The Executive Update

Ask the Coach: Leveraging Your Skills Set Analysis

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 Kim Batson, The CIO’s Coach, and Deb Dib, head of Executive Power Brand.

An interesting question came up in this week’s Coach call. The first caller asked Deb and Kim to offer an opinion on a Matched Skills document, which compares the requirements of a job to your specific skill set. The first third of the document summarizes your resume and the next section addresses the skills required, and the final section contains bullet points on how your skills map to the job. Is this a good resume supplement?

Neither Deb nor Kim was familiar with the Matched Skills name, but they were familiar with the concept. Kim said she thinks this is similar to a Skills Set Analysis, and since both coaches are on the lookout for new approaches for their candidates to demonstrate their worth, this seems like a useful document. Both coaches generate these kinds of documents regularly for their clients, and it is a great “leave behind” after a job interview. Both coaches feel this is an excellent way to prepare for an interview, although putting the summary at the top is redundant. The document helps crystallize the interview presentation, and if you are truly interested in the position, it’s worth the time and effort.

Of course, for such a document to be effective, you need to know what position you are shooting for. Then you can prepare a basic analysis that can be adjusted to the specific opportunity. You can then list the specific skills and benefits that match the position. As the coaches say, be a Benefit Bringer, not a Skills Singer. Your competition will have similar skills – they are the price of admission – so you need to set yourself apart. Think of the “so what” factor and make yourself and your skills important to the company.

Also remember that many job descriptions are abysmally written and often inaccurate. Job descriptions change, which is why you need to understand the underlying problems that the company is facing, which in turn will highlight what they are really looking for. A three-column chart can help. Use the headings “Skills needed,” “Benefits-Experience,” and “Proof of Performance,” and then fill in the blanks. Determine what your best example is for this situation; proof of performance is a huge differentiator.

Also note that recruiters love it when you come prepared with documents such as these. It shows you have done their work for them and it may get you short-listed for the position. It’s an ideal document for an interview follow up and also can serve as a good icebreaker.

Your Best Interview Strategy – Stop Talking and Start Listening

One of the most powerful tools in your career management arsenal is knowing how to listen. When talking to hiring managers, recruiters, or in an interview, most executives spend most of their time selling themselves rather than listening to what the other party needs. Randy Block advises his clients to listen more and talk less; learn what the hiring manager really needs. Listening closely to a hiring manager and letting him articulate his needs and desires is more powerful than than any other interview strategy.

So with that in mind, I want to share some tips from Executive and Life Coach Sharon Mikrut, which came to me via David Riklan’s SelfGrowth.com. If you are honest with yourself, you will probably admit that your listening skills could use some improvement. So consider these listening tips, not just as part of your career program, but also as part of your interaction with everyone you meet:

1. Make a commitment to improve your listening skills. Effective listening is not a skill we are born with; it takes practice.
2. Talk less and listen more. Almost everyone likes to talk about themselves. When listening to others, you often want to interrupt with an insight or an opinion. Resist the temptation. Let the other person be fully heard. One trick is to repeat every word they say in your mind after they say it. This will help you focus and not to interrupt.
3. Whether in an interview or talking with a friend or co-worker, give them you undivided attention. Don’t be distracted by your phone, television, computer, or any outside distractions.
4. Display objectivity when listening to others. Set aside your own thoughts and comments and remain detached from what is being said.
5. When listening to someone with a different viewpoint, put yourself in their shoes. Try to understand their perspective and seek out some common ground for discussion.
6. Wait until the other person has finished speaking before you respond. Also note that if you are formulating your response while a person is speaking, you are not truly listening.
7. Summarize or paraphrase what has just been said to confirm that you have heard correctly.
8. Depending on the circumstances, take notes to remember important points.
9. As you listen, pay attention to how the speaker is conveying his or her message. Are they loud? Do they talk quickly? What words do they use to express their feelings? Their tone and delivery generally denotes emotion. Be sensitive to how the speaker is feeling.
10. Look for non-verbal signs that contradict what the speaker is saying. For example, are their legs or arms crossed? Do they make eye contact? Are they turned away from you? These are signs that a person is closed to conversation, perhaps because of embarrassment or to avoid confrontation. However, if they smile and look you in the eye with a relaxed demeanor, they are ready to engage.

Practice good listening skills, not just in conversation but on the phone as well. I can always tell when I am having a phone conversation with someone who is multitasking, usually on their computer. You know when people aren’t really listening to what you have to say, and failing to listen shows a lack of respect as well as a lack of courtesy. Being an attentive listener will go a long way to making a positive impression.

Ask the Coach: “Show Me the Money”

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.

Salaries are often a topic of conversation on the Ask the Coach calls, and this week was no exception. One caller in education said that he has been in education for 20 years, and salary is largely dependent on the size of the city or school district; information that can be hard to uncover. This makes salary negotiation difficult, and if you have been out of work for a while, should you accept whatever they offer?

Debbie’s response was that companies (and school districts) are, indeed, lowering their salaries, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept the first offer. You should negotiate. Recruiters or hiring managers usually ask for a salary history as a baseline. Be flexible and smart in your response, but be honest.

Another caller said he had a panel interview scheduled and was trying to determine salary. The hiring company had not disclosed a salary range, and he has not given them a salary history. He also worked for this company before. Debbie recommended being honest and giving them full disclosure as to his previous compensation, and add something like, “during my previous tenure with this company I was paid fairly, and I am confident that your will make a fair offer.” Since the scheduled interview is with a panel of peers, rather than the hiring manager, salary should not be a topic of conversation.

Adding to this conversation, another caller said he was CEO and hiring manager for his company and that if a candidate was evasive about salary they were out of the running. If a candidate isn’t willing to discuss their salary history then it raises the question, “What don’t they want me to know? What are they hiding?” The hiring manager needs a salary history to judge expectations on both sides. Granted, the salary history question can be used as an exclusionary tool, but if the recruiter or hiring manager asks for a salary history more than once or twice, they are going to move on to the next candidate.

A Proven Approach to Avoid Bad Hiring Decisions

Every senior executive knows that bad hires are expensive. In fact, a bad hiring decision can cost up to 15 times that employee’s paycheck if you aren’t careful. Rather than firing bad employees, your best defense is to not hire them in the first place. So I direct you to Who, the A Method for Hiring, by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. This book outlines some solid strategies to help hiring managers avoid making the wrong choice.

The main thesis of the book is that hiring managers don’t adopt a systematic process when they hire new employees. Instead, they fall back on “gut instinct” or what Smart and Street call “voodoo hiring methods.” If you are going to make an A-class hire, they recommend a four-step process (the four “S’s”):

1. The Scorecard – Use a scoring system that aligns the job requirements with the skill set you need. It should include three elements: A) Mission statement, outlining the hire’s corporate objective; B) Outcomes, which details results rather than activities (which is where most job descriptions go wrong); and C) Competencies, which describes the way you expect the candidate to achieve the results. Competencies should include both behavioral and cultural considerations, such as efficiency, honestly, aggressiveness, attention to detail, intelligence, productivity, etc.
2. The Source – Where you find your candidates has a direct relationship on their capabilities. You need to consider whether the source was a network contact, staff, recruiter, or some other source. The quality of the source maps to the quality of the candidate, and be sure to offer incentives where appropriate to improve results.
3. Select – Smart and Street recommend a set of four progressively intense interviews to identify top candidates. 1) Screening first by telephone weeds out inappropriate candidates. The authors suggest a series of screening questions such as: “What are your career goals?” “What are you good at?” “What are you bad at?” “How would your last five bosses grade you?”  2) Topgrading, where you walk through a chronological job history, including reason for the hire, reason they left, what they achieved, and more. Drill down to get a complete picture of the candidate and how they function in a work setting. 3) Focus, where you have at least three team members conduct in-depth interviews of 45 minutes to an hour using the scorecard for guidance, and looking for details about experience, mistakes, and cultural and behavioral competencies. 4) Check references, including listening for what is unsaid or reading between the lines about a candidate.
4. Sell – Once you have found the perfect prospect, you need to sign them up. The best candidates will require a little selling to accept, so the authors recommend using the five “F’s” – fit, family, freedom, fortune, and fun.

There are a number of insights you can take away from this book, but the big idea here is being able to put together a cogent, well-thought-out methodology behind your hiring strategy. Eliminating voodoo hiring practices in favor of a proven, repeatable approach that weeds out the bad apples and brings in the stellar candidates is your best bet for hiring success.

New Resume Formats Needed for the New Age of Online Job Search

We have had a lot of discussion on the Ask the Coach calls in recent weeks about resume formats – what works and what doesn’t? Since a lot of NETSHARE’s members are baby boomers, they are using tried and true resume formats that pre-date the Web. Unfortunately, a lot of the old rules don’t apply in the new world of Internet-driven job search. I recently spotted one of Kim Thompson’s career columns on SFGate that talks about strategies for making your resume more data-friendly, and I wanted to share some of the highlights here:

The first thing you have to consider is whether your resume is computer-friendly. When applying for any job online, or submitting your resume to a company where it will be stored in a database, you have to make sure your resume is search-friendly. Whether you choose to use a chronological resume, a functional resume, or curriculum vitae, you need to make sure the format is in plain text so it is machine readable.

Today’s employers can’t keep up with the number of resumes flowing into their e-mail box, so most companies are using an applicant tracker system (ATS) that scans your resume and stores key words and relevant data. That’s why it’s important that your resume can be scanned, which is why you should use plain text. If you know there is a human being at the other end who wants to review your credentials, then you can revert to Microsoft Word or a rich text format in order to take advantage of formatting tools like bullets and boldface to improve readability and make your point.

When creating your plain text resume, be sure to embed strategic key words. If possible, you should align your key words with those of strategy job postings. Use common industry noun phrases and industry terms, and highlight technical skills that align with those of your prospective employer.

Once you have drafted your resume, converting it to plain text for searchability is a simple matter of saving the file in text format. Use the “save as” function in your word processor and designate plain text or ASCII as the output format. Once you have saved it, be sure to scrub the document for conversion problems, like bullets that turn into boxes.

You also should capitalize headings, employer names, and job titles for emphasis. You will lose the formatting tools such as bold face so this is an adequate substitute.

And embed key words in the text flow at strategic points in your resume. Use them in the summary, accomplishments, education, certification, etc., so they will be picked up in a database search.

These days, you are writing marketing documents to be read and to be scanned, so be sure that you use the right formatting to promote search as well as readability.

Ask the Coach: How Critical is LinkedIn?

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

How critical is LinkedIn? That was one of the many great questions asked during Monday’s Ask the Coach call. My response was, “It’s so critical that it is part of every package I sell and we spend at least one coaching session around how to leverage the power of that Web 2.0 technology.” While you are launching a proactive job search effort, LinkedIn is an ongoing, powerful, portable, 24/7 strategy.

 

In order to understand how important LinkedIn is to my clients’ career management strategy, I talk with recruiters. I have yet to talk with one who does not use LinkedIn as a primary tool to identify passive candidates. In fact,  the recruiters’ blog“A Recruiters Guide to the Universe” ranks LinkedIn and LinkedIn Groups as the two primary ways to connect job seekers and recruiters. Networking accounts for 40-70 percent of all opportunities. Being active on LinkedIn is networking.

 

So what’s “most important” about your LinkedIn profile? I’ve come up with five things:

 

1.    Create a Powerful Branded Summary. This is not your daddy’s boring bio either. This summary, limited to 2,000 characters, is your opportunity to showcase how you do what you do (your brand) that is different and unique from others who do the same or similar things.

2.    More is Better. It is great to have your employers and job titles, past and present, listed as part of your profile. But that is not enough. In the world of key searches, more is better.  The amount of information online acts as a pre-qualifier and gives both you and a prospective employer a framework to begin establishing a relationship.

3.    Create Your Vanity URL. LinkedIn allows you to create vanity URLs, and it is a great way to increase your Google rankings, assuming, of course, that you have also made your stellar profile available for public viewing, which I highly recommend.

4.    Join Groups. The “big fish in a small pond” analogy definitely applies here. Joining special interest groups on LinkedIn allows you to mingle with like-minded folks and gain access to their contact information, even if they are not 1st degree contacts in your network. Be sure to set your contact information option to open so others can contact you as well.

5.    And finally, Solicit Recommendations. Third-party recommendations are extremely important on LinkedIn. These are very powerful endorsements that add credibility to the statements in your profile and employment history, and they are critical to your positioning.

Ask the Coach: Remember, It’s Not About You

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.

In this week’s coach call, Cindy started with some sound advice for executive job seekers (or any job seeker); remember this is not about you!

To be successful, you always need to have the employer’s perspective foremost in mind. Your job search is not about what you want, or need, or expect. It has to be about the value you offer and what you can do for the company. You have to demonstrate value that goes right to their bottom line. You have to be able to explain how you will relieve their immediate pain, improve their workflow process, increase profitability or productivity, and generally improve their operation.

When you recognize your unique contribution – your personal brand –and can articulate it effectively, you will begin to compete with little competition. Very few job seekers lead effectively with a “value-drive” resume, instead of a responsibility-driven resume, i.e. this is what I can do for you rather than this is what I did in the past.

Remember that anyone who has held that position in the past has mastered the basic requirements of the job; that’s the price of admission. You need to articulate where you go above and beyond the basics. What extra skills and assets do you bring to the table to make you stand out? How have you increased the ROI for your previous companies? Even if you are not in sales or marketing role, you need to be able to quantify your results and show that you can do the same for your prospective employer. You need to be able to make statements like, “Bad decisions caused X and Y but under my leadership I was able to implement Z which resulted in an in A.”

Your cover letter is your best tool to demonstrate your value. In a cover letter you can make it clear what you can do for the company.  Show you can walk the talk by backing up your experience using the CAR formula – challenge, action, results – so the story speaks to your value. 

If you can take the time to master four basic tools:

1. Creating a resume that demonstrates value;
2. Master an effective solutions-oriented cover letter
3. Nurture your network by giving and receiving; and
4. Show you can do the job by using the CAR formula to demonstrate value,

Then you will have a distinct advantage over others competing for the same job.

The Lore of Online Job Listings: Is It Real or Urban Legend?

The social networking boom has had an interesting side effect with regard to job listings – it’s making a lot of these job posts larger than life. I have to ask if many of those listings I see propagating from CraigsList to KITlist to Twitter are real, or if they are really like urban legends. Consider the following:

Phony job listings have always plagued the human resources industry. We all know that many jobs are filled or the hiring company has a candidate in mind before a job is posted, but they have to post the position in order to comply with federal hiring regulations. Sometimes companies or more often recruiters just want to test the waters and gather resumes. I’m not talking about job scams on CraigsList for mystery shoppers but executive job listings for C-level positions. It’s always has been a problem and your only defense is to establish a rapport with recruiters and hiring managers so you know whom to trust.

Now let’s throw the Internet into this mix. When we started NETSHARE, e-mail was still in its infancy and FAXed job listings would be making the rounds. Then we all became connected and e-mail lists started to proliferate. One of the most popular these days is Sue Connelly’s KITlist. This list started out as a keep-in-touch mailing list in 1997 for employees laid off from Silicon Graphics. It’s grown to become one of the most active job lists on the ‘net.

Now consider what happens to KITlist postings. They get circulated via e-mail. You send them to friends who might be looking for a job, or a helpful recruiter might post it to a member list. We have a few recruiter members at NETSHARE that routinely repost KITlist leads. The same is true of Monster, HotJobs, and the big job boards. They routinely scrape other job boards, Criagslist, and other sources to build out their listings. These job listings get picked up and circulated by job bots, e-mail, and other web propagators.

And these same leads hit the social networking circuit where they take on a life of their own. There are more than 400 Twitter feeds dedicated to tracking job leads. So these Twitter leads get retweeted by people trying to build their online presence, which means they get reposted to Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, wikis, everywhere. It’s easy for a phony lead to get added to the batch. KITlist, Monster, and other online job services don’t qualify their job leads so anyone can post a job anywhere, whether those jobs are real or not.  Suddenly, these job leads start becoming urban legends. You start seeing the same job leads everywhere, like Kilroy, and it gets harder to determine if it’s a lead you’ve seen before, let alone a lead for a real job.

That’s why it’s important to know the source of your job lead. At NETSHARE, for example, we don’t accept money for job listings, which means we can be choosey. We can qualify every job listing. Before we post a job from a new lister, they get a call from our COO or CEO to make sure that the lister understands the rules and that the jobs they post are legitimate. And NETSHARE listings can’t be scraped because they are protected behind a firewall for access by members only. We take our job listings seriously which is why we protect them and make them exclusive to members.

So when you’re cruising those online job listings, remember you don’t know what’s being posted on the Web. That’s why it’s important to work with Web watchdogs who can vet those job listings for you.

Ask the Coach: When It Comes to Experience and Contacts, Keep it Fresh

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from this week’s session with career transition coach and consultant Randy Block.

In job search, timing is everything. And as Randy Block pointed out in this week’s coaching call, recent activity and experience outranks previous experience. And building fresh connections that can help you is important to success.

 

For example, the first caller this week wanted to know how to develop solid relationships with recruiters you have never met. When he has contacted recruiters lately, he was greeted with a “nice to meet you” response and asked for information for the database. In other words, don’t call us but we’ll call you. Randy noted that it used to be that recruiters were hunting the candidates. Now they are hunting the job openings. The ranks for recruiters have been decimated over the past year as companies are making due with fewer employees, and it is taking longer to hire for open positions. Korn Ferry, for example, reports a loss of 40 to 50 percent in recruiting assignments in the last year.

 

As with any contacts, you need to build a relationship that is appropriate. Find recruiters who specialize in your market area. Talk to your network of contacts – your friends and associates – and ask who they have dealt with recently. There are a small number of recruiters who actually place people, and the rest work for corporate clients and fill narrowly defined openings. Be sure that whomever you deal with handles the types of positions you are looking for. Even if you are not a match, if you should prove yourself valuable to them they will remember you.

 

Another issue was around resume formats. Should you go with a functional resume or a chronological resume?

 

Randy made it clear that he is not a fan of the functional resume, and he is not alone. If a company is using a scanner, they are going to be looking for company name, dates, and history, which does not emerge from a functional resume. Randy feels that most functional resumes do not help distinguish you from the pack because they are too full of “skills.”

Seven Tips to Successful Career Transition

The recession has been tough on all of us, even those who remember back to the 1983 when the unemployment rate was as low as it is today. But one of the things about the current economic crisis is it gives everyone a chance to re-evaluate their careers and their priorities. A recent CIO article outlines seven dos and don’ts for career change, including advice from our own Kim Batson, the CIO’s Coach, who frequently helps out on Ask the Coach. So here, I want to share these insights for career changers:

1.    School is out. A lot of executives decide to retreat to academia. Okay, education is valuable, but the rush for that next degree may feel like progress, but are you really moving forward? Find out how marketable your degree is before you pursue more credentials.

2.    What do you want? Big question, but critical to any career move. Determine what you really want from your next job before you make the move. (Thanks, Kim.)

3.    It’s all about the work. Find work you like to do, which means zeroing in on what you really want to do. Do real critical research on your next profession and find ways to test drive the job to make sure it’s a fit.

4.    Passion is not the same as riches. Following your dream is not the same as following the money. Do your homework to make sure your new career generates enough cash to sustain your lifestyle.

5.    There is no quick change. Changing careers is harder than finding a job according to Kim Batson. You need to be patient, both with yourself and with the process. Start by tracking other professionals in the field you are considering. Use Twitter and LinkedIn to track fields that interest you.

6.    Step by step. Don’t try to make a wholesale career change overnight. Consider incremental changes. Try projects or smaller steps to reach your long-term goal.

7.    Don’t mourn your last job. You may have lost a job you loved through a layoff or some other unforeseen circumstance. If you are looking at a forced career change, embrace it. Remember that you were able to land your last job, and you will be able to find a new job in your chosen field. If you were happy in your last job, you can be happy in your next.