Don't Miss the Promotion Train

There seems to be a lot of confusion when it comes to the promotion process. Candidates, because these are internal moves, tend to look at the promotion much differently than their leadership does. As a result, there is often a disconnect that occurs along the way that ultimately hurts all parties in the process.

Over the last year or so, I have been writing my "Road to Promotion" series to address some of this disconnect. Now I've finally compiled much of it into one report called Don't Miss the Promotion Train that you may download for free.  

If a promotion is in your future, then make sure you understand what's really going on and the role you should be playing in it.

--About Stephen----

Stephen Van Vreede is not your average IT/technical résumé writer. He provides career strategy and concierge job search solutions for senior (15+ years) (ITtechExec) and up-and-coming (NoddlePlace) (5-15 years) tech and technical operations leaders. Stephen and his team focus on building simplified, targeted, and certain career move campaigns, be it an external search or an internal promotion. He is co-author of UNcommon with career development leader Brian Tracy (June 2015). Contact Stephen directly at Stephen@ittechexec.com or send him an invite at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenvanvreede. To see whether Stephen and his team are a good fit for you, take their free (and anonymous) compatibility quiz, Is the ITtechExec Approach a Good Match for You?

People Hire People, But They Have a Funny Way of Doing It

In today's job search market generally, and especially in the technical arena, there is a lot broken when it comes to hiring and retaining talent. In a recent post I published on LinkedIn in regard to recruiters, from some of the comments, it was evident just how frustrated most professionals have become with this broken system.  

Yet HR and recruiting gurus will generally tell you that things are getting better.

Nevertheless, in working in the actual trenches with technical professionals, not just in designing their resume and personal brand messaging but in offering concierge job search solutions as well, I can tell you without a doubt things are NOT getting better.  

Wishing it were so does not make it true.

What HR and other hiring "experts" really mean when they say it's better is that they have developed hiring into a more theoretical domain now. They've analyzed it. They've philosophized over it. They know what it should be. They're all about people and talent and...  

Theory, theory, theory

In other words, there's a better sense of what hiring should be.  

The question is, though, "how do we get there?"

The main problem, as I see it, stems from an effort to try and appease too many goals: hire great talent yet make it as automated as possible and as inexpensive as possible while creating as many layers and barriers as possible between the potential candidates and the hiring managers. In other words, while making hiring as formulaic as possible (I call it "assembly line" hiring), somehow they are also supposed to show that they "care" about choosing the best talent and treating candidates with proper respect.  

People hire people, right?

I hear a lot about the "humanizing" of companies, the attempt to appear more empathetic and concerned with the well-being of candidates and employees. (I saw an HR specialist the other day even advocate for more"hugging" at the office [certainly not something I have ever heard my tech members complain about: "I just wish more people would hug me at the office!" Ah no, I've yet to hear that one].)

There are conferences and conventions and Google+ hangouts and Twitter chats all on the subject of how to show you "care"...all while instituting practices that are demoralizing.  

But what's a company to do? When it posts an opening, it gets hundreds of responses, and it must sift through them somehow, right? So why not automate things? Why not protect its hiring managers and their time?

The problem is that you have to prioritize. What is your main goal, and how is that best accomplished? You can't say one thing and then do another.

But that's exactly what the job market is like right now and most likely will be for a while because the word and the deed don't match.  

You want the best talent? Well, you have a funny way of showing it.  

My advice to corporate professionals is simple: If you're going to stay in that environment, then become what I call a "corporate entrepreneur."

Don't just add more credentials and stack up experience and think it will speak for itself. Learn how to apply basic business development techniques to your career management strategy (yes, you need a strategy!). Learn how to watch and read the market. Understand that your career is not just one job hop to another job hop with however many years in between, hoping your salary and level of responsibility increase with it.

In today's market, there has to be more mindfulness of what's really going on around you even when you're quite happy where you currently are.  

Good intentions don't mean much.

I'm afraid at the moment there isn't a whole lot we can do about the current state of hiring practices. It is what it is ... full of good intentions littered with chaos and confusion.

But we can take a different look at the corporate environment and apply some entrepreneurial concepts to build in protections amidst all the chaos (or "corporate goo" as I like to call it). Doing so will help to realign the balance of power into more of a partnership arrangement than a master-slave one.  

--About Stephen----

Stephen Van Vreede is not your average IT/technical résumé writer. He provides career strategy and concierge job search solutions for senior (15+ years) (ITtechExec) and up-and-coming (NoddlePlace) (5-15 years) tech and technical operations leaders. Stephen and his team focus on building simplified, targeted, and certain career move campaigns, be it an external search or an internal promotion. He is co-author of UNcommon with career development leader Brian Tracy (June 2015). Contact Stephen directly at Stephen@ittechexec.com or send him an invite at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenvanvreede. To see whether Stephen and his team are a good fit for you, take their free (and anonymous) compatibility quiz, Is the ITtechExec Approach a Good Match for You?

Technical Job Market Survival Guide

 

AKA: "14 Ways to Avoid Becoming Part of the 95%"

If you've followed my posts or read through any of our reports at NoddlePlace or ITtechExec, you will know that I talk a lot about the "95%", those professionals continuing to approach today's job market with yesterday's mindset, especially today's technical job market.

And this mindset has very little to do with age. In fact, I meet many younger professionals who are stuck in it as well (which tells me there is some poor advice out there).

As a result, these 95% approach their careers and each job search with a misunderstanding of what it takes to not just succeed but survive (and thrive) in the world of work.

To really delve into this issue, my staff and I have put together our annual "survival guide" that is chocked full of resources and tips on how to approach the market as we head into 2015.

If you'd like to move from the 95% into the 5%, download your complimentary copy: Technical Job Market Survival Guide.

Results of Corporate Entrepreneur Poll

Last week I put out a call for responses to a poll asking our audience what the phrase "corporate entrepreneur" meant to them. This topic of corporate entrepreneurship will encompass my contribution to my upcoming book Uncommon with Brian Tracy (Spring 2015), and I wanted to get a sense of what professionals out there thought when they heard the phrase. The largest response at 23% was that a corporate entrepreneur was "a strategist". A three-way tie for second at 15% each included:

• Someone who's business savvy but probably more suited for self-employment.
• Someone who sees what's coming in the corporate realm and prepares for it.
• A professional who knows how to apply certain elements of self-employment within the corporate structure.

If you'd like to participate in the poll, please feel free to do so. I've included it below and will keep it open a couple more weeks.

At that time, I will post the results and give an excerpt from the book discussing this issue. As a technical career strategist following the world of work closely, I am convinced that corporate entrepreneurship is going to be a "must" (yes, a must) for anyone looking to maintain their careers, particularly as we move through the next decade.

The shifting of corporate culture, the convoluted hiring practices, the mixed-generational workforce, and most importantly, the global market outlook are all bringing together a perfect storm that will forever change what it means to be in corporate. What we've seen so far is just the beginning.

Most Desirable Employers: Really Better Than All the Rest?

Business Insider released the following infographic citing the top 100 employers based off of stats from LinkedIn. As a technical career strategist, this list is anything but surprising.  

And as someone who's worked with candidates to get into many of these employers, what's also not surprising is that the more desirable these companies become, the more rigorous, and even borderline ridiculous, their hiring practices become.  

Here's the real skinny:

The best way to get these employers to even look at you twice is to make them come to you (rather than the other way around), and that requires a willingness to do things completely differently than most people do. It requires resisting the normal job board black hole and HR hoop-jumping channels, and it takes a stiff spine to refrain from handing over any leverage you might have to them.

It's the only way to separate yourself from the masses applying in droves to these employers. Credentials alone will not cut it. Tossing out a resume and hoping it passes some test will most likely not do it. Begging a recruiter to try and place you might work, but you will likely find it the most frustrating and confusing time of your life (smile).  

Strategy, strategy, strategy is the name of this game.