The Executive Update

Do You Have A Career Blueprint?

We all get caught up in the immediacy of the hunt; the urgency to pursue a specific opportunity or drill deep into a company that might turn out to be a great place to work. However, have you considered the need for a long-term career roadmap; a blueprint to help you manage your career? I recently ran across an interesting article from the Employment Digest blog entitled “How to Write a Career Blueprint,” which offers an interesting perspective on how long-term objectives can help guide short-term decisions:

“Our aspirations and view towards life change at different stage of our career lives. When we first graduated from college, we may look for a job that allows us to learn new things. As we proceed in our career and in life, the remuneration and the exposure would probably be the main search priority. This priority may change when we reach mid-life and it will also be different as we enter into our retirement stage. We also look for different goals out of our career when we face crisis in our lives.”

The article suggests that you first identify your career goals, starting with what you like and dislike about your job. Take stock of every aspect, including the employer, industry, the size of the company, what type of boss you like, salary, office political environment, and other factors. Make specific lists about what you like about your job, what you dislike, and what makes your job fun. Then, using those criteria, map out what it would be like to work in the perfect job.

There are specific steps suggested in the article, but the end result will help you focus your search. It will provide a litmus test that you can apply to various companies and opportunities to see if they would be a good fit for your next career move.

And the plan should not remain static. Be sure to update your strategy every few years to reflect changes in your goals and your professional likes and dislikes. Just as you can’t build a house without a blueprint, you can’t build your career without a strategy.

Ask the Coach: The War for Talent

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is a post contributed by last week’s coach Cindy Kraft, The CFO Coach.

One very interesting question in the Ask the Coach call was about ongoing trends. I mentioned two: the strong preference of recruiters for passive candidates, and the fallout from the Blackberry and other instant gratification toys that are now a permanent part of our worlds.

One more trend comes to mind … the war for talent. Aside from statistics backing up this premise, there are also exacerbating circumstances.

There are the recruiter-types who are digging deep to find passive candidates with the exact skill sets they’ve been hired to find. Because not everyone has bought into the importance of a visible online presence, those candidates can’t always be easily found by the people who want to find them. They “could” be desirable and in demand … if the right people knew who they were and where they are. Sadly, they may be missing out on great opportunities.

Identifying Your Unique Differentiators

In this blog, and elsewhere, we talk a lot about marketing your unique value proposition. We all need to identify what makes us stand out from the crowd; what differentiates our talents from the myriad of other Joes and Janes lined up with the same titles and job skills.

Which is why I was gratified to see a recent post from Louise Fletcher of Blue Sky Resumes that addresses the problem of how to find your unique value proposition:

“If you’re like me, you see other people much more clearly than you see yourself. So when it comes to marketing yourself, you probably fall back on platitudes, or standard ideas of what a good executive does. And the resulting resume is probably flat and boring and not at all reflective of what makes you YOU.”

Louise suggests that you ask yourself the following three questions to help you identify your unique value or offering:

1. What past complements have you received from bosses, co-workers or clients? What do they say about you? Think about the last salary review of evaluation and look at the words your managers and peers used to describe you and your performance. The trick is to not get focus on what you think, but on what other people say; how are you and your talents viewed by third parties

Ask the Coach: The Blackberry Effect

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from the most recent session with Cindy Kraft, The CFO Coach.

In this week’s Ask the Coach call, one caller asked Cindy what trends she’s been seeing in the job market.

She said at the last Kennedy Conference held in October, in Orlando, there was a definite trend among recruiters to seek out passive candidates – those who are employed and don’t have a visible presence on the web job boards. That said, Cindy strongly recommends that both job seekers and recruiters make a concerted effort to network, using business networking sites to connect with one another and share insights and referrals. Even if you don’t match a job search, offer referrals to other passive candidates who might qualify. Recruiters remember when you can assist them.

And another prevalent trend that Cindy pointed to is the Blackberry Effect – the shortening attention span of recruiters and hiring managers. Communications has evolved, from sending letters, to faxes, to e-mail, to instant messages, and now Twitter. The electronic delivery media are making messages shorter and shorter, so you have to adapt. Resumes are shorter, and your personal brand and value have to be short, sweet, and to the point.

Where the Machines Fail

I recently ran across some interesting insights from Nick Corcodilos on his Ask the Headhunter blog. Nick has a series of posts about asking In Your Face Questions (IYFQs) of headhunters or hiring managers. One of Nick’s readers suggested assertive questions like:

• What are your qualifications to determine my value to your organization?
• Are you qualified to assess my background and how did you obtain your qualifications?
• How often have you interviewed people with similar credentials?
• Is there anyone with a similar background who can accurately assess my skills, qualities, and potential?

These IYFQs point out a basic flaw with the job search system – electronic screening. Computers and preliminary resume screeners can’t effectively assess a candidate’s true capabilities, yet they serve as a firewall between the candidate and the hiring manager.

To follow my logic, think back to Alan Turing who was responsible for breaking the German Enigma code during World War II. Turing paid the foundation for modern computing by establishing a methodology to determine, in principle, whether a conjecture can be proved true or false? The decision problem calls for a mechanical set of rules for deciding whether such an inference is valid, one that is guaranteed to yield a yes-or-no answer in a finite amount of time. By reducing the decision process to a binary decision (yes or no, true or false) he demonstrated that machines can be used for problem-solving. Now the question arises,

what’s the difference between a machine and man solving problems?

Ask the Coach: From Entrepreneur to Intrapreneur

 

 

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from a recent session with career coach Don Orlando.

 

One caller asked about how to position his entrepreneurial experience? If you have experience with a start-up, is it marketable?

 

 Don’s response was, “Yes, in the right circles.” Don prefaced his comments by saying he has two  rules of job search:

1. "Nothing is guaranteed" "If someone guarantees you anything turn around and walk away!!" Job placement is too subjective a process to come with a guarantee.
   
   
2. There are no black or white answers!! There are always exceptions to every situation.

With those two rules in mind, Don explains that large companies are not fond of entrepreneurs as a rule. Those coming from a start-up environment might be considered loose cannons – Employees who cannot follow orders and are not team players. However, smaller companies that tend to rely more heavily on their executives to step out of their specific roles are more open to hiring entrepreneurs. They appreciate the varied experience required to be a successful entrepreneur.

Coach, Not Crutch

I have to give a nod to Steve Roeseler and his recent observations on All Things Workplace. I have been working with job seekers and career coaches for many years, so I found Steve’s recent post, “When Did the Executive Coach Become a Player?,” most poignant. Steve highlights a trend that some industry experts have identified, where the executive coach (as opposed to a career coach) actually starts taking on the responsibilities of the executive. Steve cites an article from the Wall Street Journal which:

"...describes how some executives’ coaches are now inserting themselves into certain executive functions, such as the hiring process. According to the article, some are actually conducting interviews of job applicants and exercising – or being given – vetoes over hiring decisions."

Here Steve and I are in agreement: if an executive coach starts assuming the job responsibilities of his client, then he or she is no longer coaching, they are managers themselves. The whole concept of coaching or mentoring is to effect a knowledge transfer; to help executives become better managers by revealing new thinking and new approaches. Once the coach assumes the responsibilities of the executive, then that coach has crossed the line.

Why “Am I A Success” Is the Wrong Question

A brief thought for Friday – I ran across an interesting blog post by on Bob Sutton’s Work Matters. Sutton references a paper by Karl Weick of the University of Michigan which offers the following observation:

“… people who are preoccupied with success ask the wrong question. They ask, “what is the secret of success” when they should be asking, “what prevents me from learning here and now?” To be overly preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where learning and growth take place. To walk around asking, “am I a success or a failure” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to answer is to say, everyone is both a success and a failure.”

This is great career advice. When you are thinking about your current job, or your career in general, shouldn’t you focus energy on the here and now and what makes you successful? After all, you can act only in the present, not in the future.

One of the challenges facing most job seekers is a tendency to be overwhelmed thinking about a long-term strategy. When you look at the big picture, remember that it is made up of individual brushstrokes. While it is important to have a roadmap for the future, it’s the day-to-day accomplishments that will lead you to your objective. Just as the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so does your career path begin you’re your accomplishments in the here and now.

Learn from your experience today, and your path for future success will become clear.

Ask the Coach: It’s About Work, Not a Job

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from the most recent session with Peter Engler or the Engler Career Group.

If you check out Peter’s web site, you will see a lot of content for job seekers over 50, so not surprisingly, this week’s call included a number of older job seekers seeking advice.

If you are looking for companies that tend to hire older workers, start with their web sites and see if they have an “older feel.” Look at the staff bios and get a sense of what kind of senior management is in charge.

If you are going to apply to a company, Peter prefers to determine if age is going to be a problem and get the “no” responses out of the way as quickly as possible. It saves time and your ego. When you make contact with a prospective employer, be sure to highlight the merits of your age, your accomplishments, and what you have to offer that your younger competitors don’t have. You shouldn’t have to compete with those who are less experienced. As Peter often says, at 45+ you are looking for work, not a job; leverage your experience.

Reframe Your Job Search

As you are thinking about your career and career management, you can find inspiration from various sources. I recently ran across a book by Erich Joachimsthaler, Hidden in Plain Sight, which offered insights in how to drive your company’s growth strategy. If you think of your career as a company, and your job search as a growth strategy (see my last blog post), then some of the insights from this book can be applied  to your own career management.

The premise of the book is that corporate success tends to hide new opportunities for growth; that companies need to look beyond customer need to understanding behavioral ecosystems that dictate people’s lives. Joachmisthaler calls this the “demand-first innovation and growth” model. In practice, this means thinking about your customers in terms of how they lead their lives, e.g. it’s more important to know that people exercise twice a week than what sneakers they wear; or the fact the Starbucks has become more than just a coffee shop, but a “third space” that functions between home and work. It’s not about features, but the framework in which the products operate.

Now think about how this applies to job search. First you have to think of the job environment as your customer, and then reframe your opportunity space. Define your job search strategy from the outside in, creating a demand framework for your skills, and then identifying that key inflection point where someone needs the skills you have to offer. Joachmisthaler identifies three basic components to the demand-first innovation and growth model, and they can be readily applied to job search: