Launching a Blog Series: 100 Career Boosting Tips

Okay. I am putting it out there. I was thinking over the holiday (well a little bit anyway) about the next spurt of blogging activity. I wanted a theme. And in my usual fashion, I came up with something biggish.

How about a 100 Tips on boosting your career? Sound good?

Okay. My pulse just went up a bit as I put that out there, but hey, we grow when we stretch.

100 short tips on boosting your career. Coming up.

My loophole…no deadline. But they are coming.

Tune in and share the series with friends.

Technorati Tags: career change, career coach, career development, career transition, cover letter, interviewing, job search, networking, personal branding, resume writing, resumes

Looking for a New Job or Career Change? Are you Market Ready?

Are you thinking about a new job?

Do you have the itch and want to make a move?

Is a change in career, company or even a promotion going to be part of your New Year’s resolutions?

Hold on…I have an important question for you. Before you rush into job search mode, think about this…

Are You Market Ready?

What I mean is, are you truly prepared to go out into the job market or into conversations about what you want next and why?

• Do you know what you are looking for?
• Are you thinking already about what you have to settle for vs. what you really want?
• Are you clear about what to avoid?
• Have you prepared a compelling case for why you are an amazing candidate for your target position?
• Are you ready to interview and prove that you are the right candidate?

I will tell you more later about why getting prepared is so important.

For now, a quick heads-up.

For the first time, I am going to be offering a program designed to get you ready for a smart, focused and powerful career transition. The program will be offered at two levels and will start later in January. I am looking forward to telling you more about it next week.

But first, perhaps you should test your own market readiness.

Watch for an upcoming post with a link to an online quiz - The Are You Market Ready Challenge. The quiz will give you a fairly accurate measurement of how ready you are to make a move.

Watch for it.

Avoid the Clichés

You…

“I add value.”

“I have great interpersonal and communication skills.”

“I am organized and hard working.”

Hiring person…

“Yawn.”

That’s what the person sitting across the table from you in the interview is doing. And if someone is reading your resume, their eyes probably skipped right over these all too common ideas. If you are in a networking meeting or informational interview, you might have blown your chance to make that important impression.

First, figure out what you really want to say, Then, figure out how you can say it in a way that is profound and believable. Consider providing evidence to back it up…”as evidenced by ______.”

I don’t have proof, but I am certain that the brain of experienced resume readers and interviewers immediately clouds over when it spots or hears these clichés. Even worse, a critical hiring person will dock you for not coming up with something more personal.

More importantly, you need to know exactly what your strengths are and what the benefits of having you on board are. That’s the real issue.

Technorati Tags: career coach, interviewing, job search, networking, resume writing, resumes

The Truth and Your Career

The truth and managing your career. There are some not-so-obvious layers of meaning that you need to master in order to build a successful career. This concept is particularly important to grasp when you are heading into job search or career change mode.

Truth-Based Behaviour

The most obvious aspect of this theme is your behaviour and actions measured against ethical and legal standards. Not misrepresenting your qualifications. Dealing honestly with customers, suppliers, co-workers and other stakeholders. The importance of this principle is well known and it should be a cornerstone of how you manage your career. Here is a good guideline: Never behave in a way that you wouldn't want people to find out about later.

The Truth About Your Performance

Which brings us to how well have you performed in past assignments and how well are you performing now. What is the truth about your performance?

This is a very relevant question. You can't improve unless you understand clearly what you are doing well and what you need to improve upon. You cannot conduct an effective job search without understanding the truth about your performance history. Effective interviewing, and resume writing are predicated on you knowing the truth about your past performance. And, you cannot plan your career with any degree of accuracy if you don't know how you measure up.

There are two relevant views of your performance: external and internal. The external view is how your performance currently rates, and has rated in the past, in the eyes of the people you work for and with. This might include the objective measures discussed below as well as subjective measures. The internal view is how you feel about your own performance. You may have met external expectations, but not your own, or vice versa. It is vital that you have a clear handle on both.

There are more sides to performance than meets the eye. Achieving the numbers or a deadline is representative of the most common types. However, many a career has been scuttled because of "secondary" performance criteria like how well you work with colleagues. What kinds of performance are we talking about?

Objective Performance: What is measurable about the roles you have held? What can you quantify? Like it or not, the people who make hiring and promotion decisions respond first and foremost to objective data. Your performance may have been measured relative to a specific objective or as an improvement or change over previous data. There are a wide variety of measures of course, and within your job history, could be nuggets of information about the impact your work has had. You should take personal ownership for working with the quantifiable measures given to you, creating and tracking measures if they haven’t been identified for you, and recording your performance for future reference.

Subjective Performance: This is the harder part. You need to get beyond loose answers and understand the subjective sides of performance. The subjective side of your performance can include the level of impact you are having in the organization, how successfully you are fitting-in, the degree to which you exhibit the values of the organization, how effectively you are developing your skills, and how well you work with your boss. Why is subjective performance important?

First, understanding the truth about how you are doing beyond the numbers is essential for understanding your job security. Second, you require this information for your professional development and career planning. Third, this information forms the raw material for your behavioural interview question responses. Fourth, the truth about your personal value proposition is often contained in your subjective performance. In my experience with clients, this is both one of the hardest areas to figure out and yet, one of the most rewarding.

Contextual Performance: One aspect to be aware of is the context of your performance. We all work within varying economic and organizational environments. Meeting your sales objectives when the market is hot is a very different thing than when the market is slow. Understand the contextual truth about how well you have done. You may find some sobering realities to contemplate, or areas of your performance that deserve praise given the challenges you overcame.

To see how this theme applies to your resume, please also take a look at Truth-Based Resumes.

Technorati Tags: interviewing, resume writing

How to Follow-Up after Interviewing

Follow-up phone calls certainly aren’t out of the place, in particular if you have made it to the short-list, and if you have other opportunities that you are trying to manage. Here are some factors to consider:



Timing: It is always a good idea to understand where possible, where you are in the timing of a recruitment process. Candidates that get in early, often have to wait longer. Sometimes, you need to be patient (while of course continuing to search).

Frequency: There is a fine line between appropriate follow-up and being a pest. The stronger a candidate you are for the hire, and the more real the hire, the more likely your call will be received if not gratefully, then at least courteously. You may get that important feedback you need to help assess where you are in the process. Unless invited, don’t follow-up more than once a week. An email can be another way to touch-base with the recruiter or hiring manager.



Stage: The degree to which you should follow-up is dependent on where you are in the hiring process. If you have had a 2nd interview or further, I think it is appropriate to check-in if they hiring company or recruiter doesn’t get back to you by the promised date. You can do so after a first interview if they have not gotten back to you. However, at the first interview stage, I wouldn’t follow-up by phone more than once unless encouraged to do so.



2nd+ Choice: In practice, a delay following a short-list interview often means that someone else was the first choice and is being made an offer and that they are waiting to see how that goes before getting back to you. In this case, you need to hang-in there to find out the result, or move on.



Changing Priorities: Unfortunately, the corporate world has its own agenda. Budget freezes. Acquisitions. Strategic discussions. Changing priorities. Even the holiday of a key decision maker might be the cause of a delay in the hiring process. If they have business reasons for the delay, there is nothing you can do about it.

In the end, you need to take your cues from your the recruiter, hiring manager or executive recruiter. If you are receiving encouraging feedback, follow-up. If you aren’t sure, ask. “Shall I follow-up in a week?” The response, and tone of response, will give you a sense of where you stand. If you don’t receive negative cues, but not an outright rejection, move on. You should always be exploring other options until you receive that final offer.



You should also have a look at The Effectiveness of Interview Follow-up Letters

Technorati Tags: career coach, interviewing