Get Career Tips, Advice & Inspiration Delivered to your Mobile Phone

BoldCareer's insights, tips, advice and inspiration on career development, job search, career change, resumes, interviewing and work is now available on your mobile phone via text messaging.

My good friend, the ever-energized Pete Smyth, founder of iamota.com and his talented team have developed a way for site owners to send various types of content to mobile phone users via text messaging. Nice.

Subscribe to Mobile Alerts:

So, if you live on your phone and would like to get a short excerpt every time I post to this blog, you can subscribe to a Mobile RSS alert simply by clicking the link above, or the link permanently displayed in the right column of this page. (Note to Mac users: The link works on Firefox, Camino and OmniWeb for Mac, but not Safari yet.)

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

Deconstructing a Bad Reference

Quality referencing is getting more and difficult to accomplish due to companies being concerned about liability. And yet, referencing is an important hiring tool and career management tool.

There may be times in your career when referencing does not result in you winning the job. At such a time, there is a strong tendency to blame your reference. Think carefully before you do so.

There is something very important called fit. There are different aspects to fit. Personality is one. Work behaviour is another. There may also be more subtle aspects that might not be evident. Fit into a certain sized organization with its corresponding operating realities. Fit into an organization going through a particular kind of change - rapid growth or turnaround being two examples. Fit in terms of the culture of business and the markets served. Fit in terms of the kind of business relationship the CEO or hiring executive wants with their executive. I could go on.

Fit is an important part of job success. Companies want to hire people who can both do the job and who fit. More importantly, you want to put yourself in situations where you are set up to succeed. Fit is a necessary element.

What happened here?

It is very possible that there was a bona fide reason why someone was chosen over you. It may have been about experience, or it may have been about fit. When this happens, I recommend doing nothing about it except moving on t the next opportunity. An experienced referencer asks questions designed to get real information about how you operate. You could have a 100% positive reference from someone, but the information provided may not be what the hiring company is looking for. This is a fit issue.

There are situations where what is coming up in referencing is something you might want to think about doing something about. For example, some executives find themselves blocked at a certain level because of an issue with how they manage teams, or how they relate at senior levels. If you suspect that there is something developmental you can work on, think about doing that.

Of course, it is also possible that someone gave you a bad reference, or a negative part of an otherwise positive reference. It happens. If you feel sure about your reference list, this probably isn't it. However, you can elect to re-arrange who is on your list if you suspect that someone isn't delivering what you had hoped.

If you aren't certain who it might be, and you feel compelled to follow-up, you can try a debrief with the reference. A question like "did any issues come up that might be helpful for me to be aware of?" could uncover something useful and explain what happened. However, if you value your reference, be very careful to do this in a constructive rather than accusatory tone.

Technorati Tags: career coach, career transition, executive search, hiring process, job search

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

Making Work Life Balance a Priority in Your Job Search

If the concept of work life balance sounds like an important and worthy goal, here are the steps I suggest you incorporate into your job search to help ensure that the job you land next is consistent with your priorities.



What Do You Mean by Work / Life Balance?

As with all labelled concepts, you need to define what you mean. Sure, the general concept is understood, but what does it specifically mean to you?



Without some definition, it is difficult for you to recognize it when you see it and you are in danger of the employer defining what they think balance means. They could assume that you don’t have a strong work ethic. Or, they may provide employee perks that they consider to be work / life balance enhancers, when in fact they might mean very little to you.



What would a realistic, but acceptable workweek and month look like? What kind of hours and travel schedule? How much work would you bring home with you? What non-work roles do you have and what kind of time and flexibility do you require to fill them? Put some definition around work / life balance and don’t forget to include requirements like maximum commute time.

How Important are Your Requirements to You?

This part is critical. You must decide how important your definition of work / life balance is to you. Which requirements are musts vs. ideals? What tradeoffs are you willing to accept? When it comes down to an actual job offer, are you willing to walk away from the offer if the employer’s expectations of the amount of time and energy you put into your job go against your requirements? Most people wish, but don’t decide. The difference is critical.



Evaluate Your Position

Part of your decision of course depends on the state of the job market, and more relevantly, your position relative to the market. If you are reasonably sure that with a proper job search, you are going to have multiple decent opportunities, then you should be picky when it comes to choosing the next stop on your career. If, however, you are in tight circumstances, at a stage of your career where you are less employable, or in a narrow niche where there aren’t a lot of opportunities, then reality calls for some flexibility on your part.



Pick Your Targets

Job search success is to a great degree about good job search process. Believe it or not, you have the power to decide within your area of expertise which fields, companies, and opportunities to target and which to ignore. Doing research early in your process will help you focus on targets that fit your work / life balance criteria, and which don’t. How do you know?



If you have already worked in your field, then you have some understanding of how things work. Use this knowledge. Some companies have intense work cultures or a reputation for demanding a lot. If that isn’t for you, steer clear. Some jobs within your field are more likely to be work / life balance unfriendly. Do your research. Talk to people in your industry, which you should be doing anyway as part of your networking process.



Screen

When you do get an interview, you have to apply your screen. The first interview often isn’t the most conducive setting for you to ask questions. The employer is usually vetting you. If you do move forward in the process, you can ask questions and try to gather clues. Your intuition will help.



In terms of directly asking about work / life balance, I think it is something you can do when you have some sense that the employer thinks you are qualified and is interested in you. Good candidates can be hard to find. So, at that point, they want to keep you interested. I recommend that when asking a direct question about work / life balance, you qualify it with your desire to work hard, but effectively, and see what kind of reaction you get.



Decide

Ultimately, it comes down to the offer and your decision. Over my years of working with people in transition, I have noticed that the decision point is a test of people’s values and confidence. It is one thing to plan hypothetically. It is another to walk away from a live opportunity. Feeling that you don’t have a choice is often about not having done a proper thorough, and proactive career transition.

Technorati Tags: career coach, interviewing, job search