exceptions. 

Here’s 5 pieces of advice that will help you survive the first cut.

Layout  

A lot of people who hit the ‘no interest’ stack do so because the recruiter can’t see what they’re looking for during the ten seconds, not because it isn’t there. Make sure the layout is very clear. Use large bold headings that communicate the information everyone is looking for.

Job titles are the most important thing

Nothing on your resume matters more than the jobs you have done. Job titles should match the job you want. Don’t use internal language specific to the company you worked at. You were a Planning Engineer. So the job title is Planning Engineer. That’s what everyone’s looking for – show them it. Do not have headings like ‘Project Controls Coordinator – Section 4’ just because that’s what they called it at ABC Ltd. Call it what the market calls it. It’s Planning Engineer. In a lot of cases the first sweep of your resume is being undertaken by a pretty junior person. Not everyone at this level is an expert. In some cases, if you use any term other than the job title they are recruiting for, you could end up in the ‘no’ stack simply because the entry-level HR person doesn’t now that a Planning Engineer might be called a Commercial Manager in some roles.

Length

You can’t view an 8 page resume in 10 seconds. Period. No, you don’t want a one page resume. But four is getting to be too long, even if you have a lot of experience. 2-3 pages is good.

Bullets, not paragraphs

It’s time for poetry, not prose. Think modern minimalism, not classic novel.

•        Get the main point across
•        Don’t duplicate anything
•         Don’t use adjectives or floral languag

I see so many resumes that insist on descriptive writing. Frankly, if you can’t write a haiku that fully sums up your job seeking aspirations, then you’re over thinking it. This will also help with the overall length of your resume.

Planning engineer

Worked on oil and gas projects

Seeks job in Houston

               

No gaps in any information

Ambiguity does not leave the door open for more opportunity in this environment. You need to make sure you’re covering all the elements that people are scanning. Not identifying where you want to work, will not leave all options open. You can’t go in the ‘of interest’ stack if you haven’t made your intentions clear. Available for work anywhere in the continental US is fine. Just don’t leave anyone guessing, they won’t bother to guess, they’ll just dump you and move on to resume 347.

Once you’re in the 'of interest' stack, you’ll get a second review with the attention and care that you deserve. But don’t ever underestimate how important it is to make the first sweep. You may be a Director, you may have graduated college 3 weeks ago – you’ll all be in the first stack together. Nobody gets a pass.

You can find more information on how to avoid the pitfalls of bad resumes by downloading our free white paper with resume advice.