The Invisible Mentor

Archive for October, 2011

Career Coach Peggy McKee from Career Confidential presented at the webinar, “How to Find a Job in any Economy.” The following job search tips were gleaned from her presentation with some of my own thoughts added.

1. View your job search as a sales process where the hiring manager is the buyer, you are the product, and your resume is your marketing and sales material. You only have 15 seconds to capture their attention so use the AIDA formula in your resume. Grab their Attention with your resume or profile headline, capture their Interest by saying something captivating that’s important to them, create a Desire by showing how you can make their lives better, and finally, take Action.
2. Never go through HR, go directly to the hiring managers. HR uses Applicant Tracking Systems as a spam filter to weed out as many resumes as possible.
3. Be proactive and work on expanding your network! Use social media to find and build relationships with hiring managers. Make sure that you always complete your profile for social media networks.
4. If you are interested in working for particular companies, create Google Alerts for the companies so you can keep abreast of what’s happening and discover their pain.
5. Use SimplyHired.com and Indeed.com, which aggregate available jobs, and set up alerts for specific jobs you are interested in to be emailed to you.
6. Only spend 10 percent of your job search time using job boards, use them more as a research tool to identify trends, and which companies are hiring.

Please refer to the blog post, 6 Ways to Maximize Your LinkedIn Presence – Tips from Carol McManus, the LinkedIn Lady. How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Related articles

• 6 Best Practices Using LinkedIn For Your Job Search (messengerassociates.wordpress.com)
• How to Use Blogging as a Job Search Tool (problogger.net)
• 10 Ways To Beat The Job-Search Blues (choosework.typepad.com)

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Art Tatum, Greatest Jazz Pianist and Interview with Jennifer Graham, Project Director, M. Moser Associates Ltd.

Mondays at the Salon

Recently the head of Facebook Canada, Jordan Banks, talked to a packed room at a Toronto Board of Trade event about “How Businesses are Organizing Around People.” According to Banks, the essence of Facebook is that it’s a social graph, meaning you have a digital imprint of your connections. To know where we are going requires that we know where we are coming from.

What’s Next for Social Media?

Booked on Tuesdays

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a collection of 11 short stories, each about 20 pages in length, which were first published monthly in the Strand magazine from 1891 to 1893. Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick Dr. Watson is his biographer, who captures the detective’s life story through the cases that he has worked on. And the best way Watson does that is by accompanying Holmes while he solves his cases. So the stories are told through the eyes of Watson.

Review – The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Image via Wikipedia

Wisdom Wednesdays

Despite being blind in one eye and partially blind in the other, Art Tatum invented a path for himself and is considered by many, including other musicians, to be the greatest jazz pianist who ever lived.

Art Tatum, Greatest Jazz Pianist Who Ever Lived 

Perspective Thursdays and Workshop Fridays

This week we featured Jennifer Graham, Project Director, M. Moser Associates Ltd. Graham is a great mentoring success story. Early in her career someone took her under his wings, noticed her strengths and gave her the necessary projects which directed her path. Here are Part One and Part Two of Jennifer Graham’s interview.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book link is affiliate link!

Interviewee Name: Jennifer Graham

Company Name: M. Moser Associates Ltd

Website: http://www.mmoser.com, http://www.lmnopnyc.org

 Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Jennifer Graham: I work as a project director for M. Moser Associates, a global firm with 650 employees worldwide, and I am one of 46 directors in the firm. Our work is primarily focused on corporate interiors. My role as project director is a combination of two roles – one is for projects and the other is having oversight for project staffing for the office. From a directorial standpoint I interface with the global directors for strategic process implementation and improvement across the firm.

I came to the USA specifically to study design, and I have a degree in interior design as well as an MBA. I was born in Barbados and lived there for 18 years. I came to the US 30 years ago – I am a single mom with twin girls.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Jennifer Graham: I do not separate the two. I find positions that have supported me where I am in life. 

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it? 

Jennifer Graham: With my girls – most likely reading together. It is my ‘daily down time’ even if it is only 10 minutes.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Jennifer Graham:

1. Patience
2.  Accept others for who they are – if I don’t get on with them – move on.
3.  I am not always right
4.  The more I know the more I have to learn.
5.  If I don’t like what someone has to say to me, first evaluate if it is a good critical remark, if it’s not, I ignore it and move on.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Jennifer Graham: Get away from my daily routine and then get enough sleep!

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Jennifer Graham: “Low aim, not failure is the crime.” It speaks for itself.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Jennifer Graham: Accomplishing attainable dreams early enough in life so that every day is a blessing and new experiences are pure icing on the cake. And the formula for success is:

1. Do what you enjoy
2. Gain respect
3. Have the experience of loving unconditionally and receive love unconditionally
4. Be recognized  by your peers for contributions to one’s profession
5. Be able to pay your bills!

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Jennifer Graham:

1. Study, BFA.
2. Good positions and experience.
3. Very hard work.
4. MBA and other professional accreditations.
5. Being good at budgets, problem solving and a good leader.
6. Having my own high standards.

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Jennifer Graham: Love what you do.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Jennifer Graham:

1. Elton John – thank you for the music
2. Michelle Obama – I am curious
3. Stephen Hawkins – I am awed
4. My future love – where have you been?
5. The fifth person would be someone who had influenced others without having known that what they did would have such a broad impact. And people who fall into that category could be Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Teresa. They might not have expected that their lives would have had such an impact. There are also everyday people who have that kind of impact who may not go down in history but actually end up changing the path of others. I would want to pick someone I don’t know.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Jennifer Graham: The Encyclopedia Britannica. I could visit anywhere I wanted as a child (in my imagination) and it prepared me for my move to NY by taking the mystery out of foreign places but showing that everything is mysterious in a foreign place and I would never be at a loss to learn if I left Barbados.

Avil Beckford: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences. 

Jennifer Graham:

1. The Bible. Each time you read it you see something you have never seen before and I am not well read or well versed of the Bible.
2. Paradise Lost - the eternal story about the fall of man
3. A book of poems through the ages. For memory, rhythm, romanticism
4. Webster’s Dictionary
5. Ulysses (I have never read it!)

Avil Beckford: What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

Jennifer Graham: I would have to choose Bach’s Brandenburg concertos. The movie is a hard choice. Maybe the Sound of Music because of the scenery, humour, romance, love, the perseverance of the human spirit and music and dance.

Bach – Brandenburg Concertos No.5 – i: Allegro

If you cannot view the YouTube video, please click here.

The Sound of Music – Trailer, Please click here to view the YouTube video.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Jennifer Graham: Everything.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Jennifer Graham: Hug my children and be thankful everyday for all I have.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Jennifer Graham: To give myself enough time and resources to have time to focus on health each day of each week.  I would manifest a personal trainer/chef.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Jennifer Graham: I am with my children and family.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

YouTube video credits: Bacholoji, MoviesHistory

Interviewee Name: Jennifer Graham, Project Director

Company Name: M. Moser Associates Ltd

Website: http://www.mmoser.com, http://www.lmnopnyc.org 

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Jennifer Graham: I work as a project director for M. Moser Associates, a global firm with 650 employees worldwide, and I am one of 46 directors in the firm. Our work is primarily focused on corporate interiors. My role as project director is a combination of two roles – one is for projects and the other is having oversight for project staffing for the office. From a directorial standpoint I interface with the global directors for strategic process implementation and improvement across the firm.

I came to the USA specifically to study design, and I have a degree in interior design as well as an MBA. I was born in Barbados and lived there for 18 years. I came to the US 30 years ago – I am a single mom with twin girls.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Jennifer Graham: A typical day starts getting the kids up, breakfast, dressed, making their lunch and off to school. Two of the five days I drop them to school, the other days their Nanny. Then I walk to work where I interact and collaborate with a team of designers and architects on a variety of projects. At the end of the day, usually 7pm I head home, snuggle in bed with my girls; we all read and then go to bed. I often get back up at 9pm and work until midnight or later.

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Jennifer Graham:  I think I have an internal motivator. I rarely feel that I must motivate myself. Although by and large my work routine is the same, the projects and people I work with change constantly so I always feel refreshed by the new challenge. I guess I am motivated by the pleasure of interacting with others. It happens every day and every day is unique.

Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Jennifer Graham:  I might have worked with one of the larger firms during my early career. I would have insisted that I keep down time in my routine that included team sports.

Avil Beckford: What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

Jennifer Graham: One can covert a Sketchup model into Revit. And that Revit Suite includes not only Revit, but a 2-D Autocad and Architectural AutoCad much like the now obsolete ADT. But I would not call this a business discovery.

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

Jennifer Graham: The further development of BIM (Building Information Modeling). 

Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

Jennifer Graham:

1. The economy and lack of understanding, want or need for what Architects and Designers bring to the table in terms of workplace environments. I am working with a global firm so my opportunities are greater as global businesses value this attribute.
2. The organizations that do not value what service providers bring to the table are the ones who retain you and then try to cut your fees or do not pay. I work with a firm that provides a holistic service approach and a design led application to projects so that provides a unique approach which makes us different from our competition and also provides value to our clients so they have an entity that takes the risk and is the single point of responsibility.
3. Lack of competition in our service delivery method. One needs competition to help provide validity to a unique approach. (As service providers are not commodities). Working for a firm that is more interested in where things are going versus where things have been.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Jennifer Graham: IPD (Integrated Project Delivery) approach in a US northeast consultancy market.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Jennifer Graham: I was laid off before Christmas 2008. I was instantly energized by the fact that poor economies provide opportunity, specifically for companies who are looking to take advantage and hire experienced professionals when others are laying off. I formed an organization called LMNOP (http://www.lmnopnyc.org) to provide affordable professional development opportunities and networking opportunities for architects and designers. I learned how to step back before rushing into my next endeavour, and to trust my instincts and have a restrained persistence.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Jennifer Graham: My big break was being born into my family – so my parents and family gave this to me.

Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

Jennifer Graham:  Getting a ‘D’ in accounting in grad school. I learned I am not defined by study that I do not master well. And that although it dragged my GPA into the mud I could manage to do well enough after so that I was not dismissed from the program.

Avil Beckford: What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its re occurrence?

Jennifer Graham:  That I am not taking the time for myself to keep fit. I need to work towards this. (And I have started as of this summer! I am swimming two to three times a week).

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

Jennifer Graham:  Retrospectively it was the decision to leave Barbados at 18 and move to NY. The positive impact is my success and happiness today.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Jennifer Graham:

1. Leaving Barbados

2. Completing graduate school, MBA

3. The birth of my children

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Jennifer Graham:  That I can take care of myself and my family.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Jennifer Graham:  Throughout my entire career I have always been mentored. The first mentor that was significant to me was Robert Burling, the person who ran Total Concept, which was my first major, real job in the US, and I am still in contact with him. He basically adopted me as a mentee in a fast moving firm in the mid-eighties when I joined them right after school. I always found that he was very supportive to someone who was just starting out. I think I was 21 at the time and we just clicked as individuals and he is about 20 years older than I am.

He was very specific about guiding me away from design into project management for my tenure at Total Concept. The first project I was put on I was fortunate to win a design award, however I think it was the planets aligning. I don’t think of myself as an inspirational designer, or conceptual designer, but I’m a good implementer and I think he saw that forte in me and pushed me into the project management track and provided me with all the support I needed throughout. In those days, you were not looked upon highly if you wanted to use the computer, that was supposed to be for secretaries, and yet I got assigned a computer that I could use whenever I wanted and basically started to do all my documents at that time on Word Perfect and Lotus – that’s a long time ago. I found using a computer as a tool really speeded up communication.

While I was at Total Concept I got great projects and traveled with the team, and it was good for me. Burling was the first and longest mentor that I had, and was part of my career for seven years. When I went to business school I didn’t have a mentor per se. I was left to try to figure our how to get through it. I did it at night time over a period of three years. I worked during the days on projects that had been passed on to me when Total Concept closed its doors, so I had a client, and I also had a private client that had been recommended to me. I didn’t have time to focus on mentors because I was too busy trying to figure out to how to get through graduate school and pay the bills.

When I went to Orsini Design Associates, even though Susan Orsini was not the mentoring type, she was extremely knowledgeable and focused on being an ethical businesswoman. She was a tough woman but I felt I learned a lot working for her for 9½ years, although I do not think she would describe herself as a mentor to anyone. The knowledge she had I was certainly able to absorb it, so she would have been my close second mentor. So that’s professional mentors.

On a personal level I go back to family members. I have so many of them in so many areas and specialties and feel that I can pick brains at any time that I want and also get unconditional support.

Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Jennifer Graham: Make sure you are doing what you’re doing for your own satisfaction because you hold yourself to a high standard. And if you hold yourself to a higher standard, many times it will meet the expectation of others, and I think having the confidence to know that you can do that is not something that would come easy for someone young.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Jennifer Graham:  Pursue happiness, but I think you have to start with your own personal circumstance and that will allow you to do well professionally. Ethics should be the highest standard that anyone should aim for. If you are ethical you will have the opportunity to influence people within the small circle in your profession.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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“That Tatum, he was just too good…. He had too much technique. When that man turns on the powerhouse, don’t no one play him down. He sounds like a brass band.” Fats Waller, Jazz Pianist, and Art Tatum’s informal mentor.

Name: Art Tatum

Birth Date: October 1909 – November 1956

Job Functions: Jazz Pianist

Fields: Music & Entertainment

Known For: Creating a distinct sound in jazz

Image via Wikipedia

Biography

Art Tatum was born in the early twentieth century (there is some discrepancy about the year he was born, some sources say 1909 and others say 1910), and despite being blind in one eye and partially blind in the other, he invented a path for himself and is considered by many, including other musicians, to be the greatest jazz pianist who ever lived. In fact, Fats Waller another renowned jazz pianist once declared when Tatum entered a club in which he was playing, “Ladies and gentlemen, I play piano. But God is in the house tonight.”

Tatum’s parents were musically inclined. His father Art, Senior was a factory worker/mechanic and amateur piano player, and his mother Mildred was an amateur pianist and violinist. Tatum had the unique ability from he was a young child, to listen to tunes he had heard and play them on the family’s well-maintained piano. When he was three years old, it is reported that he played on the family piano a hymn that he had heard at his mother’s choir practice.

Though Tatum played the piano for many years, the first instrument he received training for was the violin. When he was 13, he started to take piano lessons. Tatum learned to read Braille and studied other subjects at Toledo’s Jefferson School through eighth grade. In 1924, 15-year-old Tatum attended The School for the Blind in Columbus where he studied violin, guitar and piano. It’s assumed that he also studied Braille music reading.

Young Tatum performed whenever the opportunity arose – school and neighbourhood functions, and “Prohibition speakeasies and clubs.” He constantly listened to and played music. At 16, Tatum made his first appearance before a large audience on an amateur contest program at Toledo radio station WSPD. As a result of his performance and skills, Tatum was given his own 15-minute morning program which he did for two years. NBC was so impressed with Tatum’s morning broadcast that they aired it on NBC’s Blue Network. During Tatum’s daily radio program he sometimes played duets with Teddy Wilson.

He loved to experiment and invent new sounds. For instance, Wilson recounted that Tatum used “flatted fifths and all the added tones, and improvising these wonderful progressions in the middle of a tune….No other pianist had, even remotely, that conception of playing.” (The melodic flatted fifth (flat 5) is formed by playing two notes that are six steps apart on the piano. This interval is very dissonant sounding. http://www.songtrellis.com/concepts/interval)

Tatum’s formal education ended in 1927 and he set out to invent a path for himself by embarking on a professional music career in jazz, which offered him both creative and lucrative opportunities. To grow as a musician, Tatum built on his classical training by listening to pianists and other players, as well as participating in marathon playing sessions in after-hour clubs. He worked to perfect his art and to garner a wider audience. He was admired by classical pianists such as Sergei Rachmaninoff and Leopold Godowski.

In 1932, jazz singer Adelaide Hall heard Tatum perform and brought him to New York as her second accompanist. He made most of the opportunity – that same year he made his first record as her accompanist and the next year he made his first solo record. Tatum would stay with Hall for two years and during that time she gave him increasingly more demanding roles.

Cover of Adelaide Hall

In New York, Tatum spent the time needed to discover after-hours clubs, and sought out the very best players. Tatum had a very competitive and combative nature, always wanting to show off his superior talent. He would wait until all the players had performed and shown their best, then he would simply outplay them. He would play what they played then added to it with inventive and creative variations.

According to Tatum’s biographer James Lester, “The reigning kings of jazz piano, Fats Waller, Willie “the Lion” Smith and James P. Johnson, “invited” Tatum to a session the following night [the night after his first appearance with Adelaide Hall]. By all accounts, the Toledo youngster ascended to the pinnacle that evening, never to be dethroned. As writer Robert Doerschuk reported mentor Waller’s words: “That Tatum, he was just too good…. He had too much technique. When that man turns on the powerhouse, don’t no one play him down. He sounds like a brass band.””

After he left Hall, for several years, Tatum played in many different venues such as New York’s famous Onyx Club, Chicago’s Three Deuces, 52^nd Street’s Famous Door in New York, Los Angeles’ Paramount, the Trocadero and Club Alabam. And he also played in the better restaurants in New York such as Cafe Society, and Kelly’s Stable. Tatum routinely travelled between New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. He went where the work was, and also appeared on the Bing Crosby radio show; and on Steve Allen’s Tonight Show in the early 1950s.

Blues in B Flat (1954) by Art Tatum

If you cannot view the YouTube video please click here.

In 1943, Tatum formed a trio with guitarist Tiny Grimes and bassist Slam Stewart. For several years, intermittently, they performed together, toured and recorded music. The group also changed over the years with different personnel and Tatum was the only constant. Also, during this period, there was not much work because of the rising popularity of bebop (Bebop or bop is a style of jazz characterized by fast tempo, instrumental virtuosity and improvisation based on the combination of harmonic structure and melody, Wikipedia), which was developed in the early and mid-1940s.

In 1953, Tatum signed a deal with recording executive Norman Granz, Clef/Verve label. For two days, Granz sequestered Tatum in a studio with a really good piano, and in that short time span he produced 70 solo tunes, most on the first take. From 1954 – 1956, the number of recording reached 121. Additionally, Granz arranged some group sessions that produced another 80 tunes by quartets. These quartets featured talent like “reedman Benny Carter, vibist Lionel Hampton, clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, tenor saxist Ben Webster, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, and drummers Buddy Rich and Louis Bellson.”

Even though Tatum was very competitive and combative in nature, he still carved out time to mentor younger players. Others viewed him as an invisible mentor and studied his work from a distance and listened to his music. Tatum was a virtuoso and kept growing musically to the end. He died on November 4, 1956 from uremia, kidney failure. Like many performers, Tatum had become a heavy drinker. On September 30, 2004, Art Tatum was inducted into the Lincoln Center’s Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame.

Jitterbug Waltz (1955) by Art Tatum

If you cannot view this YouTube video please click here.

Some of the Musicians Who Respected/Appreciated Art Tatum’s Musical Influence

• Leopold Godowski
• Sergei Rachmaninoff
• Fats Waller
• Jimmy Rowles
• Dave Brubeck
• Red Norvo
• Marian McPartland
• Oscar Peterson
• Dick Hyman
• Lenny Tristano
• Bud Powell

YouTube Credit: Blues in B Flat (1954) by Art Tatum bluesinorbit

YouTube Credit: Jitterbug Waltz (1955) by Art Tatum bluesinorbit