The Executive Update

Ready, Fire, Aim: To Hit the Mark, You Need a Target

One of the hardest challenges I have working with NETSHARE members is helping people help themselves. It’s amazing how difficult it is to get people to be specific about what they want.

There is a mythical fear in job search that if you are too specific about your job specifications or salary or the kind of company you want to work for that it hurts your chances to find a job; that you are limiting your options. In fact, the opposite is true. If you try to be all things to all potential employers, in fact, you won’t be in a position to land that great job because employers won’t consider you. They are looking for the perfect fit, not a candidate who is “good enough.”

The most frustrating part of my job is trying to help people who don’t know what they want. If you are going to change jobs or careers, you need a clearly defined objective. You need to know exactly what kind of job you are looking for, and the kind of company that you want to work for. The more specific you can be, the more people in your network can help you achieve your goal. If you are looking for a job as a vice president of logistics, for example, then you have a clearly defined objective that people understand, and that makes it easier for those in your network to help you on your way. And if you have a specific company or company profile in mind as a potential employer, then your network contacts can help find other contacts within that company who are in a position to help you.

Seeking a Safe Port in Times of Storm

I have been talking to a lot of recruiters of late, and there is a new topic of conversation emerging – what are we going to do with all these financial services people?

With the recent economic downturn, there is a new influx of executive job seekers from investment banking, mortgage banking, construction, and building products. With the financial crisis and the recent collapse of new housing starts and mortgage banking, there are a lot of folks from financial services looking for greener pastures. The challenge to the HR and recruiting community is what to do with all these professionals?

It’s a unique challenge when an entire business sector goes belly up. We had a similar challenge in the 1990s when the Savings and Loan crisis hit. Suddenly there was an influx of unemployed S&L workers who had to be absorbed by the job market. However, the current economic crisis is somewhat different. The affected sector is much larger, and the collapse has been in a very short period of time.

In many ways, the current economic implosion is unprecedented. Who would ever have thought that investments in banking and mortgages would ever be at risk, but they are. It’s been a real shock for Californians. For the first time in history, the value of California real estate is dropping. The current downturn has created a real flood on the job market; everyone from Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns down to the smallest mortgage banker are laying off workers. This isn’t a cyclical downturn and it’s not a structural downturn so I’m not sure what you should call it.

Ask the Coach: Laser Focus Hits the Target

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 Cindy Kraft, The CFO Coach.

There were a number of topics touched on in this week’s call – ageism, the role of job boards, resume formats, and more. However, a common thread through all these discussions was the need to focus your efforts. Whether you are looking to change careers or trying to land a new job with “too many” years of experience, if you focus your efforts you will succeed.

A specific case in point from this week’s call illustrates the point. On caller, Larry, asked if he should cast a wider net and broaden his search. In his case, he has more than 20 years of experience in marketing and sales and decided it was time to get “back in the trenches.” Should he use awards and accolades that are 20 years old? Should he broaden his search and seek out more companies?

Cindy’s response – stay focused! Making a backward career move is not easy and will make any company suspicious. The hiring manager will logically ask, “Why? What’s wrong with this candidate? If we give him a try, won’t he leave for greener pastures when a better offer comes along?” It’s better to be prepared and be focused; make your search deep and narrow, not shallow and broad. Hone your unique value proposition and target a specific market and companies where your skills will be truly valued.

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Don’t Let Virtual Networking Get in the Way of Personal Contact

You may have noted that I have not been posting to The Executive Update as frequently as usual in the past few weeks. That’s because I have been traveling, and as the saying goes, traveling broadens the mind. One of the things that travel has reminded me of is the joy of in-person interaction. Online networking is terrific, as far as it goes, but it is no substitute for a handshake and seeing people face to face.

Personal contact puts a different perspective on any relationship, especially in a job search. In a face-to-face situation, people tend to want to interact and be genuinely helpful. They want to be a hero, so in a group, if you say you have contacts who can help in a job search, the emotional stakes are much higher. Virtual connections are great, but it’s a different dynamic when you interact face-to-face, and it jogs the memory differently.

During my most recent trip, I had an opportunity to see a recruiter whom I have known for 15 years as a contact via phone and e-mail. Nicola James works with Thomas Brook International in Chicago and is one of those rare recruiters who goes beyond a mere job specification and actually works with the client to define the job specifications. She not only fills the order, but works to understand what a company actually needs, not just what they think they need in a senior management role.

One of the trends we discussed during our meeting was that all companies, large and small, have white elephants they can’t get rid of; senior executives who have been around for a long time but are no longer effective. These companies often don’t see is that they often start building a department around poor managers to make up for their deficiencies. In these kinds of situations, she will recommend giving the manager a different job that makes better use of his or her skills and then rebuilding the affected department. This is an organizational development approach to recruiting, and can be incredibly effective.

It’s refreshing to encounter a recruiter who has such a strong rapport with her clients and is not afraid to show a client a problem and deliver a solution. That’s what true consulting is all about.

So get out and meet more people face to face. You never know what you might learn.

Overcoming the Agoraphobia of Online Networking

An extension of Wikinomics is the notion of an online exchange for ideas. As discussed in the book, Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, the ancient Greeks created the concept of the agora or marketplace, where people would gather to not only trade, but to listen to philosophers and exchange ideas. The online equivalent could be called an “ideagora,” a virtual marketplace of ideas or an online water cooler where like-minded experts gather to share information and ideas. You’ve undoubtedly encountered dozens of these special interest groups or SIGs where you can post a question and receive multiple responses to provide a solution.

The same concept can be extended to the job marketplace. Why not seek out a “Careeragora” where peers and professionals gather to share their wisdom about advancing your career, resume development, interview strategies, salary strategies, and other topics that relate to your career.

You should think about these online career resources as a way to tap the wisdom of the masses. As Tapscott and Williams note in Wikinomics, the concept of the Wikipedia – an online encyclopedia assembled by volunteers creating and correcting entries – is not perfect, but it is becoming increasingly more accurate. The concept is “peer production” – seeking information from volunteers who create and correct each other’s work. The same peer-driven concept works well in career management.

At NETSHARE, for example, we maintain a number of professional forums for CEOs, CFOs, marketing executives, biotechnology, government relations, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. The idea is to create a Careeragora, where like-minded professionals can gather and share insight and information. It’s an ideal means of getting insight into how to present yourself to a specific company, how to deal with gaps in your resume, how to put the best face on a bad career blunder, you name it. The forums routinely field questions about where to find a contact, or information, or how to deal with a thorny career issue. Any number career questions can be addressed by other professionals who have been there, done that.

Translating Wikinomics Into Career Collaboration

I talk a lot about professional networking in this blog, which is a vague concept to many. Perhaps a better way to look at the notion of networking is mass collaboration. I recently ran across an abstract for a book on Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams that illustrates this concept.

“Wikinomics” combines the term “wiki” (from the Hawaiian word for “quick”) with “economics,” but even more than speed, Wikinomics refers to a new way of interacting that is appropriate for and made possible by the digital age. It is built on software that enables collaboration.

On a larger scale, Wikinomics is a concept to tap people and ideas outside your company or sphere of influence. Rather than producing everything in-house, outsource, and outsource not only production but design as well. The idea of tapping the larger universe to drive new ideas to solve business problems is a bit frightening, but it can be extremely valuable. In the book, the authors cite the example of Goldcorp, Inc., which issued a challenge with a $500,000 prize for new ideas to help revive its failing gold mine and ended up netting eight million ounces of gold.

Now consider how the same collaboration techniques applied to job search. Of course, you can’t completely outsource your job search. You are the shepherd of your own career and you need to determine where you want to go, but there is nothing that says you can’t ask for external input to help point the way and improve your pitch. Find a collaborative marketplace, like NETSHARE, where you can engage with like-minded professionals so you can tap into a larger sphere of influence for new ideas and input. It’s the concept of collaborative intelligence that we have blogged about in the past.

Ask the Coach: Understanding Job Boards

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.

One of the topics of conversation in this weeks’ call was how to think about job boards. Should you belong to one or many? What are the differences between job boards? How do you think about job boards as part of your job search strategy?

Randy noted that job boards can be valuable, but they are only one arrow in your job search quiver. When researching which job board is the best fit for you, Randy notes that many job boards exercise a practice called “scraping.” They send out automated search bots that scour the web looking for job listings they can repost. The same job lead may travel from board to board until it has been reposted dozens of times as a new job listing. Which means that by the time you see a job notice it may be old news and not exclusive at all.

There are job boards, like NETSHARE, that do not scrape. NETHSARE only post positions that come directly to them from hiring companies or recruiters. the positions and the posters are verified before they positions appear on the site. Recruiters may choose to post the same position on other job boards, but many of them select only a few targeted job sites to try to elicit a more manageable response from qualified candidates. Using sites that don’t scrape gives you a better chance of getting in front of a decision maker with fewer competing applicants. NETSHARE also only posts positions with a minimum base compensation of $100,000.

Ask the Coach: The Difference Between Resume Writers and Resume Hacks

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.

Resumes are a challenge every job seeker faces, no matter what his or her income. In this week’s Ask the Coach session, one caller said he had joined a six-figure salary job site and took them up on their free resume critique. The critique basically tore his resume to shreds and kindly volunteered to rewrite it for a large sum of money. His question, is there a way to find experienced help with your resume?

Don was familiar with this particular career site and this particular sales tactic. Such resume sites typically hire untrained people whose job it is to sell a resume template as a paid resume rewrite. If you want a professional resume writer to help you, then that professional won’t tear your resume apart. Rather he or she will work with you to help uncover your value and present it in the best manner. They will help you clearly state how you are going to help a prospective employer make money!

Remember that at an executive level, all the candidates come to the position with similar experience and credentials – that’s the job! What you have done in the past is going to be the same as the other candidates. Your resume needs to highlight your unique qualifications; what you can do no one else can and how you can help the company make money.

Getting More Out of LinkedIn

I bet that if you are reading this blog, you also have a profile posted on LinkedIn. You may even be one of those aggressive LinkedIn maniacs who maintain thousands of connections with former colleagues, co-workers, classmates, etc. But is that kind of LinkedIn activity really helping you with your job search or to build personal brand?

If you do have a profile on LinkedIn, then you undoubtedly get those regular e-mail updates showing who’s connected to whom. If you pull that e-mail out of the spam filter and take a look at it, you’ll see that a number of your connections are mining LinkedIn to help build market presence. When was the last time you checked out the Answer section? If you respond to questions by providing informative information and relevant contacts, you can quickly build your network, and build brand awareness for yourself and your expertise. Take a look at the “answers” section and do a keyword search on your area of expertise. You’ll be surprised what you can uncover.

You can post questions as well, but don’t be too obvious, like asking “Who is the hiring manager for Acme Manufacturing?” See if you can come up with more thought-provoking questions about your profession and trends in your industry. Why not take one of the proof points from your resume, like a sales or staffing challenge that you solved, and turn it into an industry question? It’s a great way to establish a dialogue with like-minded professionals who may be in a position to help you. You can even ask simple questions like, “What are the five things that you find most challenging about…?”

White Lies Will Leave a Black Mark on Your Resume

I spotted a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle about a local school official who was appointed last year, and this year, the school board discovered he lied on his resume. He doesn’t hold that PhD, or that Master’s degree in theology and philosophy, and there are a number of discrepancies in his job history.

Lying on a resume is not that uncommon, and there have been some noteworthy executives who were caught by their false credentials. (Remember the former CEO of Radio Shack?) One search firm exec says she thinks that 40 to 50 percent of all resumes contain lies or liberal exaggerations. However, lying on a resume is incredibly stupid because in today’s marketplace, background checks are fairly routine and it’s too easy to get caught in a lie. And a good interviewer can catch a candidate during the pre-screening process.

In doing some digging I ran across a blog post from Better Hiring Today that gives an HR manager’s viewpoint of the five most common red flags to look for on a resume. They are insightful for anyone writing a resume or going into an interview:

1. Gaps in job history – Resumes often have gaps in job history (or worse, extend the dates on job history to cover unemployment), and you need to be prepared to defend those gaps. Normally a gap in employment is because a) you were fired, b) you quit a job without having another job lined up or c) you left your job for personal or family reasons or the company failed. Any of these can be addressed in an interview, but prepared to be honest and don’t make a lot of excuses or go into unnecessary detail. Remember, though, that a good hiring manager or recruiter will dig into the details until they get an answer that satisfies them.