Marketing Insights Podcast - Pathways to Career

Shanita Akintonde:

Hi, this is Shanita Akintonde, professor, author, career coach and marketing shero. I invite you to join me for this very special edition of my Marketing Insights Podcast Series. This one is going to take a deep dive into the pathway to your career, whether you're going into marketing, advertising, PR, communication, or something else under the wind. The two experts that I have joining me today are going to help us unpack that. But let me say this before I continue. These aren't just two anybodies. These are two individuals who I'll call the bookends of the career trajectory. On one side, we have the person who has worked with more seasoned professionals and/or those who are making career transitions. And on the other end of the spectrum, we have a young woman who works with career-oriented students, those who are aspiring professionals, like many of you dear listeners to this Marketing Insights Podcast Series. To jumpstart 2025, we thought it apropos to focus on career advice and trends for aspiring professionals or seasoned professionals, and we want to do that in a way that gives you an opportunity to expand your knowledge.

Now, if you're a devout listener to this podcast series, you know I did a recent version of this called Ditch the Dodo and go for YOLO. Again, you have to go back and listen to find out what YOLO means. But the idea is to continue that conversation today. And so without further ado, allow me to introduce to you the two speakers who are going to be our expert presenters today and answer a few questions.

First up is Jennifer Halperin. She has advised Columbia College Chicago students and graduates for nearly 20 years on how to find internships and jobs in advertising, public relations, journalism and communication related fields. Her expansive networks includes young professionals as well as those who are trying to, again, break into the field like she did. She started her career in journalism, working for newspapers and magazines in Illinois, Florida, and Ohio as a reporter and editor before moving to, where'd you move to, back to Chicago, her hometown. She has a plethora of ideas and things that she can share also about her background, including that she attended the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and also the one in Springfield for her master's degree.

In addition to her work at Columbia, Jennifer has a freelance writing and editing business, so you can follow up with her on that after this podcast. And she also has clients such as Northwestern University's school of business, Kellogg, which some of you may or may not have heard of. And she's a passionate Career Yenta, is what she calls herself. She lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with her partner and their beloved mutt, Rex. Her words not mine. And she loves visiting with her grown children who live in Chicago and LA, even though they don't seek her for job advice. I can relate to that, Jennifer, with my two adult sons. They don't seek me for any advice at all.

Next up, we've got Gregg Orloff, who is a founding partner, and I love the fact that he's a founding partner, y'all. That means he has built something from the ground up and can help you do the same with your career. Gregg is one of the three founding partners of Roberts & Ryan and has amassed more than two decades of experience himself in the executive search industry and marketing and advertising fields as well. He began his career with a brief stint in the media department of Foote, Cone & Belding, also known as FCB.

And while there he then found his niche as a recruiter. He fell into the recruiting business at a local firm called DG&A and has built an advertising agency and recruiting vertical building through Roberts & Ryans where he continues to build out his practice and quickly has made a name for himself in that area. This vertical evolved toward a national presence, which provides him with the best-in-class leadership skills for agencies of every size, every discipline, and every geographic location. His firm is in its 25th year providing both agencies and corporations the best leadership talent in marketing and advertising. And that's a lot.

And last but not least, Gregg lives in Deerfield, Illinois, with his wife of 27 years, Julie, oh, I love the love you both are sharing here, and periodically with his three grown children, Matty, Evan, and Justin. When he's not working, he is fueled by a passion for music, me too, Gregg, rhythm guitarist, oh, for a local garage band. Check him out. I can't meet you there, but I can dance to your music. He plays golf and has a B handicap. Don't know what that means, Gregg, but you can elaborate on that. And he is no match for his son's 2 handicap. And watching his two teams who reside in his heart. And those are the Kansas Jayhawk basketball team and now football team and the Chicago Cubs. You had me there. I'm a Chicago Sox fan, but that's okay. White Sox, I should say. But we're all good, Gregg. So with that, that's Jennifer and Gregg. So happy to have you both on this Marketing Insights Podcast.

Gregg Orloff:

Thanks for having us.

Shanita Akintonde:

Okay, listeners, I need to practice something else before I delve into these questions with these two. We just completed a webinar for the Chicago Advertising Federation that I have the opportunity and honor to host called Market Smarter, Market Smarter. That's Chicago AF, which is the Chicago Advertising Federation. Is a webinar series devoted to giving members of the Chicago Advertising Federation tools and tactics that they can apply to their work. But because I had these two experts on that call, I thought let's parlay them over to you, my marketing maestros on this Marketing Insights Podcast Series, to continue the conversation. And so I'm going to pick up where we left off on that last call with you, Gregg, by asking this first question which we didn't get to, and that is how important is personal branding for aspiring advertising professionals and what advice would you give for crafting one that resonates with hiring managers?

Gregg Orloff:

Yeah, for aspiring professionals, I have sort of mixed feelings about it. I mean, I absolutely think that a personal brand is a great exercise to go through. It is great. It helps to organize, I think, as you go through your interview process to think about what are your superpowers, what is it that you want to represent that you bring to the table, all those things are very good things. And as long as they're authentic because you kind of craft that question, you think about it, how do you get one to set apart for hiring managers? And that's where I think it's difficult. When you're a fresh graduate, your brand is all intangible things. It just is what it is. You don't have the practical experience yet that you can bring to the table. As you get older and you get more experience and you can kind of carve out what is it that you could do for these companies, what have you done for these companies, that's different. But when you're speaking of intangibles, I don't think those things read as well as they present.

So I talked about this with you guys in our last meeting, the notion of making sure that you break through the clutter and become a real person. If you can tell your story and your personal brand in person with people where they can see it, they can feel your energy, they can benefit from your curiosity and all the things that are going to make you a great candidate, that is really going to be helpful. But to craft it in a way that it's going to resonate with every hiring manager, that becomes difficult. So that's where I go back to if you go through this exercise and you can really think about who you are and really sell it, that this is what you want to represent in the market and not feel like you're manipulating it for each of these opportunities, I think it is a great exercise to go through. But in terms of importance, I think it's more important that you tell your story in person than it is really about crafting this brand statement, if that makes sense.

Shanita Akintonde:

It does.

Gregg Orloff:

I think it's much more about the personal touch that sets you apart.

Shanita Akintonde:

Yes, and we're going to delve further into that, I hope, in this time we have together. Thank you for that, Gregg. So Jennifer, with so many students pursuing creative careers, how can someone differentiate themselves and build a unique portfolio that employers will notice?

Jennifer Halperin:

Well, the best advice I could give students about that is to take a little time, whether it's on their own or with a faculty member or peers or with somebody from their school's career center and just browse through LinkedIn to find some people who are doing the types of roles that you're interested in doing, the job title, the place that they're working, whether an agency or an individual company or a nonprofit. And look at the portfolios for people that are, they're usually available on LinkedIn and I'm sure there's other sources to find them too. But that's a pretty safe and easy way to find some portfolios that are effective in the sense that people who are successful in the field are showing themselves that way. So this might mean just trying to look through three or four to see if there are common elements that students are finding that they can mimic.

So for example, one of the pieces of advice that I get from hiring managers to pass along to students is to make sure that their portfolios have their work samples very soon when you open the portfolio page. They don't necessarily want to see just a big picture of the person with their life story written out. They want to see just a quick opening and then where they can view the work. And the work, it doesn't have to be just the finished product. It can include steps that you took to get there, but most importantly, rather than just have somebody open a link and try to figure out what they're looking at, you really want to give them some context. Explain what the assignment or what the problem or issue was and what you were trying to solve for. What was this, for example, marketing campaign that you're showcasing trying to do? So give the viewer that information and it can really help with coming across effectively.

Shanita Akintonde:

Yes. Context is key and we talked a lot about that on our last call as well. And for the listeners to the podcast, we are saying that if you're going into marketing, advertising or public relations, I'm expanding the audience a little bit on this podcast because the listeners represent a lot of different areas, regardless, you need to understand what it is you're pursuing, what the job entails, what the career path entails, who the players are, as Jennifer is saying. Follow them on social media, particularly LinkedIn. I am definitely a big fan of LinkedIn myself. At the end of this podcast, we're going to see if Gregg and Jennifer can share with you how to get in touch with them on LinkedIn, for example. But speaking of LinkedIn, Gregg, how can folk leverage that platform, particularly as an aspiring hire? What are some things you think they can do?

Gregg Orloff:

Well, I think LinkedIn is, I think its two greatest uses are first to get information. And I think what you guys are talking about is right, connect with as many people as you can so that your feed fills up with a lot. You can find out a lot of interesting things merely as a voyeur. So that's just one thing that I think is practical. The job boards themselves, I don't believe, I feel the best analogy to doing that I would just say is sort of playing the lottery. It's very cluttered and it's very difficult. You do it and you hope for the best, but I don't think that's best.

But recruiters over time, we have a special version of LinkedIn that allows us to run all sorts of different queries looking for various types of skills, various types of technologies, various types of experiences, geographies. We break it down in number of ways. And so visibility is really the great, LinkedIn is something that can kind of be working for you without your doing it. You want to make sure as you amass skills throughout your career that you list them out all the time. You want any skill, any sort of experience or skill that would appear on the job description that you're ultimately wanting to be included for, that your name comes up from a query that a recruiter is going to find.

And in addition to that, I think you want to be on people's feeds yourself. And one of the things that some people do is you don't even have to do much. Look, if you're a writer and you have things to say, people talk about wanting to blog, that's up to you. If you have things to say, if you have things you want to do, want to speak about, then I certainly encourage you that that platform, it can work for you, against you. But if you've got things, it's a great platform to do it.

But even if you just follow, there's some other things Jennifer's talking about, just follow the industry that you're interested in. And it can be as simple as finding an article about advertising that you find interesting, put it into your feed, make one little comment about it, let people think about it. It just puts your name, attach it to a point of view on something and kind of puts it out there. We talked a lot about just networking and amassing conversations, amassing touch points and occupying real estate on people's brains. And that's where LinkedIn really has its greatest magic. It's not always specific, it's not always binary, but it works. If you keep doing and you keep getting on people's brains, it will manifest itself in positive ways for you. You can't use it as a crutch, think it'll get everything done for you. But those are the best two ways just to enhance your visibility and being found by the right people in the future.

Shanita Akintonde:

Oh, wow. So again, you all have given me a new way to think about things. This is why it's good to do interviews to get insights from professionals such as yourselves. Those are wonderful Easter eggs that both Gregg and Jennifer have given us, listeners. Let me say this. LinkedIn democratizes a lot of reaching to folk and connecting with them as both Gregg and Jennifer are saying here. To build on what Gregg just stated a moment ago, if you use LinkedIn and you have access to a CEO, which you do by going to his or her profile on that platform, and you comment on an article that they may have posted or you yourself share something about that particular organization with your own comment, that gives you access to them in ways that used to be them up in an ivory tower somewhere behind glass panes and you couldn't reach these individuals. Now you can. And so to take advantage of that via platforms like LinkedIn gives you an opportunity to really put yourselves out there in a different way.

But the second piece I want to add to this before I go to the next question is, it's a question for you, rhetorical of course. And that is, what is your hiring or career advice diet? And by that I mean how are you parlaying your time by using platforms like LinkedIn or Handshake, which I know is at Columbia, or other resource tools that exist to position yourself if you are looking for a career in the world, because to look for a job is a job. There has to be a systemic process that you yourself put into place. And so what does that diet consist of? Like you have your three main or whatever, four, how many is it, Gregg, five diets that your wife, Julie, cooks for you, whatever it is, on your plate every day. You need to ask yourselves that so that you can say, "I'm going to spend this much time on LinkedIn, I'm going to spend this much time crafting my portfolio," if that's what's needed for your career. But you have to make a concerted effort to make those things happen and not be a passive participant.

The last thing I'll say, and I'll go to the next question, is this. How many people say, "Well, I reached out to you, Jennifer, and you didn't call me back, so I guess you're not interested in me." It's not their job to reach out to you. You may have to draw the line between persistence and pestering, but it's up to you to be the initiator. You don't passively wait. All right, I'll get off my soapbox with that, y'all, because I could go on for 30 hours on that piece. Okay, Gregg, so networking is often emphasized in the job search process. Can you share one or two practical examples of how networking has opened doors for candidates in your experience?

Gregg Orloff:

Yeah, I mean, it's very easy. I mean, network, I saw some stats somewhere for job seekers where I think it's somewhere between 70 and 80% of jobs are found that way. And more so than ever. I can go right at home and give you, my son, a recent graduate, this is actually a story of him looking for an internship in advertising. He had been looking last winter and applying online, and I know some people, so I introduced him here and there. He had a couple of meetings here and there, but he really just, timing wasn't working out. It wasn't getting in the door. He needed to do it for his final year of school. And I knew a few people in Kansas City, one of which was someone that I had placed years ago, I'm not trying to make it about me, but it was someone that I knew and I just gave him his name.

He reached out to him and said, "I'm Gregg's son and I'm looking for an internship." And this goes back to what we were talking about in the last webinar about luck. Was this luck or was this the culmination of all these efforts? He contacted this person who's a senior player at an advertising agency in Kansas City, happened to catch him on a day when they had maybe the day before had a meeting about having their first in school for credit internship that they were doing. And lo and behold, he didn't even have an interview. I think he just had a meeting, he had phone conversation turned into a job right away after all these other things where he had done all of these things.

And so the point, networking is so important nowadays because it is really cluttered out there and people are very sophisticated. It is not always specific. And we were having the conversation before about how it's going at people in a way that isn't transactional, just to have a conversation, just to get to know them, just to hear their story. But what you're really doing is you are getting every person that you speak to, every person you network with is now on the case with you. And similar to you're talking walking the line of patience and persistence as I call it, where you have to manage that line. But the more people that are actually people that you have had conversations with that you're reaching out to versus reaching out to cold, you keep doing that and it works. You're one phone call away from them from having gotten a phone call that they have a friend who heard that they might need somebody for an entry level position and then they think of you. The more people you have that you do that, it's imperative.

So I tell people that, it might be harder for a fresh graduate, but I tell the senior people who I work with who are in a transition, make a list of 25 people. It can be some family, it can be people you worked for, people you worked with, colleagues, it doesn't matter. Try and get to 25, it's a list of 25. And no other way to say it, just ask for help. Just tell them, "Hey, I'm in this spot. I'd love to talk to you about what's going on or at minimum, can you just keep me in mind? Or if there's anybody that you think I should talk to." All of a sudden that list of 25 grows to 50 and grows to 75.

And then now you're talking about this is just sales 101. You develop a pipeline, you develop numbers, the odds are in your favor that things are going to happen. And that's the only part of the process that you really have control over is that volume of these conversations. Everything else is, as they say, in God's hands. Yes, you still apply, you still interview and all these things have to happen, but they come from this work. So I can't emphasize enough that networking is just something and now people are learning that skill much more early and no time like it. I mean, I guess I was always doing it. I don't think they called it that. They called it pestering when I was graduating school. But now it's a little more practical. And as we talked about before, people want to help. In general, people do want to help.

Shanita Akintonde:

Yes, they do want to help. And speaking of wanting to help, Jennifer, I know you are one person that wants to help students in particular. This idea of networking, when you use that term with young folk, it can be overwhelming, misunderstood, confusing. So what kind of advice would you give to students who say, "Okay, I keep hearing this word networking, but I'm not exactly sure how to get started?"

Jennifer Halperin:

Well, I probably should have mentioned this on the webinar that we were doing, but I do usually tell students that when we talk about networking, because I can remember hearing it as a young person and I immediately got intimidated and I thought it meant inviting myself to cocktail parties and trying to get in with people and things that really were less than comfortable for me. Now I tell them when you hear networking, think of it as just people that you meet. So for example, somebody comes in as a guest speaker to your class and afterward you maybe stop and introduce yourself and ask another question, and then you add them to your LinkedIn network or you send them a note to follow up, that is networking. Breaking it down like that can make it seem a little bit less intimidating than this idea that you have to show up at events and just start approaching people.

So one great way that I tell students to try to approach networking is to get involved with a student organization, preferably one in the field that they're wanting to work in. And that almost inevitably is going to mean helping to plan events or visits to employers. And by doing that kind of outreach and having a reason to call people, let's just say, in the marketing industry if you're in a student marketing club and you want to approach marketing professionals, that's a great way to do it. "Hi, we're having a professional panel. We'd love for you to be on it." And so that essentially is networking, not just the attending of the event, but actually helping to plan it and introducing yourself to people and talking about how you can work together as a student and a professional for a specific event.

That can be a very low-key, I say low-key, I mean, it's networking, you have to have some initiative, but it's not like you're just on your own in a big room and someone's saying, "Go." It kind of plans it out for you, you've got your specific duties and there you are networking. So once they start thinking about it like that, it can be a lot less intimidating. So I always try to frame it as, we can call it networking, we can call it talking with people or asking questions, seeking out connections on LinkedIn. But that's all part of that same trying to meet as many people as possible because it's true, I've seen over and over that the connection is what helps somebody land the job. Maybe not so much with all internships, but certainly with a lot of them, but especially for jobs.

I'm very active on LinkedIn with advice or my opinion on things, and I've had people contact me who I don't know, who didn't go to the school that I work at, Columbia College Chicago, and say, "Look, I see you active on here. Is there any way you'd be open to meeting?" And I for sure am. And so far, twice people that I haven't met, our conversations through LinkedIn and then my outreach to connections on LinkedIn have led to them, I'm not saying it was a cause and effect, but down the road, not too far, they got a job with one of those connections.

So I'm bringing that up not to say, "Oh, aren't I so great?" It's more a matter of just I'm always on there. So it's like, okay, if you do something frequently enough, it's going to happen. But that people would reach out, network with me by introducing themselves to me and saying that they're having trouble or whatever their situation is. And then for them to go on and get jobs with people I don't even know kind of shows how it is who you know, but not necessarily who you know in terms of if they're your neighbor or your friend and that you know know them, but people that you've been able to connect with in the digital or real world. I hope that makes sense.

Shanita Akintonde:

No, it makes perfect sense. And I just want to correct something that both you and Gregg have said on this podcast. Jennifer, I'll start with you. You said, "I don't want to take credit for that." You absolutely should because you are a conduit, whether it was directly related to you calling the person and saying, "Hire this person." The connection, I believe in the six degrees of separation principle and LinkedIn gives you that. A contact of a contact of a contact can then be something that works out favorably for you in that regard. And you, Gregg, started off telling us that wonderful story about your son and saying, "I don't want to make it about me." You absolutely should make it about you because your experience, as I said in your intro, and yours as well, Jennifer, people can learn from that. So I think there's a line between being egomaniacal or being self-righteous or sounding like I'm the perfect person.

But the other side of that coin, which is the advice I give to people when you're looking for a job, is this is no time for modesty. I mean, you don't want to be the person that's annoyingly, again, your ego walks in the room before you do. But especially in a field like marketing, advertising, public relations, et cetera, where our job is literally to get the brands and the businesses out in front of the world, you can model that in your own behavior and it can be done in a way that's classy and not obtrusive. But at the same time, if you're talking about standing out, you got to stand out. So both you Gregg and you Jennifer, can toot your own horn, toot, toot, because those are good things that you're sharing and they're true. It's not like you're making it up.

Gregg Orloff:

Very good. That's great.

Shanita Akintonde:

Speaking of true, can you both talk about, and I'm going to rephrase this because I used the word mistakes in our last conversation, I don't want to say mistakes that you've seen. What are some areas of growth or some opportunities for individuals who may be on the fence, as I just mentioned, a little nervous about putting themselves out there. What advice, Gregg, can you give them so that they can say confidently, "You know what, I am who I am and this is how I need to position myself in order for folks to see me and consider hiring me for their position."

Gregg Orloff:

Yeah. I think the best advice I can give on that is that there's not one answer key. One of the hardest things to understand is that these are people making... It's ironic that there's so much talk about AI and technology and all these things that are automating, but what I do, I take offense to that. Yes, there's things automated to help create lists, but the art of the science of chemistry is not something that robots can really do. And so there are plenty of introverts who have big jobs. There are plenty of shy people, there are all different race, religion, color. It is a melting pot out there. And I think advertising, maybe it was a little late, you talked about the Mad Men clip from the last one being a pretty specific demographic, and that is changing, maybe not to the degree, I don't want to open a different soapbox, but it's getting more and more open.

And I think that you don't really know until you know what the other person is looking for. You don't know what they value, and there's no reason to try and answer things the way you think they want to hear them. Be who you are. And if that's not good enough, it's not good enough. And I know that that can be a hard thing to say because a job search can take a while and it can maybe make people feel a little frustrated that things aren't going at a pace that maybe they're doing something wrong, but they're not. It's just there is a randomness and a numbers game to it. It's really just something that you have to stick to. And it goes back to the notion of a personal brand. Sometimes people think about branding, the way I hear people talk about it, it's more of a manipulative tool trying to put something out there that really people read and are stilting your resume or your bio in a way that people think they want to hear it.

Well, I don't like that. If it's truly you and something you've put thought into that you're going to own when you're there at a real person, if it's the truth and you can go and confidently speak to it as the truth, it's fine. But if you start to put things out there, buzzwords that you think people want to hear, you're going to get caught up and you're going to foul up trying to remember all those things. So I think that whatever that is, and if you have things that are, especially nowadays, there's things about you that maybe you feel some people think are negatives, but you just got to own it and own whatever that is. There's strength in being quiet and there's strength in being extroverted. You just have to sync up with the right person who values the right part of your being to make it work. And it's really that simple. There's just no substitute for the truth, and everyone else gets found out if they don't subscribe to that.

Shanita Akintonde:

Amen. That was such a brilliant statement or a brilliant way of putting that, Gregg. I'm going to say, in the classroom, I would often notice my quietest students, those, as they say, still waters run deep. My quiet students particularly got my attention. And I know the opposite may have seemed to be the case, the ones who talked the loudest or were the most verbose, and they had a place too, I'm in that latter category often, but I would often pay attention to the quiet ones in particular. And I love this book called Quiet as well because it talks about the fact that the introverts in many cases are often the true leaders. And that's not to say extroverts are not, but you got to pay attention. And so I appreciate what you're saying, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, be authentically you because the representative will be found out and then you'll both be out of there.

So to you, Jennifer, and we're going to be wrapping this up soon, I mean, what is it that you can say in relation to that? Students may say, and I think there's a continual with students, or there's two ends of the spectrum. You got the overly confident, and we talked about this too, "I can do anything including just walk off the campus into the advertising CEO's office and get the other corner office adjacent to his because I'm all that and a bag of chips student." And then you have those who say, "I'm just a student. I don't know where to begin. I'm overwhelmed. I don't think I have what it takes. This is intimidating to me." So how do you address either, both? What do you say, in our last few minutes here, Jennifer?

Jennifer Halperin:

Well, one reason I like to set appointments with my students for an hour instead of a half hour is because as I'm helping them build their resume, I like to listen a little bit to their life story, what brought them to where they are. And frequently students will say, "I don't really have anything for a resume. I have not done much." And so trying to talk to them and build up their confidence about what they are bringing to the table. Maybe they are bilingual. That's huge. A lot of people don't put that even on their resume. That's just a golden asset. Maybe they're a first generation college student. That's a valuable perspective that supervisors are going to want to know. Maybe they went to a two-year school at first and now are commuting for their final two years at a university. That's huge. These are the kinds of things that can be seen as challenges within life. Maybe you don't have the ability to not work during school and you're able to go with family help or scholarships, etc.

So I try to get them to look at what they're bringing to the table as their authentic selves so that they understand their perspective is needed and wanted. And for example, speaking to the diversity issues within advertising, I know that we were talking about the Multicultural Advertising Internship Program, Shanita, and I know you're an alum of that, but also in recent years, there have been a lot more popping up, including one called the BLAC, B-L-A-C, internship program specifically for advertising. So these perspectives that have been not cultivated in the past, now at least there is that effort. And so I really try to imbue students with a sense of what you're bringing is important, your perspective is important, and the way you've built your experiences is important. So I do try to turn that around for students to be like, "I don't have things that would be valuable yet," to be like, "No, you're coming in already with a unique and important view."

Shanita Akintonde:

This is why I love this lady. Jennifer walks the walk and talks the talk, or talks the talk and walks the walk, however you want to put it. I've seen her in action with students. And you do, at the end of the day, need to know, as both of the panelists are saying, that people really genuinely care about you. Jennifer is an example of that. Gregg is an example of that. We are so honored to have both of you take time on this Marketing Insights Podcast. I think what you shared with the listeners is invaluable. At the end of the day, be authentically you, share your own story. Understand that preparation meeting opportunity is really what's going to get you across the finish line. But don't be afraid to reach out and ask for help along the way. And speaking of asking for help, how do folks get in touch with you both? So Gregg, how do they get in touch with you? Can you share your info that you feel comfortable with with the listeners? How can they find out about you or your company or how to reach out?

Gregg Orloff:

Well, being a recruiter, I'm a slave to LinkedIn, like everybody else. And so I encourage anyone. It's G-R-E-G-G, three all day, but two at the end, orloff@robertsryan, gorloff@robertsryan.com is my email. But LinkedIn is a great way to have access more on an ongoing basis and should be pretty easy to find. And I would say feel free to reach out. I'm happy to part any advice and help I can along the way. It takes a village, so please do.

Shanita Akintonde:

That's wonderful. So that's Gregg, G-R-E-G-G, two Gs because he's double good, Orloff, O-R-L-O-F-F and he's on LinkedIn. Jennifer, how can they get in touch with you?

Jennifer Halperin:

I'd love to connect with people on LinkedIn. I'm on there as Jennifer, J-E-N-N-I-F-E-R, Halperin, H-A-L-P-E-R-I-N. So you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Or my email is jhalperin@colum.edu. So it's jhalperin@colum.edu.

Shanita Akintonde:

And that's for Columbia College, Chicago, my alma mater, and the place I had an honor of teaching for almost 25 years alongside this wonderful woman. So there you have it, folks. This was our conversation about pathways to career. Hopefully you got some information. Again, follow up with all of these folks or, I'm saying all, both of these individuals after today's call. Until next time, which will be our best time, this is Shanita Akintonde, professor, author, career coach, and marketing shero signing off. If you enjoy listening to these podcasts, be sure to subscribe to them on your favorite platforms such as Stitcher, iTunes, Apple, audible, Google Play, etc, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Be sure to like them and subscribe wherever you hear them. Connect with me on LinkedIn as well at Professor Shanita Akintonde. Or follow me on Twitter, @_ShanitaSpeaks. That would be follow me on Twitter, @_ShanitaSpeaks. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.