The Executive Update

When Working with Recruiters, Why Not Think Small?

One of our career coaches, Debbie Ellis of Phoenix Career Group, shared an interesting little tidbit in a recent Ask the Coach call. Here are the results of a 2001 survey from Vault of the Top 20 Executive Search firms. What the survey shows is that some smaller boutique firms offer better service. Note that smaller firms, like J.B. Hunt (ranked 17) and Battalia Winston International (ranked 19), made this year’s rankings and are starting to compete with the larger firms. It shows that personalized service counts.

Here are the results of this survey of more than 340 HR and career professionals:

Rank	Executive Search Firm	Score
1	Korn/Ferry International	7.24
2	Heidrick & Struggles	7.04
3	A. T. Kearney	6.58
4	Spencer Stuart	6.41
5	Russell Reynolds Associates	6.26
6	Christian & Timbers	5.85
7	TMP Worldwide	5.72
8	Egon Zehnder	5.66
9	Michael Page International	5.59
10	Solomon-Page Group	5.41
11	Ray & Berndtson	5.28
12	Management Recruiters International	5.27
13	Norman Broadbent International	5.22
14	The Witney Group	5.21
15	Robert Half International	5.18
16	Allen & Associates	5.16
17	J. B. Hunt Executive Search	5.08
18	Boyden	5.06
19	Battalia Winston International	4.98
20	Amrop International	4.95

Ask the Coach: Round Pegs and Square Holes

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 Debbie Ellis, President of the Phoenix Career Group.

In this week’s Ask the Coach session, Debbie Ellis shared some insight from a blog she read about the three unasked inner questions that an interviewer thinks about when screening a candidate:

1. Is there trust? Does the interviewer feel you have integrity? Do they feel you are competent?

2. Will you embarrass the company? Through your actions, whether conscious or unconscious, will your actions or words represent the company? How do you treat people, both subordinates and senior managers?

3. Will you fit in?  Even if you are the best qualified candidate, if you don’t fit into the corporate culture, it just won’t work.

To highlight the importance of this insight, Debbie then fielded a query from a caller who was looking at a CEO position with a new start-up. The candidate has extensive experience and is often asked to step in as an interim CEO, which is why he has been asked to interview.

What Does Online Retail Have to Do with Career Management? It’s a Long Tail

I have recently been reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, which profiles changes in retail with the advent of the Internet. The long tail refers to the statistical curve that shows why e-tailers who have infinite goods for niche markets will outsell retailers with limited goods for mass markets.

The basic premise is that in an Internet-driven world, where consumers can find exactly what they want in the perfect size and color, and the bestseller products that would spread like wildfire will give way to microproducts. To prove his point, Anderson notes the decline in box office and CD sales and the rise of niche companies like Netflix and iTunes that deliver exactly what consumers want – niche products that are easy to access and inexpensive.

So what, may you ask, does this have to do with career management? Think of yourself as a product in search of a market, and your skill set, the features that a target consumer wants from that product. If you try to broaden your skills to accommodate every potential employer, you’ll miss your niche. It’s better to be laser-focused and target your niche than try to be a career chameleon and try to adapt yourself to the career opportunity at hand.

Hobbies Can Highlight Your Passion

Personal branding is about more than what you do during your working hours. It’s about the   brand that is uniquely YOU, which means what you do in your leisure time and how you make a niche for yourself in the community as well as at work. Of course, hobbies and personal activities don’t have a place on your resume, or do they?

Wendy Terwelp, president of Opportunity Knocks, notes that if you can make your hobbies relevant, you might include them on your resume to help differentiate you from the pack. She offers a number of examples, including the IT manager who also works as a rock climbing instructor, the nurse who was a marathon runner, and her own experience writing about Harleys and how that landed her a job because the hiring manager rode a hog.

Her point is that if it’s relevant, then why not include it? Being an instructor shows mentoring capabilities and if you teach rock climbing, you have focus and guts. A marathon runner has the kind of drive that’s perfect for a sales or marketing role. If your hobbies are an extension of your capabilities, they add spice to your professional persona and show that you are more than what you do during working hours. Your hobbies can demonstrate passion, leadership, and skills that aren’t obvious from a job title.

If your passion outside the office demonstrates what you can bring to a job, why not include it on your resume? It will make you a more interesting and memorable person, and may help you get your foot in the door.

Ask the Coach: Recruiter Confidential – The Inside Scoop

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 a new addition to our coaching team, Randy Block.

Randy brings 30 years of executive search experience to NETSHARE, mostly working with mid-size to large companies. He suggests you ask the following questions of recruiters when you first engage with them:

1. How long have they had the search?                               

2. How long have they been in the business?

3. How long have they worked in the industry?

4. How long have they been working with the hiring company?

Randy also notes that as an applicant, you should never be the first or second candidate presented. The first applicants are almost never hired, but help fine-tune the requirements and needs for the open position. If the recruiter is not in tune with the needs of the hiring company or its industry, then they need to refine their strategy to find the best candidate. However, if they have been working with the hiring company for some time, they can have a lot of clout with the hiring managers.

Ask the recruiter what it will take to ace the interview and then follow instructions!

Randy also noted that candidates are presented for positions that already have qualified candidates to keep things on the up and up. This does happen, and a number of the callers agreed that they had been on interviews where they knew there was a candidate in the wings and the hiring manager was only going through the motions. Don’t waste such opportunities, but use them as an opportunity to build your network. The interview pressure is off, so make the most of it. You now have the opportunity to connect with some influential people who can help you, and it’s on their time! Show them how you can help them in the future, or help someone they know. If you play it right, the interviewer will share your resume with other professionals. Use it as an educational experience.

Turning Research into Tactical Job Search Tools

One of the things we always counsel NETSHARE members about is doing their homework. If you want to land the job you really want, then it requires research, research, and more research. That’s why I wanted to acknowledge a recent blog post by Phil Rosenberg, president of ReCareered out of Chicago, entitled, “4 Killer Ways to Do Research.” As he points out, most job candidates research a company’s past, without thinking about their own career in the context of the future:

“Many candidates research a public company’s annual report, looking for sales and profit figures, understanding what industry they are in, who the officers are, and the major events of the past year. They research historically. But few of these facts will help much in making your resume standout, or impressing during an interview.”

The point is research is not just about you finding a company with a great track record where you will succeed. It’s also about identifying those inflection points where you can make a difference; where your unique skills will prove invaluable. Rosenberg says this kind of research falls into three categories:

1. Goals and Challenges – Rather than looking at where a company has been, look at where it’s going and research the market challenges that company faces. Then you can see how your skill set fits into that market challenge and you can demonstrate to that prospective employer how you can help them overcome their challenge. The higher up the position, the bigger the challenge you need to tackle.

Don’t Let Inertia Becalm Your Career

The biggest impediment to career advancement is inertia. We all suffer from it in some form. After you have been working at the same job for a while, it becomes easy to just show up and do the same job, day after day, and not rock the boat. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Your job is “good enough,” why look for another?

Statistics show that one of the greatest challenges to business isn’t competition, but inertia. For customers and prospects, why buy when what you have is good enough. Similarly, indifference in the workplace undermines employee effectiveness. A team is only as strong as its weakest link, and team performance requires commitment, enthusiasm and a sense of urgency.

The same is true of job search. It’s easy to become discouraged when looking for a new opportunity. You may be sending out what seems to be countless cover letters and resumes until the process seems to be rote, like a full-time job that you can’t get excited about. You surf the Internet and submit applications through job boards, kidding yourself that you are conducting an effective job search. You lose your drive and inertia starts to set in, and your job search is going nowhere fast.

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Ask the Coach: Using the Cover Letter to Unlock New Opportunities

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 of the topics that came up in this week’s Ask the Coach session is how to create an effective cover letter for a career change, especially a lateral or downward move. A good cover letter can be particularly effective for executives who have climbed the ladder of success and reached the C-Suite, but are now ready to tackle something they love, even if the title doesn’t match. Many executives find themselves “typecast” in the C-level positions – “once a CEO, always a CEO” – with little room to maneuver even though they have already played “the game" and are ready for a fresh challenge. Let someone else tackle the 100-hour work weeks and the heavy decisions.

Cover letters are a great tool to open doors to such challenges, and at the same time, a cover letter is a misunderstood tool. They should not be addressed to someone in the HR department, but rather to the hiring manager. Don’t repeat the points in your resume – that’s a waste of time. Rather, prepare the reader to see what you want them to see in the resume. Use an approach such as, “When you read my resume, you will see that I am a CEO but I think I can make a great contribution in this vice president’s position because I offer unique value... I understand the value of… And I want to return to a longer term opportunity that lets me do what I love most…”

Ask the Coach: Older Workers Can Stay Ahead by Staying Focused

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 Debbie Ellis, President of the Phoenix Career Group.

In this week’s Ask the Coach session, career coach Debbie Ellis offered some encouragement for the older worker.

She notes that there has been a major shift in the workforce in recent years; a trend that is continuing. In 2005, the 55 and older group made up 15 percent of the workforce. By 2020 they are expected to be more than 20 percent of the workforce. Clearly, younger workers are not replacing older workers but finding their own path.

Debbie added that older workers are making up something new in the workforce. They are looking for more flexibility, and the companies that hire them realize that if they don’t accommodate this demographic, they’ll be losing valuable resources with ingrained organizational and institutional knowledge.

Debbie also noted that this shift is not happening overnight, but older workers need to stay on top of the trend to stay competitive in the job market. Try using Google to track specific topics and read articles to stay current on your specific market as well as the job market. A Google reader can help by consolidating news and blog feeds and expert resources.

Older workers can gain an advantage by following specific companies, analyzing their points of market pain, and the offering their expertise to address specific problems. Have a specific value proposition and marketing documents ready.

Staying closely targeted can keep you ahead of the game.

For Women, Salary Negotiation Begins at Home

I ran across a fascinating research paper from the Harvard Kennedy School recently entitled “Gender in Job Negotiations: A Two-Level Game” by Hannah Riley Bowles and Kathleen McGinn, which adds some interesting ideas to the dialogue about unequal pay for the sexes. As the authors point out:

“The gender wage gap has declined in recent decades, but it has not disappeared. There  still remains a significant “unexplained” difference in male and female compensation that cannot be accounted for by controlling for human capital factors, such as gender differences in work commitment, education, and experience (O'Neill, 2003) or institutional considerations, such as unionization (Blau & Kahn, 2006).”

I won’t try to encapsulate all of their research here, but the long and the short of this treatise is that the gender roles that play out in the household tend to spill over into the workforce. Women tend to marry men with greater earning power, which puts them in a financially subservient role that spills over into salary negotiation and professional advancement. And even when the wife makes more money than the husband, the nature of the domestic partnership still impacts the professional persona. The research the authors cite is interesting and demonstrates that, no matter how much additional earning power women achieve, they are still reluctant to give up their domestic responsibilities, which puts them at a disadvantage in the workforce. Women tend to take on more responsibility, even though they expect less in compensation and advancement.