28 Jul The Worst Interview of My Life.
The eye contact. Oh my God, the eye contact.He stared me down. His face didn’t move. He never blinked. His eyeballs followed my every millimeter of movement. It was perfect.He was the Michael Jordan of eye contact. If there was an eye contact competition he would win 10 years straight.He was interviewing me for an entry-level job out of college.He asked me a stupid, simple question. A question that was directly related to my major and experience. I had spent 4 years waiting for this exact question.I had an answer prepared. Right before I was about to blurt out my canned answer, I made a huge mistake.I looked directly into his pupils.It was the equivalent of looking directly at the solar eclipse without glasses. My brain immediately told me, “Don’t use your perfectly prepared answer. Say something else. Anything else. Just don’t use that answer.”
15 Apr Why I publish on LinkedIn: The power of storytelling.
This post was originally published on the LinkedIn Official Blog. In the second post of a three-part series, LinkedIn asks members to share why they publish on LinkedIn. Robbie Abed is the Director of Marketing at Y Media Labs--a mobile interactive agency for some of the most leading brands and emerging startups.Why do you feel it’s important to share your professional perspectives with the world?Career advice always sounds the same: meet the right people, don’t play office politics, work hard, and do good work. It all means nothing in the end unless you can relate it to your specific situation. Telling someone to always negotiate their salary is different than someone telling a story about how they managed to negotiate their salary when the company wasn’t offering raises as an option.
16 Feb Why I Write — A Tribute to my Father.
My dad had two rules:
- Don’t sit on his couch
- Don’t touch the remote
My dad looked like he belonged to the Italian Mafia. It was always great when a friend of mine would meet my dad for the first time. They didn’t know if they should laugh at his jokes out of fear or because he was genuinely funny.
My dad passed away following a battle with lung cancer. A few days before he died, the remote control wasn’t working properly. He asked me to get batteries from the cabinet. When I asked why he needed them, he looked up at me with a dumbfounded look on his face and said, “To put up my ass! Why else do people need batteries?”
I laughed, shrugged my shoulders and said, “Well… Looks like I’m going to get the batteries!”
20 Jan How to Get a Coffee Meeting With the Busiest Person in the World.
I idolized James Altucher. It is okay to say that I had a man crush. If you don’t know James, he wrote one of the most popular posts on LinkedIn about how you should quit your job in 2014.
Mine wasn’t your normal man crush. He didn’t have a body I wanted, nor did he necessarily have the job I wanted.
Have you ever seen someone on television or read someone’s writing, and your first reaction was, “I MUST meet this person?”