📚 Gorick Ng, Author of "The Unspoken Rules" and Career Advisor
How to be clear, concise and confident in your communications at work
👋 Hello. It’s Julia. Thank you for dialing into this edition. To celebrate year 3, I’m hosting The Switchboard’s first Newsletter Club. The first session is February 7th at 5pm PT/8pm ET. Register to discuss How To Write for an Executive. Join us later this month on February 28th for Work Hacks to Support Happiness & Success.
In This Edition
🌳 The influence of family experiences on careers
🖊️ How to be clear, concise and confident in work communications
📰 A newsletter that teaches stories from the past to shape the present and future
What sparked your path into your current work?
I grew up in Toronto as the only son of my working-class, single-parent mom who had dropped out of school at 12 years old to work in a sewing machine factory. When I was 14, she lost her job. Because of my proficiency in English and knowledge of the Internet, we job searched together—I used to write resumes and cover letters during recess and coach her over the kitchen table after school. But, despite sending in probably 200+ job applications, not a single role called her back.
Though she eventually got a position as a daycare assistant and also returned to school, this experience has defined what I do today and continues to shape whatever comes next. As for what I do, I’m a first-gen college grad turned career adviser turned author. I’m on a mission to help talent from humble beginnings rise to positions of leadership while demystifying the unspoken rules of career success.
What is one project you are particularly proud of accomplishing over the years?
The project that I’m particularly proud of right now is my newsletter, Did You Know? with Gorick, which shares the untold stories to success of the people you know and actionable career strategies to subscribers each week. Speaking of newsletters, I’ve been devouring the interviews and advice that you share here on The Switchboard and my continuous thought has been: How do you do it?!
I say How do you do it?! because it’s been an iterative process. The first format for my newsletter was “a story from the past, a study from the present, and a strategy for your future,” where I’d share one story of a famous individual from history, one recent research paper from the past few years, and one technique to help students, professionals, and educators in their career journey.
Now, the current format focuses more on a story and a strategy. I’ve expanded away from people and am now including lessons (Listerine has been one of my favorite recent editions). As much as I wish there’d been an “unspoken rules of newsletters” I could have read at the start, it was a goal of mine to launch a newsletter for the past several years so I’m ecstatic to finally have it up and running!
What are a few of the best practices you give first-gen professionals for communicating at work?
The communication best practices that I share with first-generation professionals or college students are the same I’d recommend for any professional or student: Be clear, concise, and confident.
These are essentially a sub-bullet of The Three C’s, my main framework from The Unspoken Rules. The Three C’s stand for competence, commitment, and compatibility: and can be interpreted as three main questions that any employer is asking themselves:
Competence: Can you do your job well?
Commitment: Are you excited to be here?
Compatibility: Do you get along with us?
Being clear, concise, and confident are the ways that The Three C’s also show up in our communication with others:
Clear: Is your main takeaway (e.g., a question, concern, or suggestion) immediately recognizable in what you’ve written or planned to say?
Concise: Is your communication digestible and/or skimmable so that you can provide more context when or if appropriate?
Confident: Do you appear to know what you’re talking about, even if you aren’t sure?
There will be scenarios and settings where these could and should apply. And, it can be a good idea to consider the “who, what, when, where, and how” when you’re engaging in any type of communication.
I used to take hours to write one email / thank you note/invitation… now it’s a few minutes (for the most part!). So, if that sounds familiar to anybody reading this, know that you’re not alone!
Can you tell us about your book and course?
After college, I went into management consulting at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and later, investment banking at Credit Suisse. It was in this traditional corporate environment that I began to observe similarities between the experience I had helping my mom apply for jobs and the way those who get and stay ahead navigate the workplace.
This commonality is what I now call “the unspoken rules” but back then it was really more of, “Hey, why does everyone else seem to know what they’re doing—and I don’t?” The best example I have is this story from my first day in a new role. I was setting up my laptop and noticed that my deskmate was going to lunch with a higher-up. “That’s so awesome they’re taking the time to get to know us!” was my first reaction. As you can likely infer, this was an invite-only lunch: my deskmate had already been forming connections while I was still organizing my inbox.
Eventually, I pursued my MBA. Throughout this time, I’d been cataloging what I started to call “the unspoken rules” or the skills and strategies that are passed down from parent to child or mentor to mentee to help them secure jobs and internships.
But for first-generation college students (who comprised 56% of undergraduate populations in 2015-16) or other individuals from underrepresented groups, these “rules” may not ever be concretely shared or addressed. Ultimately, this creates an unlevel playing field between those who get ahead and those who don’t.
The Unspoken Rules was a result of my experiences but moreover the experiences and strategies of over 500 professionals across job types and industries. It’s one of many batons in what I think of as a track-and-field-like collaborative effort between researchers, writers, educators, administrators, employers, employees, and so many more who believe in increasing opportunities of higher education and in the workplace.
The course is my attempt to build on the book, with new and improved strategies that take students through a visual roadmap starting from a new hire’s first day, through leading projects, improving productivity and communication, up to positioning oneself well for promotions. The course is doable in a morning at 3.5 hours long; afterwards, individuals can practice the main takeaways of each module with over 30 pages of cheat sheets and checklists.
How do you continue learning about your field?
I’d say this is a combination of connecting with other individuals in the higher-ed and leadership development spaces as well as those who are “in it”, meaning those who are learning how to navigate recruitment season at college or preparing for their first day at their new job post-graduation.
The former helps me stay up to date with best practices, new strategies or initiatives, and keeps me connected to some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. The latter helps me stay up to date with current trends, new questions or painpoints, and also keeps me connected to some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met.
About Gorick
Gorick Ng is the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right, a book published by Harvard Business Review Press named by Thinkers50 as one of the top 10 management books of 2022.
Gorick is a career adviser at Harvard College, specializing in coaching first-generation, low-income students. He is also a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked in management consulting at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), investment banking at Credit Suisse, and research with the Managing the Future of Work project at Harvard Business School.
He has been featured in Fast Company, Fortune Magazine, CNBC and other news outlets. Find him at www.gorick.com.
Thank you for dialing into this edition. To celebrate year 3, I’m hosting The Switchboard’s first Newsletter Club. The first session is February 7th at 5pm PT/8pm ET. Register to discuss How To Write for an Executive. Join us later this month on February 28th for Work Hacks to Support Happiness & Success.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, I always love hearing from you — reply to let me know what resonated, comment, give it a heart or share on LinkedIn and tag us. Thank you for your support.
Thank you so much for having me in this edition of The Switchboard, Julia!