Love drives student choices in products, organizations

My next-to-last column for the Technique.

Those of you who have read Kevin Roberts's book, Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands are already familiar with the concept of "loyalty beyond reason." To many of us "geeks" that probably sounds ridiculous: Why would we as people want to have such an emotion towards something as impersonal as a company or a brand, one that makes us act in an illogical way?

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, however. While ultimately a company's motivation in building these relationships is to get you to buy their products or services, I don't view marketing as an inherent evil. Much of the time I want to be marketed to: Knowing about new products that might be of interest to me adds value to my life, and if someone wants to get that information to me more effectively, I'm more than happy to let them.

After all, the process of creating a Lovemark includes creating superior products and providing customer service that goes above and beyond. When a person has this sort of bond with a company, that usually means they had a particularly fantastic experience. If a company is willing to do that for me, I'm willing to give them my loyalty.

In the column, I ask the question of what it would take to make a student organization a lovemark for people who are not its members, and what that would even mean. Alas, as always, I don't have an answer.

In the meantime, though, there are some companies that are lovemarks of mine: Amazon, Opera, Seagate. These are companies I am loyal to, whom I would buy from and whose products I buy or use. But even more importantly, these are companies I would recommend to my friends and acquaintances without reservation. In exchange for their good treatment of me, I award them not only my business but that of the people I can influence. So, dear readers, what are your lovemarks?

Finding what makes you 'exceptional' key to success

It's actually been more than a month since I wrote this column, which follows rather directly from my previous two. My deliberations on the wonderful matter of how the financial crisis is impacting the job hunt, and the need to find the right fit, led me to what is perhaps the logical next step: When you find a job you think you want, how do you stand out in order to get it? Maybe just being a good fit isn't enough.

My thesis is that what makes a person exceptional is, to quote the column, to be "at least a little bit above average in an interesting combination of ways." It doesn't necessarily matter what that combination is, as long as you can find the way to make use of it in a way that gives you a leg up.

The difficult part is, of course, that it isn't always obvious how you can usefully combine, say, chemistry and economics. Many people go through life without discovering what that is. Sadly, it seems that like with many of the other things I've written about this semester, I have thoughts and not answers. I wonder if that makes me a bad columnist?

Financial turmoil creates greater risks in job hunting

With the financial downturn getting progressively worse, the job hunting picture for students has grown murkier. In my own case, I've seen the companies I've applied for make major changes, whether that is laying off thousands of workers or even getting bought out.

All told, it's really making me wonder whether I should make the effort to work toward getting hired by some of these companies. It seems at this point that most of the financial services companies, along with banks, are going through such a rough period that any hiring they actually do is not guaranteed at all.

In the end, this is the business world, and there are no guarantees in business. Rather, it is a matter of working just a bit harder and researching companies just a bit more, in order to ensure the position a new college hire gets isn't swept out from under them in a matter of weeks or months.

Strive for best fit, not "best job"

The career fair is upon us today, and with over 400 companies represented between the two days it's very difficult to decide which companies to even speak with, let alone which you want to work for. If we as students are overwhelmed by the number of options, however, I can only imagine how the company representatives feel as they get bombarded with questions, resumes, and puppy dog eyes from hundreds of students pleading for a job or at least an interview.

The solution for both parties seems simple, and it's the subject my column: No matter how outstanding you are, the rest of the applicant pool is just as smart and just as talented. Likewise, from the corporate perspective, the top students you want to hire all have countless options before them. The emphasis cannot just be on how wonderful an applicant is, or how prestigious the position is. Rather, the question has to move to one of fit: Is this the company that is most in line with my goals? Is it the one to which my background holds the most appeal?

In the real world, however, these sorts of questions are notoriously hard to evaluate. You often don't get a feel for the culture of a company until after you've worked for them for a while, and companies are well aware that the interview process doesn't tell them nearly everything they would like to know. The solution to that remains elusive. Whoever finds it will, I think, make the world of job-hunting a much better place. And probably make a boatload of money in the process.