Don't Skip Out on Your Upcoming Career Move "Prep" Session

For years we kept telling our technical resume/job search members they needed to get properly prepared before they rushed out into full-blown job search mode, even "passive" job search mode. We kept saying that those members who do see much better results, particularly in dramatically reducing the length of their job search time and the effectiveness of their resumes. But it just wasn't sexy enough...apparently. :-) [Or we weren't convincing enough, I guess.] Because we kept seeing heads nod in agreement but members rush out anyway into job board land and recruiter chaos (and attend network mixer after network mixer) without much of a "plan" other than trying a lot of things. (Or, worse, they marched into the promotion process, the highest stakes "career move" there is, without any leverage.)

So this year after introducing our concierge job search "launch" solutions to our resume portfolio offerings, we began tracking and publishing the results our members were receiving.  

(We decided that if we wanted our members to invest in what we were saying, then we needed to prove it!)

And, not surprisingly, the stats are overwhelmingly in favor of implementing some type of "prep" session into your upcoming career move efforts. Overall, our members beat the national average for job search length by 4 months (a 67% improvement; 169 hours recovered for the member) and the resume response rate (# of resumes sent before receiving first call/response) by 100% with 90% of our members cutting the response time in half or better. (See our Latest Member ROI.)  

But out of those stats, the members repeatedly driving down our averages were the ones that thought strategy first, execution second. (They averaged an 85% improvement over the national average in job search length, another 18% of time recovered over our other members.)  

Why all the fuss?

Here's the deal: Today's technical job search, whether you are currently employed, unemployed, going for a promotion, or a consultant is more of a "zoo" than it used to be, and all that corporate "goo" that makes up most hiring and retention practices is, well, a bit sticky. Not to mention the fact that the job search is an emotional, often reactionary, process.  

So the days of whipping up a resume and tossing it out to see what sticks "should" be over.  

That is, if you value your time and your career AND want to reduce the stress that comes with a career move. And who doesn't, really?  

But I know: What we should do and what we actually do are typically not the same things.

That's why, to make the mind shift easier, when I talk about a "Prep" Session, I am referring to a simple, low-commitment session with a big return that is conducted before you do anything else, NO MATTER WHAT TYPE OF JOB SEARCH YOU ARE CONDUCTING. The idea is to get you up to speed on where the market is today, how well you are positioned for the market you are targeting, and the steps that will get you better prepared for making that next move.

There's no doubt that if you read all the trend reports, soul-search until the cows come home, and obsess over your resume, you'll end up more confused than prepared.

So don't short-change yourself.

Take an hour, get a Prep Session (even if you're not looking to make that move until 6 months from now), and get some peace of mind that you have an authentic perspective going forward. (It doesn't have to be expensive or exhaustive. It's a "prep" session, after all.)  

The idea is that you start off on the right foot. And if you've worked as hard as I know you do, then you deserve at least that.

(I believe in it so much that it is now a mandatory part of our membership!)  

Listen. If you want to get good results, you do what works. Why do anything else?

When You're Not Sure What's Next in Your Career

One of our newest offerings at ITtechExec are our What's Next? solutions. They came out of several years of working with tech/IT/engineering professionals (and those who serve with them) and observing all the things they were doing to try and figure out what's next for them. The following Slideshare presentation details 11 ways we've identified NOT to figure out what's next in your career. Be careful...they just might surprise you.

When You're Not Sure's What's Next in Your Career from Stephen Van Vreede

Who Says "No" Is Always Negative?

I was speaking with a fellow parent a few years ago who has a son my daughter's age. While our two children were playing together at a birthday party (they were about 5 years old at the time), he was proudly telling me how he "never says no" to his son (of course he had just heard me say "no" to my daughter who wanted to suck on a lollipop while jumping in a bounce house). He told me that "no" is so "negative" and he doesn't want his son to grow up with that hurting his self-image.

(Although I know our respective kids were a long way off from considering each other as "marriage material," I couldn't help my natural tendency to start moving my daughter away from his son...judge me if you must.)

I'll never forget the conversation because 1) I was taken aback by his self-confidence that he was doing the right thing (and that I was so old-fashioned) and 2) it reminds me of the career services/hiring world of work.  

A "no" is "always" taken as a negative. And it is "always" linked somehow to your self-esteem.

We seem to live in a world that dislikes the word "no," so much so that we go to great lengths to avoid hearing it or using it or acknowledging it.  

Yet, there it is anyway!

Recently, I wrote about positive thinking and your career, and in that post, I talked about how proper preparation leads to true positive thinking because it allows you to have a foundation for it. Expanding on that is the idea of "negative preparation."  

Negative preparation is a strategy that allows us to anticipate obstacles or the "no(s)" we might encounter on our way to a goal.

In other words, we learn to expect a certain amount of "no" in our quest to advance or progress. By preparing for these negatives, we can better form our argument and have an answer to respond to them. Lawyers do this when preparing for a case. Good sales staff do this when preparing for objections in the sales process.

And part of the preparation is understanding that often the counterarguments brought up along the way have less to do with us personally and more to do with the other party's perspective, a perspective that might have some validity to it and that we can grow from.

Of course, sometimes even with negative preparation, we still might ultimately get a "no" or lose a case or argument, but the idea is that it helps you fine-tune for the next time around. (Furthermore, I think all of us can come up with a time when we can be thankful for "unanswered prayers.")

For some reason, however, negative preparation rarely gets applied to job seekers. Job seekers are told to "think positively" and to "brand" themselves, to have the "right" credentials, and to present themselves as a "team player." They are also told that if they have certain limitations, such as lack of credential and over- or under-qualified, then the world is against them...personally. And the best they can do is hope for the best.

It's odd advice if you think about it.  

Hoping for the best is not a strategy. And a "no" is not "always" a personal slight.

Yet because the job search process is so emotional, we often lost sight of these things. We take rejection hard and rarely use it to make us better prepared the next time around. In other words, we only see it as a negative. And that negative usually has a significant impact on how we come to view ourselves.  

It's hard for us to remember that although our careers are personal, the marketplace is not.

The market functions on different principles than we do, and by watching what it says "yes" to and what is says "no" to we can adjust to meet it better (aka strategy). Because it is "always" saying "yes" and "no"...always (and usually more "no" than "yes"). The question is are you prepared for it?

Or are you going to be like my fellow parent's son, unprepared when someone says it to you? Because sooner or later, they will. (I'm positive about that.)

Executive Job Search Strategies for CIOs and CTOs

On Tuesday, October 14, at 12pm Eastern, I had the opportunity to participate in a TweetChat hosted by @BlueSteps called #ExecCareer. This week the topic turned to CIO and CTO candidates. You can view the questions and my responses regarding job search strategies at the following link through Storify:

https://storify.com/BlueSteps/executive-job-search-strategies-for-cios-and-ctos?utm_source=embed_header

Getting Around "TUIT"

I encountered Zig Ziglar ~15 years ago at a leadership conference I attended in Lancaster, PA. Shockingly, and sadly, at the time, I really didn't know who he was. I was young, supposedly well "educated," ambitious but green, very green. And so when he came up to me and shook my hand, I had no idea who this guy with the interesting name was other than the main speaker at our conference.

It wasn't until sometime later, after he had passed away, when I was in desperate need of learning how to grow and develop my own business, that in getting more "educated" I came across Zig Ziglar quote after Zig Ziglar quote and realized just how influential he was from a sales standpoint but more importantly from a character and leadership standpoint.

He came to mind the other day when I was speaking with a client who was telling me that he was "going to get around to it" in regard to some career management issues we were discussing. It reminded me of Zig, that leadership conference, and his "round TUIT" (too-it) cards.

He used to give out these circle cards with the letters "TUIT" on them whenever someone told him they were going to get "around to it" sooner or later. He would then say something like, "Great! It just so happens I have a round TUIT right here. Now you can get going."

In other words, he was letting the person know in a humorous way that saying that you are going to "get around" to something is basically a silly excuse. He was "freeing" them from all those good intentions. As a business owner, it's been a great challenge for me. One I ask myself regularly,  

"Well, are you going to do it, or aren't you?"

When it comes to our careers, 95% of us seem to manage them based on the "round TUIT" principle. We start off with grand ideas, get beaten down a little by the corporate "goo," hope for greener pastures, get tired out from our personal lives, and pray for a savior (but only one that will make it all so much simpler for us). In other words, we want it all (or at least better than what we have now), but we don't really intend to do much about it until we're forced to.  

That's the career management strategy we know and, well, apparently love because that's what we do. (Myself included at times.)

Also, there's a segment of the 95% who believes they must have everything figured out all the time or else suffer the consequences of a "rash" decision. (This group loves the "getting around to it" syndrome because it is so comforting.) Little do they realize, however, that in the marketplace "haste does NOT make waste," stalling does.  

The more you stall, the more you lose.

Ouch. That hurts. But it's true. Corporate "goo" has a way of clouding over the realities of the marketplace. It makes its professionals forget that they are part of the supply-and-demand cycle (so...capitalistic, I know!). It makes them think that things move along slowly and that time is meant to be tied up in a lot of activity (not necessarily accomplishment). It makes them (you, me) forget that they really can be "proactive" with their careers (beyond paying thousands and thousands for more education for little ROI). It does all that until...

POW!

One day the world drops out, the company sells/changes management/lays you off/fires you/pigeonholes you into a role you don't want....  

Whatever it is...when it comes, it comes. And there's no more getting "round TUIT."

At both ITtechExec and NoddlePlace, we've made a conscious effort to focus on the 5% who understand, like Jack Welch, that "speed is imperative." Not because they want to take uncalculated risks or do something foolish, in fact they come to us to ensure that doesn't happen, but because they want to do whatever they can to take back control of their careers and build in protections.  

In other words, they're tired of waiting to see what happens and hoping they will get around to it. They're willing to do it "afraid" or maybe even a little bit less prepared than they would normally like!  

Are you?

6 Tips for Sticking Out Your Holiday Job Search

It's that time of year again. That time when mixed emotions, nostalgia, sentimentality, joy, anxiety, regret, and depression, all float around us for 6 weeks like some deranged version of the Nutcracker.  

And if you're in career move mode or job search mode, it's an even more confusing dance.

For on top of the typical feelings that come with the end of one year and the beginning of another, you have the emotional baggage that comes with any type of career move (internal or external).

If that isn't bad enough, everyone, everywhere seems to have an opinion on what it's like to go through a job search during the holidays that range from complete despair to unfounded optimism.

This year, to help curb some of the mixed signals you might be getting as you wade through the job market zoo during the holidays, I've put together a no-nonsense report called "6 Tips for Sticking Out Your Holiday Job Search."

(I'm probably one of the few who thinks that the holidays can be a positive time for the job seeker if you're willing to think and act a little differently than most!)

Click to download the complimentary report: 6 Tips for Sticking Out Your Holiday Job Search

Positive Thinking and Your Career

If there's one thing people, especially people in my line of work (career services), love to talk about it is "attitude."  

Usually right on the heels of use of the word "attitude" comes the term "positive thinking."

Positive thinking is touted as the best way to get through life. It makes you, at least on the surface, seem happier. It might even add years of good health to your life. It makes you more pleasant to be around. And, well, it's just so much more positive!

I mean, isn't it better to think positively than negatively?

Now, if you're like me, all of this discussion makes you cringe a little. That's OK. It should.

Yes, it should. And here's why:  

"Positive thinking" is not mind-numbing optimism. Nor is it mind control or "mind over matter" even. But yet that is often how it is presented.

In fact, thinking like that can bring a lot of negativity into your life. (I mean, what happens when it doesn't work?)

But let's face it: We all do it anyway...even the pessimists among us. We have been socially engineered to think that if we just "hope for the best" or "only see the bright side" that these good thoughts we've put out there will reward us for our good attitude.

I actually thought I was immune to it until I found myself telling my daughter the other day to "think positively" and to change her "attitude." What parent hasn't said that a time or two? (Of course, it didn't work any better with her than it would with me.)

All of my life people have said I was "easy-going" and generally a "happy" guy. But what they really didn't know was that I was more like an ostrich with my head in the sand. True, I wasn't stressed out and tense, and I was always smiling and shrugging things off.  

But that's easy to do when you just refuse to face the facts about anything!

I went through life "avoiding negativity" until one day I realized that I was incapable of dealing with certain situations and with really connecting with people. In other words, my positivity was actually causing me a lot of negativity!  

So what is positive thinking then if not perpetual optimism or wishful thinking (or in my case, pretending not to see what you really see)?  

A positive attitude or outlook is really only achieved, at least in any meaningful way, by preparation.

Yes, preparation. We can't go through life (or our careers) denying that bad things happen or acting as though life should really be only how we want it to be. Doing so assumes a level of control that we simply don't have.

In my mind, preparation means facing life as it is, not as it ought to be, recognizing that throughout your career in particular, you are going to face obstacles, especially if you plan to take any risks (and I hope you do! God bless you if you don't in today's market). Whether it has been my corporate career, and especially in my entrepreneurial one, a lot of people and things generally seem to try to thwart my plans and goals. All the optimism in the world doesn't get rid of them or work around them. Instead I must prepare to face them because as soon as I work around one, another always seems to pop up. (I am positive about that!)

Now, it is impossible to "prepare" for everything. There is a reason people turn to faith, after all.

Yet what I've discovered is that by preparing to face objections and other obstacles along the way, especially in my career, I've grown more confident and more, well, positive. I can discern between what is and is not a real impediment. I'm not just hoping something comes along and rescues me. I do my best to create pipelines of opportunity, understanding that some will work out and some probably won't.

Either way, though, this approach attracts many more well-matched, positive opportunities than just believing they will come because I want them to and, hey, I'm a good guy and work hard so I deserve it.

So while it is true everyone prefers to be around someone more positive than negative, that's only surface-level living. We can all "fake" the right attitude for a while to get by. But a real "positive thinker" has a foundation behind it. The next time you're wondering either how it is you change your attitude about your career or why you're optimism isn't panning out the way you'd hoped, stop and think about the preparations you've made. Are you really ready to face certain obstacles that come up? Have you thought about the different objections that will stand in your way?  

Maybe the biggest issue is that you haven't given yourself an actual "reason" to be positive. Or, perhaps worse, you're being positive for no "reason."

What Is a Job Search "Agent" Anyway?

This whole thing started when I heard someone emphatically "yell" over social media that he "would NEVER EVER use job search services."

(Note to self: When someone starts "yelling," and using extremes like "never" and "always" [especially in all caps], that's a very good sign there's a need out there, probably more of one than you even realize....)  

It has been my experience that we have the "kickers and screamers" of the world to thank for the rise and spread of innovation.

And I get it. Change is not always a good thing...or it certainly doesn't seem like it is. What we deem as "innovation" is not always what's really best for us as individuals and as a society. So it's fitting that we should have someones who kick and scream about it. The problem is that the more they kick and scream, the more they expose the truth:

Change isn't just coming; it's already here, and we have to deal with "what is" and not "what ought to be."

So after my social media "friend" did his best to shout at the universe, going on to say that he knew everything that there was to know about job searching, that he was the best networker in the world, and that he was the master of Indeed.com, I knew then that I was on to something important. I had been looking at ways to move our company away from the traditional "resume-only" style of firm that could not really determine its ROI into one that could not just produce top-quality documentation but also play a part in the job search process for our client members.

Maybe, sadly, I wasn't going to be able to help my social media friend here, but he did confirm for me that obviously there were other people I could help.  

That's when I met Sue. (Well, actually, I already knew Sue, but I hadn't realized that our paths would cross in such a significant way. So maybe I should say that I "re-met" Sue.)

If ever there were an answer to prayer, music to my ears, or a sight for sore eyes (you get the drift), Sue was it. Blending a unique background in managing both IT and telecom day-to-day operations with extensive hiring and recruitment experience for small/mid-sized organizations as well as for a prominent Fortune 1000 company, Sue has been up close and personal with HR, and has had to wade through layoffs, acquisitions, and corporate restructuring. (That means she's a veteran of the job market zoo and has been so deep in corporate goo that nothing surprises her anymore!)  

She was the exact person I was looking for to serve as our Job Search Agent at ITtechExec and NoddlePlace.

We had already transitioned to meet current job market demands with a successful "resume portfolio" approach. And after spending time as a career adviser to TechRepublic, Dice, and CIO.com, and seeing the confusion in the job search realm, especially when it came to tech, I knew we needed to develop solutions in that area to meet today's reality. Too many candidates were approaching the market from an outdated perspective.  

So even if they had great documents, they didn't have the proper job search approach to go with them.  

We needed to find ways to move candidates, active and passive, out of the job board addictions they were in and into more proactive (and effective!) approaches.

So, together, Sue and I started shaping 4 "NoNonsense" job search solutions that she conducts on behalf of our client members once their resume portfolios and brand messaging has been developed. In other words, she isn't there just to tell you how to do things (coach you); she actually participates in launching a portion of your job search on your behalf.

Perhaps the best part is that the 4 solutions Sue conducts are all meant to make it simple for you to move beyond the comfortably, but largely ineffective and demeaning, world of job boards and online postings. Using a 3-step model for each solution, called Write the Vision, Make It Plain, and Run With It, she guides you by:

• Setting a strategic vision for your job search (putting together a practical, easy-to-follow plan for how/where to spend your time based on your goals and limitations. (Strategic Visioning Intro Session)
• Matching you with recruiters who are best suited for you and your goals and helping introduce you to those recruiters. (Recruiter Matching)
• Building strategic LinkedIn connections focused on your target industry and goals and helping you engage with those connections in a productive way. (LinkedIn Network Building)
• Profiling employers who meet specific parameters set up for you and reaching out to contacts at those employers on your behalf. (Employer Profiling)

It's been an amazing journey over the past year as we have successfully married our resume/brand messaging solutions to these job search "launch" solutions so that by the time you leave us not only do you have top-quality materials, but you also have some traction in your job search.

Just over the past few weeks:

• I've witnessed two members get first and second interview invites for jobs NOT posted anywhere from our Employer Profiling solution.
• I've watched Sue make a strategic connection for another member at a high-profile tech company through our LI Network Building solution that he has been trying to get in with for a long time. He now has had a couple informal informational interviews with this connection and has met a couple other contacts as a result.
• And I've watched numerous others get connected with recruiters who are well aligned with their goals through the Recruiter Matching solution, not to mention the members who've walked away with a clear strategy for how they should spend their limited time and resources on their job search.

So although I know this post is a bit "promotional," please bear with me. We're all more than a bit excited! It's hard not to be when you see such progress being made.  

It's what's taken us from a traditional "resume-only" firm into a full-service job search firm that holds itself accountable for the work it does. We're measuring our ROI, comparing against national averages, and seeing amazing results.

So although I wish my social media friend well with his "NEVER EVER" mantra, it's awesome to see our members becoming part of that 5% who recognizes the hiring "zoo" we're in and are willing to move out of the familiar and into today.

Elevator Pitch: Good? Sales Pitch: Bad?

I was having a discussion recently with a colleague of mine in which the word "pitch" was used in reference to candidates in the job search process. This colleague quickly bristled and said, "I don't advise my clients to pitch anything."

To which I quickly reminded her that she most certainly does. After all, she prepares the so-called "elevator pitch."

She then bristled again and said, "Well, that's different."

When I asked her to explain, she went on to tell me that one was the "off-putting," basically "disgusting" art of "pitching" a sale, while the other was the crafting of a statement that encompasses the candidate's "value proposition."

I guess in her mind she isn't teaching her clients how to sell; instead she's teaching them how to...sell but pretend they aren't...? (A pitch is a pitch is a pitch is a pitch.)

 I know many people probably share my colleague's sentiment about the idea of a "sales pitch." Within the career services industry, in general, the idea of a sales pitch is met with disdain but the concept of an elevator pitch is lauded as good practice. (Go figure.)

And I do get it. We can all think of the stereotypical slimy salespeople who will say anything to get us to buy...who try to whip us into some emotional state where we are tricked into making a bad decision. And we rightly bristle at the idea that any of our clients would take that approach in their job search.

But as someone who has an MBA in marketing and a strong education in sales, I'm more than a little concerned that by playing games with semantics, we (career strategists and candidates alike) are in danger of leading candidates down the wrong road.

In my mind, knowing how to "sell" is one of the most secure and marketable skills you can develop regardless of what role, industry, private/public sector career you have. There is a lot of truth to the saying that "all of life is sales."  

The problem is that most people have been taught that selling is bad. That it's manipulation. But that is NOT what good selling is.

Good selling starts from a basic premise: That you have a good or service (product) that will make someone else's life better in some way (it solves a problem). Marketing introduces that product to the specific market who will benefit from it the most (building the recognizable "brand"). Then sales backs up the brand by "demonstrating" the product to individual prospects interested in how this product will make their lives better and solve a problem they have.

Now, here's where the "pitch" comes in. It isn't a trick like a fast ball; it's a reinforcement (a "connecting of the dots," if you will). The prospect has already identified that he or she has a problem that needs solving, and the marketing has attracted him or her to this brand as a possibility of solving it. Now the prospect just wants to know 1) whether he or she can trust your product and your brand and 2) whether what you are saying really will solve his or her problem. The job of sales, then, is to convince (create trust/belief) and then persuade (encourage action). Nine times out of ten without the sales "pitch," the prospect will do nothing even if he or she is interested. (As humans, we like to be convinced and persuaded as we don't want to make a foolish decision.)

In the end, contrary to popular opinion, the transaction that occurs is not a "win-win" (company-buyer). It's a "win-bigger win" in which the company makes a short-term profit (because let's face it, the company needs a lot of sales to profit long term) and the buyer gets a long-term resolution of his or her problem.

 In good selling, the buyer is always the bigger winner.

(In fact, it has to be that way for businesses to prosper. Big, sustainable businesses must have that to survive. If not, they will become irrelevant to the market. The problem, of course, is that they often lose sight of it, for various reasons, and when profits start to slip as a result, they react by becoming more selfish, eventually creating that slimy sales environment we all know and hate and usually cheapening the product to "save" on expenses.

And by the way, nonprofits and other public sector agencies pretty much operate on the same premises. They all have a target market they serve, staff who needs to make a living, grant funders they need to convince and persuade, boards of directors and other stakeholders who look to "profit" in some way even if that way seems more "humanitarian". It's all a matter of practicing good selling. In fact, in many ways, the public sector/nonprofit arena has to do a lot more "selling" than the private sector does.)  

So getting back to the "elevator pitch" and the job search process, in general, what else is it if it isn't a form of good selling?  

Wouldn't you rather learn how to do good "selling" than just good "bragging" or, worse, "selling but pretending you're not selling?"

I've met a lot of good braggers and none of them are good at sales/marketing. Why? Because they practice poor selling techniques, expecting to trick the other party into thinking they are better than they are, expecting to win bigger than the other party does. I've also met a lot of others who don't want to seem like their "selling" so they don't. They don't pitch any substance, and they don't make the sale. (They make the mistake of thinking the product will just sell itself.)

Listen. When you go out with your "pitch" in job search mode, the potential employer should make out better from hiring you (that is really what a "value proposition" is). After all, you are performing a "service" and that service does make the "world a better place" (at least the world inside that company), doesn't it?

(I should hope so! Otherwise, your service is irrelevant.)

Now, that doesn't mean you don't stand to profit. You expect a good wage (price) for your hard-earned effort so that at least during the short term (as long as you work there), you can make a living, maybe even a good one. You also expect other things like respect and certain benefits. In the end, though, while you are there, you help solve problems that build in long-term sustainability (that's your legacy) for the company (or at least should be if the company is being managed properly), making the company and all the people it serves (customers, staff, communities) bigger winners.

So the next time you bristle at the idea of selling, particularly as it relates to you, the job seeker, be careful of clouding your judgment so that you miss out on what good selling "pitches" do. Otherwise, you'll spend so much time trying not to "sell" with your "elevator pitch" that your potential employer(s) will be left wondering just exactly what it is you can do for them and whether they can trust what you say.

Two Roads Diverged in Your Career Path Wood...And You?

Two Roads Diverged in Your Career Path Wood...And You?

And you?

If you're like many professionals, you know it's time to make another career move. The writing is on the wall, so to speak. You've either been in your current role for a bit longer than you intended, the corporate culture around you is shifting in a direction that you don't seem to fit into, or you just feel the itch. Whatever it is, it's time.  

So you're thinking you should get your resume together.

But as soon as you start talking to resume writers or reading through the latest career trends, you keep hearing the same mantra:

"Your resume should be focused, focused, focused. The more focused, the more effective it will be."  

And then you start to panic. You might even think, "Oh no, do I really want to push myself into such a corner? What if I want to pursue two options? How come I don't really know what I want to be when I grow up?"

For older workers, it might even be more frightening. Maybe you thought you'd be retired by now or certainly within the next 5 years. So if the idea of making the career move isn't daunting enough, now you have to marry yourself to either your current role or break out into a new one at what feels like the exact wrong moment.

Or maybe you're like me and middle age is upon you. You've always done the "safe" thing or whatever you had to do. It would be nice to take more of a risk or at least find something you really enjoy doing.  

Whatever the situation may be. The good news is that you're not alone...

Robert Frost wrote about something very similar in 1920 in his famous poem The Road Not Taken when he was about 46 years old:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Now if you studied this poem in school or are just an avid fan of Frost or poetry in general, you've inevitably heard many commentaries wax philosophical on this poem.

The popular way to read it is to think that the road "less traveled" that the narrator took "made all the difference." That the soul-searching, life-affirming, man-in-touch-with-the universe sentiment is the key here. That the narrator walking through this "yellow wood" (in tune with nature) saw two different paths, and the decision of one over the other was what "made all the difference" now looking back on his life. In other words, the courage to go a different way saved him or her from the dreaded "regret."

It's a nice thought, isn't it? It's certainly sold a lot of Hallmark cards.  

But what if Frost were doing what Frost often did...what if he were being a bit facetious, a little tongue in cheek, if you will?

I won't go into too many details for sake of time, but I think you could make as strong an argument that Frost was in jest when he said this decision "made all the difference" as you can that he was dead serious: e.g., the use of exclamation point and all caps, the somewhat melodramatic tone ("I shall be telling this with a sigh"), the awkward rhyming with "difference" at the end. In other words, the poem can be read in two different ways, much like the two different paths.  

So what does that mean, particularly in regard to choosing between two career paths?

For one, I think it means we need to give ourselves a break, that although the decision might be significant to us at the moment, looking back in life, it might not make "all the difference."

For another, and this is a topic I want to keep "for another day," sometimes when we are faced with what to do in our careers, we've bought a little too much into the idea of "soul searching" and not enough into the understanding of "market indicators" (not very sexy, I know...and so, well, capitalistic).

Robert Frost was a great poet, one of the few who actually knew "fame" from his writing during his lifetime. He was also a mediocre farmer (and that's somewhat generous). Neither of those things, however, really made him money. Instead, he became a prominent speaker who spent a lot of time doing the college circuit and writer conferences, where he capitalized on the fame from his writing and stayed on the road (why he wasn't such a good farmer).

So although we can wax poetical or philosophical about our career decisions, more often than not, like Frost, sometimes we have to do what we have to do "knowing how way leads on to way."

Making It Through the Tech Career Goo

We get a lot of requests at both ITtechExec and NoddlePlace for stories of how our members have made it through all the tech job market zoo and corporate goo that makes up much of today's world of work. So we've compiled the following 5 stories, each dealing with different aspects of today's market and workplace culture. Perhaps you can relate...

Making It Through the Tech Career Goo from Stephen Van Vreede

1 Year of Experience 30 Times or 30 Years of Experience?

One of my favorite types of clients to work with is the more "experienced" professional, the one whose been around the tech/engineering fields for a while and has watched the evolution of technology and different trends come and go. It fascinates me that anyone (no matter how well intentioned) would suggest to these valuable professionals that they should:

1. Hide their experience

 or

2. Ask them to pretend to be younger

Logic dictates that if you have 30 years of experience in your field (or 20 or 40 or whatever you have) and have been a valuable member of that community, it should be a source of achievement, not suddenly an impediment or something you have to change or hide about yourself (as if you really can anyway).  

And in my mind as career strategists, we need to ensure that our industry STOPS reinforcing this notion.

It certainly doesn't help these professionals continue to progress in their fields, and we aren't sending an effective message, other than "there's something wrong with you, which you can't control, but you have to fix it anyway" and, my favorite: "Compete with younger people as if you are younger too." In other words, the message becomes "be hip". And "sell yourself like a commodity."  

There's nothing wrong with having 30 years of experience, and we need to stop acting like there is.

Instead, where there's a problem that needs to be addressed is in how that 30 years of experience is presented.

All too often, there is a tendency to position more experienced workers as "stagnant" in which their education was learned once a long time ago and simply repeated throughout the course of their career. Or worse, their earlier education is tossed out and the focus is only placed on the last couple years.  

So rather than demonstrate 30 years of accumulating education and experience, it comes off as much less, and it gives the employer an apples-to-apples comparison between the younger worker and the older one.  

What we really should be doing is making an apples-to-oranges comparison.

In other words, when it comes to the two groups, there is no comparison. They each bring different types of business value to the organization, and the challenge for the more experienced candidate (as well as for the less experienced but in a different way) is to communicate how he or she does that.

For the professional with 30 years of experience, it is a matter of building a story of how that amount of experience culminates in understanding today's business challenges and how you can leverage your background to solve those problems. Any organization that wants to profit knows it needs people who bring business value because that value produces results, and like it or not, results are what organizations are after (private sector AND public sector).

Now, you might be thinking, "I have been doing that. I've been telling them how relevant I still am." Chances are you've been telling them from a skills-based focus. You've been telling them how up-to-date your skills are. But that's not really leveraging your background with your skills. In other words, it's not really giving them the full breadth of what you bring, and it's not being tied in to that bottom line business value.

We all have this tendency to think that hiring managers are good at connecting the dots...but they aren't. No matter what age, we still have to do it for them.

We think that our latest credentials we paid handsomely for or our work history will just tell the story for us, but it rarely does. Instead, potential employers often just look at us and think, "is this person going to make my life easier or harder?"

And the more experienced you are, the more difficult it can be to show how your background can be leveraged to make life easier for the employer because it is, well, complicated...there are more dots that need connecting. Therefore, the focus by the older worker often dissolves into "defending" his or her experience.

Contrary to popular belief, most employers only want to do so much "molding" of younger workers. They might think at first that this will make their lives easier (because it is easier to identify with younger because you were younger once too; it's harder to identify with older when you haven't been through that yet) until they start trying to "mold" them. :-) So there are only so many of them they can realistically hire/promote. That can mean opportunity for those who are "different" (who are that "orange" and not another "apple," so to speak). Unfortunately, though, most candidates believe that "difference" is really a bad thing and try to hide it, but that comes back to not knowing how to leverage it properly.  

Difference has to "know" its relevance, not just "say" it's relevant. (Think of how companies are continually looking to differentiate themselves.) And that "knowing" comes in understanding the results you can bring (or support) to the organization because of the amount of experience you have.

It's funny. Communicating that is what makes you "hip" again....trying to act younger does not.

You're a Hard Worker, So What?

When you ask most professionals what their best quality is, typically, they will respond with some variation of "hard working." Sometimes they will call it "dedicated" or "committed" or even "loyal," but it pretty much all boils down to the fact that they think they work harder than other people do and that this should distinguish them in the minds of their employer. And to some extent, they are right.  

Employers do appreciate hard-working professionals, all across the corporate spectrum.  

But it rarely plays a significant role in the hiring process (and not as much as you might think in the promotion process either).

For one thing, it is tough to assess based on just speaking with someone. For another, it is assumed. Furthermore, it is the type of thing that is really earned by reputation, not by you saying it. Frankly, most people probably are not all that extraordinary in their "hard-working" ability, at least not as much as they think they are. They can just think of a handful of people who are worse than them, so that justifies their self-labeling as "committed."  

I have yet to work with one candidate who didn't think he or she was "hard working"; yet they could all tell me about at least 5-10 others they knew who were not as hard working as them. Go figure.

So given that hard working is not a label you can give yourself with any type of credibility behind it and that employers pay very little attention to these self-declarations in the hiring process, the "hard-working" professional is often confused and can be somewhat unsuccessful in the job search (and especially promotion) process. Once again, it comes down to audience. Sometimes the things we think are most impressive about us are not as valued during the hiring process as we think they should be. (As I mentioned recently, very little about hiring is rational on our part as much as on the employer's part.) Therefore, most job seekers are unwittingly "sabotaging" their own job search by approaching it with the wrong focus.  

A misaligned focus is really what makes the difference between a "good" resume and a "bad" one (despite whatever else you may hear).

So although it is good to think about formatting and typos and proper white spacing on the page, if you're trying to sell your target audience the "wrong" product, it won't matter. And that is what often happens. We just want them to know how hard working we are and, if we have them, how many credentials (degrees/certs) we have. And then we are confused when they don't seem as impressed as we thought they should be (or as our education system told us they would be). Overall, today's employers, especially those in the tech arena, say they are most looking for proof of the following skills (notice advanced degrees/certs are actually missing from the list, so even though every job description seems to ask for them, this is what employers really want):

• Analytical skills (coding is in demand)
• Global outlook
• Cross-functional ability
• Soft skills (how well do you communicate both verbally and in writing?)

The other quality they desire, and this is a big one, is an understanding of business value. They want someone who knows the value he or she brings to the overall business focus.  

If you think about it, this puts hard working in a tailspin.

Because it is not enough to say, "I am dedicated." (I know a lot of poor performing, yet dedicated, entrepreneurs.) And it is not enough to say, "I work more hours and with more passion than everyone else." (I know those same entrepreneurs do too.) In business, results matter (and contrary to popular belief, effort does not always produce the right results). Corporations are no different, and they are looking for people from the bottom up who understand the role they play in producing those results. So set aside your overwhelming urge to declare your hard-working superiority and your overreliance on credentials and start looking at the qualities that are most significant for business growth and success. If you can communicate how your skills align with that, then your hard work will really start to pay off.  

Your Work History Doesn't Speak for Itself

Here's something we all wish were true. Believe me, as a small business owner, I definitely wish it were true! But a product (or service, which is really what your "work" is) does not and cannot sell itself. Why? Well, there are lots of reasons for this, but essentially, it all boils down to one thing:  

People have short attention spans and really poor memories.

It's always been true, but it's especially true today with all the things that beg for our attention. Frankly, your boss, co-workers, industry cohorts, and even mentors are generally not storing away all those little details about you and your work history like they might make it seem so that someday in the future you will get the recognition (aka pay) you "deserve." And, really, you don't want them to.  

That's right. You don't want them to.

Because if they were, that would mean that your career, your future earnings, your family's livelihood were in their hands (yikes!).

And you're too valuable for that.

But let's face it. We still wish it worked that way anyway.  

It would just be nice to have our work history speak for itself.

But I learned really early on in my corporate career, and have been reinforced almost daily in my entrepreneurial one, that my career progression is mine and mine alone. Sure, there have been many nice people along the way who have "noticed" and "appreciated" me...at least to a point. But I've discovered that my greatest accomplishments have come when I've learned how to be my own advocate and career strategist, not when I've relied on bosses or mentors or career credentials or my work achievements to "market" me or "notice" me or deem me "worthy." And I've found that when I do that, when I make that investment, suddenly there are a whole host of people more than willing to "help" or "promote" or "work with" me.  

But it was up to me to be the catalyst.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't subscribe to the "positive thinking" movement, at least not in the way that most people mean it. I don't believe success comes or has come just because I think good thoughts. The good thoughts come out of a solid foundation and...preparation...preparation for the obstacles against me.  

95% of people fear the obstacles that might come (so they hunker down and hope for the best). The other 5% expect them to come (so they prepare and have less fear).

And that difference means one group does its best to think "positively" and follow the "right formula" only to be surprised or stunned when the world isn't all that welcoming. (You know, we've all been taught to believe that if we just work hard [and get good grades...and oh be nice!], someone will "notice" and we "will" be rewarded for it. It's a nice idea when it works [as it sometimes does], but it catches us off guard when it doesn't.) So this group went into the world of work expecting that if they held up their end of the deal, the powers that be would hold up theirs (life is an "if/then" proposition).  
It's why there are so many depressed positive thinkers out there.

The other group has members all taught the same mantra (work hard/good grades = good job and nice house), but somehow they never quite bought into it as a guarantee. (Maybe they had entrepreneurial parents who taught them early that life doesn't always work this way. Or they did believe it but were bit by it one too many times, and they finally got fed up with it.) Whatever the reason, instead of living in a state of stunned stagnation, they start doing what "positive thinking" is really all about, accepting life for what it is and not for what it ought to be and making preparations for it. Now, I know what you might be thinking...this is all, so, negative! It's such a poor attitude!  

I mean, it's not exactly the Disney World fantasy we would like it to be, is it?

Listen. Career progression and, more importantly, protection doesn't come down to optimism versus pessimism. It isn't about good attitude versus bad attitude.  

It's about having the right attitude:

The one that's going to give you more freedom and more security than just hoping you get noticed someday and don't get screwed by your next boss. So, no, your work history isn't speaking for itself. It's up to you to advocate for it, to position yourself strategically, and to expect/anticipate obstacles along the way. You have a lot more to be optimistic and positive about when you take that approach than when you are just "waiting and hoping," chasing after this credential and that one, running yourself ragged to fit into the latest management mold, just praying someone up the ladder remembers all the great work you do and rewards you for it.  

In my mind, that's the most negative thinking you can have.

Face It: Your Job Search IS Emotional

We'd like to think that all of our decisions are rational, that we know how to tell the difference between an emotional response and a logical one, and that we are completely in charge of our emotions.

These are nice thoughts, but study after study proves us wrong on all accounts.

Just look at the world of sales and marketing. I've known salespeople and marketing gurus who are great at appealing to the prospect's "logic" and "reason" and who build extremely convincing rational arguments. But those who linger there too long rarely make the sale.

Why?

Because to persuade someone to take action requires an emotional trigger. Yes...requires.  

We can be convinced of something (actually believe it), but that doesn't mean we are persuaded to do anything about it. More often than not, we need our emotions to compel us to take action.

A successful salesperson knows this and understands how to appeal to both the logical side as well as the emotional. (We need both because the emotion will trigger the sale, while the logic will allow us to rationalize why it was a good decision.)

So what does all of this mean for the job search?

In working with a lot of IT and scientific/technical management professionals, there is often a desire to appear extremely rational. After all, it is a much safer (comfortable) place full of logic and mathematics that often leads to conclusive answers. So naturally there is a tendency to take that approach both personally and professionally.  

And while it's true that being overcome with emotions can result in negative consequences, believe it or not, there is a danger of trying to deny the part emotion plays in our lives. This is especially true when it comes to a job search.

Much like in the sales process, we need to tap into our emotions for the "persuasion trigger," that adrenaline that causes us to act. Without it, we can end up in endless debate (often with our internal selves) and somewhat delusional, mistaking our sound reasoning as protection from looking or doing something dumb. Of course, this protection also has a tendency to make us stagnant. (I've spoken with many a tech professional who proudly will declare that his or her use of sound logic has kept them from making stupid career mistakes. That's nice, except for often it really just means they haven't taken any risks either. Instead, they've just been waiting for a "rational" world to recognize their value.)  

Also, when it comes to the job search process itself, logic and reason are often missing.

Hiring practices, job market forecasts, networking, and job search methods are all fraught with a certain level of silliness. They are often uncomfortable, outside of the proper order, and full of politics and human interaction (which are generally not known for being "rational").

So when making our way through the job market "zoo" as we like to call it at ITtechExec and NoddlePlace, we need to remember two things:

• We are emotional, and our emotions are at play during our job search. And that's not always a bad thing!
• The people we are dealing with throughout the hiring process are also emotional, and just like we need to have an emotional trigger that requires us to act, so do they. (Most hiring decisions are made on "gut" feelings, no matter what else you may hear, more so than on pure logic and reason. The logic and reason usually justify the emotional [instinctual] decision.)

It just might be a better world if everything went according to a sound, well-reasoned plan, but it's not likely to happen anytime soon. It reminds me of that other sales and marketing adage: If you want to be successful in your job search (career, life, etc.), to some extent, you have to  

Succeed based on what is and not on what ought to be.

Are You A Good Career Negotiator?

Recently, I was asked to contribute to a CIO.com article by Rich Hein on "career negotiation."

As always, I am thankful to CIO.com for including me, especially on such an important topic in today's market:

8 Tips to Be a Better Career Negotiator

The Softer Side of Tech Revisited

Now that Labor Day is long gone, summer has faded, and the kids are well into school, there's one thing that is sure to happen...in fact, it already has...  

IT and tech candidates are going to decide they are now ready to get going with their job search, you know, the one they have been meaning to do but have been putting off all summer?  

As a result, the other thing that's sure to happen is a surge in the market of tech-related job seekers all vying for open positions from now until Thanksgiving when they put the brakes on searching again. Yes, the job search market has a predictable cycle too, and if you find yourself coming up against it during the "peak" seasons (specifically, spring and fall), it's wise to bring your A game. Therefore, I want to revisit a post I published back in February 2014 in anticipation of the upcoming spring season. Now that fall is coming, I think it is a good time to look at it again. -----------

So, for a little bit now, I've been discussing the importance of "soft skills" in the 2014 IT job market. The following posts all touch on how the market is favoring those IT professionals who are, well, softer:

• "A Career in IT: 'It's All Ball Bearings Nowadays'"
• "IT: Your Friendly Neighborhood Strategic Business Partner"
• "The Road to Promotion: Culture, Culture, Culture"

Today, I'd like to highlight perhaps the top 10 soft skills in demand, things that you need to show, not tell, in your next career move.

 1. Strong Work Ethic

When I first started writing resumes, it was considered bad form to put "hard worker" or "hard working" on a resume because it was one of those... no duh....things. Who doesn't think they are a hard worker and have a strong work ethic? But increasingly, in today's market, employers are demanding professionals to demonstrate a strong work ethic. One way to do that would be to prepare a Problems-Solutions-Results (PSR) page as an addendum to your resume. It can showcase problems you have faced and how you have worked to resolve them.

 2. Positive Attitude

Here's one that can be tough for some personality types. Let's be real. It isn't that you are negative necessarily (although others might perceive it that way); it's more likely you are direct, to the point, and in your mind a realist. Unfortunately, though, these traits aren't always well received in today's corporate market (neither is a healthy dose of sarcasm) even if sometimes they are what's needed. So finding a way to be direct while being sure to end on a positive note will go far.

 3. Good Communication Skills

Many times people only focus on the verbal and listening part of communication skills, but in today's world, writing skills are at a premium. So showcasing your background in this area is important too.  

4. Time Management Abilities  

5. Problem-Solving Skills

Again, here is where the PSR mentioned earlier would come into play.  

6. Acting as a Team Player

The PSR could also provide you with an opportunity to showcase the work you've done in a team environment. A Testimonials page could do the same thing by letting your colleagues "refer" you through their kudos of you.

 7. Self-Confidence 8. Ability to Accept and Learn From Criticism

Inevitably, you will be asked a question during interviews about a time when you had to take criticism and what you did with it. So be prepared to provide an example.  

9. Flexibility/Adaptability

Here is where an Innovation page could come in handy. Outlining ideas for changes in business operations or procedures that you see that could enhance business activities and show adaptability is highly sought after.

 10. Working Well Under Pressure

 Once again, the PSR page is a great place to demonstrate a scenario where you handled pressure and came out strong.

Chasing After the Low-hanging Professional Fruit: Part III

In Part I of this series, I started out by talking about what makes us move from the ordinary into the extraordinary, questioning the clichés we often hear when it comes to the use of "excellence." In Part II, I started discussing some things that my 10-year-old daughter and I have been looking at it when it comes to facing different situations in life (specifically for her at the moment competitive swimming is playing a large part). I brought up the need to shift our mindset and remove some "stinking thinking." In relation to that, I brought up two issues:

 A. Focus more on legacy than on long term or short term.

B. Cut out the noise and seek wisdom.

 Now here in Part III, I want to end by looking at two more issues that might not be normal things people talk about in relation to "excellence," but I think have merit because they allow us to look at life in a more mature way.

C. Recognize that life is not fair...to all of us in some way or another...it's what makes it so, well, fair...And this is nothing new. It's always been that way, and it will always be that way. Extraordinary people are aware of their place in the human struggle, and they fight against the tendency to let unfairness cloud their judgment.

My daughter has about the world's worst birthday for swimming competitively at least in the under 15 world. Swimming, in an effort to be fair, has created a very unfair system for young swimmers when it comes to their birthdays. As a result, some get to dominate an age group during championships while others are forced to age up simply based on whether your birthday falls the day before or the day after the meet. For my daughter, whose birthday falls the day before, it actually keeps her from going to championships. Even though she more than qualifies and has spent the entire season one age, because of her birthday, she can't go unless she happens to swim a qualifier time for the next age group before her actual birthday. Yet if her birthday were a couple of days later, like it is for some other kids, she could go and most likely win medals and ribbons and all the prizes they do. (I won't even mention how this affects coaching.)

So it's an unfairness, for sure. Yet it's not likely to change during her "career" as a young swimmer. It's a struggle she must deal with if she wants to be a part of the sport, but more importantly, it is one she can't dwell on. If she gives it too much weight, then it will affect her decision making, her confidence, etc.

What unfairness do you have to face in your career? Age, gender, disability, lack of education? How often do you let it affect your choices and outlook?

Facing life's unfairness is something we can all nod our heads to, but I've met very few people who really come to terms with it. Most people either give up, shrug it off and try to ignore it, or rage against it. Very few find a "healthy" way of approaching it (myself included). Extraordinary people find a way to acknowledge, recognize, advocate but still progress. They may be talented and hard working, but they understand disappointment too.

 D. Recognize that time and chance happen to us all. OK, this one might be splitting hairs a bit as it is related to the general unfairness (or, uh, fairness, if you will) of life, but I think there is an important distinction here. For those of you familiar with Scripture, you might recognize this as a snippet from Ecclesiastes 9:11:

"The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."

More often than not, people like to use this verse to talk about the negative things that happen to us, but I think the verse is more inclusive than that. It is talking about all the things that happen to us: good and bad. Sometimes we get what we don't deserve (good and bad!), and sometimes we don't get what we do deserve (good and bad!).

It is a reminder that we are not, contrary to popular clichés, in control of everything that happens to us. Hard work and dedication mixed with talent is noble, for sure, and often does lead to good outcomes, but it's not a guarantee.

In my mind, both C and D here point back to the necessity of A. If life is unfair and our destiny is not completely in our control, then our legacy becomes even more important. And legacy is not earning a specific award necessarily. Sure, that's a great goal, but it's bit like making money a goal. Instead a legacy is a gift you leave behind and that gift paves the way for someone else. It makes their life easier or enriched in some way, not yours necessarily.

Can you imagine what it would be like if we spent more time focusing on that gift instead of on chasing the low-hanging fruit that rarely satisfies? Now that would be something truly extraordinary.

Talent Shortage vs. Candidate Pool [Infographic]

If there's one thing that we hear over and over again in the tech market, it is that the talent pool is lacking. Yet, when job postings come out, I come across candidates who at least on the surface check off all the boxes on the posting.

So what gives?

The following infographic from the Career Advisory Board of DeVry University is interesting. Personally, I think the first item "Not Positioned Right" is a high-priority issue as it speaks to a bigger problem, which is that candidates often think they understand their audience and what matters to them when, in reality, that audience has a different set of priorities.

As we have discussed several times in this blog, understanding the needs of your target market is really at the core of both a successful job search as well as long-term career management.

Why Our Writing Skills Need an Upgrade Revisited

by Sheree Van Vreede (@rezlady)  

Since I first published the following post almost 2 years ago now, I've received lots of feedback, mostly from people who are seeing a serious lack of written communication skills on their jobs and a general lack of concern company-wide about it. So I thought I would revisit this issue again.

-------------

 It's funny. I hear a lot of people talking about the importance of strong verbal communication skills these days, but I rarely hear much about written communication skills. I find that odd considering how much written communication the average person now does, from remote work, to documentation, to social media.

Not surprisingly, this same issue translates into our education system. When most people talk about curriculum reform, they talk about the need for more math, science, and technology in the classroom (and for good reason). Usually, though, the last thing they are thinking about is grammar and the importance of written communication. In fact, by and large, many efforts have been made to downgrade these skills as a side issue to something "larger" (big picture thinking). Sure, our kids still practice writing in their daybooks and journals, producing responses to endless essay questions, and so on. But often they are graded more on their critical thought process than they are on their actual writing ability.

In the age of social media, this is a concern.

I've been a remote worker since 1999, and my foundation is in freelance editing for scientific/technical/academic publishing houses. Because I am remote and because I work with documentation written by mostly technical folks, I can tell you that there are three main skill sets that are desperately missing when it comes to written communication these days:

• Engaging personality.

Sometimes I think there is nothing more self-absorbing than e-mail. People rush them off with barely a consideration for how they might be perceived by the person at the other end of the communication. You are expected to understand them. Period.

My business partner and I have an inside joke. Every time we get some terse e-mail, when we follow it up with a phone call, our "lion" quickly turns into a "lamb." Every time. Why? Because verbal communication tends to make us more engaging and less confrontational. We have a person right there we have to interact with, and unless we are really, really mad, we tend to want to make a connection with that person.

Writing, which should actually heighten this effect, more often than not misses that mark for most people. The reason? Because they are thinking more about themselves than they are about their audience. They forget about the other person who will be reading their diatribe.

Let's face it. Selfish people are just not that engaging.

• Grammar skills.

Now, I know that learning grammar was probably one of the least favorite subjects by most people in school, but do you know that today very few kids are even learning it? Sure, they get the basics (parts of a sentence), but they learn very little about the true meaning behind most words and how to craft more meaningful texts. Now, I understand not everyone wants to be Shakespeare, but I didn't want to be Einstein either, and even I still had to learn basic physics. So despite whether it is fun, it is still your language. It would be nice to know more about it!

 Let me be clear here. My point is not that people sometimes have typos (as far as I know, none of us is perfect). It's not even that someone might have difficulty spelling (although it would be nice if they at least tried to use spellchecker from time to time). It's the general lack of concern for how they present themselves and the embodiment of their work. You don't have to be stuffy because you choose your words carefully and consider how they are arranged and what they mean. Some of the best wordsmiths are the most entertaining precisely because they have such a strong command of language.

• Cohesiveness.

We seem to think that by teaching math and science, we are teaching logic, but that is not the whole picture. Crafting a well-written, cohesive document requires some of the strongest logic skills there are (after all, you are building something out of nothing). And I can tell, whether it is my engineers at Boeing or my PhDs at Harvard, the ability to write something that is logically cohesive is lacking. The reason is because the act of writing has become such a hurried, secondary, unimportant event in our lives; we no longer sit and really think through what it is we want to say and how we want to structure it (in fact, I have had many an author act as though it is beneath them...all this fuss over writing).

But it is not enough just to "know" something; you must be able to connect with your audience.

You know, there once was a time when people actually rated each other on their letter writing abilities, how well they engaged the reader, how proper the grammar, and how cohesive the letter. They didn't want a list of bullet points, vomiting out what the other person knew. They wanted something that was on point and interesting to read. It meant the person was "educated!"

This all might sound "stuffy" to a "hear-and-now" (as well as a "here-and-now") generation, but if the popularity of social media is any indication, now more than ever, people want to be heard. They have something to say.

Yet, unless you can communicate it well in writing, I promise you, no one will be listening.

Chasing After the Low-hanging Professional Fruit: Part II

I ended Part I of this series talking about what excellence really is. Often we think of it as hard work and commitment, both of which are noble things. Or we think it comes out of a competitive spirit or extreme natural talent, again not bad things necessarily. They all certainly can put you on the road to "excellence."  

But I would propose that excellence is more than that: It is an ability to go beyond the ordinary.
And to do that requires a shift in our typical mindset to fight against natural tendencies (what my grandmother would call "stinking thinking"). I listed these tendencies in Part I, but I will give a short recap here:

1.  We talk long term, but we think (and act) short term. 
2. We crave a team, but we like individual prizes too much. 
3. We need constant positive reinforcement. 
4. We focus on the wrong things because they look and sound like (or seem like) they are more satisfying than the right things. 
5. We don't really know what our goals are.  

To achieve more or something outside of the norm, you have to do something different, and that starts by thinking differently, battling against these tendencies, which have a way of making us ordinary, not extraordinary.

In Part I, I started out by talking about the world of competitive swimming that my young daughter is in. After a couple of years in it, frankly, I still don't understand much about it. It's a confusing environment, and it is a world where you are actually coached to "sweat the small stuff" because technique matters so much.

But from what I've observed, another aspect matters just as much, and that is mindset. So although I can't coach my daughter on her technique, I can coach her on her mindset, a mindset that if she can learn to shift now, she can use when she enters the rat race, an even more confusing environment.

Here are some things we've been discussing (to be continued in Part III):

A. Focus more on legacy than on long term or short term.

When you're 10, like my daughter, long term is 6 months from now or maybe next year. And although I hear a lot of talk (both in swimming and in the professional realm) about setting short- and long-term goals, I've encouraged her first to think more in terms of "legacy" when it comes to her involvement in swimming (or other things). Why do you do what you do in the first place? What mark, however small and however brief, do you hope to make on it?

By using examples from history, she and I have looked at this concept of "legacy building" and what that might mean. Have you ever thought of your career in those terms? What legacy will you be leaving behind?

I find the distinction important because so often we rush to set goals, such as a new title or new pay rate or new venture, both long- and short-term ones, but we often set them merely as wish lists, not from a foundation of what we think our legacy should be. Doing so first helps then drive the goals with a purpose. It also helps when we don't reach one of the goals or it takes longer than expected. We still have our purpose behind it.

Legacies are also what make us unique, by the way. Lots of us can have the same job or same lot in life, but we are still each uniquely made and we bring that "gift" to our careers.

B. Cut out the noise and seek wisdom.

Here's a tough one, especially in today's world. We have a lot of different voices coming at us, telling us that we better do this and that or we'll miss the boat and be left behind! So we tend to find ourselves chasing after this thing or that thing. As parents, we do this with our children all the time. We just want to make sure they have the best, so we spend a lot of time getting them "positioned" well with the "right" classes and the "right" activities at the "right" places.

In our careers, we do the same things even though we might not be as aware of it. We get nervous about missing out, or about becoming a victim of the market, so we keep trying to maneuver into the "right" position. And although strategic positioning makes sense, we need some real wisdom behind it first; otherwise, we are really just following the masses.

Extraordinary thinking reminds us that we can't always trust our senses, especially what we see and hear. It tells us we can't give in to scare tactics.  

Ordinary thinking says that perception is reality. Extraordinary thinking is thankful that's not true.

(Stay tuned for Part III, where we look at dealing with unfairness and time and chance

On the Road to Promotion, Don't Get Stuck in Traffic

 

Let's face it. Most professionals would like to get promoted at their current companies.

It's much easier than facing another external search and less disruptive to work-life balance. You know the culture, and good or bad, you know what to expect.  

But despite the desire to get promoted, most professionals get lost in the promotion process and fail to get the results they were hoping for.

Why? Well, usually, there are two different factors at play:

1. Internal company chaos in the form of politics and poor processes
2. Lack of preparedness on the part of the professional up for promotion

In this post, I specifically want to look at #2 because often when candidates don't get the promotion, they blame #1 (internal processes), but although internal practices are certainly convoluted at best, candidates usually make the "mistake" of expecting their work histories to speak for themselves, which results in hurting their chances for promotion.

Don't get me wrong. This expectation is an understandable one.  

You've put in the time, made the effort, and have the results to show for it. Your clients or end users love you, and you've always received solid performance reviews. So why wouldn't all that speak for itself?

Right or wrong, however, it often just doesn't. It doesn't make the case the way you think it should, and because of that, two things happen:  

a. You go in unprepared, poorly prepared, or mediocre at best: As I've written about in previous posts, going for a promotion is still a form of a job search. In fact, it is really an even higher stakes one because although you think you should be a no-brainer for the position based on XYZ (major wins for the company you helped score, your hard work and commitment, etc.), upper management is also usually aware of other things that may or may not have been in your control (what I call ABC, some slights you thought were nothing, personality conflicts, poor performing projects, corporate politics, etc.). And even though you think ABC should not carry as much weight as XYZ, it often does.

Therefore, you need to be approaching the promotion process with even more diligence than you would an external opportunity because this is not a clean slate. In other words, there's lots of corporate "goo" going on here.  

b. You lack leverage: It is my opinion that in today's market, professionals should always be in some sort of job search or business development mode. We should be creating what I call "pipelines" that bring us opportunities that we can choose to consider or ignore. It leads to what I call a "corporate entrepreneur" mindset. Much like a contractor or consultant must be on top of lining up the next contract while working on the current one, even full-time employees should be paying attention to building relationships that will help create options for them. By doing so, it allows for more flexibility/agility in your career, for you to avoid (hopefully) a full-time job search, and build leverage in your current role (especially during promotion time).

Now, I am not talking about building leverage so you can beat your current employer over the head with it. I'm merely talking about understanding your marketability and what else is out there for you (not what you think is out there or what you think you're worth). Understanding this allows you to have some kind of leverage in the promotion process because as in any type of negotiation, you should have some! Otherwise, you are just hoping the company sees your "market" value and bestows it on you....a value you aren't all that sure of.

You have to remember that there are two factors at play here in the promotion process. It's not just getting the promotion; it's getting the proper pay to go with it! When internal moves are made, the proper pay does not always go with it. (I just spent a good portion of a day on the phone with one of my clients who recently accepted a "promotion" with a small bump in pay only to find out later that the company was advertising the position for a much higher rate on external job postings...yikes.)

Nevertheless, I continue to speak with candidates on a regular basis who insist that they don't need to invest much in the promotion process and that they are just going to "wait and see" how it all turns out. I would say with this mindset it is a 40/60 turnout: 40% get the promotion but not always the proper pay; 60% don't get anything and usually end up pretty bitter about it.

With candidates who shift their mindset and take a more proactive preparedness approach, I would say it is a 60/40 turnout: 60% get the promotion and generally the proper pay (due to preparation).  

With candidates who get prepared and have leverage already built, I would say it is a 75/25 turnout: 75% get the promotion AND get the proper pay to go with it; 25% don't but have stored up leverage to look more actively and more quickly at external opportunities.

Overall, it's a much better increase in odds, but first, you have to stop thinking sensibly and start understanding that when it comes to careers, sensible and rational don't always apply:  

Right, wrong, good, or bad: Your work history does not always do the selling you think it should.

Overcoming Job Board Addiction: Part II

 
OK, so in Part I of this series I might have ruffled a few feathers by referring to what I see as a "job board addiction."

Listen. If job boards are working for you, you have so many hot opportunities lined up and your pick of good positions with great salaries, then that's awesome! You are one of the lucky ones then.  

But that's my point: With an effectiveness rate of only 1-7%, more people lose than win.

In the whole job search picture, job boards and online postings are not all that effective; yet candidates put the bulk of their efforts into them.

The reason for their ineffectiveness is there is a lot going on behind these postings that you can't anticipate. For one thing, some jobs are posted but really are already filled, but for various reasons, the company still posts for the position and goes through the motion of interviewing candidates. A large percentage of organizations now dump all entries into an automated Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that tries to weed through applicant resumes to sift out the best qualified ones. Of course, if applicants don't guess the parameters used by the company's specific ATS, their resume could be tossed out without any human every laying eyes on it. Furthermore, if all of that isn't enough to discourage the average job seeker, the average number of submissions to these online postings is running in the hundreds these days, which means you are effectively being dumped in with the masses.

So even if you are the perfect candidate, first you have to differentiate from the masses, then you have to make it through a complex and mysterious human-less process called the ATS, and finally even if you succeed through all of that and get called in for an interview, you still have to hope the job really is "open" and you aren't just fulfilling some internal company regulation that says every position must be posted and external candidates must be interviewed before the internal candidate can be promoted. (But, hey, miracles do happen....1-7% of the time!).

Shifting our mindset is not easy to do.

My overall philosophy when it comes to a job search is that in today's market where you are likely to switch jobs every 3 to 4 years, candidates should create career-long pipelines that put them in a position for opportunities to be brought to them instead of trying your luck with the masses. I call it networking with positioning, and it is more along the lines of what an entrepreneur or small business owner has to do to create business development and stay solvent. Although it takes a shift in mindset and it requires some preparation, it is much more effective and logical than trying to unlock some secret job posting code that really has very little logic behind it.

But, hey, since when has a job search ever been a logical proposition?