The Executive Update

Some New Year’s Resolutions for Your Career in 2012

It’s a new year, and that means a renewed effort to manage your career. If you are like most people, you have made some New Year’s resolutions to improve performance for the coming year, and you may abandon those resolutions before January is over. However, if you are serious about making a positive career move in 2012, consider hanging on to some of these New Year’s resolutions:

1. Complete your LinkedIn Profile – If you haven’t done it already, complete your LinkedIn profile, and if you have completed it, consider revising it. Spend some effort reworking your profile to integrate the right key words and make it compelling. Talk to co-workers and others who can offer recommendations. Add a professional photo. Think like a hiring manager and look at your profile and ask yourself, “Would I contact this person?”
2. Network with a Purpose – Networking is important, and with social media it’s easy and it’s free! However, remember that you get what you pay for. Making thousands of LinkedIn connections has no value unless you know what those contacts can do for you. Identify a handful of networking groups and dig in so they know who you are. If you identify four LinkedIn groups, for example, each with 50 members, and you target those four groups, you emerge with 200 people who know who you are and what you have to offer.
3. Clean up your digital dirt – It’s time to do some housekeeping. Look at some of those old accounts you never use and close them, or refresh them if you have to. Do a Google search on yourself and see where you might have to do damage control, or where you might have to focus your energies to improve the rankings for content that matters to your personal brand. Try to remove those embarrassing photos on Facebook and check for past rants about your coworkers and your boss on Twitter and elsewhere. Resolve to be a clean and sober cybercitizen this year.
4. Determine your true value – Times have changed. Rather than chasing the salary you used to get three or four years ago, determine what your true market value is today. What are your skills worth today’s market, and how can you maximize your value? Check out Payscale.com, Glassdoor.com, Salary.com, and your peers and network contacts to reset your market value.
5. Focus Your Efforts – Don’t throw your resume at any job that appears. Don’t pursue arbitrary networking opportunities to build your contact list. Focus. Determine where you are going to get the most traction. Identify your skills, what market you want to work in, and focus your efforts to network into that industry, targeting company and people who can help you achieve your goals. Apply laser-like focus to your career goals.

Of course, these aren’t just New Year’s resolutions but are useful the year round. The beginning of a new year is a good time to re-think your career objectives, and how best to achieve them.

Time Management: The Underappreciated Skill in Job Search

Time management is one of the biggest challenges facing career changers. Where do you spend your time most effectively? How much time do you dedicate to online search? How much time do you apply to online networking? How much to materials development?

Time management is a skill set like any other and successful time management takes planning. So whether you are working on a major project or undertaking a career change, you need to have a strategy to allocate your time. Here’s a strategy outlined by Anne Lueneburger at North of Neutral:

1. Define your goals – Anne suggests you be “SMART” about establishing your time management goals. The acronym SMART stands for:
   • Specific – you want to be exact about your objectives. “Finding a better job” is much too vague. “Finding a vice president of marketing role with a major retailer within six months” is more specific. Use who, what, when, where, and why to guide you.
   • Measurable – You need to know success when you see it. If your time management strategy calls for making 30 new contacts a week, then that’s measurable.
   • Attainable – Don’t set your sights so high that you are destined to fail. If 30 contacts a week is too ambitious, for example, adjust your goal to 15.
   • Relevant – Be sure your goals are in line with your overall objectives. For example, building your personal network is important, but it’s only relevant if your new network contacts can help you achieve your objective.
   • Time-oriented – Establish deadlines and time parameters. For example, set yourself a realistic long-term deadline to find a new job, such as six months. And be sure to set yourself a short-term goal for time allocations, such as one hour a day for networking.
2. Prioritize – The challenge with time management is all the smaller tasks that are easy to accomplish, but distract from the larger tasks that should be a priority. Those things that are important and urgent usually get dealt with in a timely manner, but the important items that are less urgent often get set aside. Be sure to focus effort on action items that will accomplish the goal.
3. Overcome procrastination – We all have challenges with procrastination. The best approach is to recognize when procrastination starts and the take steps to eliminate it. There are some steps you can take to help, such as contacting a mentor or career coach for assistance getting focused, breaking daunting projects into bite-sized steps, addressing “worst things first” to get them out of the way, and setting yourself a small reward for accomplishing something unpleasant or difficult.
4. Manage disruptions – If you have incoming disruptions, manage them as part of the process. Build the new requests for your time into your priority list; are they urgent or can they wait? You can minimize disruptions by turning off your phone, shutting down your email, or closing your door. Set aside dedicated time to pursue your job search without interruption.
5. Take charge of your schedule – Set time aside every day for job search but be sure to balance your career management schedule with other demands on your time, such as family, friends, and work. Try to find a time that you can dedicate every day or every week to your career pursuits that won’t interfere with other activities.

Structuring your time is a good way to increase your productivity, but you can’t be too rigid about time management. If you don’t get everything done on your list, don’t punish yourself. Just be sure you make the most of the time you have allotted for your job search.

“Creative” No Longer Cuts It – the Most Overused Words on LinkedIn

We spend a lot of time and space on this weblog talking about the need to network and how important your online profile is. In fact, today we sponsored an Experts Connection webinar with social media expert Glenn Raines talking about how to create professional social media profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google. As part of that process, it is becoming increasingly important to stand out from the crowd. Hiring managers and recruiters are using social media outlets to find fresh talent, and they are using proactive search terms. That means you need to keep your social media profiles fresh as well.

According to the latest poll from LinkedIn, users continue to use the same hackneyed adjectives in their profiles. “Creativity” is the most overused buzzword for 2011, followed by “organizational” and “effective.” The problem with all these buzzwords is they do not differentiate you or your expertise. Everyone can make claims about vague capabilities like “creativity” and “effectiveness.” And such platitudes don’t promote searchability. No hiring manager is going to search for the term “creativity” or “effective.” They will search for nouns, such as “sales manager,” “telecommunications,” “top seller,” “Ruby on Rails,” and other specific terms that will help narrow their search. In his Experts Connection presentation, Glenn Raines noted that you need to keep your keyword density at 3 percent if you want your profile optimized for the search algorithms.

So don’t waste precious space on adjectives that are meaningless, actually less than meaningless because they just make you part of the herd. Try to use terms that differentiate you, and your expertise. Identify key phrases and terms that speak to your expertise and your profession. Think like a hiring manager. How would you find, well, you? What search terms would you use to find a hot property like yourself? If you can describe yourself as you want others to find you, you can build a solid social media profile without falling prey to buzzword bingo.

Ask the Coach: Practice Organic Networking

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from our most recent session with Christine Dennison, The Job Search Coach.

This week, career coach Christine Dennison continued on the theme that was begun in last week’s coach call – networking to advance your career while you are still employed. Many executives feel that building their personal networks will raise concerns with their current employers. Some employers may raise an eyebrow, but networking in today’s online world is a natural thing. And that was Chris’s advice – keep it natural.

Make networking a natural or organic extension of your interests and activities. Base your networking on curiosity, education, mentoring, and learning more about the industry, whether it’s your industry or a new one. This works for you whether you are looking for a new opportunity or not.

You can also start making natural inroads into target companies through online commentary. Conduct online research to determine what’s happening at your target companies. Identify what sets them apart in their market. Identify the movers and shakers within the organization and start communicating with them in a natural way. Using this approach, you become familiar to others in a low-stress manner that forges strong connections for the future without shouting “Hire me!” As you build your network you can keep yourself open for opportunities that may arise, either for yourself or for another network connection.

As you start to build that organic network, opportunities will arise. You will start to look at openings that are worth pursuing. How many openings can you try to juggle at one time? That’s up to you. However, you want to make sure you give each opportunity proper consideration. You don’t want to shortchange yourself or your potential employer by not assessing the opportunity properly. Dig deep. Assess the cultural fit as well as the job fit. Is the position you are going after what you really want to do. If you can’t give yourself the time you need to get all the information required for a fair assessment, then you are stretched too thin.

Remember, each opportunity needs to be considered on its own merit. If it’s a fit, excellent! If it isn’t a fit, then don’t close the door. Keep your options open. That same company may have a new opening just down the road and you want to be remembered in a positive light. If the job isn’t right for you, then be polite but offer to help find another candidate from your network. Show you want to work with them. It’s good karma for you and for the corporate recruiter, which can only lead to good things.

And if you want to learn more about how to effectively network using LinkedIn, be sure to join us next week, November 15, when LinkedIn expert Jason Alba presents the webinar, LINKEDIN FOR EXECUTIVES: BEYOND THE BASICS, 2012 Edition.

“You’re Fired: Hand Over Your Entry Card and Your LinkedIn Contacts!”

If you have ever ready any of our previous blog posts, then you know that we are huge advocates of networking, both to advance your career and to advance yourself professionally. I spotted an interesting article in Forbes today discussing who owns your LinkedIn contacts. As with most legal questions, the real answer is “it depends,” but raising the question made the hairs on my neck stand up. What if you don’t actually own the contacts you have built up on LinkedIn?

When you read the article, you realize that the issue really has to do with competition and the ill-defined corporate rules of social networking. A recent UK court ruling insisted an employee turn over his LinkedIn contacts to his former employer. Including proof he had not signed them as clients for his new company. If you are planning to change jobs or start your own operation and you are considering stealing your company’s customers, partners, and vendors, then your LinkedIn contacts may be an issue, since your contact list could be considered a company asset. As the article states:

It “highlights the tension between businesses encouraging employees to use social networking websites for work but then claiming that the contacts remain confidential information at the end of their employment,” according to the Telegraph newspaper.

While it’s unclear exactly what transpired between an employer and employee based on press reports, one thing is clear: both employers and employees need to start considering ownership of social media contacts. Paying attention to the documents you sign when you are hired – or reviewing them after the fact if need be – is becoming more important for all employees.

The U.S. courts seem to differ on some of these same issues. Recently a New York district court ruled that LinkedIn contacts could not be considered a trade secret, but again, every situation is different so it depends.

Your best defense is to get make sure the rules surrounding your use of social media are clearly spelled out with your employer. The Forbes article cites some interesting statistics from a recent DLA Piper study showing that almost 40 percent of employees have connected with a colleague or business contact on Facebook or LinkedIn, 21 percent of employers have had to discipline an employee about inappropriate social media use, and only 25 percent of companies actually have a written social media policy. Social media use in the workplace is still vaguely defined.

The rules of common sense and simple ethics certainly apply. If you use your social media outlets to steal clients from a former boss, that’s wrong and probably illegal. If your job in sales or marketing relies on your social media contacts, then a case could be made that those contacts are corporate property. However, if you above board and careful in your ethical use of social media, then you are probably in the clear.

As a precaution, you should back up your LinkedIn contacts in any case. Be sure to save your contact information in another database or file format, such as a .CSV file, in case you lose your LinkedIn contacts and have to start over.

Your best defense is a good offense. Go to your company and clarify the policy. Determine in advance who owns your online contacts. If there is a question, consider creating two social media accounts so you can continue to build your personal network of contacts. But whatever you do, make sure that you can maintain those networking contacts. They are your insurance for the future.

Ask the Coach: Getting a Stake in the Private Equity Game

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 Nicola James, Managing Partner of Thomas Brooke International.

Private Equity firms have always had an allure for many executives. The challenge is how to get on their radar? This week’s career coach, Nicola James, has a lot of experience working with private equity firms and was able to provide some meaningful responses to NETSHARE member questions.

The first caller noted that he had worked with private equity firms in the past at a senior level. How should he re-engage with the private equity market? Nicola replied that his previous experience would give him some standing with those who have hiring authority.

Nicola reminded the callers that there are two different levels of hiring within a private equity firm. If they are hiring at the C-level, then that is usually done by the portfolio company, by the partners. In this case they usually look to their own personal networks for hiring candidates. This gives you an advantage since you can identify those partners and build your connections through your own networks. Determine their outside interests. Find different ways to approach them and get to know them. That way, when they start looking to fill a new position, you will be there. The challenge with working with partners, however, is they often tend to be disorganized and don’t have a formal process for managing their contacts, so you have to maintain regular contact to put yourself in the right place at the right time for the right opportunity.

Below the C-level, recruiting is usually handled by the Vice President of Recruiting. These guys are professionals, with better contacts and better contact management systems than you typically find at the partner level. The way the vice president will keep track of their candidates is better organized so being “top of mind” is less important, but they also don’t maintain that same personal connection. They tend to work from resumes and information in their database and they may or may not understand the real parameters of the job.

In either case, you need to have the right market connections of the “investment backed” background to make sure you can get traction in the job search. You also will have to be more flexible about compensation. Private equity opportunities usually don’t have the same salaries and you need to be prepared to take less compensation on the front end and look for an equity payout later.

If you have background in a specific market, then it’s best to search our private equity firms that work in those areas conducting searches for professionals with your background. You will need to determine where the gaps are in their knowledge base and demonstrate how you can fill the void. Show your value. If you can’t demonstrate your market value, then demonstrate what specialization you have that matches the company’s need- working with start-ups, working with underperforming companies, etc.

You need to help the private equity company connect the dots to show them why you are a great candidate. If you don’t connect the dots for them, they won’t do it themselves or they will do it wrong.

Ask the Coach: Be the Hunted, Not the Hunter

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 career management consultant Randy Block.

This week’s call with career coach Randy Block was a lively one. The discussion began with a discussion of social networking and how to use it effectively as part of your job search.

Randy opened the call with a story about a group of hunters who were very excited about the opening of moose season. They packed up and heading toward their cabin the woods to get to bed early to bag their first moose of the season early the next day. Imagine their disappointment when they awoke to find a dead moose on their doorstep. The point, of course, is that you want to be hunted rather than being the hunter.

The first caller talked about his LinkedIn strategy. He has a profile on LinkedIn but was only using it to network with contacts and he kept a lot of the information private; accessible by invitation only. Randy notes that that is a mistake. LinkedIn sells sophisticated SEO software to clients to help them find candidates on LinkedIn using sophisticated search criteria. In order to be found, you need to put your best foot forward in a searchable profile. Highlight your best achievements and make sure you are discoverable using keywords and other means.

Randy also emphasized the need to be perceived as a subject expert. Participate in the forums and offer expert opinions on various topics related to your personal brand. You become known by the groups where you are active and how you rank as an expert, so participation is important.

Another caller asked about the new social network Google+ and how important that is to job search. As Randy noted, some folks like to start with a Google search, and if you are active in Google it increases your rankings. Google+ is another tool that you can add to your job search arsenal to supplement your hunt-ability. The more Google tools you use, the higher your rankings.

Start by doing a vanity search and uncovering what you can on your name and your personal brand. Then you can help shape your brand with a Google profile and using Google+ to build your network. As Randy noted, relevancy is the key to job search today. To be found and considered, you need to be perceived as relevant, so you need to plant your brand footprint in as many searchable locations as possible.

Job Interview Psych Out – Taking Control of Your Interview

Many candidates work really hard to identify the right company to target, create the right job opportunity, and do everything right in the race to win that next perfect job, only to lose in the last mile – the interview. Even the most polished presenters can trip up in a job interview, and as the old saw goes, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

I recently came across a post from PsyBlog, “10 Psychological Techniques to Help You Get a New Job.” It captured my interest because of the links to research. As the blog notes, hiring decisions often are made on gut feeling and personal interaction more than on credentials. In fact, your credentials are probably what landed you the interview. Most interviews are about “fit” – can you really do the job and will I like working with you. Here are some pointers based on psychological research that should be valuable to anyone going into an interview:

1. Schmooze but don’t sell. Be complementary about the other party; don’t sing your own praises. Praise the organization, the interviewer, show enthusiasm, see if you can find common interests, use eye contact. In other words, engage the interviewer. Research shows that those who ingratiate themselves do better in interviews.

2. Maintain control. You undoubtedly have rehearsed some of the tough questions in advance. So when an interviewer asks you how you handled a tough situation, make sure you answer the question so it displays the qualities they are looking for. Specifically, show how you took charge of the situation, rather than letting the situation control you.

3. Give yourself a pep talk. You should talk to yourself because it provides “verbal self-guidance.” Talk to yourself about positive ways to approach the interview such as “Smile and offer a firm handshake” and “Be confident in your approach.” Vocalizing these instructions helps give you more conviction and confidence. (Just don’t get caught talking to yourself in the interview itself.)

4. Use mental imagery. Visualize yourself as feeling confident and relaxed in the interview. Studies show that those who use positive mental imagery perform better in job interviews.

5. Lose the plastic smile. Be forthright in your body language, using eye contact, lean forward, don’t cross your arms, etc. But don’t put on a fake smile. A genuine smile and relaxed posture go farther than putting on a false front.

6. Use a firm handshake. It’s amazing but a firm handshake makes all the difference, especially for women. Use a firm hand grasp to start the interview.

7. Be defensive when appropriate. Some career coaches advise that you avoid being defensive, but if you are being challenged about holes in your job history or other obvious issues, defend yourself. Studies show that interviewees who made excuses, expressed remorse, and promised reform ranked higher than those who didn’t. Human fallacy is desirable.

8. Be honest about your weaknesses. It takes skill to reveal your weak spots without sacrificing likeability. Being honest about your weaknesses is seen as a positive trait and refreshing, where being honest about your strengths is perceived as boastful. If you are up front about your weaknesses, you will promote likeability with a better outcome. If you walk out of the interview on a high and feeling good about it, chances are the interviewer will come away with the same impression.

9. Avoid the, errr, verbal pauses, like, you know. It’s a shame that many of the younger job seekers lack verbal communications skills and continue to punctuate their conversation with phrases such as “like,” “you know,” and “ummm.” Studies show that these verbal fillers are seen as being less professional and have a clearly negative impact on hiring.

10. Be different. Granted, you have heard most of the interview questions in the past, but if you can come up with a unique response or a novel answer, it will be to your advantage. You will stand out and remain memorable for all the right reasons.

Practice makes perfect, so don’t be afraid to get some interview coaching. Find a professional to practice with so you can smooth the rough spots out of your interview technique.

Ask the Coach: When Everything is Hurting, Offer Targeted Pain Relief

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 career management consultant Randy Block.

This week, career coach Randy Block observed that in hard times, gift stores tend to do well, where in good times high-end stores do well. When things are going well, we tend to go to great lengths to impress others through our shopping habits, spending money at the high-end stores that have a lot of offer. However, when times are hard, we tend to gravitate to the gift stores and target our shopping to meet a specific, immediate need.

The same is true in recruiting. Companies can’t afford to shop for high-end talent that offers multiple skills. They are not looking for a jack-of-all-trades. They need a skilled expert who can stop their pain in one specific area. If you muddy the waters, and your value proposition, by bundling your specific value with other traits, it will be lost. You need to be able to address their specific point of pain without making them wade through excess information.

Be sure to present all the pertinent information right up front! Make it easy to find and easier to understand. There can be no question about the value you bring and that it’s aligned with what the target company needs now!

If you are worried about your age getting in the way, turn it to your advantage. Offer to use your expertise and wisdom to help solve their problem through a specific assignment. Contract work is less “age sensitive” and can lead to full time positions.

The Art of the Blog Comment and Building Your Digital Footprint

We spend a lot of editorial space in this blog talking about promoting your personal brand by building your digital footprint. The more breadcrumbs you can scatter across the web that point back to your personal branding documents – your blog, LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, online CV, or whatever you are using to promote your brand – the more likely you will be found. One of the best strategies is commenting on blogs about topics related to your expertise. If you can add to the conversation by commenting, you increase your digital footprint.

Of course, blog commenting can be time consuming. As you are surfing the web you could run across a blog entry on any topic that is interesting, insightful, and already well-commented. What can you add to the conversation? You can add your two cents, or you can spread the word. When you lack inspiration, here are some ideas as to how to contribute to the comment conversation without overtaxing yourself (with thanks to Keisha Easley who posted the original article on Social Media Today):

1. Make a note and come back later. If you have nothing to say in the moment, bookmark the blog site and think about it so you can come back later. When inspiration strikes, you can come back and post your insights.
2. When in doubt, tweet it (or Facebook it, or post it to LinkedIn). One of the great things about using social media sites is they thrive on the exchange of ideas, even when those ideas aren’t your own. You can use interesting blog entries to post to your Twitter stream, Facebook page, or to your LinkedIn contacts and groups. If the content is related to your personal brand it has potential value to your followers.
3. Comment on the comments. Blogs are part of the larger online conversation, and comments feed the conversation, so commenting on the commentary just adds more insight. Read what others have to say and feel free to expound or disagree. However, repeating what someone else says in different words doesn’t add much to the conversation. It’s better to provide a contrary or expert viewpoint to demonstrate your own expertise.
4. Poke around the blog. If you run across an interesting entry but have nothing to say, chances are there are similar blog posts at the same location that might inspire something. Explore a little and see if you find another blog post that promotes a reaction.
5. Been there, done that. Providing personal experience or an anecdote is a good way to add to the conversation and promote your brand. It helps if you have some spicy details or something unusual to share to make it memorable.
6. Try humor. One way to be memorable is to be funny. It’s okay to make a fool out of yourself if you have something clever to add. Just don’t force it and don’t be off-color or offensive.
7. Great post! Okay, you can say that but it won’t add to the conversation and you may be perceived as a spammer. Better to demonstrate that you were paying attention and add to the conversation – “I really liked what you had to say about…”

So step up and offer an opinion. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain when it comes to building your digital footprint.