The Executive Update

Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive

In recent weeks I have been spending a lot of time talking to professional career coaches about negotiating tactics and strategies. What is the best way to handle an interview? What do you reveal? What do you emphasize? How do you negotiate the best package for the position? The common theme, in the words of Johnny Mercer, you have to Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.

What comes through in all these discussions is be honest! This doesn’t mean you need to bare your soul in an interview or embrace a policy of total disclosure. However, you should be forthright about who you are and what you are seeking from the opportunity at hand. You also need to positive in your approach, which means you need to be both sure of what you are looking for, and self-assured.

This is where your work on your personal brand converges with the research you have done on your prospective employer. In the last blog posting, we told a story about a young woman who knew her worth, knew her needs, and was able to create her own position with the right compensation and the perks she wanted. This was the direct result of understanding what she wanted and using a positive attitude.

In job hunting, approach is everything. Every week, I welcome new NETSHARE members in our weekly call, and I talk with new members one on one. I can tell who has what it takes to land their next job, and who doesn’t. Okay, we know that getting fired or laid off is a humiliating experience. Until you get past the negative and focus on the positive, you can’t move forward.

So beware of projecting a “victim” mentality, especially when looking for a new job. That negativity comes across every time. Be positive and be powerful.

What Price Compensation?

We have been talking a lot about negotiation and compensation packages with NETSHARE members lately. Our next Experts Connection session, scheduled for March 28 features Dora Vell discussing how to negotiate the best salary package, and how to really command what you are worth when you close a new job. But compensation criteria changes with time. Younger workers and those who are just starting their move up the career ladder are more interested in cash – Show me the money! As you get more established, and command that higher salary, it’s harder to squeeze more cash out of a job, so you look for other benefits like stock options. And as you mature in your career, and gain some financial security, your own priorities will change. It’s natural to want to take more time to be with family, care for aging parents or young children, take time out for hobbies and activities that help you stay passionate about the rest of your life. And there is no reason why you shouldn’t look at options such as flex time, telecommuting, time off, or geographic flexibility as part of your overall compensation package. It’s your career; make it work for you rather than being a slave to your job.

I often hear from NETSHARE members about how they are penalized in their careers for trying to create a life that balances family commitments and work. Too frequently, intelligent, talented women who take time out to start a family often have trouble re-entering the work force at their old level; they backslide and have to catch up. Other executives decide to accept less rewarding positions that give them the freedom to create that life/work balance. But why compromise?

Negotiation is not always about the money. If you approach it right, you can get a terrific job and still have time to coach your son’s baseball team or take care of your aging mother. When you achieve a certain professional level, your skills are valuable to the right employer. Understand that and use it to your advantage.

In another Experts Connection teleseminar, Ross Macpherson discussed how to handle this kind of negotiation in an interview setting. The best approach is be up front. If the compensation package isn’t quite right or there is something wrong with the job – too much travel, a long commute, challenging work hours – it’s going to impact your personal life in any case, which means it may not be the best fit for you. Put your cards on the table and ask for what you want. You may just get it.

I recently received a newletter from Judith Cushman, a recruiter specializing in technology, that offered a prophetic tale of a job seeker with just such a challenge. Recently fired with two young children, she was struggling to find a job that would do more than pay the bills. She thought she found the perfect opportunity, but there were a number of red flags – it was a long commute and telecommuting was out of the question, she would have a controlling supervisor, and the interview process revealed that the company was extremely inflexible about accommodating its employees’ personal needs. She passed on the job, and instead applied for a position from a job board for which she knew she was overqualified. She saw that the company needed more strategic talent than outlined in the job description. She got the interview, talked to the partners, and stated her case. After internal discussion and some external coaching, the partner saw that the position was too narrow this woman was an asset they could not afford to lose. They rewrote the job description to director level, and she not only landed the job at a higher salary, she is allowed to telecommute two days a week, which for her was priceless.

So when you are negotiating that new job, think beyond pure compensation. Understand what it’s going to make to make you a whole person and a better professional. Work life balance is too big to ignore.

The Diogenes Dilemma: Looking for Honest Work

Let’s consider the difference between looking for a satisfying job and finding satisfying work. Many of us press on through our careers looking for the next fulfilling career opportunity, the next job. However, as you advance in your career, the brass ring seems farther and farther away. It gets harder to reach the next rung in the ladder. The right jobs become more elusive, but there is plenty of work for those who are nimble enough to change tactics and pursue the task at hand. Don’t sell your skills to the highest bidder, rent them for greater wealth and personal satisfaction!

Peter Engler is an experienced executive coach, headhunter, and career marketing executive has some interesting thoughts in what it’s like to look for work over 50. It’s a different process and you need to apply different criteria. He said it best, “post-50 year olds should be looking for WORK, not a job.”

There is a growing belief that employers will become crunched for skilled workers. Recent statistics from the US Department of Labor demonstrate that the workforce is clearly aging, and workers 55 and older and even 65 and older are making up a larger percentage of workers. Think tanks such as the Boston College Center on Aging and Work are predicting a sea change as boomers retire and a leave a workers shortage as fewer young workers rise in the ranks.

This presents a golden opportunity for aging executives looking to make a change in their career and seek something more fulfilling. Employers are going to start actively looking to fill this void in their workforce. Older executives can opt to compete with generations X, Y, and Z and stay in the workforce longer, or they can go freelance. Seek out the work, not the job. Quite often if you look for satisfying work, a great job will follow.

Let’s face it. Despite the laws and the rhetoric, ageism is a fact of life. The older you get, and the farther you move up the career ladder, the harder it is to find a worthwhile job. Even seniority does not guarantee job security. As we’ve noted previously, the average tenure for C level executives is four years or less, and other senior managers lose their jobs just as frequently when the corporate game plan changes. As you and your career mature, it gets harder to reinvent yourself, and the wide net cast by the Internet makes it harder to compete with the up-and-comers who have exactly the right credentials and command a smaller salary.

So when you hit the top of your game what do you do, retire? Naw! When the going gets tough, the tough become consultants. (Or as I sometimes phrase it, “Freelance is another word for nothing’ left to lose…” with apologies to Kris Kristofferson.) A growing trend in today’s business climate is to rent senior talent rather than hire it. This opens up some new possibilities for the executive looking for a change and willing to take a little risk. Why not try consulting for a change of pace.

Okay, consulting can be very scary. There is no regular paycheck, and you have to worry about paying your own taxes and health benefits, but the rewards can be significant. If you start to see yourself staring at a dead end with no prospects in sight because of your age or rarified level of expertise or specialization, consider short-term employment. Become a troubleshooter.

Increasingly, companies are looking for seasoned execs with a narrow and deep level of expertise who can address a specific problem: opening a new territory, promoting customer retention, fixing the supply chain, revising the accounting system, whatever. These employers are hungry for the expertise and willing to pay handsomely to rent it, but they balk at a long-term commitment. Once the task at hand is complete, all that senior-level expertise becomes dead weight on the payroll.

So go with the flow. Offer yourself as a guru for hire. Command the bigger salary for the short-term assignment. Who knows, you might find the ideal career role while you are moving from consulting contract to consulting contract. Some of the best jobs emerge from temporary positions, and if you like the variety and the challenge, why not try consulting? At least until you create that perfect job.

Work is the Root of Network

While traveling to New York for the Association of Executive Search Consultants conference, my friend, Professor James Weldon asked me to speak to his MBA class on principles of marketing at Fordham University. The class is mostly made up of Generation X and Y students in their 20s and 30s; young professionals who have come to appreciate the value of career management. They understand that the rules of work are changing, and they appreciate third-party advice that helps them stay ahead of the game.

We were talking about career advancement and what it takes to get a job in today’s economic climate. One of the students in the class works for a large consumer packaged goods company and said it was his company’s (unstated) policy not to hire anyone who is unemployed. A foolish policy, considering that even C-level executives leave their companies, either by choice or by circumstance, every three to four years (see my last blog entry). Forced unemployment is nothing new, and as companies change strategies like dirty socks, they often throw away the best and brightest, which means there’s a great talent pool walking the streets as “unemployed.”

What some of these younger career seekers seem to grasp that many of the older generations don’t is that gainful employment has little to do with actual job performance and everything to do with corporate circumstances. The market drives careers, not job performance. If a company changes directions to take advantage of changing market conditions, there is a strong likelihood that people will lose their jobs.

That’s why it’s vitally important to maintain your career network. Students applying to colleges today are not only looking for the best curriculum but the best networking schools (UCLA apparently ranks high in networking opportunities). They understand that employment is becoming more tenuous, and it is increasingly a matter of not what you know but who you know. Personal networking is more important than ever, which is why there has been a rise in the popularity of social networking sites like LinkedIn.

As David Sandusky, president of Your Brand LLC, explains it, creating your personal network is like managing your bank account. If you are constantly making withdrawals from the bank, your career will soon be in bankruptcy. You need to make deposits as well as withdrawals, i.e. you need to nurture your professional network as well as exploit it.

Job searching today is all about building relationships, and the contact you make today may be interviewing you tomorrow. So remember that “work” is the root word in network, and that your personal network could be the thing that gets you a job when you really need it.

Keeping Pace with the New Economy

Last time, we noted that executives have a shorter tenure than ever before, and that CEOs are turning over every few years. To stay ahead of the competition, companies, and their executive managers, are having to reinvent themselves every few years just to stay in the game.

So what does all this mean for the executive job seeker? Here are some thoughts:

1. There is no such thing as job security. With senior management turning over every few years, don’t be lulled into a false sense of security when you land that executive position. A change in strategy often means a change in regime, and you may get caught up in a corporate housecleaning and find yourself back on the street without warning. The lesson to be learned is don’t let your resume gather dust. Keep your credentials fresh and up to date and keep building your career network. You never know when you might need a friend.

2. If companies need to reinvent themselves and their strategy every three years, shouldn’t you? You need to keep your personal brand promise and value proposition fresh to keep up with the companies you want to hire you.

3. Understand how you can take advantage of change by becoming a change agent. Do your homework and observe those companies you are interested in working for to see where they are in their change cycle. Find an inflection point where you can insert yourself and your credentials and demonstrate that you are the right agent for change; the catalyst that can drive the company to new profitability.

As the value of people as assets continues to grow for American business, you need to be prepared to become an asset. Where people are valued, you need to make yourself invaluable. You also need to be prepared to continue to promote your value, to your employer, to your network, and to potential employers who may be there to snap you up when the revolution comes.

Professional development has become more important than ever, because jobs have become more tenuous. Stay connected with your peers. Continue to build your network. Work with professionals who can help you prepare when you find yourself against the wall when the revolution comes. That’s NETSHARE’s mandate – to give you the ongoing resources you need to get connected, stay focused, and be prepared so you can move your career forward.

Job Security? The Rules Have Changed

Last week I attended the annual conference of the Association of Executive Search Consultants in New York. The theme for this year’s conference: The New Rules. I wondered if the rules of recruiting and employment really have changed? Certainly new technologies like the Internet have redefined the way we interact and communicate, but have the fundamental rules of jobs and career changed.

The keynote presentation offered some very insightful views on how today’s job world is, indeed, very different. The keynote speaker was Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor at large for Fortune Magazine. His topic, The New Rules for the Outstanding Executive. I’ll provide a synopsis here but his speech offered some real food for thought.

Coleman offered four basic rules for companies operating in today’s economy:

Any organization’s competitive advantage resides in its people, its culture, and its relationships. In brief, great businesses understand that real business is based on people. To prove his point, Coleman offered two examples. In the first, he compared Microsoft to Exxon. Microsoft is a people-based operation; where the ideas and concepts derived from human capital far outperform the capital of conventional assets, like petroleum production. Just compare their stock performance. He also offered a similar comparison between Google and Citibank. The innovation and creativity of Google’s human capital outperforms Citibanks’ financial assets. In short, successful companies invest in people.
Know when to change your business model. In the era of the “old economy,” the rule of thumb was to change your business approach every 30 years. In today’s fast-paced digital world, smart companies are reinventing themselves every three years. Driven by the Internet and other resources that provide almost instant gratification – the Free, Perfect, Now syndrome which allows customers to get exactly what they want faster than ever – you have to meet customer needs faster, and more specifically than ever.
Understand the reality of wealth creation. This is really important. Wealth creation is about capital earning more than it costs. Institutional investors, not individuals, hold most of the wealth in today’s global economy and many executives overlook this basic maxim that you need to earn more than you invest. Consider what this means when your capital is counted as your people. Invest in people and they should yield a greater return than the investment.
Execution is key. In the old economy, too many CEOs, CIOs, CFOs, CxOs have been focused on the process, not the results – they lose sight of the bigger picture, which makes them slow to adapt to new market conditions. As a result, the average tenure of a C level executive is 4.5 years, and the average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is 22 months. As the corporate game plan changes every three years, it’s harder for senior management to re-invent themselves in order to keep up. So even at the top, there is no job security.

The bottom line is that to stay competitive, the innovative companies will invest in people. I know you have heard this before, but there was a lot of buzz at the conference about recruiters identifying and investing in star performers and tracking them from job to job, so when that senior position opens up, recruiters have candidates primed and ready to fill the slot.

So what does this mean for the executive job seeker? Stay tuned. That’s the topic for our next blog entry.

Crossing the Personal Brand Chasm

Is your prospective employer an early adopter? A risk taker? A market innovator? Is that employer ready to embrace the brand called You?

Last time I discussed the difference between chasing openings and creating opportunities. Part of the challenge of creating a new opportunity is creating a unique value proposition where your professional value, your brand promise, is irresistible to an employer. In technology parlance, this means enlisting that potential employer as an early adopter, ready, willing, and able to embrace your unique brand.

If you know Geoffrey Moore’s oft quoted, seminal book, Crossing the Chasm, you have an understanding of Moore’s concept of the rates of adoption for new technologies. When a new technology hits the market, about 20 percent or less are the “early adopters” who have to have the latest and greatest widget. The rest adopt technology as the newness dims and what was innovative becomes mainstream, even mundane. You might try adopting the same approach in your career search. Show prospective employers why they really need what you have to offer and make yourself indispensable. Show them why they need to be early adopters, before someone else scoops you up.

One of Harvey McKay’s more intelligent observations was that, in a job interview, the question he always asks himself is whether he should be worried whether his competition hires this candidate. If you can make yourself indispensable in the interview and they have to hire you.

Okay, maybe that’s a tall order, but if you do your homework and closely match your skills and your personal brand to the specific needs of the position and the company, you have a good shot at seeming indispensable, which is essentially the same thing. Show them how you have done your homework, and that you are a commodity that they should scoop up, before the competition gets a hold of you. Make them understand that being an early adopter gives them an edge, because they gain a unique commodity that has unprecedented market value – you!

Don’t Chase Openings, Create Opportunities

The interesting thing about defining your personal brand is that, if you do it properly, you open up a whole new vista of career opportunities. Creating your personal brand requires a lot of introspection; a degree of soul-searching that is hard to achieve if you are too busy trying to please your current employer or your next employer.

There is a truism that I have shared with any number of jobseekers over the years. Getting fired is very freeing; cathartic; an opportunity to take your “do over.” Most senior managers are too worried about personal cash flow to understand the advantages of suddenly becoming a free agent. It’s when you lose your roadmap to the future that you have an opportunity to define a new path.

If you do the soul-searching and really work at creating your professional brand, then you can narrow the field for your job search, and open up broader career options at the same time. Your unique brand value should allow you to define a niche market where your expertise will prove invaluable. You should be able to create your own career opportunity, rather than pursuing available job openings.

Knowing the difference between opportunities and openings is critical to the successful jobseeker. Everyone is pursuing openings; those listings posted on job boards and e-mail lists. Everyone is scrambling to squeeze into the same opening, but there is only one candidate to fit the position. Your strategy needs to encompass every opportunity, both proactive and reactive. So certainly continue to put yourself out there on job boards and pursue those openings; people do get hired that way. But you also need to be able to create career opportunities.

One of the interesting aspects of the Internet is that it has actually made finding a job harder for the jobseeker. The web has broadened the field of potential candidates to encompass the entire planet. Employers can now post an exact description of the candidate they are seeking on one or more job sites and, due to the power of Internet proliferation, they can find the exact candidate they are seeking. The web makes it possible to scour the planet for the perfect employee, and it means you are competing with the global population for the same job.

That’s why it makes more sense to create opportunities rather than pursue openings. By taking the time to distill your unique value proposition – your brand – you have narrowed the potential market for the product that is “you.” Once you have defined your target market, you can develop marketing strategies to present yourself to those select members of the corporate demographic that will benefit from what you have to offer.

As we noted here before, it is better to be hunted than to hunt for a job. Similarly, you need to create your own opportunity. Find the perfect niche – the perfect company with the exact need – and sell yourself to fill the gap. Make your pitch strong enough the interviewee would be worried if you were hired by the competition. You need to prove you are uniquely qualified for the position that your employer hasn’t really thought of, yet. That’s the difference between creating your own unique opportunity and chasing openings where you may have to shoehorn the fit.

Granted, this approach is unconventional, maybe even unorthodox, but it has proven results. If you don’t take the lead, you are destined to follow, and as the saying goes, if you are not the lead dog, the view never changes.

Check back with Executive Update and we’ll do our best to show you how to command the lead.

Winning Interview Strategies: Pitching Your Brand One to One

Packaging your brand is only part of an effective job search. The brand isn’t of much use unless you get to present it to people who matter, like a prospective employer. How do you apply personal branding in an interview, and make it work to your advantage?

Last week, Ross Macpherson, president of Career Quest and an expert in interview strategies that yield job offers, was the speaker for our Experts Connection teleseminar series. Ross’s topic, “Advanced Interview Strategies that Generate Job Offers.” I thought I would share some of his insights here.

Ross is a great interview coach, showing executives how to effectively prepare for an interview. This doesn’t mean psyching yourself up as you would before the big game. It means preparing yourself in a thoughtful way to outperform the competition. As Ross explains, to get ready for an interview, you have to do your homework. You need to prepare you case, make your case, and leave the interviewee with the bullet points he or she wants to hear.

The first step is to understand what your prospective employer is looking for in the role. Do your research and prepare a research map that connects your skills and accomplishments with the needs of the company. Focus on the benefits, not the features; that is, be ready to talk about the benefits you will bring to the company’s specific needs, and map those benefits back to your experience and skill set. And always use concrete examples!

For example, if you are interviewing for a key sales position, determine what, specifically, is the sales challenge facing the company. Is it customer retention, building sales, expanding into new markets, upselling current customers? If a super salesman talks about how great a closer he is when what the company is looking for is someone who can troubleshoot existing contracts, then that employer will probably keep looking. Don’t start pitching your expertise until you know how it fits into the bigger picture, their picture.

Now let’s talk about how you can use your brand to control the interview.

The first step is to distill your brand into three key brand messages. The rule of three is an established concept: people tend to remember information offered as a trio. Identify those three key aspects to your professional brand and package them as key messages. Now you can map the key messages back to your research on what the company needs.

By using your brand messages, you can package yourself and your skills in a way that directly relates to the position you are interviewing for. As Ross notes, the best strategy you can use is to get them to visualize you in the role. So use your brand messages to project yourself into the job, mapping your brand promise to their specific needs.

Remember to focus on the benefits to the company. You have to map your skills to the beneficial outcome, so that means using your personal brand messages as a roadmap that leads to company returns.

For example, if you are in sales and you distill your personal brand into three key points, then you need to map the brand to specific returns to the company:

Superior sales performance = adds to the bottom line
Superior customer service = cultivating customer loyalty to upsell
Superior industry knowledge = ability to outsell the competition

If you have done your homework, you should be able to uncover what your prospective employer is looking for in a job candidate and then adapt your personal brand messages to serve as benefits that fit the mold for the job.

Ross closed with a final thought that should always be part of your interview strategy: ask for the job! Just like you have to close a sale, you have to close a job offer. Be sure to close an interview with questions such as, “So is there anything about my background that I can address that would prevent you from offering me this position?”

What has been your success with mapping your personal brand to job specifications? Please share your insights, and continue to check back with The Executive Update.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

The web continues to be a fresh and dynamic medium for executive job seekers, and it’s a truly rich medium that supports audio and video as well as the printed word. So in building your online presence, you have to think outside of the text box and embrace new approaches to deliver your personal brand message. Remember, the medium is the message, so you need to move beyond presenting plain text to carry your message and think about images, sound, and video.

In our last entry, we talked about building your online portfolio. Obviously, as part of your online brand, you want to present your credentials, your work philosophy, key market messages that differentiate you from the competition, a photo, etc. However, a growing trend is producing video podcasts as part of your portfolio. The next best thing to a face-to-face meeting is presenting your message in a video. A number of job seekers are starting to post their video resumes on popular public sites like YouTube, or there are emerging online video posting sites such as RecuiTV.

The mistake that many job seekers make is trying to force a video podcast to do the job of their resume. Building your brand requires the three e’s: extract, express, and exude, and producing a web video is your opportunity to exude. Video is a poor medium to present details about your professional credentials, but it is a great medium to give prospective employers a flavor of who you are as a person. Video profiles should be about the packaging, not the substance, but you still should be careful about pushing creative boundaries.

A recent story broadcast on National Public Radio demonstrates the pros and cons of taking creative risks with video resumes. The story compares the clever promotional approach of Trent Willis, whose online profile “Do You Really Know Trent Willis?” is a clever parody of a political ad, the ideal foil to get the attention of lobbyists who might hire him. Compare this to the unfortunate video CV of Aleksey Vayner, “Impossible is Nothing,” which has received widespread ridicule for missing the mark in trying to create a message that would appeal to financial institutions that might hire him. Remember our previous comments on digital dirt? Well the same goes for video footage that you post to bolster your portfolio – make sure that the video is relevant to the image you want to create, and you aren’t setting yourself up as a contestant on American Idol or worse, The Gong Show.

When hiring at the executive level, C-level managers are often trying to gauge who you are, rather than what you can do. If you have made it to the senior management level, it’s assumed you have the expertise; the real question is about your character and whether you are good fit for the organization. A video profile is an ideal way to tell people who you are, ideally without having to resort to juggling chainsaws or singing karaoke.

I agree with Mark Hovind, founder of JobBait.com who edits (and occasionally hosts) video profiles for clients. “What goes on a video clip is your passion,” says Mark. The objective of a video clip as part of a portfolio is to present you as a breathing person, separate from your credentials. Mark believes all you need is a short, impromptu video clip that speaks to who you are, your passion, and how you handle yourself. He also believes that scripted videos are the worst, since executives seldom read scripts well and tend to be stiff or freeze. Rather than delivering a State of the Union address, he suggests you use the Academy Awards approach and tie your passion to a few key messages that link back to your core brand.

Once you have a video hosted as part of your brand portfolio, use it! Include links in communications to prospective employers, colleagues, friends, and family. Make sure you take advantage of the viral effect of the Web and get your brand out there. Flog your blog!

Coming up, I will share some of the insights offered by Ross Macpherson in the latest entry in our Experts Connection teleseminar series. Ross is an expert in delivering your brand in an effective interview that closes the job.